The Black And White Man
“When racial riots burn on the streets... when the KKK takes your baby away... when a gangsta rapper parks his Ferrari on your garden... Who ya gonna call?”
| black and | white man |
“Hmmm... it seems to me that this guy has personality issues”
“It's Black? It's White? It's tough for you to get by”
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The Black And White Man was an ethnic superhero based in Bronx, New York. Like most superheroes he was concerned about regular crime but, much like his tutor Luke Cage, B&W Man had a special fondness for fighting racist organizations.
Background and personality issues
The Black And White Man was born in Tupelo, Mississippi, under odd circumstances. His mother was a colorblind KKK white supremacist while his father was a Black Panther black supremacist. With such hatred involved in his deep-drunken conception, instead of being born a mulatto his genes split by the two sides of his body, making him literally half black and half white. This weird configuration is considered to be the source of his powers, one side concentrating the gifts of blackness and the other the flaws of whiteness (original titles from the California Liberal Institute for Mutants). Another point of notice is that his brain lacks a corpus callosum, vis a vis the two sides of his brain are not connected, leading to a double personality. These physical quirks and his predictable family issues - his parents broke up when he was aged 15 minutes (counted from conception) and he was raised in an orphanage - lead to a very unusual personal life, being him the only person known to have been both a Quantum Physics PhD and a high school dropout. In other words, the white side, the one who was expelled from high school, was hopelessly dumb, scoring an I.Q. of 76, while the black side was a genius with an I.Q. of 189. According to research conducted by Professor X this has nothing to do with the genetic quality of either of his parents, both of whom were very stupid.[1] The theory is that Blacky took the left, or "rational" side of the brain, while Whitey was installed on the right, "impulsive" side.
Powers
According to Internet Mutant Database, B&W Man was a level 3 psionic (code Ps-3). He had one power for each side:
- Da Funk: a mental wave used by the black side, which causes a state of dizziness and nausea in the target. There's a major inner discussion regarding the name: "Hell, don't use such a derogatory term, you moron! It's Mental Disruption Wave!" "Lolz. But it makes the enemy feel as if a two-month old bean-filled skunk corpse is behind his nose!" "Shut up, Whitey!" <slap>.
- Guilty Gear: another mental power, but that one causes the enemy to fall into a state of depression and self-hate. Launched by Whitey.
- Mixed Beam: launched when both sides attack simultaneously. It forces the enemy to do the samba, rendering them harmless but spicy.
Rise to herohood
When he was 17 years old B&W Man was expelled from the orphanage after Whitey stole the principal's car (he gave an intravenous Rohypnol dose to Blacky while he was asleep). Blacky spanked Whitey as much as he could (mostly running him against a wall) and it was during this conflict that they discovered that they possessed superpowers. Whitey felt an awful odor coming from himself and thought that Blacky had maybe punched him too hard. Blacky, in turn, started to cry, consumed by a terrible guilt for hitting his brother. Perceiving the abnormality of the situation, Blacky promptly took them to Professor Xavier's School for Gifted Children (Whitey protesting: "We're not gifted, we're mutants, numbskull!").
At Xavier's school, they learned how to control their powers. But not simultaneously: Blacky took two days, but Whitey took four years. During this extended stay at the school Blacky earned his PhD in quantum physics, graduating mutant cum laude.
The following is an excerpt from their school days, later published in the book "The Inner Dialogues of The Black & White Man":
“Can you turn this fuckin' gangsta rap off? This kind of shit just reinforces the worst black stereotypes!”
“Ha, ha, ha... Look at that coconut nigga, trying to be whiter than the whites!...”
“I should break your teeth just for using this "N" word. Man, I am what I am and this makes me a living proof that black people are free individuals, not walking stereotypes. Yet another proof, as if proof was needed... By the way, what about you, playing this pathetic role of being a, how do they say?... Whigger!”
“I can call you nigga 'cause I am a nigga myself, dammit! One drop rule, remember?”
“And I'm making you bleed all of my drops if you don't turn this shit off. The only music I can listen to whilst studying is Johann Sebastian Bach.”
“Coconut!...”
“Whigger!...”
As the other mutants were confused by his double identity - no one knew whether they should act politically correct or were free to tell racist jokes - B&W Man didn't befriend anyone while in Xavier's institute. Later on, after a long discussion if he should move to New York ("I want to be next to Guggenheim" - Blacky) or a trailer park ("I wanna be next to our mommy" - Whitey), Blacky spanked Whitey yet again until the two sides compromised and moved to the Bronx, meeting Luke Cage on arrival. Cage gave him some hints on being a freelancer superhero, who to take as casual ally and who to fight. So, despite Whitey's protests, who always sympathized with the villains ("Man, this drug dealer is a cool pimp", "Look at that grillz", "Yeah, that's a hardened nigga, raping 120 white children!") B&W Man managed to get by in a life of crime-fighting.
Secret identity
In the Bronx Martin-Mobuto opened a tattoo shop, which also served as a cover for Blacky's laboratory and Whitey's pig farm. The tattoo shop was also an ad-hoc explanation to B&W Man weird aspect: depending on the customer being black or white, either Blacky or Whitey could turn into "a giant tattoo".
Fighting supervillains
The B&W Man took part in major combats between "supers". Here goes some of his greatest adventures.
- B&W Man defeated Juggernaut the Unstoppable by Blacky using his Mental Disruption Wave known as Da Funk in order to make him believe he had stepped on something disgusting while in his Unstoppable Run - so he stopped to check his shoes.
- B&W Man defeated Hulk by convincing him that he was not white and thus should join his struggle against racism.
- B&W Man beat Captain Obvious by simply asking him if he was applicable for affirmative action quotas.
- B&W Man defeated Magneto with Whitey, using his Guilty Gear, and Blacky, confusing his mind with a literate, liberal discourse, turning him into a sissy pinko, disturbed to the point of procastination by the Palestine situation.
- B&W Man beat Onslaught after he laughed himself to death over his ridiculous powers.
Fighting racism
Aside from supervillains, B&W man fought several racist criminals:
- B&W Man used Blacky's knowledge of computers to hack the Libertarian National Socialist Green Party, placing irresistible music by James Brown, Marvin Gaye, Isaac Hayes and Barry White as the background theme for their website. This had the side-effect of doubling the site's accesses, but also caused forum entries to drop to zero. In this adventure, he fought a sociopathic Nazi teenager who threatened, on his website, to invade his school with a pistol. Whitey convinced him that being a loser is not all that bad and he should look for good lovin' instead. Even if he had to pay for it.
- B&W Man traveled back to Mississippi to fight William J. Simmons III. With his guide Marlow he followed the Mississippi river upstream and found a weird primitive fortress garrisoned by an army of fanatics. After being imprisoned and set free without apparent reason, he killed a cow with a sword and Whitey yelled "Barbecue!". This gave him enough time to kill Kurtz, I mean, Simmons, and run away.
- In the same adventure, he found his mother, but that was a traumatic experience. She rejected him, as Blacky was the two things she most hated in the world: black and smart.
- B&W Man traveled to Brazil to find the Nazi runaway Josef Mengele, who was trying to clone Hitler, and was pretending to be a plastic surgeon (the only plastic surgery he could perform was whitening the locale's skins and giving them fake blue glass eyes, non-operational). Mengele tried to bribe him by proposing a plastic surgery to make he look "totally normal", either "aryan" or (he couldn't hide his disgust when giving this option) "negro". Whitey almost cried, but Blacky kicked Mengele's ass by showing him the ambient feel of a concentration camp. Then the Nazi committed suicide by jumping to the sea.[2]
- B&W Man fought some black supremacists as well, but the publisher thought this to be too politically incorrect to be sold in stores. In a 70-story building in New York, he took an elevator upstream and there found a primitive fortress garrisoned by an army of fanatics. Blacky gave them a 2-hour speech about the foolishness of hate and they just disbanded out of boredom.
- In the same adventure, he found his father, but that was a traumatic experience. He rejected him, as Whitey was white and Blacky was "whitened".
Break up
Tired of the stupid names Whitey gave to his powers - and also concerned about his powers being actually stupid - Blacky built two cyborg half-bodies and performed a robot-nano-biotech surgery in order to separate him from his brother. As an homage to their previous life as a single superhero, his cyborg part is white, while Whitey's is black.
Blacky never again used his ridiculous superpower, and eventually changed his name to (he asked Whitey for a suggestion - Whitey is definitely not the creative type) The Cyborg. He also signed a contract with DC Comics and no longer owns the rights to himself. Whitey fell into obscurity and moved back to Mississippi. He tracked down their mother again and using his power made her repent of her previous racist ways. They are living a happy peasant life in their trailer and are the proud owners of sixteen guilt-ridden pigs in the backyard.
See also
Notes
