When watching TV, especially American television, POC are often relegated to being nothing more than a sidekick, an advisor to the usually, Caucasian main character without a semblance of a personal life themselves. So when Michonne was introduced, she was shown as being a tough fighter, a warrior of sorts, and people paid attention to that because it was something they knew and were accustomed to seeing. She held no real value outside of her fighting skills to them. Even when she was getting some development and being shown as a complex character with her own flaws, they ignored that because they doubted that she would last.
I would say that even the people who read the comics, and are familiar with her comic counterpart, doubted her as well because a TV show and a comic book are two different mediums with different rules. In the comics, it’s fine for a black woman to exist and continue to thrive but on a television show, it’s a foreign concept. Even if the black woman is being treated well by the writers in the beginning the writers will sideline her for a white character (ex. Lacey Porter, Abbie Mills), they’ll be used as a plot device and discarded when they are not needed (ex. Bonnie Bennett), or the fandom will try to remove them from the narrative (ex. Iris West and I’ll include Scott McCall, a latino male, in here because I hate the Teen Wolf fandom and their racist asses). Honestly this happens so much that I’ve become cautious of forming an emotional attachment to nonwhite characters, especially a WOC.
There are two popular tropes for Black Women: The sidekick and the mammy (there are more but I chose those two). But Michonne’s character defied a lot of them. She is a dark-skinned woman who is shown to be soft and gentle as much as she is shown to be a fighter. She wasn’t and still isn’t just a trope.
The writers didn’t have her be Ricks right hand woman. She didn’t just exist to support him, be by his side in fights. She wasn’t around to just his kids. I know some people feel like she was a mammy but I disagree with them. As others have said her relationship with the Grimes children has been about her development and growth more than it was about the children needing a babysitter. Not only that but the narrative painted her as being more than just someone to watch the kids. Her bond with Carl specifically, the writers showed that she cared for him and that he also cared for her as well. And she wasn’t always with the kids, after 4b she had a episode with Carl and Judith when she watched them at the church and she rarely interacted with the kids afterwards. Tyreese was more of a babysitter than Michonne. The writers may have desexualized her character, by not having her in a relationship or by not having anyone flirt with her. But Michonne was not a mammy. (SHE WAS NOT A MAMMY).
A lot of people were shocked that Michonne wasn’t treated like she was disposable. They never thought much of Michonne as a character and they certainly never thought that she would be with Rick. (Honestly, even as a shipper, I feared that Richonne would never happen because Michonne was not white; she wasn’t the typical woman who is often shown to be ‘worthy’ of being loved.). Michonne always had to prove herself: she had to show that she was a loyal member of Team Family and she had to prove, to some, that she was ‘deserving’ of being Rick’s love interest. She will never be good enough for them. I’ve seen some people say that she isn’t feminine enough and other things I don’t want to delve into.
The same people who didn’t pay attention to Michonne before, the same people who laughed at the prospect of Richonne, are the ones who want her dead. She was supposed to be there to fill the quota, to be the Black woman and that’s it. But Michonne is more than that and they are not comfortable with that so she has to be the one to die. There’s no way TWD would keep their main character with “someone like Michonne” (I use quotation marks because I’ve heard that said often).
Those “Negan kills Michonne” people are hoping that she dies. Some hide their bs by saying that Michonne dying makes sense because she ran out of story to tell, but wanting Michonne dead has nothing to do with the story. They hate the fact that the black chick is being treated like she’s an actual character on the show. They are counting on those tropes, on the fact that American television constantly mistreats Black women, and they are waiting for Michonne, and her fans, to be reminded of where their place is..
I’m sure somebody has written about this already, I’m just rambling while I watch The Expanse (because I am, apparently, unable to do just one thing at a time without getting bored).
While there are fans of color in literally every fandom, and there are people calling out racism in literally every fandom, it is only natural that fans of color looking for better representation flock to diverse media.
If we are consuming a piece of media specifically because it has better representation than most, we also hope to create and consume better fanworks than most. Our expectations will be higher, and we will be more vocal when they aren’t met.
Now, white people are racist, and white people expect to be allowed to be racist. That is a given. Universal rule, the privileged are used to being able to wield their privilege without anyone criticizing them for it. White fans are used to be the majority in fandom, to have mainly white characters in the original media, to interact primarily with other white people.
And then, a diverse show comes out and white fans expect to interact with it and with its fandom in the same way they always have, and they aren’t happy to find out that they won’t always be allowed to be racist without any sort of call-out.
That’s why we get white fans –specially white Big Names who’ve spent a couple decades in mainly white fandoms– crying about how fandom culture has been ruined by Social Justice Warriors and Political Correctness Culture and whatever-the-fuck-else, about how overly-critical fans of color have made them terrified of creating fanworks with characters of color (as if they ever have).
Edit: as @mystarsuniverse pointed out, “there’s also the element that a diverse show is more likely to contain characters and ships that make those same white fans feel more threatened and uncomfortable, which inevitably makes it harder for them to hide their racism because it’s harder for them to hide their negative feelings on seeing characters of color getting good things.”
@diversehighfantasy talks about this in her post, How Abbie Mills Changed The World.
I think a diverse canon makes a big difference in how racism gets noticed and called out in the fandom.
A diverse canon is more likely to show racist behavior from white characters towards characters of color, so white women fans show their asses while trying to defend their white faves.
A diverse canon with PoC in leading roles is more likely to provoke racist jealousy from white fandom.
WoC in fandom also have more confidence to call out women if we feel supported by canon and if there are more of us to keep each other from being gaslit by white women.
A diverse canon also makes white fans’ fakeness more obvious. Like Sn*wbarry shippers bitching about Iris being “reduced to a love interest” in Westallen storylines then saying nothing when Iris is really being sidelined. They’re just as fake about shows where CoC are more mistreated but their fakeness is harder to call out then.
Fandom is like anything. It’s like this: do you see more race problems in Baltimore, Maryland, or Burlington, Vermont?
Fandoms like TFA, TWD, Sleepy Hollow (RIP), The Flash, etc, are Baltimore. The shows have black main characters and, related, larger black fanbases than average. Racism comes out more because there are more black people in it.
It’s not that there are actually more obvious racists in Baltimore fandoms. There may even be fewer, they just have more targets and therefore make more noise. Inevitably, the most noticeably racist fandoms are the ones with the most representation. Sad but true.
(Thanks for the link!)
@@@Oh, calm down. The whole post isn’t quite so dour! There’s sometimes funny racial shit on Tumblr:
Happy Birthday Wayne Brady! (June 2)
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Racist white people love telling black Americans to go back to Africa like our ancestors voluntarily went on a 3 day cruise across the Atlantic Ocean and decided not to go back to Africa because they loved it in the West.
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The Queen:
Gina Torres in ‘Xena: Warrior Princess’ (1995).
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I am still trying to get a trailer for this or stream it or something:
okay so russell t davis has done a version of a midsummer nights dream that’s currently on bbc1 and not only is it set in a radical dictatorship which is super cool, with hippolyta, oberon, puck, hermia, demetrius and a number of the main mechanicals and fairys all played by poc, but:
and omfg:
i’m so
the cast:
also:
Anyone who thinks that this is somehow not in the spirit of the original is being incredibly disingenuous
Geeking Out about It 
I always love the articles about WOC and fandoms. Thanks for sharing.
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Reblogged this on Live Your Dreams.
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