I See White People: Hunger Games and a Brief History of Cultural Whitewashing

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From Jezebel:

“Kk call me racist but when I found out rue was black her death wasn’t as sad,” wrote one. (Okay, you’re racist. And you left out a “k.”) “HOW IN THE WORLD ARE THEY GOING TO MAKE RUE A FREAKIN BLACK BITCH IN THE MOVIE ?!?!?!??!” wondered another. One didn’t mince words (or use them correctly in any way): “Sense when has Rue been a nigger.” (Sidenote: Pretty much all of these teens have since locked or deleted their Twitter accounts—because it’s totally cool to be racist in front of your friends, but the rest of America can be a real drag, bro.)

First of all, I can’t even figure out what race means in the context of a futuristic dystopian vision set in an alternate-reality America where children fight to the death for the amusement of Katy Perry’s wig collection. Like, how do our present stereotypes even apply? Do these kids think Cinna only got into fashion school because of a post-apocalyptic affirmative action program? Do they conceive of 12-year-old Rue as some sort of tiny welfare queen from space? It makes no sense.

Second of all, and more importantly, this is obviously horrifying. But is it really that surprising? Those tweets raise knotty questions about what we see when we read—how our brains conceptualize things that aren’t explicitly dictated, the ways our subconscious is conditioned to fill in the blanks. The characters that these racist garbage-teens are so upset about are either explicitly described as having dark skin (to the point where, while reading, I felt a little weird about the demographics of Panem—did they seriously just make District 11 the black-people district?), or not specified at all. But, of course, if it’s not specified, it must be white.

The ubiquity of whiteness in popular media is so overwhelming that, in the absence of any racial signifiers, I would guess that the majority of white people and a significant number of non-white people automatically assume that characters are white. I know I do. (To be clear: I am a white lady.) I mean, Jesus, the impulse to default to white is so strong that the above child prodigies defaulted to white even when explicitly told not to. (I guess they assumed that “dark skin” meant, uh, dark white. Like George Hamilton or something.) Also, speaking of Jesus and white people, let’s not forget WHITE JESUS. White people’s PR campaign has been so comprehensive, we’ve even managed to make God white—to the point where even black people worship white Jesus! And Jesus was hella not white. Like, at all.

See also: Racist Hunger Games Fans Are Very Disappointed

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  • badphairy

    There’s also the issue that in the books, it seemed to me like people of color were scattered through the society. In the movie, it’s made clear that all the brown people inhabit only one district.

    • badphairy

      And upon reading the Jezebel article, it seems I was making an assumption of a less racially stratified society than is actually on the page. *le sigh*

  • KayWhitlock

    I’ve seen “Hunger Games” and have been stunned by the kind of racist responses to the characters of Rue and Cinna.  But I should not have been surprised. The social permission for public racist expression has wildly expanded since President Obama’s election.  Instant, powerful pushback is necessary.  The Jezebel blog has done an admirable job on parsing/unpacking this whole thing.  I love this character breakdown posted at Jezebel:  http://jezebel.com/5896515/a-character+by+character-guide-to-race-in-the-hunger-games.