Civil Rights and the Metaphor of X-Men

At the time, the plan of putting together a team of hero teenagers by Marvel was not in and of itself surprising. They had success with both teenaged heroes with Spider-Man and team books with the Avengers—and even a mix of the two with the Fantastic Four. However in a move, that if nothing was built on good marketing or an eye on the zeitgeist, Marvel decided to create a team of—admittedly Caucasian—youths fighting for respect and equality in a world that hates them for being different, during a time of great social upheaval. While the differences in the characters were not in fact in the color of their skin, they were others in a variety of ways. Cyclops, the team leader was effectively blind as his open eyes released a destructive beam of scarlet energy; The Beast was a deformed genius with an ape-like build; Angel had eight foot feathered wings protruding from his back (you may think this would be endearing, but think about if you actually saw this guy on the streets). The other members had some level of “passing”, as many colored silver screen actors and actresses had attempted to do leading up to the 1970s: the Iceman could turn into a snow man or just be a normal boy, and Professor X was a normal looking man—though bound by a wheelchair, while Jean Grey was a teenage girl (a demographic also seeking liberation and equality). The stage was set for stories that could speak—to some degree—to the racism and hatred that minorities were experiencing in a super hero context.

The idea was that, as Martin Luther King advocated in real life, mutants could live in peaceful coexistence with their oppressors if only they could focus on their commonalities rather than their differences. Racial tropes tend to have wild inconsistencies in them, or at least glaring oversights, the one that is most apparent is the type of racism that mutants are subject to versus those of blacks, women, the disabled, and homosexuals as Dr. Mikhail Lyubansky points out in his Psychology Today article The Racial Politics of X-Men.  Lyubansky points out that mutants are subject to an envious prejudice—one of loathing but deference to high competency—while the aforementioned groups are subject to contemptuous prejudice—one of loathing and no presupposition of competence. The mutants, therefore, in the eyes of the oppressor are more owed the viewpoint of  Magneto’s superiority. It is arguable then that Professor X’s viewpoint of integration and peace is all the more radical and less truth worthy general in the eyes of the Marvel Universe’s American. Certainly they wouldn’t trust these mutants supposedly crusading on their part—and they didn’t; altruism is a hard pill to swallow, especially in the face of the glaring superiority of superpowers (even if some were rooted is gruesome appearances).

What would seem more likely, more reasonable, more human, is the Magneto perspective—bastardized as it was from Malcolm X’s stand point which itself was derived almost directly from Booker T. Washington’s viewpoint of self-reliance—though tinged with a martial manifestation. The focus of Malcolm X’s message was then skewed in the creation of Magneto to the “by any means necessary” mindset without the acknowledgment of development of the racial community by this separation to relieve the oppression and dependence upon the dominant group. Insofar as Magneto is concerned, this was rectified years later in the 1990s with the development of the mutant community on Asteroid M and the short lived mutant nation-state Genosha (a former mutant apartheid state).