White Victimhood Gets Even Nuttier

Even though they have five times as much money as black Americans, and are much more likely than blacks and Hispanics to have jobs, white Americans feel they just can't get a break. They're always finding things to grump about: a Kenyan in the White House, taking the Christ out of an orgy of consumer spending, the death panels that are going to kill old people.....

But now that they've added everything obvious to the list Stuff White People Hate, they're having to dig a little deeper. And they have. A friend recently informed me that they have found a menace to the Master Race lurking in comic books, specifically Marvel and DC Comics, the two outfits that between them produced Batman, Spider-Man, the X-Men and Superman. The contributors to the conservative website the Astute Bloggers are outraged that Batman has recruited a Muslim of Algerian descent to help him fight crime in Paris. Let me just say I didn't know Batman had expanded his operations beyond Gotham City. I guess this is Batman in the age of globalization. What's really weird about this is they're not mad at Batman for expanding his operations to France (doesn't he know he should be focusing all his energies on protecting Americans? I would have expected outrage that he's not on the U.S.-Mexican border stopping illegal immigrants.) No, they're simply pointing out that Batman could have found "a genuine French boy or girl with a real sense of justice."

Since when do white American conservatives talk as if they like the French?

But the real gem in the Week in White Outrage comes from the Council of Conservative Citizens, a group dedicated to preserving the American people's European "composition and character," and opposing "all efforts to deny or weaken the Christian heritage of the United States."*

What are they angry about?

A black Norse god. Yes, you read that right. The 2011 movie Thor is based on a Marvel Comics series that features Norse gods as characters, and in the film one of them is black. Specifically, Heimdall, who will be portrayed by Idris Elba. Not Big Daddy Odin, not everybody's favorite troublemaker Loki, nor the title character, but Heimdall.

I had no idea who the Hell Heimdall was. Apparently he is the guardian of the bridge between Midgard and Asgard.

So...a Christian right group is upset that a minor pagan god of an extinct religion is being depicted as black in a movie.

Considering that in Norse religion the bridge Heimdall guards is a rainbow, they're just lucky he's not black and gay.

*From the CCC's Statement of Principles.

Hat tip to David Harnden-Warwick for some of this information.