In Iowa: Talented, gifted and the ‘belief gap’

I spend a lot of time thinking about comic books.

Wait, scratch that. I spend a lot of time thinking about comic book movies and TV shows. I always have loved stories about epic quests to save the world. Throw in some witty banter and great special effects, and I'm yours.

The mass-marketing campaign that makes up the Marvel Cinematic Universe has had me firmly in its grip since it released the first Iron Man movie back in 2008. I love this stuff.

So I was particularly disappointed to hear Tilda Swinton was cast as the Ancient One in the upcoming 'Dr. Strange” movie. For those of you who have better things to do than spend a lot of time thinking about comic book movies, I'll give you the Cliffs Notes version of this - the Ancient One in the comics is a Tibetan sorcerer who mentors Dr. Strange, to be played by Benedict Cumberbatch, in the ways of magic and mysticism.

While Tilda Swinton is a fantastic actress who undoubtedly is well suited to play an ancient magician, she is definitely not Tibetan, and critics have been quick to point out this instance of whitewashing.

More Cliffs Notes here - 'whitewashing” refers to casting white actors to play people of color. In this case, Marvel officials issued a statement that they made the character Celtic instead of Tibetan, so, they said, it wasn't really whitewashing at all and everything was fine.

Not quite. Rewriting an Asian character as white to allow you to cast a white actor is a form of erasure and hugely misses the point. Whitewashing is important because Hollywood gives relatively few roles, especially leading roles, to people of color, so any time a canonically non-white role is given to a white actor, it only exacerbates that disparity.

Moreover, whitewashing has been a problem in the movies since silent pictures.

The thing is, Marvel has shown it knows better. One of the things I love about this fictional world, which at this point includes 13 movies and four TV shows, is the breadth of characters that much screen time allows. Particularly in the television franchises, which include 'Agents of Shield,” 'Agent Carter,” 'Daredevil” and 'Jessica Jones,” women and people of color have many leading roles.

But doing good some of the time doesn't exempt you from being called out the rest of the time. I can applaud Marvel for its good efforts in the past and still call on them to do better in the future.

Yes, we're talking about comic book characters here, but these things do matter. My Gazette colleague Molly Duffy reported a story two weeks ago on disparities in gifted and talented programs. Black students make up 16 percent of Cedar Rapids school district students but only 9 percent of talented and gifted program participants.

Her article referred to the 'belief gap,” the difference between a student's capability and her - and others' - perception of her capability.

When children don't see themselves in certain places, it's easy to internalize the idea they don't belong there. When children grow up in a world where only certain people do certain things, they become adults who believe that's how the world works.

Years and decades of messaging are hard to overcome, and biases - often unconscious ones - creep into decisions big and small.

These thing are about more than political correctness. They're about making sure all our kids get to see themselves as superheroes.