...so I had to say something at somepoint: RF'09
I think I'm one of many people who, before today, wasn't going to necessarily say anything big.
Not because there was nothing to say. Not because they believed the discussion should end... but because all the brilliant, meaningful things had been said by others and writing 'THIS' on a few journals was about all I could handle.
Then I read Elizabeth Bear's post this morning.
It takes a lot to get me angry. No, no, that's a lie. It's pretty easy to cheese me off. But it takes a LOT to get me to mention it and it takes a lot to make me try and put up an extended post about it because I'll be honest: I'm not very good at organizing my thoughts on the fly. One breakdown and the brain never really works like it used to, I guess.
The other reason I've never really said anything is because, well, race is complicated for me. I'm a mutt: half Polish-Russian-Jewish, half Puerto Rican. I can't really 'pass' for white but I don't exactly look like anything else either. When someone wants to discriminate against me on sight, they'll usually be confused about it for a few minutes first. That said, I don't IDENTIFY as white. I don't speak Spanish fluently (due to a decision by my father not to teach it to me as a child that I am annoyed with to this day), but I identify as a little bit of both my parents. My mindset, cultural understandings, food preferences, etc, are, well, 'non standard'. When deepads post about cultural appropriation came up, I commented specifically about some of the Latino characters I've seen... and how, amazed and happy as I was to see them, WOW some things were just off. But in some part, I've been sitting back, learning, thinking, and chiming in on posts because I'm just not that eloquent when I'm speaking as myself and not a character.
Then I read Ms. Bear's post this morning and I...
There's so much wrong here. I can't even dissect it and talk about all the wrong because I'd be at it all day. But there's just so much wrong here, so I'm going to make comments about what bits and pieces I can pull out.
I'm also only addressing her because I, literally, cannot work on more while I'm at work. Also, my brain would fry if I had to focus on more than one thing and the outing stuff? I... would start screaming. Because in my line of work I've literally seen people killed over their online persona. Literally. Had to deal with this. So really, too much rage for thought.
But I do want to make one thing clear: I still respect Ms. Bear. Because I still believe she's making a mistake. A mistake made out of anger and fear and fatigue, but a mistake all the same. I can only assume of her that she honestly thinks she's doing the right thing. That she actually wanted a cease fire (which could very well have been different than a 'shut up' if she wasn't being, well... exceedingly unwise; not shooting = good, shutting up about this = bad). And while I don't agree with her on anything she said, really, anything, I can kind of understand. In short: I respect Ms. Bear as a brilliant writer and a human being, but I don't respect her behavior in this. At all. For many many reasons. And will no longer financially support her writing. So... there you go.
I also think that a white person saying something patently racist and misogynist is as offensive as a person of color's unexamined privilege, and in internet debates of this sort, at least against well-meaning white folk who really do want to help, the persons of color do have privilege. It is not systemic, like white privilege, and it is not as toxic as white privilege.
Here's what I heard:
"Saundra has an ADVANTAGE at this wheelchair race because she was born without legs and yeah, maybe I practice when my knee twinges a little but I don't live in a wheelchair so she knows all the tricks to getting as much speed as possible out of that baby. NOT FAIR!"
...do you know who the last person to voice something this asinine was? Johnny Knoxville. In a movie. As a character. Who eventually realizes that what he said was incredibly stupid.
You know who else has an advantage? My grandfather, when we talk about being in the army. Yeah, if we're talking about the strains of combat on the psyche and how terrible it is to watch your best friend be shot standing right next to you, guess who has the 'advantage'? Oh yeah, he missed out on college and he still gets the shakes and he's got nightmares and he actually cries on the anniversary of his friend's death every year, but yeah, sure he's got the 'advantage'. That's some prime 'advantage'. And I'm sure he feels great about it.
It's not advantage or privilege; it's experience. It's having this be an intrinsic part of life, every day, no matter what. And if that experience means that someone can talk about a subject with a bit more weight than you? SUCK IT UP. You might learn something. Maybe next discussion, you'll have the experience. And we'll listen. But when you dismiss other people's experience, people tend to dismiss yours. It's this thing.
I am a person who has been affected by my society's unconscious attitudes towards race, certainly, who has internalized those--and some funny ones based on my own upbringing. I'm not unconscious of this. It's something I try to be very aware of in my work, because it matters to me.
and then
It's my fault because I accepted criticism of my book that I knew to be untrue, that I knew to be based on a shallow and partial reading (a reading of the first chapter of a 160,000-word novel), because I felt it was important to serve as an example of how to engage dialogue on unconscious institutional racism.
Here's what I heard: YOU CONTRADICTING YOURSELF IN THE SAME POST.
And this isn't just the fact that you denied a voice to a person of color by what you just said that pisses me off. It does, but other people have covered that far better than I feel I can. Oh no, it's the fact that you ACTUALLY HAD THE NERVE to use the ANNE RICE defense. THE ANNE RICE DEFENSE. The 'You are interrogating this text from the wrong perspective' defense. I think well enough of you to think that you're aware of the kind of connotations that has. As well as the fact that you should know better, if only from someone else's mistakes.
Aside from that, even, aside from your predecessors in wankishness, you are encouraging the strangling of your own art. Of art in general. You're saying that people aren't allowed to read what they read into your work. I am an English major, or I was, and I can tell you right now that no matter how old it is or how many people have read it or how 'far' it is from the reader in scope or understanding, that text has a life of it's own. That every generation will read what they need or what they would see into text. That when you send something out into the world, it becomes it's own and that while you have every right and I would never dare accuse you of anything for defending what someone might say about you, you don't have executive rights about what people think about it. You can't say that something isn't there. You can't. You can explain what you meant and you can say what you were trying to do, which is what you STARTED with (though apparently that was a lie, and don't get me started on the loss of respect THERE) but you can't change the text.
The poet Kahlil Gibran once wrote, "Your children are not your children [...] They come through you but not from you. And though they are with you, they belong not to you." And books (any writing) are the same way. I'm writing this now and I know that some people will take certain parts harder than others, laugh maybe not where I meant them to, get angry maybe not where I meant them to. Some people might think I'm not being harsh enough, others that I'm too harsh.
Responsibility but no control of perception. That's the price of freedom. That's the price of speaking. You put yourself out there and someone isn't going to like you. That's how the world works. People come from all directions; human vision is not 360 degrees around and that's not just a physical reality. We can't see everything. YOU WILL BE MISUNDERSTOOD. Or sometimes, you will be understood more deeply than you're comfortable with. That's what happens when you step out and say something, write something, create something. Expression is only half the artist's work. The other half is found in the viewer. Not realizing this? Is both childish and entirely unprofessional.
You got a bad review. NO MATTER WHAT KIND IT WAS, there's really only one option: acceptance. There is no way to invalidate an opinion (especially a well-reasoned, logically stated one), even if you don't like it. No matter what language you want to put around it, that is how a person of color saw your text. And trying to silence it, or invalidate it, is the worst thing you can do not just because it alienates people. Not just because it pisses people off. Not just because it creates stagnation and encourages nothing but the same old 'acceptable' shit... but also because it makes you look like a spoiled brat. And, pretty much, you've shown with your own words that you obviously don't care about that portion of your readership. That's piss-poor authorship by any definition.
If someone only read one chapter of your book, it's because YOU PROVED that you were only worth that much of her time. Whether your themes were racist or you were just boring, the failing is on your part. My grandfather used to say 'I wouldn't take the time to poke fun at you if I didn't like you', and what you really should have realized is that people saw WORTH in your work enough to want to write and help you fix it. People were trying to show you what you were doing WRONG so that you could do it RIGHT, reach others. And you trampled all over them like a four year old.
Because you could, both as a white person and as a professional writer. Which makes me sick on so many levels.
So I say: SUCK IT UP, deal, and learn, if you're any kind of artist at all.
But it is perfectly capable of turning any internet debate on race into a slaughterhouse, because the white progressives will generally either back down from or react with defensive panic to any accusation of racism, which makes it a nuclear option and an I Win card.
Here's what I heard: Not important.
Because it doesn't have to be like that. And it didn't start like that. It got turned into that, mostly out of fear.
Please stop being afraid. This started as a 'what they did' discussion and defensiveness turned it into a 'what they are' discussion. And the defensiveness wasn't from the side of the POC. At least, not from what I've seen. And I've read most of the posts.
The problem arises when people of color are held to a different standard than white folks. Period. Whatever that standard is.
Here's what I don't think you realize: Right now, right here, all over this planet, in a million different ways, this problem doesn't have to arise. IT IS.
ETA: For those interested in more, check rydra_wong's mad archiving skills. There's been some unpleasant all over, but we all gotta take the medicine sometimes.
Not because there was nothing to say. Not because they believed the discussion should end... but because all the brilliant, meaningful things had been said by others and writing 'THIS' on a few journals was about all I could handle.
Then I read Elizabeth Bear's post this morning.
It takes a lot to get me angry. No, no, that's a lie. It's pretty easy to cheese me off. But it takes a LOT to get me to mention it and it takes a lot to make me try and put up an extended post about it because I'll be honest: I'm not very good at organizing my thoughts on the fly. One breakdown and the brain never really works like it used to, I guess.
The other reason I've never really said anything is because, well, race is complicated for me. I'm a mutt: half Polish-Russian-Jewish, half Puerto Rican. I can't really 'pass' for white but I don't exactly look like anything else either. When someone wants to discriminate against me on sight, they'll usually be confused about it for a few minutes first. That said, I don't IDENTIFY as white. I don't speak Spanish fluently (due to a decision by my father not to teach it to me as a child that I am annoyed with to this day), but I identify as a little bit of both my parents. My mindset, cultural understandings, food preferences, etc, are, well, 'non standard'. When deepads post about cultural appropriation came up, I commented specifically about some of the Latino characters I've seen... and how, amazed and happy as I was to see them, WOW some things were just off. But in some part, I've been sitting back, learning, thinking, and chiming in on posts because I'm just not that eloquent when I'm speaking as myself and not a character.
Then I read Ms. Bear's post this morning and I...
There's so much wrong here. I can't even dissect it and talk about all the wrong because I'd be at it all day. But there's just so much wrong here, so I'm going to make comments about what bits and pieces I can pull out.
I'm also only addressing her because I, literally, cannot work on more while I'm at work. Also, my brain would fry if I had to focus on more than one thing and the outing stuff? I... would start screaming. Because in my line of work I've literally seen people killed over their online persona. Literally. Had to deal with this. So really, too much rage for thought.
But I do want to make one thing clear: I still respect Ms. Bear. Because I still believe she's making a mistake. A mistake made out of anger and fear and fatigue, but a mistake all the same. I can only assume of her that she honestly thinks she's doing the right thing. That she actually wanted a cease fire (which could very well have been different than a 'shut up' if she wasn't being, well... exceedingly unwise; not shooting = good, shutting up about this = bad). And while I don't agree with her on anything she said, really, anything, I can kind of understand. In short: I respect Ms. Bear as a brilliant writer and a human being, but I don't respect her behavior in this. At all. For many many reasons. And will no longer financially support her writing. So... there you go.
I also think that a white person saying something patently racist and misogynist is as offensive as a person of color's unexamined privilege, and in internet debates of this sort, at least against well-meaning white folk who really do want to help, the persons of color do have privilege. It is not systemic, like white privilege, and it is not as toxic as white privilege.
Here's what I heard:
"Saundra has an ADVANTAGE at this wheelchair race because she was born without legs and yeah, maybe I practice when my knee twinges a little but I don't live in a wheelchair so she knows all the tricks to getting as much speed as possible out of that baby. NOT FAIR!"
...do you know who the last person to voice something this asinine was? Johnny Knoxville. In a movie. As a character. Who eventually realizes that what he said was incredibly stupid.
You know who else has an advantage? My grandfather, when we talk about being in the army. Yeah, if we're talking about the strains of combat on the psyche and how terrible it is to watch your best friend be shot standing right next to you, guess who has the 'advantage'? Oh yeah, he missed out on college and he still gets the shakes and he's got nightmares and he actually cries on the anniversary of his friend's death every year, but yeah, sure he's got the 'advantage'. That's some prime 'advantage'. And I'm sure he feels great about it.
It's not advantage or privilege; it's experience. It's having this be an intrinsic part of life, every day, no matter what. And if that experience means that someone can talk about a subject with a bit more weight than you? SUCK IT UP. You might learn something. Maybe next discussion, you'll have the experience. And we'll listen. But when you dismiss other people's experience, people tend to dismiss yours. It's this thing.
I am a person who has been affected by my society's unconscious attitudes towards race, certainly, who has internalized those--and some funny ones based on my own upbringing. I'm not unconscious of this. It's something I try to be very aware of in my work, because it matters to me.
and then
It's my fault because I accepted criticism of my book that I knew to be untrue, that I knew to be based on a shallow and partial reading (a reading of the first chapter of a 160,000-word novel), because I felt it was important to serve as an example of how to engage dialogue on unconscious institutional racism.
Here's what I heard: YOU CONTRADICTING YOURSELF IN THE SAME POST.
And this isn't just the fact that you denied a voice to a person of color by what you just said that pisses me off. It does, but other people have covered that far better than I feel I can. Oh no, it's the fact that you ACTUALLY HAD THE NERVE to use the ANNE RICE defense. THE ANNE RICE DEFENSE. The 'You are interrogating this text from the wrong perspective' defense. I think well enough of you to think that you're aware of the kind of connotations that has. As well as the fact that you should know better, if only from someone else's mistakes.
Aside from that, even, aside from your predecessors in wankishness, you are encouraging the strangling of your own art. Of art in general. You're saying that people aren't allowed to read what they read into your work. I am an English major, or I was, and I can tell you right now that no matter how old it is or how many people have read it or how 'far' it is from the reader in scope or understanding, that text has a life of it's own. That every generation will read what they need or what they would see into text. That when you send something out into the world, it becomes it's own and that while you have every right and I would never dare accuse you of anything for defending what someone might say about you, you don't have executive rights about what people think about it. You can't say that something isn't there. You can't. You can explain what you meant and you can say what you were trying to do, which is what you STARTED with (though apparently that was a lie, and don't get me started on the loss of respect THERE) but you can't change the text.
The poet Kahlil Gibran once wrote, "Your children are not your children [...] They come through you but not from you. And though they are with you, they belong not to you." And books (any writing) are the same way. I'm writing this now and I know that some people will take certain parts harder than others, laugh maybe not where I meant them to, get angry maybe not where I meant them to. Some people might think I'm not being harsh enough, others that I'm too harsh.
Responsibility but no control of perception. That's the price of freedom. That's the price of speaking. You put yourself out there and someone isn't going to like you. That's how the world works. People come from all directions; human vision is not 360 degrees around and that's not just a physical reality. We can't see everything. YOU WILL BE MISUNDERSTOOD. Or sometimes, you will be understood more deeply than you're comfortable with. That's what happens when you step out and say something, write something, create something. Expression is only half the artist's work. The other half is found in the viewer. Not realizing this? Is both childish and entirely unprofessional.
You got a bad review. NO MATTER WHAT KIND IT WAS, there's really only one option: acceptance. There is no way to invalidate an opinion (especially a well-reasoned, logically stated one), even if you don't like it. No matter what language you want to put around it, that is how a person of color saw your text. And trying to silence it, or invalidate it, is the worst thing you can do not just because it alienates people. Not just because it pisses people off. Not just because it creates stagnation and encourages nothing but the same old 'acceptable' shit... but also because it makes you look like a spoiled brat. And, pretty much, you've shown with your own words that you obviously don't care about that portion of your readership. That's piss-poor authorship by any definition.
If someone only read one chapter of your book, it's because YOU PROVED that you were only worth that much of her time. Whether your themes were racist or you were just boring, the failing is on your part. My grandfather used to say 'I wouldn't take the time to poke fun at you if I didn't like you', and what you really should have realized is that people saw WORTH in your work enough to want to write and help you fix it. People were trying to show you what you were doing WRONG so that you could do it RIGHT, reach others. And you trampled all over them like a four year old.
Because you could, both as a white person and as a professional writer. Which makes me sick on so many levels.
So I say: SUCK IT UP, deal, and learn, if you're any kind of artist at all.
But it is perfectly capable of turning any internet debate on race into a slaughterhouse, because the white progressives will generally either back down from or react with defensive panic to any accusation of racism, which makes it a nuclear option and an I Win card.
Here's what I heard: Not important.
Because it doesn't have to be like that. And it didn't start like that. It got turned into that, mostly out of fear.
Please stop being afraid. This started as a 'what they did' discussion and defensiveness turned it into a 'what they are' discussion. And the defensiveness wasn't from the side of the POC. At least, not from what I've seen. And I've read most of the posts.
The problem arises when people of color are held to a different standard than white folks. Period. Whatever that standard is.
Here's what I don't think you realize: Right now, right here, all over this planet, in a million different ways, this problem doesn't have to arise. IT IS.
ETA: For those interested in more, check rydra_wong's mad archiving skills. There's been some unpleasant all over, but we all gotta take the medicine sometimes.