A Brief Look At Racism In The Cosplay Community
Just to give you some background, last year Nerd Caliber received a lot of e-mails about our article discussing racism in the cosplay community. Although most of them have been positive, the oddest response we received about the controversy was that we were making a big deal over something that didn’t exist or rarely happens to cosplayers. Since these instances have not decreased, I decided it was time to take a second look, this time with video.
At Katsucon 2013, we interviewed some cosplayers about their thoughts and experiences about racism in the cosplay community. I’m hoping with this video to once again look at the ugly face of racism and inspire discussion as to what we can do as a community to help fight these harmful ideas. I believe that one day these issues won’t be so prevalent in the community, but only if we keep fighting ignorance, and cosplayers of color continue to be brave and show off their artistic brilliance.
What are your thoughts about it? What solutions do you have? Any name-calling or attacking comments will be deleted.
I think the problem stems from both people's problem with humans different than themselves, and also from nerdy tendency to flip out when someone misquotes or fails to replicate a piece of nerddom exactly as originally presented.
The first is a larger cultural problem that we, as nerds, should strive to be better than.
The second is something we need to think about, because it causes a lot of people outside of nerd culture to be turned off by us.