Dead Tree Alert: To (Self-)Serve and Protect

@hrnyc: Sometimes the dumbest things you write are the assertions that you don't even think twice about. And now that you say it, yeah, I wouldn't say "shameless" racist if I were writing it again. But I also wouldn't say that he's not racist altogether.

Part of what I was writing in this passage was that everything is complicated with Vic. Much of his bad is counterbalanced with a good. And certainly he is not the virulent, outspoken racist Shane is. (As I wrote before, Shane is the funhouse mirror Vic, Vic reproduced in a dumber, more egregious package.) Compared with Shane, Vic is much more tolerant--there's also his longstanding relationship with Carl Weathers' character (name escapes me right now).

But there's definitely a recurrent strain of insult and bigotry that comes up with Vic--much more with Latino than with black characters, I think. With him it manifests more in chop-busting and putdowns. Most famously, I'd think of his showdown with Aceveda, where he tells him (paraphrasing) that you're not in charge of me, amigo, not even on Ceeeeenco de Mayyyo. He doesn't go there by accident, nor does he the various times he does this with perps ("say quesadilla," etc.).

Vic is more clever than Shane, smarter, and also more genuinely able to see non-white characters as equals. But there's still this aspect of his personality... which, as I wrote, is complicated by his genuine interest in protecting the black and brown and white people in Farmington. Obviously, in trying to make the point that it's more complicated with Vic, though, I oversimplified it--maybe this would make a good Shield Watch topic.