Comic books are often an overlooked medium, mostly relegated to the realm of children and children’s literature, viewed more along the lines of children’s cartoons. Comic books exist in a world of bright colours where fantastic heroes fight for justice using unimaginable supernatural powers, or technology so futuristic it can only be described as science fiction. I will be looking at an article by Marc Singer titled “’Black Skins' and White Masks: Comic Books and the Secret of Race,” that deals with how race is portrayed in comic books. What I will attempt to do is summarize the article while pin-pointing, through the authors’ critique of the works understudy, the concepts the author employs to get us to understand his concept of race and racism as social constructs and lived experience. I will then look at how the author sees race done incorrectly in comic books through the concept of colour blind racism, and how the more complex idea of split identity or double consciousness is a fuller and more correct way to represent minority characters and their experiences. With colour blind racism, I will talk about Charles W. Mills and how his theory of colour-blind racism applies to how Singer discusses the issue in relation to race in comic books. Then I will talk about Franz Fanon and W.E.B. Du Bois, and the idea of double consciousness and how Singer has applied that idea in his discourse on how race is portrayed in comic books.
Singer examines a number of ways that race is looked at in comics, he starts by critiquing the idea that comics contribute to the production of racism in the readers, noting that many early critics focus more on the effects of racism in comics instead of looking at the structures in society that allow for the production and re production of racism. One of the critics he makes note of is Fredric Wertham, author of the infamous Seduction of the Innocent. Singer points out a contradiction in Wertham’s argument where by Wertham states that “What I have found was not an individual condition of children, but a social condition of adults” (Wertham 1954, p. 394). While Werthams focus was on the conditions produced in the readers (children) by the comics without considering the social structures and conditions that created the problems, contradicting his point previously noted. Wertham writes “The pictures of these ‘inferior’ types as criminals, gangsters, rapers, suitable victims for slaughter by either the lawless or the law, have made an indelible impression on children’s minds” (Wertham 1954, p. 101). Singer then refers to the work of Martin Barker, who he argues has correctly noted that comic books do not “Hold a deceptive, seductive power over a completely passive audience.” (Singer 2002, p. 108). Although Singer explains that Barker, in his understanding of comic books not having power to sway, “drastically isolates comics from their own content never considering that comics might retain meanings or connotations beyond their own generic and formal functions” (Singer 2002 pg 108), Stemming from his limiting definition of stereotype as “a shorthand image which fills in gaps in our knowledge.” (As cited by Singer, 2002, p. 109). Singer feels that “comics need a less dogmatic approach one which can set aside claims that stereotypes govern readers’ minds while still holding comics accountable for their ideological assumption” (Singer 2002, p. 109).
When looking at the more complex ways that race is played out in comics, Singer places focus on the idea of the split consciousness. The split consciousness that Fanon and Du Bois discuss is about how race is a social construction, and how the racialized are forced to see and experience themselves through the eyes of the white gaze, while maintaining their own definition of self. We saw an example of this is the film “Race is a Four-letter Word,” by Sobaz Benjamin, Benjamin struggles between how race is applied upon him and how he experiences that imposition, and the internal struggle he has working through his own definition of race and self. In the film Benjamin uses a metaphor of running a marathon and how he just wants to be “running his own race.”
Singer demonstrates that the idea of split consciousness is the very foundation of the super hero through the concept of the secret identity, where the hero has to negotiate between their two identities; the identity of the super powered hero, that has meaning inscribed upon it by the public, media, criminals (all within the context of the comic) and that of attempting to maintain, a personal identity of the more mundane façade. The heroes that Singer uses as examples are Black Lighting, written by Tony Isabella, and Xero, written by Christopher Priest. Singer outlines two specific examples of split identity in the Black Lightning comics, one where Black Lightning, as Jefferson Pierce, is unable to act to save someone, his friend Walter who was also a teacher where Pierce worked, and how he has to dichotomize his superhero life and his civilian life. At this point, Black Lightning learns that the man who was killed was homosexual; here Singer links sexual split-identity of maintaining a secret self and a public self to the racialized split-identity. “Both, Isabella says, can lead to secret identities and double lives…” (Singer 2002, p. 115). 
“Xero, on the other hand, is Coltrane Walker, a black government agent forced by his superiors to disguise himself as a blond-haired, blue-eyed superhero.” (Singer 2002, p. 116). So we can see that Xero literately has whiteness prescribed upon him, but he also has another cover identity, “Walker is a rough-and-tumble basketball player” (Singer 2002, p. 116). Singer describes the characters life as the following: “Walker is thus trapped between two highly artificial and mutually exclusive roles, the black gangster basketball player and the Aryan superspy, and the series chronicles his attempts to rebuild some sort of inner life between the demands of these two stereotypes.” (Singer 2002, p. 116). Coltrane Walkers struggles with Split identity not just a struggle between the stereotype of the young black man (gangster basketball player) and his own internal racial identity, but he also has to negotiate the white identity placed upon him. Singer writes that, “the fabricated identities in Xero are not simply social constructions; they are also instruments of social control.” (Singer 2002, p. 117). Singer further builds on the idea of social construction with the statement “Xero posits that all categories of identity, including race, can in face be mutable constructions built upon externally imposed stereotypes.” (Singer 2002, p. 117).
I have shown how Singer has examined some of the competing discourses on comic books and the effects they have, or don’t have on society, and how he explained that through omission, normalization, and stereotyping, comic books have marginalized racial minority characters. Through his examination of the legion of super heroes he shows how the normalization of the characters and a lack of real races do nothing for furthering racial diversity. I then have shown how through Fanon and Du Bois and the idea of the split consciousness, Singer points to a few comic books he feels are more complex in their racial representation. The previously mention “Black Lightning” and “Xero,” and how these characters were employed to show through the nature of the duality of the super hero and the secret identity, the external pressures of race being prescribed, and the internal struggle for racial identity can be seen.
References
Singer, M. (2002) "Black Skins" and White Masks: Comic Books and the Secret of Race.
African American Review, Vol. 36, No. 1, pp. 107-119
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