thatjayjustice:

This is just the most recent of countless similar messages I have received because of my Wonder Woman costumes. I am so tired of white, white passing, and anti-Black people from any and all ethnic backgrounds and nationalities looking at me in my costume and telling me ‘You don’t deserve to wear that. Wonder Woman isn’t for Black people.’

It’s nothing to do with ‘accuracy’, it’s racism and I’m sick of it. In before ‘Oh but they just didn’t know about Nubia!!’ Please. You can try to use ignorance as an excuse but you have to ask yourself, even if these people don’t know there IS a Black Wonder Woman, what makes them feel like they have the right to tell Black people what they can and cannot do? What gives them this supposed authority over our imaginations and our desire to create? This mentality is the reason why so many potential cosplayers of color are afraid to even wear a costume.

I can and have sent these people panels, pages and issues of official DC comics full of images of Black Wonder Women (yes, there are more than one!) and it doesn’t matter to them. My skin is still too dark, my nose too broad, my hair too nappy, in their words, not mine. I have been told to my face that I disgrace the Wonder Woman costume with my Blackness. Many other people of color have gone through similar experiences. I know of only one way for us to combat this.

Create, design, display and wear whatever we damn well please. Let our differences enhance our art. Let every single privileged individual who thinks to question our rights to self expression choke on their words. Feel free to be yourself in whatever way you see fit. Do not let other people’s opinions of your race or ethnicity dictate your choices. Don’t let the way they see you have anything to do with who you are. 

Jay is amazing~