Spiderman's Politically Correct Replacement

jbarr writes "In the latest Marvel Comic series 'Ultimate Fallout,' Miles Morales replaces Peter Parker who has been killed off by the Green Goblin. Morales is a half-black, half-Latino teen, and the creators haven't ruled out that he might be gay. From the article: 'Marvel's editor in chief Axel Alonso denied that having a black Spider Man was a publicity stunt. 'What you have is a Spider-Man for the 21st century who's reflective of our culture and diversity. As someone who grew up on a steady diet of Luke Cage, Hero For Hire and Shang Chi, Master of Kung Fu, I am personally invested,' he said. "

Comments

Re:PC?

[elrous0]

Even more, if you sit a white European Mexican next to a full-blooded Mayan Mexican and ask them both if they're "Latino," they would probably both say yes.

Re:PC?

[MightyMartian]

The Victorian notion of "race" is of course nonsense, as much an artifact of how the Europeans explored the world as anything else. But there's no doubt that there are identifiable biological populations, all closely related (as compared to, say, chimpanzee populations), but still unique in some genetic and/or morphological sense. What the European explorers failed to pick up on was that there are no sharp divides, that populations exist as continuums, one merging into the other, so, if you look at two populations separated by say, several thousand miles of territory, you will find some striking differences, but if you view the intermediates, you find much more commonality.

For instance, the Victorian notion of race basically had one sub-Saharan African population, the Negro, when in fact genetics and morphology indicates at least four or five distinct groups, and probably more. A bushman and Zulu warrior were tossed together by the European racial theorists, when in fact there are very clear differences. In fact, sub-Saharan Africa has more genetic variation than is present in any other population in the world. There is no "negro" race per se.