White is Right, But Light-Skin is the Next Best Thing

Posted in Articles, Communications/Media Studies, Media Archive, United States on 2016-05-28 03:17Z by Steven

White is Right, But Light-Skin is the Next Best Thing

Media Diversified
2016-05-23

Shane Thomas

The arrival of summer means a number of things: Intermittent sunshine, music festivals where at least one white person gets their cultural appropriation on; and superhero movies. Lots of superhero movies. Box-office takings are the engine of established Western cinema, and few things fuel that engine more than a superhero tale.

Last week saw the release of the latest adventure in the rebooted X-Men series; X-Men: Apocalypse, which introduced Ororo Munroe to the franchise, better known to comicbook fans as Storm – one of the few black women characters in the mainstream superhero oeuvre.

A black woman at the hub of a major Hollywood movie should be cause for us to break out our best Sophina DeJesus impersonation, but one’s joy has to be rationed, as Alexandra Shipp was cast as (the discernibly dark-skinned) Storm. Shipp is black, but dark-skinned she is not

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