How @yellowocaballero and I Fixed Daredevil by Headcannoning Him as Mexican
When Daredevil first appeared in 1964, he was a second-generation Irish-American from Hell’s Kitchen, a working-class Irish-immigrant neighborhood. In a time where Irish people weren’t viewed as “white” or “real Americas.” They were a part of the oppressed working class, the bottom of the food chain, who had nothing but their religion, the vehicle of their culture from the old world, to keep them together.
Note: Today, the argument that “Irish people aren’t really white” has been co-opted by white supremacists and has often been used in bad faith against POC. I want it to be clear that what is considered “white” is and has always been a political term with no backing in science. Discrimination against the Irish back in the day was tied to anti-Catholic sentiment in predominately Protestant states, such as England, Scotland, and the United States. Naturally, Anti-Catholic discrimination overlaps with nativist, xenophobic, ethnocentric and/or racist sentiments (ie Anti-Italian, Anti-Polish, Hispanicphonia).
Jack Murdock was a poor boxer with no education or prospects who had to exploit his body to provide for Matt. And recognized that not a way to live and thrive, so he pushed Matt into academics for social mobility. Sound familiar?
At its core, the story of Matt Murdock is an immigrant story. Matt has the immigrant mentality; immigrants-get-the-job-done type of thing. Gotta hustle and became a lawyer because that’s how he moves up the social and class ladder. And when he does “make it” he chooses to stay and help his neighborhood because he has a cultural connection to it.
This worked in 1964, I don’t know how much it works now.
Hell Kitchen isn’t a rough neighborhood primarily occupied by working-class immigrants, it’s another gentrified hipster hellhole. Irish people and people of Irish ancestry in the United States no long face systemic discrimination.
Therefore, modern-day recontextualizing is to make Matt Mexican.
Technically, Matt can also be from any other Latin American country or Filipino but I lean towards Mexican since a) this is my post go make your own and b) we get the most discrimination from the mainstream media. Yes, a lot of it is because racists use “Mexican” as a catch-all term for anyone from Latin America but still. Trump made his presidential platform by calling Mexicans illegal rapists and druggies.
If Matt was actually the son of Jack Murdock*, an undocumented brown immigrant living in a working-class immigrant/POC neighborhood, it gives him the underdog immigrant arc the character is missing in modern-day adaptations. Matt's core is still the same Matt we know and love, he’s still the son of a boxer, whose dad’s pushed him into succeeding academically, who lost his dad to gang violence, and who is extremely Catholic. Someone who wants to fit into middle-class educated (white) society and feels like he has to suppress the "devil" inside until one day he can’t. He's seeing discrimination and poverty and crime and gentrification tear his neighborhood apart and the police turn their back on it since it's predominantly POC. The law has failed them, he's not going to fail them too.
Meg made the fantastic point that Matt should still be white-passing (and ginger) so he could exist somewhere in between worlds. And Matt takes advantage of that, as well as his Columbia Law degree to help his community. Matt not using his conditional whiteness and the fancy degree to “escape” his community and instead help it.
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