“On the grounds of Brooklyn, Your Honor.”

Again I want to start with the fact this is an open discussion. I don’t mean to offend, attack, or defend anyone with this post for/with bad intentions because at the end of the day this is a discussion on whether a fictional scenario can lead to the creation of a new race and whether a character is racist to this fictional species. I am always open to comments on this post for more opinions, and I want this to be a welcoming and open discussion.

I recently saw a post on Tumblr about how Gavin Reed is canonically racist against androids and I wanted to share my thoughts on the topic because the subject certainly interesting and very complex. In order to debate on whether someone can be racist against androids, we first have to answer the question of whether androids are a race, and more importantly what makes androids a race in the first place.

The Google definitions of race are considered to be: a major grouping of human kind, a group of people sharing the same culture/history/language/ethnic group, a group of set people or things with a common feature or features, etc etc. By Google definition, I’d like to say that androids in DBH could be considered a race. I’m saying could in the sense that androids at some point weren’t sentient, and we as people don’t often refer what we think are non-living things (things that do not have the ability to carry on life processes such as movement, respiration, growth, reproduction, and response to stimuli.) as a race.

Personally, I don’t believe androids could have been considered a race until deviancy became a common feature amongst androids because of the fact that deviancy gave androids the ability to properly respond to stimuli and grow/evolve their consciousness. Any time before deviancy, androids may not have been considered a race due to the restraints their programming had on their consciousness, restricting their ability to respond to stimuli and grow from it (ex. a robot who hasn’t deviated wouldn’t have the same interest in bugs as an robot who had deviated would because it’s programming doesn’t allow it to grow it’s love for bugs and respond to bugs as a stimuli in order to process their opinions on bugs).

Now apply that thought process on someone like Gavin Reed, who was born in 2002 and most likely was there to watch the development of androids and their integration into society. The first case of deviancy didn’t happen until 2032, when Gavin was 30. It was possible Gavin wasn’t even aware of that case and even more possible that he was still under the impression androids were machinery or another piece of technology. If he was aware of the first case of deviancy, it may have been likely that anyone who knew was told it was bug in the system. Relatably, how many of you thought the mouse moving by itself on a computer or a phone shutting itself off was just a bug or glitch. Now as much as I can find from the wiki, Gavin dislikes androids. The reason I found for this was because of the fact androids have been replacing people in the working scene. Despite having a prejudice against androids he’s also shown to have a respect for them to a certain extent, shown by Connor during the archive room scene if Connor takes the “calm” or “low profile” route. I also believe during that scene Gavin is still under the impression that deviancy is a bug in the code and not a spark of consciousness, which leads to his recklessness with androids.

All in all, I believe Gavin isn’t hardcore racist but more so ignorant as well as a careless one and has a long way to go in terms of his beef with androids. If we were given as much time with him as we were with Hank, I wonder if Gavin would have learned to move past his prejudice like Hank has. (With the mention of Hank, I’d also like to throw in the question of whether Hank was formerly racist to androids at the beginning of DBH)

I normally draw her in green which, if you hang out on my blog, have already seen a couple times! Both colors are canon to her story. Perspective starts out in a green suit when she’s a sidekick and when she comes into her own and starts being a super on her own (which is just months before the ban) she dons the color purple.

I tried to make the keyhole sorta look like a skull- which is trying to symbolize her death caused from being a super. If she stayed a sidekick, if she stayed being second, she wouldn’t have gone to Syndrome’s island.