How Important Is Race to the New Captain America?

In the first post in this series about Sam Wilson, the new Captain America, we surveyed Sam’s basic virtues as portrayed in the comics and how they compared with those of his predecessor, Steve Rogers. In this post, we look at an obvious difference between them—race—and see how it has affected Sam’s time so far wielding the shield in the comics (since he first picked it up in 2014) in terms of three areas: representation, inspiration, and expectation.¹

Representation

Sam has never been comfortable emphasizing his race, preferring to do the job and let the color of his skin speak for itself. It took his fellow hero (and his girlfriend) Misty Knight to push him to be more forward with it.

While convincing him to give the eulogy for Jim Rhodes (War Machine and former Iron Man) in Philadelphia after he was killed by Thanos, Misty told him, “Sam, you are a Black man, and you are Captain America. Nobody ever notices history when it’s happening, but let me tell you—that is not a thing, that is the thing.”²

Source: Marvel Comics

Even though Sam didn’t know Jim very well, Misty stressed the importance of representation, reminding him that people in the Black community need to see heroes who look like them, especially when they just lost one of the few they have. “A lot of kids here in South Philly, they got to look up in the sky and see Jim and say that could be them someday,” she explains. “That kind of hope is in way too short supply these days, but—well, now they don’t. But at least they still have you—and now you need to make sure that’s enough.”

(Don’t worry: Jim Rhodes got better, as did Steve Rogers after Sam eulogized him following his death following the superhero Civil War. If only Sam could speak at everybody’s funeral!)

Inspiration

Sam does give Jim's eulogy, and he begins by reflecting on the fact that, when Jim first took over as Iron Man from Tony Stark, he didn’t tell anybody who was inside the armor, even though he had to know “the importance of what he was doing” and “the history he was making.” He says that Jim likely had the same doubts he had, both of them filling big shoes and living up to impossible examples, but realizes that wasn’t why he kept his identity, and his race, secret.

Instead, evoking Jim’s military background, Sam says that Jim “didn’t want anything—repeat, anything—to get in the way of the mission,” which was “to do good. Help others. Make the world a safer, better place,” without it becoming about him.

Source: Marvel Comics

Nonetheless, Sam acknowledges that Jim inspired him and “continues to inspire us,” referring to his fellow heroes and impelling them to remember Jim’s mission—their mission—as another superhero Civil War threatened to erupt. For his part, and true to Misty’s word, Sam would go on to inspire regular people as well, including high school kids to whom he emphasized the value of self-determination, and a young Black girl who tells a television news reporter that “I’m gonna be Captain 'Merica when I grow up!”³

Expectation

Although Sam, like Jim, would have preferred to focus exclusively on the mission, others insisted on highlighting his race. During an Avengers mission, Sam tells Tony Stark that “having camera phones and cable news agenda-izing your every move into a racially based narrative is—is—the job. It’s the job. A bigger part than I’d like, but I knew the gig was dangerous when I took it, right?”⁴

In a montage of news footage that featured the little girl above, another screen shows a cable news personality arguing that the new Captain America is “pandering, pure and simple… political correctness gone mad.”⁵ Sam hears the same things in person, such as when he overheard a father and son arguing about him in a coffee shop, the father agreeing with the anchor above while the son says Sam earned the title. Of course, Sam only remembered one of them, thinking later how “one stranger’s dismissive appraisal thunders—my own self-doubts echoed.”⁶

Source: Marvel Comics

Those same doubts surfaced when Sam fought the Red Skull’s daughter Sin, who reminded him of the false criminal persona “Snap” that her father made Sam believe was his true past, when it was actually just a short-lived alternate personality Sam developed as a coping mechanism to deal with his parents’ murders.⁷ “I’m not perfect but I was never that person,” he told her. “I’m Samuel Wilson, raised by Paul and Darlene Wilson to fight people like you for a better world.”

Later, he admitted to himself that “Snap” did haunt him, "not because it was ever true—but because they expected me to believe it. That it was so damned obvious to them that’s what I should have been. That they chose that story—and for all the reasons they chose it.”⁸

Next: Meet the Wilsons

It’s appropriate that Sam mentions his parents above, because the example they set for him is largely responsible for his distinctly proactive approach to being Captain America, his most significant difference from his predecessor—two fascinating aspects of Sam Wilson, Captain America, that we will start discussing in the next post.