...and so I ask myself if I am the stone in your shoe.

[tielan]

"How could anyone love a stone in their shoe?"
~ 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.

Comments

[mahoni.livejournal.com]

I read posts like these but don't comment on them unless I have something useful to say. I mean. It just seems like there's only so much "you're right" or "good point" or "thank you for explaining this" that a person can say before it begins to sound like (or be) lip service; but on the other hand, I don't necessarily know what else I could be saying. Mainly because I don't feel like it's appropriate for me to be saying anything else. Sort of.

Someone on my flist has repeatedly stated that it's not her place to educate white people, and she's right. On the other hand, if I'm doing something wrong, it's hard to not try to learn from people who are pointing it out.

But when it comes to things like race and sexuality and class, the only thing I'm really sure of is that I can't trust my own opinion of myself. How much of my sense of what is appropriate or inappropriate is shaped by middle class straight white privilege? But I also think that when it comes to people making themselves heard on subjects like these my own relevance and understanding is pretty far down on the scale of importance. So. I don't know.

I do read, though.

[tielan]

I guess I put a bit too much emphasis on the specific 'me' and not enough on the generality of my thoughts. My bad.

Primarily, I wanted to challenge people to think about how they perceive the race discussions: as something to *sigh* and *rolleyes* about, to skip over, to ignore, to dismiss or deride or complain that it harshes their squee.

We're all shaped and formed by our history: my own is middle class, straight, and 'banana' - yellow skin, white inside. I can get past the inherently racist assumptions of others as, say, some African-Americans can't, because my upbringing was, essentially 'white'. On the other hand, there are some assumptions that I will never escape because I am not white/caucasian in appearance.

There are some assumptions I will make, am making, have made that come from a white dominant perspective: I am at once the oppressor and the oppressed. Which, in some ways, is helpful in this discussion - I've said and done stupid, racist things, and I've had them said and done to me, too. I can see both ways down the street.