Can I just say that I really don't think Hussie is actually racist or ableist? He makes offensive jokes that he should be making, yeah, but ultimately he cares about the people. None of the disabled characters in-comic are looked down on or insulted because of their disability(at least by any of the heroes), and there was a very long and heavyhanded lesson on why racism being bad via trolls and the hemospectrum. If Hussie was racist/ableist, please then why would his comic include such things?
-Tavros Nitram, who is forced to jump off a cliff and thenharassed throughout his life and afterlife by theperson who made him do it, whos arc includes “having hisdisability fixed” and “then dying”
-Vriska Serket, who is an extremely antagonistic character oftenslotted into a 'villain' narrative role* and whose disabilitiesare literally a punishment for wrongdoing, bothin-universe and narratively speaking
-Terezi Pyrope, whose disability was also inflicted on her byanother character as a punishment, though I do not believe that itwas meant to narratively be a punishment (but rather an example ofVriska taking things too far) and who in one long-running timelinewhich was understood to be canon by the majority of the fandom foryears (though I believe it has now been retconned into a doomedtimeline?) had her disability fixed
Disabled villains are a depressingly common trope with someunfortunate implications. Typically the disability highlights theirsinister nature and makes them look vaguely inhuman, the better tocause your viewer not to sympathize with, though Tragic DisabledVillain who we are supposed to feel kind of bad for is an acceptablesubtype. Fixing disabilities is another one, whether through magic,advanced surgical methods, or some kind of super sense developing asan adaptation to the disability that effectively negates alldisabling effects of said disability.
This results in a general impression that all disability must becured and effectively results in an ideal world where there are nodisabled people, which you may recognize as also what eugenicistswant. The issue isn't with creating methods to alleviate disablingeffects of disabilities or make disabled people's lives easier, butrather with the overwhelming impression that the ultimate goal of adisabled person should be to no longer be disabled. As a theoreticalfantasy it sounds nice, but it's a fantasy being read by people whoin reality are likely not ever going to be able to stopbeing disabled. The effect of never seeing stories in which peoplelike you get to live and contribute (even if it's because theyrecover from the state in which you are in) is to believe that peoplelike you never get to live or contribute, and thus that you won't andshouldn't try. This is pretty much the entire problem behind everysingle issue with lack of representation.
It additionally contributes tothe idea that disabled people are obligated to strive to be asnon-disabled as possible, and that they owe it to the rest of societyto put all of their energy and efforts into that, regardless of costto themselves. Real human beings often can't 'overcome' theirdisabilities, but if the prevailing narrative is that a good disabledperson can, what does that mean about those who can't?
Meulin, Latula, and Mituna all manage to escape both the “fixingdisabilities” and “weird disabled villain” tropes, thoughKurloz is very much a mysterious disabled villain whose disabilitydirectly adds to his sinister quotient. None of them get anythingmore than very shallow development compared to the entire rest of thecomic, as far as I'm aware.
As far as racism goes, the fact that Hussie is capable of creatinga fantasy race of aliens where he makes heavyhanded points about howjudging people's worth based on a physical characteristic they can'tcontrol and which has nothing to do with how they are as a person isBad does not mean he can't also be racist. Most people can recognizethat that's not a good thing. What then happens is that they aren'tcapable of recognizing what actually constitutesracism and oppression, so they know it's Bad but have no idea what itactually is.
Hussie's attitude towards hisfans of color reveals his level of awareness about racism as itrelates to the actual, real world we live in, in which he as a whitemale is privileged over vast swathes of the population. The CAUCASIANtrickster joke was a direct response to fandom discussions of racialrepresentation in the comic, one that made light of POC's concernsand derided them as silly and foolish for caring. It was laterretconned after massive pushback, but it took massive pushback forhim to concede that maybe it hadn't been a tasteful thing to do.Meanwhile, POC in the fandom realized that the creator of the workthought seeking representation was mockworthy and that they wereridiculous, which I am sure you can imagine would be a pretty shittyfucking feeling.
Hussie claims the kids were meantto be aracial, and could therefore be imagined as any race. He hasalso said at at least one point that he imagines them as beingpotentially any race except black.He has also referred to them as 'pink' throughout the story. Hisstore has also put out merchandise almost exclusively featuring adiverse cast of white and (for the grey aliens) heavily white-codedimaginings of the characters by various artists. Initial criticismsof this led to an initiative where artists contributing to a carddeck could redo their art if they wished to, after the initial workfeatured a full tarot deck without a single person of color in it.The reworking resulted in a smattering of brown people amongst astill mostly-white deck, amongst the rest of the merchandisefeaturing exclusively white people.
So even though Hussie has givenlip service to the idea of Racism Being Bad – via the common use of'fantasy racism', wherein an entirely fictional axis of oppression iscreated that often explicitly is not based on skin color, todemonstrate that racism is bad while not actually addressingreal-world racist institutions and quite often betraying a lot of thewriter's ignorance about how racist oppression actually works – hisactions towards his fan and the licensed merchandise of his workbeing presented all show what he thinks of racism, anti-racistactivism, and people of color in the real world.
Looking at the actual tropespresent around race and disability in his work, and the way hebehaves personally outside of the confines of his work – as both acreator and a business owner – shows that he doesn't value theinput of fans of color, doesn't really think these issues areimportant to address, will only address them when he's losing fans indroves and experiencing massive public backlash for what he's done,and inside really thinks the whole thing is tiresome and mockworthyand would prefer people just not complain about this silly racismshit while he's trying to writehis webcomic.
That's why we say Andrew Hussieis ableist and racist.
PS: we have an entire tag for things Andrew Hussie has said and done, with screencaps available. It can be found here.
