>>150853863
So I can kinda explain this.
I'm mixed and had an afro as a kid, and the weird thing is yeah, I can say characters not having hair like mine sorta effected me to the extent I would keep trying to style my hair like my favorite characters, notably Nightwing, which is, you know, impossible since my hair is naturally curly. In that regard, representation matters because kids will try to emulate their favorite characters, it's their biggest context for the things they view as "cool" at their age so it's nice that they have characters who look like them.
The thing is, Nightwing wasn't a white guy to me, he was just fucking cool and I wanted to look cool. This is where it gets weird, right? You can't really teach young kids much about race and identity. Their identity is barely formed and they're basically race blind until about like 8-10 years old. It's not some whimsical innocence "society is healing" stuff either, their ability to recognize people and the traits of people hasn't fully formed. It's why they can look at one of their own parents as a complete stranger for a few seconds after a haircut, they go by traits like hairstyle, facial hair, glasses. There was even a case where a black and white six year old thought they could confuse their teacher by getting the same haircut.
That's just sorta how kids operate.
