roachpatrol:

so i’ve been thinking about racial representation lately, and one thing that’s increasingly bugging me is how like… racial representation is always being discussed in the context of black and latin@ people, and sometimes asian and middle eastern people. and that’s cool, there needs to be more representation of all kinds of people, and it’s great to have a really diverse range of character interpretations and renditions.  

but like, with steven universe—rebecca sugar is jewish. she’s ashkenazi like me. and i don’t… i don’t see jewish characters very much. i don’t see jewish headcanons very much. alex hisrch is also ashkenazi and the pines family aren’t canonically jewish— he’s said it’s left up to interpretation.  

whether or not greg and steven universe are jewish is also i guess left up to interpretation and generally it seems like no one interprets it. i see rebecca sugar criticized as a clueless white bitch who’s talking down to black people,  way more than i see anyone talking about how her race might influence perspective on violent versus nonviolent resistance to oppression, exploitation, and genocide. 

i guess i’ve just been thinking about how tumblr draws and interprets characters, and how often diversity headcanons are black or latin@ or asian extraction but jewish representation kind of seems to begin and end at stuffing a character in a hannukah sweater. like that’s the only way anyone knows how to draw a jewish character. 

like, i’m used to studying the hell out of how to draw different races in good ways, but the ways people draw jews fall into like three categories: ugly antisemetic charicature of the big nose and brown eyes and curly hair, or acceptably blond and pretty guy who happens to be jewish, or double-dipping for tumblr points black/asian guy who happens to be jewish. and there’s black and asian guys who are jewish. but you know, there’s a lot of people who look like me who are jewish, and i feel like i never see them except on the gross caricatures, and that kind of sucks. 

i don’t really have a big shame-everyone point here to make, i was just thinking about drawing characters from the adventure zone, and i’ve seen them as like all different kinds of races, and i thought, ‘what i drew one of them as my race?’ and i… couldn’t think of how to do that. i don’t know. i don’t think i’ve ever done that. i don’t think i’ve ever dawn anyone as ashkenazi. and i guess i’m kind of sad about that. i don’t know how to draw characters of my own race because i’ve never done it before.

anyway going forward, antisemitism is gonna be more of a thing than ever, so, to keep it positive, maybe drawing jewish characters, especially characters that are specifically racially ashkenazi instead of the usual ‘literally anything else but in a hannukah sweater’, would be a good way to push back against that.