A professor has the worst possible take on Social Justice and dystopian cities like Gotham City.

[DetlefK]

https://www.salon.com/2022/08/26/its-time-to-cancel-batman--for-good/

My big disconnect from Batman initially came from his relationship with Police Commissioner Gordon. I didn't mind police when I was a little kid, but by the time I got to sixth grade, police officers had become the most oppressive people in our neighborhoods. By 11, I had already heard or witnessed countless stories of people being beaten, harassed and sometimes even shot by our local police. And yet the Batman, who was hated by many police officers, maintained a relationship with Commissioner Gordon. It seemed like he was siding with the people who historically had taken a stance against me. Why did Batman have to work with the commissioner? He was a master detective with access to unlimited resources, including the best gym membership, and with a workout schedule that allowed him to grow the biggest muscles in Gotham, plus all kinds of crazy weapons. He wouldn't even be needed if police officers actually did their jobs. Yet he still chose to work with cops, which essentially makes him a snitch.

Batman can beat up people but he cannot send them to prison. Only Commissioner Gordon can do that.

The real-world police-violence that you witnessed is NOT evidence that the Gotham City PD is beating/harassing/shooting people.

Learn to keep fact and fiction separate.

but if I could travel back to that moment, I would tell Jake that Batman's only power is white privilege, and that is why he began to seem so unimpressive to me by then. Batman could not fly, make himself disappear, or shoot lasers out of his eyes. He was just another white guy with too much money surrounded by people who were too poor to get by.

So... if I understand the author correctly... white privilege and being rich leads to being a master-detective and having a perfect athletic body???

Nobody has as much white privilege as Batman. Batman has so much privilege he can afford to hire people to run all of his companies while he works out 12 times a day and spends his nights fighting people he could instead send to therapy and eventually hire.

The guy who wrote this article is a professor. He thinks that CEOs actually run companies themselves. Newsflash: They don't. Modern corporations are structured in such a way that the employees run the company by themselves by simply following established procedures and guidelines. There is NO NEED for day-to-day decision-making from upper management in a modern corporation.

Bruce Wayne's employees running Bruce Wayne's corporations on their own isn't white privilege. It is simply best-practice in business.

That's not enough, Bruce. Fictional Gotham is still an extremely dangerous city, and yet we keep getting films and comics and TV shows based on this wealthy grown man's obsession. Gotham doesn't need vigilantes; it needs wealth distribution.

...

Bruce Wayne would be more effective if he sold off all his toys, allowed Alfred to retire, for God's sake — lord knows how many years he has been on the job — and divided his wealth amongst the people of Gotham. If Bruce Wayne did that, then and only then will he be a true hero. Every time rich people go out to solve a problem, it seems they think of everything except spreading their money around. That makes no sense. Most people who commit crimes do so because they are poor. They are not bad people, they do not love to hurt innocent people, they are just poor. Batman has the power to save them from being poor, but instead he dresses up in costumes and beats their heads in. How can this guy be a world class detective and not understand how poverty works?

Except, Batman doesn't handle only poor-people-crimes. The police does that. Batman handles supervillain crimes.

Bruce Wayne could create a fund that would allow the Joker and Two Face to get the mental health treatment and plastic surgery they need, mend his relationship with the Penguin, and even let the Riddler start an adult children's book imprint at Random House. Bruce could make it so that everyone in the city has a livable wage. He could create social programs for the people who suffered under many of his own oppressive businesses for years and use his political influence to clean up, reform or, really, delete the ineffective Gotham police department. Bruce Wayne could do all of that and more.

1. Bruce Wayne donating his money won't stop the Joker from falling into a vat of chemicals.
It won't convince mobsters like Carmine Falcone and Black Mask to stop being crimelords.
It won't stop Mr Freeze from trying to revive his dead wife.
It won't stop Killer Croc from eating people.
It won't stop the League of Shadows from detonating a chemical weapon in Gotham City's water-supply.
It won't stop the League of Shadows from taking Gotham City hostage with a nuclear weapon.

2. In order for the Joker and Two-Face to get mental health-treatment from Bruce Wayne, there first has to be a Batman to arrest them. Except there is no Batman because Bruce Wayne donated all his money.

3. And how exactly is Bruce Wayne supposed to give a "livable wage" to people who don't even work for him?
Is he supposed to supplement the wages of underpaid Walmart-workers?
Why is this author angry at Bruce Wayne for keeping his money but he is not angry at Gotham City's politicians for failing to pass better minimum-wage laws?

4. After deriding Bruce Wayne as someone with white privilege and too much money who gets a kick out of beating up poor criminals, the author now advocates that this white-privilege billionaire should buy his way into politics and remake law-enforcement according to his personal opinions/feelings/grievances?

Would the author be okay with cult-leader Elon Musk taking over police?

Would the author be okay with union-buster Jeff Bezos taking over police?

Would the author be okay with rightwing-donor Sheldon Adelson taking over police?

Would the author be okay with media-mudslinger Peter Thiel taking over police?

Would the author be okay with Trump taking over police?

It's almost as if the author is intentionally taking a nonsensical stance, just so he has an excuse to vent his frustrations at the world.

D. Watkins is an Editor at Large for Salon. He is also a professor at the University of Baltimore and founder of the BMORE Writers Project. Watkins is the author of the New York Times best-selling memoirs...

D. Watkins isn't angry at the corrupt politicians who failed Gotham City.
He isn't angry at decades of failed socio-economic policies that drive poor people to become criminals.
He is angry at the white guy who refuses to piss away his fortune in a doomed attempt to bribe crime and corruption into submission.