Civil Rights and the Plight of Mutants

Since the introduction of the X-Men in 1963, the Marvel Universe has had the plot device of mutants. Mutants are men and women who are born with a certain gene (the X-gene) that gives them extraordinary abilities that usually present around puberty but have been known to be present since birth. Mutants are regarded as outsiders. At best they are considered the next stage in human evolution and at worst are labeled as freaks and monsters. This outsider status has mutants standing in for nearly every oppressed minority in American (and world) history.

When the X-Men first debuted, their struggle to fit in with a world that fears and hates them was best seen as an allegory for the civil rights movement. Mutants were seeking equality among a population that was dominated by humans, just as African Americans were also seeking acceptance from a population dominated by whites. Even the two leaders of the Mutant community, Professor Xavier and Magneto, were seen as allegories for civil rights leaders Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. Professor Xavier saw a world where mutants and humans lived together in peace, similar to how Dr. King saw people not being judged for their race, but for their characters. Conversely Magneto saw the only way mutants were going to gain a place in the world was through violent action, not all that dissimilar to the teachings of Malcolm X. Much of the hatred towards mutants depicted in the comics was the same sort of racist violence that many African Americans were being subjected to in the more racist parts of the country.

As the civil rights movement ended, fear of mutants morphed from racism into paranoia. Mutants were like Communists, living among the ordinary Americans. Just like people suspected anyone could be a communist, the comics showed situations where anyone could be a mutant. Like the Cold War inspired a real world arms race, in the comics there was an arms race of a different kind. Sentinels. So terrifying was the mutant threat that humanity created giant robots to hunt down and capture, or even kill, mutants. Political characters became the new enemies of mutants. Attacking mutants became a political platform in the Marvel Universe, just as attacking Communists was a political platform in the real world.

In recent years, being a mutant has been treated similar to someone being gay. There is a social stigma to it, and while some people accept the mutant community, there is still many who see mutants as some sort aberration or abomination in the eyes of God. Mutants are unsure of how they are going to tell their friends and family that they are “different.” There are also parallels in that like the gay community, which was plagued by the HIV virus, the mutant community was shown as being threatened by the Legacy Virus. The Legacy virus was a creation of Stryfe, a clone of the mutant hero Cable, who was raised by the mutant terrorist Apocalypse. Apocalypse believed in a strict “Survival of the fittest” mentality and saw humans as weak. The virus was designed first to get rid of the weakest of the mutants and then to attack the ordinary human population. This parallels the HIV/AIDS epidemic of the 80s and 90s where at first the virus struck the homosexual community and then began to spread among the heterosexual community as well.

Perhaps the worst atrocity that mutants have most closely resembled is The Holocaust. In the famous Days of Future Past storyline in the pages of X-Men, the world had been ravaged by war and the Sentinels were rounding up the last surviving mutants and placing them into concentration camps before eventually exterminating them. In another storyline (possibly an extension of the same dystopian future) mutants are shown as being branded with a large “M” over their right eye, a barbaric practice that was first performed by the Nazis who would tattoo numbers on Jews being transferred among camps and also similar to the yellow stars of David that Jews were forced to sew onto their clothes in the ghettos. On a side note, the character of Magneto is motivated by the atrocities he witnessed as a Holocaust Survivor to ensure the same such atrocities never occur to mutants.

Even those who were oppressed and hunted in the far past share a connection with mutants. In the popular mini-series 1602, written by the brilliant Neil Gaiman, the Marvel Universe is portrayed as if it came into being during Colonial America. The X-Men are not referred to as mutants but are instead called “witchbreed.” In essence being a mutant is worthy of the same persecution that was visited upon those who were believed to be witches and servants of the devil. It makes sense since these acts of persecution were acted out of fear and superstition. If mutants truly are metaphors for oppressed minorities then it makes sense that they would represent this group as well.

The final group that shares a history of oppression with mutants are the Native Americans. In the recent pages of Ultimate X-Men, the surviving mutant community is relocated onto reservations. Previously in the pages of the regular X-Men comics, mutants had established a sovereign nation on US soil known as Utopia, a small island off the coast of San Francisco. The similarity between mutants and Native Americans (of which there have been a few mutant Native Americans) is that both groups of people have been placed by the government in land for which they received sovereign control. In many ways their placement there was forced, in that they had no other viable option against the superior military might of the American government.

The fight for civil rights is a fight for change. The very word “mutant” means something that has gone through change. It makes perfect sense that mutants would be a metaphor for the struggles of so many people. People hate what they fear and what people fear most is change. Things that are different from themselves. All the above groups were seen as different from those who were in power and that difference led to hate. In many ways, we all need to mutate our views of the world.