As we sat in the theater watching a 3D version of the animation, an immersive fever dream of color and spectacle, I was thrilled that Cristian was seeing someone just like him – a bilingual Black boy from New York – saving the day. Then in December, “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Vers e” arrived with Shameik Moore at the helm. Even the dude from Everybody Hates Chris wanted in. Donald Glover and Jaden Smith’s names were thrown around. I remembered thinking what a blessing it was that my boy would no t only grow up seeing someone who looked like him in the Oval Office (Barack Obama was just two years into his first term), but in comics as well.Īs the years passed, there was talk of Miles’ story heading to the big screen. At a time when images of Black people being policed for doing innocuous things like barbequing in a park, selling water, or talking to their mother in a hotel lobby dominate mass media, it’s important for Cristian to not only see people who look like him involved in the extraordinary, but also the ordinary: celebrating who they are, having meaningful relationships with family and friends, and overcoming internal and external struggles.Ĭristian was just seven months old when Marvel announced that the new hero taking over the mantle from Peter Parker’s Spider-Man would be an Afro-Latinx kid named Miles Morales. That’s why I’m grateful for “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” and “Black Panther,” two superhero films released in the last year that broadened depictions of Black identity. Cristian’s father and I have been working diligently to show him the beauty in his Blackness, but I will never forget how those events left him with the desire to be – as he referred to it – “peach.” A few years ago, he was bullied for being one of the few Black students in his class and he has even heard disparaging comments about his complexion from adults. He’s only eight, yet already painfully aware of the fine society levies on dark skin. Not in the distorted, funhouse mirror way that America tends to show Black males, but accurately and with complexity and nuance. If there’s anything I want for my son, Cristian, it’s to be seen. Using vampires and mirrors as a metaphor, he once said – and I’m paraphrasing here – that the best way to deny someone their humanity is to render them invisible, particularly on a cultural level. There’s a quote by Junot Diaz about representation that has always stuck with me.
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