...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

[skywardprodigal.livejournal.com]

I read you off the deadbrowalking or Mordor friendslist. I think you're a strong dynamic writer. When you write about race or ethnicity sometimes I nod along, sometimes I wince, sometimes I smile. I don't always comment because, well, I just don't.

But I think you're bravely being you, and working through your own experience, and tying it into you experiences as a fan and I reading your posts on fandom and race make me think. They add to my experience as a fan.

You're open, and careful, and raw. That's...I don't really have a handy descriptor for that.
You're doing it for you, and you're out about it, and I think that's admirable and loving. And stubborn. You're determined to just work through all of this in the context of what's happening. And when I read posts like the one you just put up, I'm holding my breath but my eyes are smiling.

[tielan]

Well, I wince at myself sometimes. Actually, most of the time. :)

I think I often feel I don't have a 'right' to talk about my experience because it's not the kind of experience that many of the deadbrowalking LJers have. There's racism, certainly, and it's humiliating and frustrating and depressing, but it's not as pervasive or as horrible as what many others with darker skin and less 'mainstream middleclass' upbringings suffer.

I know that's bullshit. But I mentioned in my last post about race, that sometimes I wonder if the LJ POC community sees me as something of a pretender. Most of the time, I'm pretty sure they're not. But sometimes I worry all the same.