you see me rolling up, pops, you step aside

but really though

zelda-fistgerald:

deannatroi:

looking at the characters from the ACD canon that are in the show (if I’m missing any, please let me know)…

• Watson: Joan WOC yay!
• Sherlock: white guy
• Gregson: white guy
• Moran: white guy
• Irene: white woman
• Mrs. Hudson: white woman (but she is trans! yay!)

do you not see why we want a man or woman of color as moriarty? like… good on you show for switching it up with watson and mrs. hudson but if every other canon character besides watson is white, then, like, I feel like you didn’t try hard enough

While I would love more POC characters in the show, I think that having a MOC as Moriarty (and especially a Black man) would bring up stereotypes that Black men are inherently dangerous and the villains. 

I really this post about having a POC being a villain.

But yes I would love more POC in Elementary, just not as villains (but I’m white so I could be very wrong).

Well, I’m not white and the eight minutes during which I thought that Moriarity, one of the most iconically brilliant characters in the western canon, nemesis of probably THE most iconically brilliant character in the western canon, might be John Douglas — a black man from an underprivileged upbringing — were eight of the most excited minutes I’ve ever spent watching Elementary. And anyone who follows me on Twitter knows that my normal level of excitement about Elementary is nothing to sneeze at.

I desperately want Moriarty to be a POC.

If the ONLY black man in the show was the bad guy you might be on to something, but that’s not the case.

Also, I disagree with that feministdisney post. The hypothetical they bring up is pretty pointless given that we don’t have a situation where black men are always given the roles of “really cool” villains and never get to be heroes, as such we have to judge the antagonistic roles that black men get against actual reality.

The racist stereotype of criminality wrt black people and black men especially if not directly derived from is hugely, heavily influenced by the perception that black people are inherently unintelligent, brutish, and animalistic. As such black men, lacking any other way to get by, become violent thuggish petty criminals and ONLY violent thuggish petty criminals. Compare this to the way that white criminals are constantly, perpetually glamorized when they are the villains and moreover are made into dramatic and tragic antiheroes who are the protagonists of their own stories.

To reduce the issue with black people being the villains in fiction simply to the frequency with which it happens is hugely myopic. Yes, if every villain ever was black and no heroes were, clearly, that would not be okay.

But to assert that the quantity alone is the issue of such primacy to necessitate barring black people from playing complex and well-developed and important characters whether they be protagonists, antagonists, contagonists, or otherwise is completely counterproductive.

The actual issue is that black people aren’t often allowed to play full and complete characters, and an antagonist who isn’t unintelligent, thuggish cannon fodder is just as much of a rarity for black men as the stubbly hero who saves the world or wtfever.