Nevermore and Race: Historical Revisionism, Colorblindness, and White Feminism
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Heavy themes and historical atrocities will be discussed. Reader discretion is advised.
What does it mean for a story to be colorblind and to be historically revisionist?
They’re both tied to the same thing-history. Race is a construct created by history. To write colorblindly is to ignore that history when it comes to your characters. For people of color especially, that means to erase any discrimination they faced because that would mention their race and the story is colorblind. Race-and to that extent, racism-does not exist.
Historical revisionism, in a non-academic context, means to rewrite or present history in a way that aligns with an agenda or ideology. This is also called negationism, though that specifically is deliberate. Both distort, minimize, and lie, not always but usually about, the reality of racism in world history.
Nevermore is both. The writing of its characters and world building is negationist and colorblind. Let me explain why.
Prejudices that exist in Nevermore
The oppression of women is one of the most prominent themes of the comic. An example is the backgrounds of the protagonists, Anabel Lee and Lenore. The misogynistic idea of hysteria and the belief that a woman's only role is to get married and bear children is what got Lenore confined to the attic and Anabel Lee to North America. Lenore attempted to flee an engagement and injured herself, rendering her unable to walk (the doctors did not attempt to rehabilitate that ability due to her being a woman), and therefore unable to marry. Anabel Lee refused to marry anyone who could not match her intellect, and after running out of men in London, went to New York. The choice not to marry was never an option. Patriarchy is the reason they met, as well as the reason they both died.
These themes are common in the story-madwomen, marriage (especially in relation to wealth), hysteria, and what is expected of each gender.
Even though characters lose a majority of their memories after death, most still remember these ideas.
The most common post-mortem examples are misogynistic language, language that calls men feminine to degrade them, the idea of a ‘lady’ and how she behaves, and damsels.
Ada and Berenice’s backstories revolve around both gender and class. Similar to gender, most Nevermore characters remember that calling someone poor is insulting because being poor is not desirable.
The idea of a lady, while put on the gender slides, is also tied to class. Proper ladies are feminine and wealthy, and do femininely wealthy things like wear corsets and don’t swear, as opposed to masculinized, unrefined poor women.
Due to women’s limited career options, a women’s only choices to survive was to get married to a wealthy man or be doomed a ‘spinster’. Lenore is the latter while Anabel was going to get married to a man handpicked by her father before Leo showed up, and Ada and Berenice were both with wealthy men who ultimately led to their downfall. While not confirmed, Lenore was likely killed by Anabel’s suitor. And if you subscribe to the theory that Lenore shot Anabel when she meant to shoot the suitor as well, then all four of them had demises related to wealthy men. Their lives were also all controlled by wealthy men.
All of this contributes to their personalities and choices in Nevermore. After a lifetime of entrapment, Lenore disregards rules and expectations, knowing it’s all meaningless, while Anabel sees it all as a zero-sum game, like the men around her did. Ada clings to power, especially those who seem to be wealthy and refined (Prospero and Anabel) because in her life, those with money had all the power. Berenice has trust issues after Sterling’s betrayal and feels like she’s always just trying to survive.
But why am I telling you this? You know poor people have it worse than rich people. You know women have it worse than men. You know people’s personalities and beliefs are informed by the mistreatment they go through. Everyone knows that, including Nevermore. They show it in their dialogue and storylines constantly.
But everyone also knows that white people-specifically Anglican white people-have it the best. But does Nevermore know that? Does Nevermore show that?
Racism does not exist in Nevermore
No. Not only does it not exist, it’s intentional, which is why I called Nevermore negationist.
At the academy, characters not only remember classism and sexism, but countries as well.
But none of them are racist. They all come from time eras where racism was the norm, some of them are already bigoted against poor people and women, yet they’re okay with the plethora of people of color around them.
Almost half of Nevermore’s main cast is American-seven out of eleven. Out of those seven, three would be considered people of color by the American government of most of the cast’s time-Prospero is Sicilian-American, Eulalie is Japanese-American, and Berenice is African-American. America was a racially segregated country, either informally (ie, rich Whites lived in one place, poor Italians lived in another) or through formal Jim Crow laws. Jim Crow is considered one of the most robust, long lasting, and reprehensible systems of racial segregation in history. It informed every aspect of life. So it’s quite a shock that none of the American characters remark on the fact that Nevermore is desegregated.
In life, Eulalie, Berenice, and Prospero weren’t allowed to attend White colleges and they definitely wouldn’t have had White roommates if they did. The same discrimination would apply to Duke and Morella, Black and Irish respectively.
The rooms of Nevermore are separated by gender. Most of the non-human Nevermore cast seems aware of the construct as well.
This is an illogical equation. Human characters practice classism and sexism. They are from obscenely racist eras of history. They are aware of countries. But none of them are racist.
Nevermore is not a period piece. It doesn’t need to include every single historical aspect or be 100% accurate. But it’s one thing to include a hair style or slang word that was a few decades too early or late. It’s another to erase one of the most pervasive bigotries in history while extensively showing one of the others. Nevermore’s almost (I’ll talk about that) complete omission of racism creates confusing and problematic implications.
The first is that, upon entrance to the Nevermore purgatory, everyone loses all memories and conceptions of race. Just race. This would explain why both humans and non-humans are aware of other social biases. But this is obviously problematic-it puts the problem of racism below that of class and gender based discrimination, when all three are interconnected issues.
So maybe racism in Nevermore never existed in the first place. This is disproved by the comic-Prospero gets called a slur, Eulalie dies in a fire that may or may not have been racially motivated, Egaus tells Berenice to act like they belong, and Luca and Isidor seem immediately suspicious of Duke. It’s also even more problematic, disrespecting the millions of lives lost in racist wars and expansions, and those who fought to repeal racist laws and systems.
The final conclusion, then, is that racism does exist and characters do remember it at the academy. . . We just haven’t seen them talk about it yet.
Running under that assumption, let’s explore the lunacy and convenience of none of the main cast being racist, talking about race, being traumatized by their race, or having abstract reactions to Nevermore’s desegregation, in relation to their time era and ethnicity. I’ll also point out the negationism of many character’s life flashbacks. Going chronologically, except for those who would be considered people of color.
Montresor
Arguably the most bigoted character in the comic, Montresor is quick to break out misogynistic language and enforce gender roles. The fact that he’s this misogynistic, but not racist, is enough to raise eyebrows, even without bringing in his time era. His enemies are a Black man, a Black woman, an Asian woman, and eventually, an Irish woman. Sometimes, he’s in private with these characters, where no one would hear him break out a racial slur. Yet he never does, implying that even when no one is listening, Montresor is not racist.
There’s a lot to talk about when it comes to race, the Wild West, and cowboys. For starters, cowboys weren’t all White. There were a lot of Black and Mexican ranch hands. The origin of cowboys diffused up from Mexico, where they were called vaqueros. The Wild West was an extremely diverse place, with newly freed Blacks using the westward expansion to escape the South and Chinese immigrants coming from across the Pacific. It’s disappointing that Montresor’s flashbacks to life don’t acknowledge this historical reality and are almost entirely composed of White people. I counted maybe two Brown background characters.
But diversity doesn’t mean equality. I’d be remiss not to mention whose land the cowboys were settling on. Native Americans are a common presence in cowboy stories, usually as antagonists cast in racist stereotypes. It’s convenient that we’ve seen no Native Americans at Nevermore Academy. Or in Montresor’s life. Or any of the American character’s lives.
The cowboy era was from 1865 to 1890. 1865 was the end of the Civil War, the start of Reconstruction, and the birth of the Ku Klux Klan. The Chinese Exclusion Act was passed in 1882. Sundown Towns became a thing in 1890. It was America in the late nineteenth century; racism was everywhere.
Montresor is from the farthest back in time and his beliefs regarding gender roles reflect that. The absence of racist beliefs implies that yeah, he’s okay with it all. The oldest character, possibly fresh out of Civil War America, is okay with a desegregated school. He’s a bit of an egotistical sadist, but he doesn’t discriminate based on race. Black people? Chill. Asians? No problem. Women? Bitch. Whore. Slut. Montresor remembers all the nasty words to degrade women, but never people of color. He’s a hole of insecurity, self-loathing, and illusions of grandeur, but not a white supremacist. Another illogical equation.
Anabel Lee and Lenore
Placed at the start of the twentieth century, our protagonists are wealthy White women, one British and one American. All of their life flashbacks take place in the North. Something I immediately noticed about the servants of their homes is that all of them are White. A majority of Black women worked in the home. They raised White children, cooked meals for White families, and cleaned White living rooms. Did Lenore experience this growing up? It’s unclear. It’s possible her parents were racist against Blacks (Northerners were against slavery, but that didn’t mean they liked the enslaved), but then that begs the question of how Lenore felt about Blacks.
Based on her friend group-two Black people, an Irish, and an Asian-Lenore’s pretty accepting for a twentieth century White woman. But that’s quite strange considering she lived a sheltered, wealthy life and then was confined to an attic for most of adulthood. When did she deconstruct the beliefs of white supremacy around her? How? Why? Yes, she was a rebel, but she was also drugged and confined. Undoing racist beliefs, ones forced upon her since childhood, would be quite the undertaking. If this is what happened, it’s odd readers aren’t shown it.
Lenore had probably never seen a Japanese person before, as most of them were concentrated on the West Coast, yet her reaction to Eulalie is no different than her reaction to anyone else. On the other hand, as a New Yorker, she would’ve encountered African Americans outside of the home, as well as Irish immigrants. She would’ve been aware of ongoing racial violence, like Robert Lewis’s lynching (1892) and the race riot of 1900, and taught that Black people-especially Black men-are dangerous.
Everything I said about Lenore goes for Anabel, including the when did you become not racist bit. Anabel Lee was a wealthy Brit from 1901. Everyone around her would’ve looked down on the Irish. But Morella is just another pawn to her, regardless of race.
Based on their behavior in the afterlife, neither Anabel Lee or Lenore are racist; strange miracles considering their upbringing. But Anabel is the enemy of the Misfit group. If she’s willing to kill them, why isn’t she willing to pretend to be racist to degrade them? Appearances of power are everything to her and there’s nothing more powerful than a wealthy, refined, White woman.
Pluto
Pluto is likely from the 1920s. The British empire was at its largest during that time. This included significant parts of Africa and Asia. But Eulalie, Berenice, and Duke aren’t from any of those colonies, so maybe that’s why he doesn’t discriminate against them.
But you know who was born and raised in a British colony? Morella. Yet similar to Anabel Lee, Morella’s race has no impact on his treatment of her, despite the temporal proximity of the Irish War of Independence (1919-1921) and the Partition of Ireland (1920). There were also British race riots in 1919, with four of the five deaths being that of Black men. Those riots targeted Blacks, Arabs, and Chinese for ‘taking away jobs’.
It makes more story sense for Pluto not to be racist, as he is one of the Misfits (unlike Anabel Lee) and not a rampant misogynist (unlike Montresor). However, it still raises questions of how, when, and why. Most Brits in the 1920s had no reason not to be racist. Their colonies provided materials that allowed Britain to financially prosper. But maybe Pluto didn’t care about that. Or maybe he was just a really, really good person who unlearned the myth of the British civilizing mission. Too bad the readers don’t get to see it.
Will
William Wilson is a bootlicker from Dust Bowl-era Kansas. People get so much more racist during times of economic despair. And the Great Depression is the worst it ever got.
Kansas has a complex racial history-Bleeding Kansas, John Brown, the forced relocation of Native Americans. But we don’t see any of that from Will, not in his backstory or his behavior. Will goes along with the people around him, both in life and death, but strangely, none of the people around him in either times are racist. So Will isn’t racist because none of the people around him are. That works for Will, someone whose character is deeply entwined with the idea of having no identity of their own, but it also implies that most White people aren’t racist unless prompted by others, which ignores the subconscious biases they hold that allows them to go along with racism/have racist friends in the first place. It lets White people off the hook instead of forcing them to confront their biases.
And how far can you stretch this character is too weak to be racist? In Episode 80, Will backs into a Black guy, who apologizes and leaves before Will can reply. In the 1930s, this would’ve been grounds for beatings, degradement, and death by hanging. Will definitely went to lynchings with his family. The most infamous photo of a White crowd gathered around two lynched men is from 1930.
But Will isn’t racist and doesn’t hate Black people cause he has no identity. But does the Black guy he bumps into know that? The scene is supposed to show how ignorable Will is. But what Black man would just ignore his show of disrespect to a White man? The most modern character is from the 40s and lynchings very much still happened then.
The violence Black people faced for ‘disrespecting’ White people was serious and very, very real. Sometimes they committed no crime but being Black, and were still killed.
The unnamed Black character shows no worry for such violence.
Ada
Similar to Will, Ada also follows those in power. But unlike Will, she initiates, lashing out and taunting.
There is only one powerful character of color-Prospero. The rest are Misfits. So why isn’t Ada racist? After all, she uses the lines of class and gender to position herself as someone with power, even if it’s all an illusion.
Ada is probably from the 40s. Do you know who was the villain during the 40s? The Japanese and Italians. Eulalie is Japanese, Prospero is Italian. Now, Prospero reminds her of her former lover and has a Spectre early in the comic, so it makes sense he’s not the target of racist remarks. Italians had also widely assimilated by the 40s.
But Eulalie? People from the 40s hated Japanese Americans so much, they sent them to concentration camps. Eulalie is not only a ‘dirty Jap’, but a member of the Misfits who attacks Ada’s new boyfriend. But there’s no racism from Ada.
The 40s weren’t kind to African Americans. Redlining, Jim Crow, poll taxes, exclusion from unions. Do Berenice and Duke face any of this bigotry from Ada? No.
This is completely diametric to Ada’s character. Ada is someone who sticks to social hierarchies because it gives her power. To anyone from the 40s, White people are powerful. Furthermore, African-Americans were (and still are) greatly associated with poverty. Ada loves to call people poor, but she never calls Berenice and Duke poor because they’re Black.
Ada being an open racist would make lots of sense for her character. But I guess she’s just someone who believes very strongly in the superiority of wealth, but not Whiteness.
Prospero
Italian immigrants to the United States were faced with scorn and discrimination. Between the 1880s and 1920s, the peaks of their immigration, there were lynchings, unfair trails, and federal legislation written to keep them out. Propsero’s flash back to life is an excellent depiction of how that historical treatment would’ve affected him.
Despite his politeness to the White Americans around him, he gets called a slur and is reminded that his position in relation to them is one of subservience. His community of fellow Sicilians is tight knit and isolated from Whites to shield from their harassment. A majority of them are dying from disease without access to medical treatment because they’re poor. Most don’t go to college and do hard labor in the mines. There’s even discussion of cultural assimilation; Prospero hides his Sicilian accent and only speaks his native language to his mother.
It’s good. There’s no other way to say it; it’s an excellent flashback that shows the reality and hardship of being an ethnic minority considered an outsider and inferior.
There are two criticisms: Prospero being the subject of discrimination does not mean he couldn’t have been racist himself. The relationship between African and Italian Americans was strained as they both competed by resources (and eventually Italians were considered White), but they lived in the same communities. So that could explain Prospero’s non-racist treatment of Duke and Berencie.
The other criticism has less to do with the scene itself and more with its singularity. Episode 113 of Nevermore shows that it can engage with the history of race and class, not just accurately, but well. It sets a high bar-in its second season, over a hundred episodes after the introduction of historical misogyny, but a high bar nonetheless.
Do the other characters of color clear this bar?
Morella
Morella was a Roman Catholic nun during the Irish War of Independence, which lasted from 1919 to 1921. I know she’s Roman Catholic because she’s performing the Adoration at a monstrance and Ireland at the time was majority Roman Catholic. She nurses a soldier of the Irish Republic, Maeve O’Malley, who is hiding from the Black and Tans, a violent paramilitary group on the side of the British.
I won’t pretend to know the history of Ireland or its wars as well as I know American ones. But I do know that Ireland was colonized by England and lost its land, language, and three million people. The treatment of the Irish under the British Empire was absolutely abhorrent.
For those reasons, I don’t understand why Morella asks Maeve ‘why must you fight’. Morella clearly knows about the war-she recognizes Maeve’s uniform, her mention of the Black and Tans, and knows she is not to help her. This could be explained by her dislike of conflict, an aspect of her personality that continues into Nevermore academy. But that’s when strangers around her are getting into arguments. This is a war for independence from an empire that has occupied her country for seven hundred years.
It’s an incredibly dumb question that, for those not in the know of Ireland’s oppression, comes off as, ‘war is bad and should not be fought’. And yes that is true, but in this context, it erases the fact that Ireland should have independence. This is a war for autonomy, freedom, and liberation. Why would Morella ask Maeve not to fight it? Has Morella magically not been oppressed by the British? She’s a Roman Catholic nun, there is literally no way she has no bad blood against the British because Roman Catholics were who the British were targeting!
It’s implied Morella changes and joins the side of the Irish rebellion (she remembers dying trying to save people). But it still doesn’t explain why initially she is so blind to the seriousness of the war. Why doesn’t she know the reality of the world? What reason is there to bend character traits and historical reality just so Morella doesn’t want independence for her own country immediately? Are the readers to believe that a kind character with a penchant for defending others who is completely capable of getting angry (see Ada) wouldn’t already be absolutely outraged at the British?
This bending goes further in Nevermore academy. She isn’t afraid of Pluto or Anabel Lee, despite both being British and from time eras where they would’ve been her oppressors. They don’t remember to be racist against her. But that doesn’t mean Morella can’t be rightfully afraid of them. But she isn’t.
Seven hundred years as a colony. A manmade famine. The erasure of the Irish language. Religious persecution. An active war. Morella remembers to be kind, but not those who tried to take it away from her.
Duke
Duke is French. On the board where characters talk about countries, they talk about his a lot. And Duke is proud of his nationality, he also talks about it and he speaks French constantly.
He seemingly has no criticism for its history of slavery or its ongoing colonial empire that was abusing and exploiting people that look just like him at that very moment. In 1912, France owned about a third of Africa. Duke seemingly doesn’t think about any of this.
Duke experiences racism once. Luca and Isidor are immediately suspicious of his work and assume he’s scamming people. Personally, I don’t think this is a racist occurrence. Luca and Isidor are professional magicians and look down on his work, not because he’s Black, but because they think such tricks are not worth people’s time. Isidor is impressed and smiling after he pulls off the knife trick and (based on the fact that Luca kills Duke) takes him under his wing. And from there, there are two conclusions: Isidor is a racist who trained and exploited Duke for other White people’s amusement or Isidor is not a racist and kept Duke around to hone his talent.
Most signs point to the second. Luca is absolutely infuriated at his father’s proud look towards Duke. Why would he kill him if Isidor only kept him around as a toy? And if Duke was treated as dehumanized entertainment, wouldn’t we see the psychological impact it had on him?
At the end of the day, this is only my interpretation. Maybe it was racist, maybe it wasn’t. But if it was, that means Duke experiences racism once. And that doesn’t make sense. He’s Black. He’s Black and it’s the 1910s. I’m not deeply versed in French history, but its colonial empire was only second to Britain’s. They threw Algerians into the sea out of helicopters. The French colonial empire hated Black people. Why is that hate distilled into two guys?
Berenice
The negationism of Berenice’s backstory is disgusting.
There is a vague handwave to racism at Sterling’s party. Egaeus tells Berenice to act like they belong on their way up the steps. But the owner of the estate is a Black man himself, so the belonging is more about class than race. Regardless of interpretation, there are no explicit shows of racism. No slurs, no segregation, no race based violence.
Nevermore does nothing to show how African Americans were treated in the 1920s. Reading their depiction, you wouldn’t know that it was a brutal decade of anti-Black, white supremacist violence. Birth of a Nation released in 1915 and led to the second wave of the KKK. The Red Summer of 1919 killed hundreds. Massacres and lynchings killed more-the Ocoee massacre of 1920 (80), the lynching of Charles Strong, the Perry massacre of 1922 (4),the Rosewood massacre of 1923 (8), and of course, the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921. The amount of deaths and injuries remain unknown, but it flattened Black Wall Street. Unrestrained Black financial success was not welcome in the 1920s.
Yes, there were mixed race parties during prohibition. Yes, wealthy Black people existed at the time. But to show both of these things and not the existing violent, prolific racism is an astoundingly malicious choice of the authors.
It makes it seem like people weren’t racist to African Americans. And that’s historical revisionism.
Berenice should be traumatized by her experiences, should treat her White classmates at Nevermore with caution and fearful deference because anything less could get her raped or murdered (neither of which would be prosecuted). And she should be absolutely gobsmacked by a desegregated school because she was a Black woman from Jim Crow America.
Authors make choices. Illustrators make choices. Kit Trace and Kate Flynn making Berenice’s first full length flashback at the private, interracial party of a wealthy Black man and not engaging in any of the racial subtext at play is a choice-one that has too many consequences to count.
Eulalie
As a fellow Asian American, Eulalie’s history is deeply important to me, which makes its erasure all the more frustrating. Berenice and Eulalie’s backstories is where Nevermore loses all its subtlety.
Her first full length flashback shows no racism. That’s an immediate problem because the clothing and hairstyle of her friends scream the 40s (look at those victory curls). I mentioned this with Ada, but from February 1942 to March 1946, 120,000 Japanese Americans were forced into concentration camps without trial in one of the worst displays of racism in American history.
Eulalie’s flashback shows no sign of this-she has White friends, her father is able to buy a house, she’s outside for Christ’s sake. There are plenty of theories of why this is and where that could place her in time, but my main question is: why? Why wait? Why does Eulalie have to be free in her flashback? Why does Pearl Harbor have to not have happened yet? The authors chose to make her a Japanese person from the 1940s, why aren’t they showing the racism she inevitably would face?
I know this sounds strange, like I want to see Eulalie suffer through the imprisonment of Minidoka or Tule Lake. But you have to remember how exhaustively the authors show the oppression of White women, how they have no autonomy, are controlled by those around them, and are subject to misogynistic stereotypes that end up dictating the paths of their lives. That’s why I’m so irritated by Eulalie’s backstory. The authors show misogyny in every single one of Anabel Lee and Lenore’s flashbacks, but Eulalie’s first full length flashback just so happens to take place during the brief years she wouldn’t have experienced racism. How convenient.
There is of course . . . another possibility. That Eulalie is never going to be put into a camp and that fire will start for some other reason because the authors have decided to ignore the history of Japanese internment camps. That would be horrific and disgusting, but not surprising since they’ve done the same thing with Jim Crow, an apartheid system that influenced Nazi Germany and lasted much longer. It hasn’t made a single appearance in the comic thus far, so Japanese internment being given the same treatment wouldn’t shock me.
But let’s assume the best and say Eulalie is heading into the camps. Maybe she survives, maybe she doesn’t. Either way, why isn’t she afraid of her White classmates? For all she knows, they wanted her in there. Besides the camps, Eulalie was still from 1940s America. That’s one white supremacist nation, and though she wouldn’t have been treated as badly as Black people, she was still a non-White person in a dominantly White world. She should tread with caution at Nevermore.
But she doesn’t. In fact, she directly calls out the Romans for being imperialists to no one’s reaction. Everyone in the room was either from a country that participated in imperialism or was a victim of it. Lenore, Duke, Pluto, Berenice, Morella-none of them look offended or aghast, just slightly confused or put off by her intensity. The US literally owned the Philippines in all of the characters’ time eras. Why is Eulalie the only one aware of and disgusted by imperialism?
In the same episode, she calls Nevermore academy ‘an academic institution conveniently reflective of our modern sensibilities’. And I have to ask-whose? Because every American character in Nevermore’s cast existed during Jim Crow and none of them care about their very much not Jim Crow school. Is Nevermore reflective of the characters’ modern sensibilities-whatever that means for a cast spanning seventy years of history? Or is it reflective of the audience’s?
Nevermore’s Black characters aren’t aware of their Blackness. Its Asian character isn’t aware of her Asianess. White characters don’t remember the privilege and power they held. In summation, despite their appearances and extremely rare deviations, characters are written without thought to their race. Nevermore is colorblind.
As the characters are written without thought to their race, real racist laws, behaviors, and events do not exist in the canon of Nevermore. Nevermore is historically revisionist.
In the world of the comic, misogyny and classism do exist. Ableism as well, especially related to mental illness. Despite the intersection of racism with all of these issues, it is not given the same screen time. The authors of Nevermore are completely capable of depicting historical race based discrimination, yet choose to only do it in one episode. Nevermore is negationist.
So for 99% of the comic-racism doesn’t exist in Nevermore.
What this means and what can (and can’t) be done
If the characters of Nevermore were written to be cognizant of their races, I’d say that the lack of racism in Nevermore academy opens up some plotholes. Specifically, why would characters horrendously oppressed in their lives want to escape a space where it completely stops? However that criticism is made void by Nevermore's colorblind writing. Those oppressed characters didn’t just forget their oppression; it never happened in the first place.
There are four potential reasons why Kate Flynn and Kit Trace may have chosen to make Nevermore colorblind. I will not be entertaining the reason ‘they didn’t know’.
Racism will be shown later
But why? Historical misogyny is introduced in episode 8. And we see explicit racism in Prospero’s flashback. Why makes his oppression more important than the other characters’ that warrants the authors’ attention?
It’s not important
All of the characters come from countries with complex histories with race. Some characters are from oppressed racial minorities and their lives were completely shaped by discrimination. Racism is pretty important to the story.
It’s too controversial
More controversial than lesbians from 1901? More controversial than gay cowboys? More controversial than arranged marriages, rest cure, anti-Italian discrimination, classism, and (implied) incest?
The suspension of disbelief
Suspend your logic. Don’t think about it too hard. But that’s for stuff like electricity and plumbing in Nevermore academy. Why doesn’t the audience have to think about racism if they do have to think about misogyny?
There’s a theme in all of this. The writers of Nevermore have made it consistently clear that, to them, the issue of gender based discrimination is far more important than racism. This is, as mentioned earlier, bad.
Nevermore is participating in white feminism, or feminism that lacks intersectionality and analysis of broader issues to focus on advocacy centered on problems that affect the self. This in turn does not make it real feminism, which is about advocating for the equality of all people.
Not all white people who are feminist are white feminists and there are plenty of non-white people who are white feminists. But in this case, Kit Trace and Kate Flynn embody what most people think of when they hear of white feminism: white women whose feminism doesn’t extend to the plight of non-white people.
(Note: white feminism also has lots to do with class, as its advocates are often wealthy white women who uphold the system of capitalism since it allowed them to succeed.)
Kit Trace and Kate Flynn are queer, White women. The main characters of their story are queer, White women. The feminism of that story is centered entirely around the oppression of said queer, White women.
To be clear: they didn’t have to do this. Kit Trace and Kate Flynn did not have to exclude historical racism to tell a story about White lesbians. But they did it anyway, to very little benefit. Their depiction of anti-Italian discrimination was amazing, and if that same treatment was given to all characters of color, the comic would be better for it as it expands Nevermore’s themes of historical mistreatment and belonging. The inclusion of racial dynamics at Nevermore academy could’ve added a juicy layer of tension and nuance that simultaneously made the story more interesting and acknowledged the historical hardship of being a person of color.
Instead, it’s ignored and that erasure weakens Nevermore’s social messages. It tries to say things about queerness, female autonomy, and mental health, but without race, these themes become hollow and performative. Who benefited from suppressing queerness in Indigenous cultures? Who got rich off controlling female slaves? Who got to stay in power after throwing Black people into mental institutions?
Who benefits from cutting race out of the picture? Putting a character into a time period where their life would’ve been significantly impacted by their skin color and acting like it actually wasn’t that way only caters to one audience-White people. It puts their comfort over what actually happened.
Nevermore is a fantasy, removing individual, systemic, and institutional racism (and the pain that comes with it) from existence. It’s a disservice only provided to the characters of color, even more so to its female characters of color. Anabel Lee’s and Lenore’s stories are entirely built off historical misogyny and gender related oppression. Their choices are limited-marriage or spinster. But there’s nothing about the lack of choices given to Berenice, Morella, Eulalie, or Duke. Berenice couldn’t buy a house or vote, wasn’t allowed into White spaces, and was ridiculed by popular media. Morella was discriminated against based on her religion, unable to speak her own native language, and was in the middle of a war. Eulalie was literally in a concentration camp, robbed of her right to trial by jury, money, property, and dignity. Duke’s country controlled 35 million Africans and put on human zoos where they were the subject.
To the authors, their oppression isn’t important enough to transcend death. It isn’t even important enough to be there openly in life. For characters of color, the subtext of their persecution must be sniffed out. For the White main characters, the bigotry shows up in the first flashback of their lives, loud and unmistakable.
No matter the time, gender and race have always been related. A story that depicts the struggle of women without factoring in the potential advantages and disadvantages their race may give them isn’t progressive. Ignoring the power White women have had over racial minorities for centuries isn’t feminist. It’s just stupidly and desperately ignorant.
Nevermore is racist. And in creating it, Kit Trace and Kate Flynn have exposed their own biases. So what can be done?
Hopefully, this sparks reflection. I don’t know these artists, but I hope that this essay will lead to them learning about and engaging in intersectional feminism. That would be beautiful and make the world a better place.
What I do know is that I-and all members of oppressed racial minorities-are owed an apology. Not just one on Tumblr, but on all platforms, for all fans-especially White ones who may not have ever thought of this as an issue-to see.
Apologize for omitting our history and stripping our relatives of their lived reality. Apologize for engaging in historical revisionism that lets more overt bigotry thrive. Apologize to the Irish, whose population is still less than before the famine and whose history is criminally undertaught. Apologize to the Black French, who live in the shadow of institutional colorblindness. Apologize to the Japanese Americans incarcerees and their descendants. And apologize to African Americans, whose history of oppression is too long and horrible to confine to a single sentence-or line of dialogue.
Your characters of color deserve better, as do your fans.
Personally, I feel the authors have written themselves into a corner when it comes to introducing realistic racism to the story. The limbo racism lives in for Nevermore is as such: racism maybe, sort of happened in life, but it doesn’t exist in death. Suddenly flipping the switch to make everyone in the academy remember racism would be abrupt and unsubtle. But I’d prefer bluntness over keeping racism confined to life because every other bigotry exists in Nevermore and racism deserves to be there too.
But that bluntness would completely change all existing character dynamics and reopen questions about what the Deans are. If the writers flip that switch, do they become racist? If so, does Nevermore have Jim Crow laws? If not, are they just eldritch beings with slightly negative beliefs on gender but extremely progressive ones on race? Furthermore, allowing the characters to remember race will likely cause clashes in time eras, whose mystery is one of the comic’s driving plot points.
Nevermore’s suspension of disbelief is surprisingly reliant on the non-existence of racism. A testament to the hurdles Kit Trace and Kate Flynn have leapt over to make it that way.
There’s no perfect solution and I didn’t start writing this with one in mind. This essay was about injustice and historical pain, that of those who look like me and those who don’t. But sharing the same experiences as someone isn’t a prerequisite to protecting them. Everyone deserves your love and passion.
I understand the criticism of the lack of racist critique, but I don't think a reason why racism should be tackled is because sexism and classism are discussed. Just because one type of oppression is covered by media, it doesn't mean that it needs to cover all the others. For example, Arcane focuses on classism rather than race. Mel and Ekko are both black, but they are treated differently because of their wealth. This actually strengthens classist critique by showing that even absent of any racism, sexism, or homophobia, a society that discriminates based on wealth is deeply flawed. Works like these are crucial because they present an ideal society wherein all races are equal, negating narratives that racism is inherent to humanity or that racial minorities' failure is because of their "laziness" rather than an extremely bigoted system.
I agree with the point that Nevermore doesn't handle racial history with enough nuance however. Unlike Arcane, which is a completely reimagined world, Nevermore takes place on Earth, which means it must acknowledge the lived experiences of people who have suffered from racism on Earth.
I attempted (poorly) to photobash the characters from big bad dogs by @where-spar0w-barks. In my defense, i did it on my phone and while i was waiting for a doctor's appointment.
I've never posted on tumblr??? and it's so so so confusing. I used random models from pinterest and i have no idea how Lane ended up looking so much like that guy from 13 reasons why (maybe that show was so culturally relevant to my generation it's engrained in my brain).
No tattoo for mr helmet boy cause i was already overwhelmed with the scars (also. looking up "scars" on pinterest was the single bravest act of my existence) but i can always pretend it's him in 2008 (clean jaw in the locker pic?. Also, no missing chunks from his ear opsss.
Big issue with how young/old everyone looked, but i feel like it looks solid for people between the ages of 20-25.
Adding also my first attempt, so i guess i should make her an OC? with a special signature (the lips are my own, freckles and hair as similar to mine as I could find), though clearly I hadn't gotten the hang of it - and i still don't.
quality is so messed up, but again, i was working on my phone lol.
thank you to the wonderful dev for the incredible writing, art and passion, i've been lurking in her tumblr for so long and in the ones of the wonderful, creative and talented people that are in the community.
The internet overwhelms me, so I didn't think I'd ever post anything, but I might as well :) (hoping i'm not getting something wrong lol)
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