Let's talk Privilege

[tanndell]

Two rants in a month?  I'm on a roll.  But I believe that I genuinely have something to say about the recent outrage regarding a certain fic set in Haiti in the spn_j2_bigbang.  Again, it's something that's been intensely discussed and fantastic points about privilege, racism and ignorance have been highlighted, but as a FoC there are responses

Comments

[kaydeefalls]

Very well said -- this is exactly what's been bothering me about the reactions to the (clearly extremely problematic) fic. Thank you for putting it into words so effectively.

[tanndell]

Thank you so much for commenting and getting the point. The fic is problematic, hugely so, but let's focus on why it's problematic and not get derailed into ignoring cultures so that cultural appropriation cannot happen.

[tanndell]

Thank you, and that's absolutely okay. I am very flattered.
And hmmm... I hadn't seen that before, but yes! That's a fascinating idea, and I am interested in seeing the fics produced by it. "With some acknowledgment of how the racial difference would make a difference to the story being told." That's the key! Good start, fandom!

[tanndell]

Supernatural fandom is a place of much chaos. To cut a long story short, someone wrote a fic set in Haiti with a white doctor and his magical black sidekick (that's the summary, I am quoting) driving around trying to fix the problems of the survivors, and the big giant love story between the doctor and a photographer

[tanndell]

Exactly, don't appropriate my culture, but don't ignore it either... and I think that goes for all minorities. No, I don't think only people of colour should write the narratives. Seriously, let's have some more ghetto-ization shall we?

[muccamukk]

I like your first point. There were a number of fics out there with Americans (and others) processing their feelings about 9/11. I'm in comics fandom, and a lot of canon talked about that too (to varying degrees of effectiveness, Captain America worked pretty well. The one with Doom crying, not so much). If I really, really felt like I needed to write about Haiti, however, I sure as shit wouldn't use it as a backdrop. I'd probably use Jericho Drumm (originally from Haiti, now lives in New Orleans) either as a POV character, or if I didn't feel confident in that level of insight, have a non-Hatian character with him as POV character. In any case, I'd do a hell of a lot more reading about Haiti than I've already done for writing Jericho in other things.

To completely eschew it is both privileged and escapist. Word. I had a discussion over in my post about how even when one does not write characters of colour in a story, one is still writing them. By leaving CoC out, the author is writing them as not interesting/important enough to be

[tanndell]

Thank you for reading and commenting. I appreciated your post so much that I'm glad you took a look at mine. As a comics fan (though not in the comics fandom per se) Jericho Drumm (though his nom-de-plume still icks me slightly) would be an interesting character to examine the Haiti issue through, but I think I could tolerate a fic that used white characters, if it examined it well. Bruce Wayne finding that all the money in the world wasn't good enough to just make the problems go away for example... I don't mind white PoVs, I just have aproblem when they are used to subsume the narrative of the culture that is being explored

[muccamukk]

I liked the post that talked about how this story was essentially White Man's Burden porn. (Possibly In the same way that Left Behind is Rapture porn for Evangelicals).

Well, Doctor Voodoo is vaguely better than Brother Voodoo, I think. Still. I'm currently Very Concerned about him, and am mentally prepping an angry letter. No year is a good year to kill of one's only Haitian character, but this year is worse than most.

[asimaiyat]

Thanks for this post.

What I always want to tell people, when I see them saying they can't write characters of color, or characters from other cultures than their own, because they're afraid to do it wrong, is to be humble. As in, be aware that you have the potential to screw up, do your best not to, and be aware that you will probably screw up at least a little anyway, but it's not the end of the world if you apologize gracefully and do what's needed to repair any hurt you cause, and learn not to do it again.

It's like driving. You need to be really careful not to run anyone over. It's not that hard not to -- most drivers go their whole lives without running someone over. But you will probably run a red light or rear-end someone at some point, and it won't be a disaster, even if it feels like one at the time.