I wonder if you can make an analogy with sexuality that's the least bit useful. Categorizing people as gay and straight and bisexual is very specific to the West after the 19th century, and it doesn't really work to say "Shakespeare was gay," but we can look at his sonnets within the context of a class on same-sex desire in premodern literature. I don't want to get hung up too much on putting a dividing line between those who are "in" and those who are "out," when maybe the real question is whether their works and their lives and their identities can illuminate the questions we're trying to look at. But that's not necessarily a good answer either if people try to argue that To Kill a Mockingbird "counts" more than a standard-issue fantasy novel by a Japanese writer.
About being the mainstream majority in one's own country, I don't know. I feel like I did have some aspects of white privilege when I was living in Japan; it's a privilege if people think you're adorable when you make mistakes. It's a privilege if people think that you come from a glamorous society. And I certainly don't feel like Brazilian immigrants to Japan got those same privileges at all. Even as I didn't have 'majority race' privilege, I did have 'high-status-native-country' privilege.
I think there are at least two reasons to read writers of color specifically because they're writers of color: firstly because the experience of being Asian-American, or African-American, or Haitian or Indian or Egyptian is underrepresented (especially if you read books marketed at American science fiction readers). And secondly because the experience of being discriminated against for being those things is underrepresented. And I feel that it's important to read books that address the first even if they don't address the second because the characters don't face a lack of racial privilege.
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Date: 2009-04-02 01:58 am (UTC)About being the mainstream majority in one's own country, I don't know. I feel like I did have some aspects of white privilege when I was living in Japan; it's a privilege if people think you're adorable when you make mistakes. It's a privilege if people think that you come from a glamorous society. And I certainly don't feel like Brazilian immigrants to Japan got those same privileges at all. Even as I didn't have 'majority race' privilege, I did have 'high-status-native-country' privilege.
I think there are at least two reasons to read writers of color specifically because they're writers of color: firstly because the experience of being Asian-American, or African-American, or Haitian or Indian or Egyptian is underrepresented (especially if you read books marketed at American science fiction readers). And secondly because the experience of being discriminated against for being those things is underrepresented. And I feel that it's important to read books that address the first even if they don't address the second because the characters don't face a lack of racial privilege.