Have we addressed the Walking Dead argument?

You know, the one about Michonne's beating and rape.

Basically, I don't think it was out of line. I think it's the expectation that a white writer would purposely abuse a black female character that's causing the anger, not the actual writer's intentions.

We simply don't have enough to go on to say that Kirkman is racist for what happened to Michonne. The Governor, however, might just be. Kirkman made The Governor completely worthless as a human being, and a completely worthless human being acting the way The Governor did is logical. He's a real villain. Making the person that did that to Michonne one of the most vile villains in comics I've seen tells me that Kirkman has his perspective straight.

Now we get into the folks that want Kirkman to take into account the history of black treatment by whites when he writes black characters. These folks aren't accusing Kirkman of being racist, only of being insensitive to their perspective. Basically, what they're asking Kirkman to do is factor in how real-world readers will view anything he does with the black characters he created. It doesn't stop there. These sae folks want Kirkman to not only factor in how they view anything that happens to the black characters, but also how those folks think OTHER folks are gonna view it.

In this month's letter column actually said this:

"If you want the honest truth Mr. Kirkman, a great deal of white readers probably whacked off to that issue."

Let's not even get into if that is true or not just yet. Let's examine the wording.

"If you want the honest truth" tells me I'm going to get a fact or at least the truth about how this reader feels about the issue. But we don't get truth. We get speculation on how THIS reader feels about OTHER readers.

Even more, it tells me that this particular reader may see me in my local comic shop picking up The Walking Dead and assume that I'm going home after I stop off at Walgreens for some cocoa butter and an off-brand dildo so I can fuck myself while watching a character get beaten and raped. Oh great, now I'M paranoid to even be seen reading it. I imagine it's a million times worse for Robert Kirkman, who actually creates it.

So okay, now we can get into whether or not "a great deal of white readers" jerk off to watching a black woman being beaten and raped.

Show of hands?

Just as I thought. Only JRennolds and Uatu.

But seriously, agree or disagree, I wanna hear this. I tell ya what, I'll put it on the blog, and we can discuss it there. I'd like Kirkman to see more than one black/white reader at a time discussing this.

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