Hydra aren’t Nazis & Avengers isn’t racist

jamesgilmer1976:

As an actual person of Romani/Jewish extraction…ffs, while I appreciate the problems with whitewashing characters, the Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver are not the two whose hill you want to die on.

They were raised by a cow-woman named Bova on Wudagore mountain and the Romani stuff was there just to pull in the “dark magic” stuff for Scarlet Witch, and the Magneto stuff was shoe-horned in when they were making him into a hero.

And as to getting a PoC to play the characters…no. I have no idea what some people seem to think a Romani person (or a Jew) looks like, but most of us look like whatever country’s host population looks like. There are plenty of blond haired, blue eyed Romani, and the fact that people don’t know that is more disheartening than making a couple of characters into generic Eastern European rather than go through the headache of bovine midwives and licensing headaches.

Romani aren’t some sort of weird Other that doesn’t look or talk like you. Most Romani would pass for generic white or…well, “generic eastern European”, and whatever image people have in their heads of my people are about a 100x more offensive than Elizabeth Olsen playing either a Romani or a person of generic Eastern European heritage.

And…god, both sides of my family suffered horrifically at the hands of Nazis. HYDRA are not Nazis. They worked with the Nazis because they’re a fascist cult. Red Skull is a Nazi. Hydra has had heads and splinter groups all over the globe encompassing all sorts of backgrounds, many of which comprised of members of the untermensch races that Hitler hated. 

In Marvel comics they have long gone out of their way to make it clear that HYDRA =/= Nazi, only that some members of Hydra worked for the Nazis, and Hydra itself goes back centuries and spans the globe.

I’ve love to see a Romani superhero…but, to be honest, he’d just look like me, and I just look like a guy you’d pass on the street. One of the benefits or being my flavour of Romani and Jew in America is that I don’t stand out, I’m just another generic white guy, but I actually grew up in an area that had Neo-Nazis who would have gladly murdered me if they knew what I was.

Please, I can understand and appreciate that some of you are trying to be helpful, but as a person who actually belongs to both ethnic groups you’re championing…stop, because you’re wrong about Hydra (because I’ve read Marvel since I was a boy, and they really are NOT Nazis), and please stop assuming that Romani are some weird ethnic other.

And, btw, Romani are NOT the same as Irish Travellers, which are often the focus of TV shows like “My G**** Wedding” and such. 

Oh, and as to the G-word, I bear no ill will to Elizabeth Olsen for using it and being corrected because she STOPPED using it. It’s hard for Americans and even some other people across the world to realize it’s considered a slur when TV shows use it as their titles.