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"How could anyone love a stone in their shoe?"
~ The Stepmother, Ever After ~
~ The Stepmother, Ever After ~
*breathes*
It started with an author called Elizabeth Bear talking about writing the Other without being a dick. Unfortunately, someone pointed out a story of hers which features a magical negro who is 'tamed' by a white woman and stating that it was problematic.
It turned into a big argument about cultural appropriation: who has the right to write about non-whites, how our society perceives and stereotypes the Other (African, Asian, Indian, Oriental, Pacific Islander, Eskimo, Alien), how perfectly nice people can be racist without ever realising it, how it always comes back to the satisfaction and emotional catharsis of white people at the expense of the persons of colour trying to say "I am here, my pain is real, don't ignore what I have to say or dismiss it just because you don't want to hear that you put your foot wrong and might have to apologise."
I'm no good at talking about this stuff - I can't talk about a broader experience, I can only talk about my own experience.
One thing that's repeatedly come up is that white fans feel fandom is their safe space and their place to have fun. That to question the racial assumptions, cultural appropriations, and racist attitudes of fandom is to effectively deny white people their 'safe space', where they can happily squee and post fannishly and never have to question their choices or behaviours or feel guilty about the weight of history upon them regarding racist behaviours, a racist system, and how POC can't hide that they're POC.
And so I sit here and post these thoughts and try to broaden my perspectives and watch as the people who read this journal amble by without ever reading or commenting.
My f-list is primarily fannish. People who like my fic - whatever aspect that might be. People who once liked me. There are a handful of people who are both fannish and people of colour, but they're just that - a handful.
And so I watch the comments rack up on my fiction and wonder if I am the fly in the ointment of my f-list's f-lists.
Am I the crazy lady on the train?
Am I the stone in the shoe?
And if so, are the only options to wince and bear it or to throw the stone away?
Which do you choose?
Do you wince and bear these posts of mine and others like me? Or do you skip over them, safe in the knowledge that tomorrow, next week, next month, I/we/they might post something that you're actually interested in - something that's relevant to you, that doesn't challenge you and your way of looking at the world in any way?
Sometimes I wonder.
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Or maybe I just see us/hints of us more.
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I think especially Germans have grown up with an internalized guilt about any kind of oppression. It makes it difficult to discuss anything objectively. No one really blames today's living white US-Americans for slavery (and no one should, though the history obviously means a lot of problems), but since WWII is 'only' two generations in the past, it is still very much present today, even for people like me who are two generations removed from it. It's difficult to debate it without really wanting not be come across as an 'evil Nazi'.
And also, the way racism manifests is just so different here. The whole discrimination of people because of their race/religion (Jews, people from Islamic countries) instead of on race and the way things currently are with the Turkish communities... it just is different from the way I hear about it from US-Americans. I don't know what's worse neither can I judge that nor should there be a hierarchy. There are no affirmative actions for minorities at colleges for example, only a handful minority politicians, but there is also not centuries of bad history standing between the groups. So yeah, different starting point.
And no, I don't really know what i wanted to say with that.
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Which makes me wonder whether they really gravitate more to these posts or if they just "jump my eye" more.
Turkish representation in Germany is a strange thing. Maybe I should do a pondery post about it in my journal once. :) Not here of course since it would be kinda off topic/defeating the purpose of the entry ;D
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*trying not to hijack this post*
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But what really caught my eye was your opening quote, because I love that movie and cringe every time that line comes up - it's so horribly visceral. But it also reminds me of another "stone in shoe" quote - from the song "By My Side" in Godspell. The musical is Christian, but the song speaks to me about friendship and love and death and losing people. I think it talks poignantly about meeting the people you need to meet, learning from each other, and then continuing on through life:
"Where are you going?/Where are you going?/Can you take me with you?/For my hand is cold/And needs warmth/Where are you going?/Far beyond where the horizon lies/Where the horizon lies/And the land sinks into mellow blueness/Oh please, take me with you/Let me skip the road with you/I can dare myself/I can dare myself/I'll put a pebble in my shoe/And watch me walk (watch me walk)/I can walk I can walk!/I shall call the pebble Dare/I shall call the pebble Dare/We will walk, we will talk together/About walking Dare shall be carried/And when we both have had enough/I will take him from my shoe, singing/'Meet your new road!' "
Anyway, taking your stone metaphor, I think it can be expanded to consider the way we need to love and appreciate the people who challenge us.
Although, I've never considered you a stone - rather, a writer I enjoy reading.
ETA: I wanted add, regarding "safe space," that for many fandom acts as safe because it doesn't have a bodily presence, and because there are a preponderance of people who are othered in a variety of ways, especially sexual, philosophical, and religious. However, the challenge is to make sure that it's safe for *everyone* - and I think this is a debate we'll always have : about bi-curious and lesbian presence in fandom, about religious diversity, and about race - and there's an effort to be certain that by making the space "safe" for one particular group it doesn't become unsafe for another, which often happens. Thinking of/accepting fandom as a "safe space" for white privilege would be the worst possible betrayal of that ideal, of a place for complexly othered people to all hang out together in harmony.
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As a POC I have at times have found fandom to be entirely to white and therefore have only lurked in one of two areas, yours being the main one and yes I do agree to an extent that some use it as their haven where they can live in their own little world of whitness with no interruptions.
Yet there is another side that welcomes your discussions and as I enjoys them, it reminds me that I am not alone in my thinking.
I respect what you do in all aspects of your writing but mostly in the voice you give to those characters of color. Without you and others like you, a reader would be hard press to know that poc existed in certain fandoms.
I true writer can give a voice to any character regardless of color. If you respect your character and your audience you would do what you must to bring that character to life. The same way a poc can write for an white character and audience the same should be for a white writer.
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As thelana says, shared experiences of oppression can be a useful bridge between people - as long as that experience isn't being used to invalidate someone else's experience, which does often happen and is profoundly upsetting and disconcerting.
I would add that some forms of oppression other than race are also visual, and that there are constant attempts to force or require people with "invisible" oppressions to perform them in visually legible ways so that they can be policed and controlled - so I wouldn't completely discount the visual in other cases.
However, every form and experience of oppression is also unique and irreducible.
The safe space metaphor
Everybody can relate to the idea of fandom as a safe space. The issue is that white fen claim fandom as their safe space, but what makes it safe for them might be precisely what makes it unsafe for POC fen.
So, how do we deal with unsafe space? In warning discussions we regularly have the discussions about how people really want rape warnings, because they have so called "triggers" that they want to avoid because they have experiences with rape in real life. This explanation is generally respected.
So, if we framed the safe space problem as being like this, would it make sense? People who endure a lot of race related crap in real life, who are triggered by offesive representation and want to avoid it in fandom, who want fandom to be their safe space?
If we used this logic, wouldn't the logical result be if people started warning for it? No, obviously not along the lines of "this is racist crap", but more like "cpwotc" (clueless person outside their culture) or "wpwotc" (white person writing outside their culture) or even just wpw (white person writer).
Or maybe disclaimers along the lines of "Disclaimer: This might be annoying and offensive to you. Please consider not reading it.".
In the case of rape, warnings and disclaimers protect twofold. The easily triggered person gets to decide whether they really want to take the risk and bother with the fic. And the author who gets called out about it gets to say "Hello, didn't you read the warning? Don't like it, don't read it. If you don't like it, why didn't you hit the back button?".
Of course this is just a half tongue in cheek mind experiment. Tough I do wonder how/whether that would affect writers. Would it make people more aware of what they are writing? Would the writing get more bad? Would there be discussion about it? Would it motivate people to try harder to overcome the wpw label?
I guess that is currently on my mind. If we are trying to discuss race on a larger scale or if the topic really is race and racism in fandom specifically.
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I also understand how you could see that what I discussed was outside perhaps what you were asking, which as I understand, was primary about how white people treat POCs, not how white people treat other white people or how black people treat asians or any number of other combination.
I think this goes along the line of what
I hope what I have said above makes sense and isn't offensive.
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You explained my reasons for sharing my story a lot better than I could have. It was a good explanation for both sides of the argument and I've got a bit of a better understanding why comments like the above can hurtful, even if that's not their intention.
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Your posts are very informative, and I thank you for making them. If you like comments like "read it! thinking about it!", then I can give those. I just don't have anything of substance to contribute like you do.
Re: The safe space metaphor
To some extent I think the point is the people saying something offensive rarely perceive it in that way - so it would be something other people warn you about - which, I think, is a fairly accurate representation of what we have now - a word-of-mouth system for warning people about writing/conversations that are racially problematic.
Do you remember the incident with the Supernatural RPS fic set in Cambodia awhile back? Something like that might have benefited from some kind of institutionalized warning system - if the author had to stop and consider whether to check a button to warn about potentially offensive representation of a culture not his/her own, that may have produced some deeper thinking - or, it might just have served as the sort of "don't like, don't read" justification that you mention.
But, yes, overall it's unfortunate when one person's quest for safe space undermines someone else's ability to feel safe.
Re: The safe space metaphor
I know you meant it as something of a facetious idea, but there's a danger in that people might begin to think that they can 'warn' for innately racist behaviour and that precludes them having to apologise.
Does that make sense?
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But I think that the learning experience can be replicated for all peoples when dealing with matters of race, presumptions of ownership, and the assumption of a minority ("ethnic") cultural identity by lighter-skinned people towards darker or 'coloured' ones.
I was still taught 'coloured' was an appropriate, not offensive term
Yeah, I was taught that, too. And I did I use it in a fandom discussion the first time. I still do sometimes when I forget. Usually, it takes a subsequent explanation that the term is intended from the speaker (me) as non-pejorative, and a crossout/change.
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Most people don't question that a white person should always be the hero character or save the day; many don't question that non-whites are always the alien or Other characters, or that the non-whites are relegated to stereotypes or caricatures of people instead of being developed; many don't ask where the pureblood Chinese are in a Sino-American culture, or why there are no Hispanics in So-Cal, or why the main quartet of characters in an entirely Asiatic culture - a culture specifically designed to be non-Western - must be portrayed by white actors, one of whom thinks that all he needs to do to 'pass' as suitably Asian is to get a tan.
These assumptions - those 'pass cards' - are rooted in the racial and racist history of our cultures, in the same way that sexism is rooted in the sexual and sexist history of our cultures. Yes, we bear the weight of history upon us when we enter into these discussions - I think that this linked post looks at the weight of history and how to deal with it, if you're interested.
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As sugargroupie pointed out, though, the tactic of saying "Well, there are other types of oppression in the world, too, that are just as important, and people ignore them!" has often been used to derail discussions about race and racism, colour, and culture - and often tries to turn the conversation to a topic that allows the white people to be oppressed, too, thereby absolving them of any responsibility for the prejudice experienced by POC.
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It's strange for me. I'm subconsciously aware of the "other" perspective I bring to my writing. I think these posts you make about race enrich your writing for me. I remember when I first started reading your fic, I liked the way you portrayed Teyla and John. You write Teyla as a person rather than just an alien.
I became more aware of the subtle differences in how writer's perceive race when I started betaing. Then suddenly, I have my potentially-offensive-use-of-terminology glasses on and I see things (and feel a certain level of obligation) to point it out to the writer where someone else might not have noticed it. Still, I feel a strong sense of naivety at time when confronted with such things, because I'm not one that's quickly offended. I just like to make someone aware of how certain things can be perceived if they're written just so.
But hey, I live in a place where many people think it's perfectly acceptable to sport Confederate flags on t-shirts (http://dixieoutfitters.com/dixie_store), cuz, ya know, it's about "heritage, not hate."
Re: The safe space metaphor
*shudder*
If anything that is the kind of fic that if you want to write it should come with a whole slew of warnings plastered all over it and maybe only be shared on a request/email basis.
That's actually one category where I would wish people would realize that something like this really is on a level with, let's say extreme chan or "she was raped and really enjoyed it" fic. Of course nobody can forbid you to write and think it, but you should at least know that in public environment it is extremely distasteful and should only be posted with the strictest precautions and ideally not in a public forum (like those people who send certain stories out only by email or only post it under friendslock in their own journal).
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I feel your pain.
Though I suppose technically that should be, "I feel y'all's pain." (as y'all is now singular)
Re: The safe space metaphor
Several people have compared the POC experience to somebody standing on their foot and not getting off. People talk about actual hurt it causes. In that case, wouldn't it make sense to try to think of ways to evade it? Because in the end there is never a way to completely evade it. Because in the end you still are writing outside of your own experience and no amount of studying up on it will change that. So wouldn't the logical and fair thing be to slap a warning outside "This might not be as good as you have hoped for".
I'm thinking less with people mind who write actively horrible stuff, but more of the "I have well intention, but I'm worried I might not get everything right/I might fall short". To me, it's just fact that you are not going to get everything right. Even if you did an endless amount of historical research, you are not going to get everything right if you haven't lived through it (even if you manage evade things that are actively wrong; but there is a difference between "not getting it actively wrong" and "getting it perfectly right") and since this is fandom, people are even less likely to put in the same amount of research they would or should put in if they are writing an actual book. So wouldn't a fair thing be to give a warning?
It just seems to me that fandom is more or less built on the idea that you can write what you please and that you don't get to question people'e preferences. If somebody wants to write a teamfic where Teyla and Ronan are just afterthoughts that is incredibly depressing, but can you actually forbid people from writing it? At least a warning would indicate some awareness.
I get the idea of how minds have to change so attitudes will change. But isn't the approach from the backdoor also one that deserves considering? If you change the attitudes, maybe the mindsets will eventually change with it? (or how about a combo version? Install some attitude related laws like anti-discrimination laws and still work on trying to change mindsets on top of that)
Again, people use the language of immediate hurt. So wouldn't the normal reaction to hand out a bandaid? I get the idea that it is pointless to keep carrying over bandaids rather than fixing the bridge that is crumbling above. So why can't you do both? Hand out a bandaid and at the meantime continue thinking about how you can fix the bridge above? Work on both the mindsets and the attitudes?
Again, I can picture that these things might be boring or frustrating for fen of color (white fen talking amongst themselves how they could potentially make things nicer for our fellow fen of color), but maybe it is still something that has to happen. With of course, the problem of where we draw the line between things that really need to happen and things that are just the equivalent of tying your shoelaces for 5 hours.
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In this discussion, however, it's especially frustrating because this isn't knowledge that's never been imparted before - this is old news, rehashed, and very few people seem to be learning, let alone growing.
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But, as George W Bush and the USA proved for the last 8 years, blind faith and unquestioning certainty is something that many people yearn for.
Perhaps the people questioning the validity of POC experience wouldn't subscribe to Dubya's specific brand of blind faith and unquestioning certainty, but the unhesitating belief that 'I Cannot Be Wrong. To question if I am right suggests I might be wrong. And I cannot be wrong. Therefore, I am Right and any issue between us is Your Problem and nothing to do with me.' is a part of human nature.
It's not right, perhaps, but it's very real.
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