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megwritesIn light of the remark that Ms. Bujold made (just go two entries back!) about the magical non-existence of fans of color before the internet (which actually is older than Bujold would seem to believe), I felt compelled to say something that I didn't say in comments.
The first person who handed me a comic book (X-Men, to be precise) was not white. I sat on the bus with his comics in my lap and could not wait until I'd finished them so we could geek out together. I bugged him forever asking him about the characters, the storylines, the powers that each of the X-Men had, and endless "what ifs". The fact that he consented to be seen even talking with the fat girl was kind of amazing.
The only other kid I knew of who also liked X-Files? Was not white. We used to send each other secret messages in class pretending we were FBI agents. Until her sister found them and made fun of her and then it was uncool to hang out with me because we were both labeled nerds (and of course, I was already super fat geeky ugly nerd girl and she had to deny my existence). But that's 7th grade for you.
And the only other girl who would 'fess up to still liking Power Rangers to me (albeit secretly) was not white.
Please understand that I'm not trying to brag about how diverse my friendships were in school or something. I do not want to be that person. You know the one. The "But I Have Black Friends!" person who thinks that excuses them from being privileged/racist. Or even worse, the "But I was raised around lots of black/latino/non-white/lesbian separatist people!" person. The ones who think that if you stand close enough to a person of color that you can magically never do or say anything racist.
I'm not. Trust me, I was just as unwittingly racist and privileged as every other white kid there. And yeah, we traded comics and pretended to be FBI agents, but we weren't inviting each other for Saturday night sleepovers and church the next morning. Because we all knew How It Was, which is sad. Mid-90's Tennessee was still a festering ground of quiet, insidious racism. Anyone surprised?
The point of me saying this is that I want to make it known that I take personal offense at anyone who would deny these people's existence and say that they weren't there. They were. They were awesome, and they were there.
I take offense to any that would say that their experiences didn't count because they took place on a school bus, or during lunch hour, or passing notes during class, or while secretly trading books (because it's school and if you admit you're an sci-fi nerd, it's pretty much Wedgiesville 'til you graduate).
What does it take to make something real to you? Besides whiteness, I mean. If I told you I can remember the number of the bus and the seat I sat in when I got handed those fateful X-Men comics, is it real then? If I can take you back to the 7th grade English class and showed you where she sat and passed notes to me, is it real then? If I point out the spot in the hallway, by my old locker, where she and I whispered and giggled and her eyes sort of flicked away, but she smiled when I asked, "Do you still like Power Rangers?" and she said, "Yeah, maybe a little" which we both knew meant "a lot, actually", is it real then?
It's real to me. It was definitely real to them. I treasured my experiences with them, and I still do. Because they were bright spots, good places in a childhood that I honestly can't say I'm overly nostalgic about to begin with. I hope that they remember that weird fat white girl from school fondly as well, if they remember me at all.
So why on Earth should they be invisible when I am not? Why should I count more than them? I don't feel like I was any more of a fan, anymore geeky, any more important than them. And in fact, I wasn't.
What thing makes me somehow more visible and real? Oh, yeah, that's right. I'm white. And if the only criteria that separates them from me (in this regard) is that? Then let me just go on record as saying that your criteria for noticing things is stupid. And by stupid, I mean, "how did you live this long because this idiotic?".
If your physical vision was like your cultural vision? You would need a guide dog.
That's the thing about this claim that PoC are somehow johnny-come-lately's to the genre. There are so many people who are telling you about these same kinds of things. Who can smile and point you to the library or the schoolyard or the neighborhood or the flashlight underneath the covers after bedtime or the friend or family member who were fans, who shared their love of this kind of literature and who were not white.
It seems to me that the erasure or ignoring of fans of color is part of a tactic that is used by white people who aren't full out Howling Racists but are still carrying around racist ideas and beliefs and are trying to compensate for it.
Additionally, it's also why anyone who falls back on their age as an excuse for a racist thing that they do or say only earns my intense ire.
The thing is, racism is, at it's heart, a fundamental belief (however subconscious) that people of differences cannot share space and resources and that once race must dominate another.
So, I know what a Howling Racist is. And that's the first level. That's the person who believes that white people are better in every way and that other races should pretty much either be subservient or die out. Why do I know this? Because I have sat at Sunday dinner and had older relatives expound on why they believe the "Philippinos are even more pathetic than the n******" and "why God separated the races".
I'd like to say I stood up and said, "That's wrong!" and was some brave crusader. I wasn't. I nearly choked on my mashed potatoes and cast my very ashamed eyes to the floor and tried to not hear what he was saying and just prayed that they'd start talking about football again.
But then you get the next tier of racism, and that's the one where, if making people subservient or killing them doesn't work, they decide they'll just segregate themselves from the Other and keep all the resources for themselves. They're the ones who use quieter methods of keeping money and resources for themselves. They hole themselves up in all white environments, never saying so out loud, but making sure that it's known that there are still areas that are Whites Only. The ones who don't say the n-word, but think it. The ones who pretty much believe what the Howling Racist does, but know it's not fashionable to admit to.
These are the people, who, coincidentally, turn to you after Old Racist Grandpa just told you why all the black people should be slaves again and say, "That's just his generation" or "That's just how he was raised" and shrug and give you that knowing smile. As though somehow, you're the one who's wrong if you don't defend your relative, if you don't invest yourself in the same system.
But then after that tier come the "I Don't See You" Folks. They're the ones who decide that if they can't kill you, enslave you, segregate you, or deprive you, that they'll just ignore you and erase you. They'll just quietly take you out of the history books and popular literature and push you to the side and eventually they hope you'll evaporate. These folks try to think of themselves as being nice guys. They're not like Old Racist Grandpa over there or even Quietly Racist Auntie Em. They'd like people of color just fine, if there were any around! It's all white people, what can they do about that?
Well, for those who aren't so successful at sticking their fingers in their ears, there's another level. Those are the people who, when all else has failed, have decided that the answer to the question of racial equality in our society is just to make everyone white. And in a way, these are the most self-deceptive of people. I know. I've been one. These are the people who decide to lay out a feast and say, "Come on to the table, but wash all that color off before you do!". These are the people who feel they're doing the right thing. They know that people of color are here, and they don't want them gone. They just want them to be less, you know, ethnic. They're the people who think that you should straighten your hair and never speak any language but English and put away all those silly cultural things and stop trying to be so different. The ones who believe in colorblindness as a metaphor for "let's not tell them they're not white and maybe they'll stop being different".
For them, the solution to the problem of racial relations is to make everyone white. If you can't beat 'em, have them join you. It's like the old Soviet Russia jokes, but not funny and very hurtful.
I think this level may be the worst, because it's the blindest. It's the one where they've taken the principles that are right, but have subverted them. These are people who think that because they're not self professed racists that they're free of racism, and who don't understand the difference between them.
These are the people who promote tokenism. Who pat themselves on the back because they have a friend of a different race (but not too different. They don't have an accent or wear silly ethnic clothes or have outrageous names), but still cross the street if too many people of a different race are gathered, if they're playing their music too loud, if they look like they're "in a gang". These are the people who don't understand how using their affluence to make a neighborhood too expensive for the people who originally lived there is bad. These are the people who think they're crusaders for justice and anti-racism experts because they picked up an Octavia Butler novel and liked it.
And these folks? They'll listen to you talk about the problems of racism you encounter, but only if you don't get too mad. Don't get too close to home. Only if you pat them on the head for listening and educate them and center your entire existence on them.
Not to mention that these are the folks who believe they can pretend whiteness doesn't exist, or that they're not white. These are the folks who say that if they're queer, if they were raised in an ethnic neighborhood, if they don't "feel white" (which will include a list of all their European heritages and maybe some Magical Indian Princess Blood), then they're not racist and therefore their actions and words can't possibly be hurting you.
These are the people who are hardest to convince in some way. Because they're the ones most convinced they're not doing anything wrong. They're the people who say, "All right, we'll share, but only if you let me dole out the portions" and don't understand why it still doesn't work, because they're still keeping the lion's share for themselves.
Because these people fail to realize something that, oddly enough, Old Racist Grandpa does understand. It's all about dominance. It's all about who gets to control culture, resources, the justice system, economic power, jobs, education. Old Racist Grandpa, at least, admits that it's about this.
If I sound like an expert (which I am not), it's because I've been these people. I've been the one who didn't see the color around me, the one who defended and excused the Howling Racist, the one who only listened when I was comfortable.
In many ways, I still am. I wish I could say I was a true anti-racist ally. I want to be, because I believe in it. I believe that we have to strip dominance out of our cultural structures, that we have to progress. I believe that, in a way, the fate of what mankind can become and whether we can undergo a social evolution depends upon whether we can learn to exist without inherent dominance structures inside our society.
Can we really judge people just by their merits? Can we allow people to reach the potential they actually have as opposed to the potential we allow them?
But I don't feel that I'm educated enough on this. I don't feel I've earned my stripes, so to speak. I don't feel like I'm in any way worthy of being trusted and called friend and leaned upon in times of need.
I think that's why I was, actually, a little bit discomforted by the response that went down in my own LJ. Because I feel a bit like a phony.
And I'm afraid of being part of this, where a white person reiterates to other white people what PoC's have been screaming for ages and is more successful than the PoC because they're relying on the very thing they're trying to be an ally again. I'm afraid that I'm becoming the person that Nopper was talking about, the person who, even in trying to do go, is harming their very cause and harming the people who's cause it actually is. I don't want to co-opt this struggle as my own. I don't want to appropriate the things I ought not to.
I'm afraid every single time I go to write for a character of color in my novel, and whether I will be adding another brick in the wall that readers of color in SF/F have been bashing their head against. Yet, I know the answer is not to just have all the characters be white. I know the answer is not to step away from that which I might get wrong, but to do my level best to get it right. Not just my "I'll talk a nice game" level best. My actual level best. n
But I do this with an awareness that for me, the consequences are minimal. If I screw up, then some people say mean things at me. And some other people? They get stereotyped a little more, erased a little more, pushed down a little more, dragged out of a genre they have every right to be in. Because of me.
The fans of color in this genre have taken enough crap from white writers and white fans. I don't want to add to that, ever, and sometimes I wonder if it's ever possible for my very existence not to burden them.
Even as I write this? I'm afraid that it will be seen as bragging about how humble I can be and bragging about how aware and educated I am. And heaven knows that PoC's have had enough of white folks making trophies out of the struggles, using anti-racism as a bragging right.
So, if you're reading this. If you're one of the people who's been friending me, don't do it because you think I'm somehow smart or I've got my head on straight or I'm a great ally. I'm not. I'm a fraud. I'm still learning. I'm not even past the 101, not by a longshot. I'm going to mess up, I'm going to fall down, I'm going to hurt people without meaning to.
I'm not cool, I'm not smart, I'm not righteous. I'm just trying. That's it. No more, no less. I am just trying.
So, make your decisions accordingly.
The first person who handed me a comic book (X-Men, to be precise) was not white. I sat on the bus with his comics in my lap and could not wait until I'd finished them so we could geek out together. I bugged him forever asking him about the characters, the storylines, the powers that each of the X-Men had, and endless "what ifs". The fact that he consented to be seen even talking with the fat girl was kind of amazing.
The only other kid I knew of who also liked X-Files? Was not white. We used to send each other secret messages in class pretending we were FBI agents. Until her sister found them and made fun of her and then it was uncool to hang out with me because we were both labeled nerds (and of course, I was already super fat geeky ugly nerd girl and she had to deny my existence). But that's 7th grade for you.
And the only other girl who would 'fess up to still liking Power Rangers to me (albeit secretly) was not white.
Please understand that I'm not trying to brag about how diverse my friendships were in school or something. I do not want to be that person. You know the one. The "But I Have Black Friends!" person who thinks that excuses them from being privileged/racist. Or even worse, the "But I was raised around lots of black/latino/non-white/
I'm not. Trust me, I was just as unwittingly racist and privileged as every other white kid there. And yeah, we traded comics and pretended to be FBI agents, but we weren't inviting each other for Saturday night sleepovers and church the next morning. Because we all knew How It Was, which is sad. Mid-90's Tennessee was still a festering ground of quiet, insidious racism. Anyone surprised?
The point of me saying this is that I want to make it known that I take personal offense at anyone who would deny these people's existence and say that they weren't there. They were. They were awesome, and they were there.
I take offense to any that would say that their experiences didn't count because they took place on a school bus, or during lunch hour, or passing notes during class, or while secretly trading books (because it's school and if you admit you're an sci-fi nerd, it's pretty much Wedgiesville 'til you graduate).
What does it take to make something real to you? Besides whiteness, I mean. If I told you I can remember the number of the bus and the seat I sat in when I got handed those fateful X-Men comics, is it real then? If I can take you back to the 7th grade English class and showed you where she sat and passed notes to me, is it real then? If I point out the spot in the hallway, by my old locker, where she and I whispered and giggled and her eyes sort of flicked away, but she smiled when I asked, "Do you still like Power Rangers?" and she said, "Yeah, maybe a little" which we both knew meant "a lot, actually", is it real then?
It's real to me. It was definitely real to them. I treasured my experiences with them, and I still do. Because they were bright spots, good places in a childhood that I honestly can't say I'm overly nostalgic about to begin with. I hope that they remember that weird fat white girl from school fondly as well, if they remember me at all.
So why on Earth should they be invisible when I am not? Why should I count more than them? I don't feel like I was any more of a fan, anymore geeky, any more important than them. And in fact, I wasn't.
What thing makes me somehow more visible and real? Oh, yeah, that's right. I'm white. And if the only criteria that separates them from me (in this regard) is that? Then let me just go on record as saying that your criteria for noticing things is stupid. And by stupid, I mean, "how did you live this long because this idiotic?".
If your physical vision was like your cultural vision? You would need a guide dog.
That's the thing about this claim that PoC are somehow johnny-come-lately's to the genre. There are so many people who are telling you about these same kinds of things. Who can smile and point you to the library or the schoolyard or the neighborhood or the flashlight underneath the covers after bedtime or the friend or family member who were fans, who shared their love of this kind of literature and who were not white.
It seems to me that the erasure or ignoring of fans of color is part of a tactic that is used by white people who aren't full out Howling Racists but are still carrying around racist ideas and beliefs and are trying to compensate for it.
Additionally, it's also why anyone who falls back on their age as an excuse for a racist thing that they do or say only earns my intense ire.
The thing is, racism is, at it's heart, a fundamental belief (however subconscious) that people of differences cannot share space and resources and that once race must dominate another.
So, I know what a Howling Racist is. And that's the first level. That's the person who believes that white people are better in every way and that other races should pretty much either be subservient or die out. Why do I know this? Because I have sat at Sunday dinner and had older relatives expound on why they believe the "Philippinos are even more pathetic than the n******" and "why God separated the races".
I'd like to say I stood up and said, "That's wrong!" and was some brave crusader. I wasn't. I nearly choked on my mashed potatoes and cast my very ashamed eyes to the floor and tried to not hear what he was saying and just prayed that they'd start talking about football again.
But then you get the next tier of racism, and that's the one where, if making people subservient or killing them doesn't work, they decide they'll just segregate themselves from the Other and keep all the resources for themselves. They're the ones who use quieter methods of keeping money and resources for themselves. They hole themselves up in all white environments, never saying so out loud, but making sure that it's known that there are still areas that are Whites Only. The ones who don't say the n-word, but think it. The ones who pretty much believe what the Howling Racist does, but know it's not fashionable to admit to.
These are the people, who, coincidentally, turn to you after Old Racist Grandpa just told you why all the black people should be slaves again and say, "That's just his generation" or "That's just how he was raised" and shrug and give you that knowing smile. As though somehow, you're the one who's wrong if you don't defend your relative, if you don't invest yourself in the same system.
But then after that tier come the "I Don't See You" Folks. They're the ones who decide that if they can't kill you, enslave you, segregate you, or deprive you, that they'll just ignore you and erase you. They'll just quietly take you out of the history books and popular literature and push you to the side and eventually they hope you'll evaporate. These folks try to think of themselves as being nice guys. They're not like Old Racist Grandpa over there or even Quietly Racist Auntie Em. They'd like people of color just fine, if there were any around! It's all white people, what can they do about that?
Well, for those who aren't so successful at sticking their fingers in their ears, there's another level. Those are the people who, when all else has failed, have decided that the answer to the question of racial equality in our society is just to make everyone white. And in a way, these are the most self-deceptive of people. I know. I've been one. These are the people who decide to lay out a feast and say, "Come on to the table, but wash all that color off before you do!". These are the people who feel they're doing the right thing. They know that people of color are here, and they don't want them gone. They just want them to be less, you know, ethnic. They're the people who think that you should straighten your hair and never speak any language but English and put away all those silly cultural things and stop trying to be so different. The ones who believe in colorblindness as a metaphor for "let's not tell them they're not white and maybe they'll stop being different".
For them, the solution to the problem of racial relations is to make everyone white. If you can't beat 'em, have them join you. It's like the old Soviet Russia jokes, but not funny and very hurtful.
I think this level may be the worst, because it's the blindest. It's the one where they've taken the principles that are right, but have subverted them. These are people who think that because they're not self professed racists that they're free of racism, and who don't understand the difference between them.
These are the people who promote tokenism. Who pat themselves on the back because they have a friend of a different race (but not too different. They don't have an accent or wear silly ethnic clothes or have outrageous names), but still cross the street if too many people of a different race are gathered, if they're playing their music too loud, if they look like they're "in a gang". These are the people who don't understand how using their affluence to make a neighborhood too expensive for the people who originally lived there is bad. These are the people who think they're crusaders for justice and anti-racism experts because they picked up an Octavia Butler novel and liked it.
And these folks? They'll listen to you talk about the problems of racism you encounter, but only if you don't get too mad. Don't get too close to home. Only if you pat them on the head for listening and educate them and center your entire existence on them.
Not to mention that these are the folks who believe they can pretend whiteness doesn't exist, or that they're not white. These are the folks who say that if they're queer, if they were raised in an ethnic neighborhood, if they don't "feel white" (which will include a list of all their European heritages and maybe some Magical Indian Princess Blood), then they're not racist and therefore their actions and words can't possibly be hurting you.
These are the people who are hardest to convince in some way. Because they're the ones most convinced they're not doing anything wrong. They're the people who say, "All right, we'll share, but only if you let me dole out the portions" and don't understand why it still doesn't work, because they're still keeping the lion's share for themselves.
Because these people fail to realize something that, oddly enough, Old Racist Grandpa does understand. It's all about dominance. It's all about who gets to control culture, resources, the justice system, economic power, jobs, education. Old Racist Grandpa, at least, admits that it's about this.
If I sound like an expert (which I am not), it's because I've been these people. I've been the one who didn't see the color around me, the one who defended and excused the Howling Racist, the one who only listened when I was comfortable.
In many ways, I still am. I wish I could say I was a true anti-racist ally. I want to be, because I believe in it. I believe that we have to strip dominance out of our cultural structures, that we have to progress. I believe that, in a way, the fate of what mankind can become and whether we can undergo a social evolution depends upon whether we can learn to exist without inherent dominance structures inside our society.
Can we really judge people just by their merits? Can we allow people to reach the potential they actually have as opposed to the potential we allow them?
But I don't feel that I'm educated enough on this. I don't feel I've earned my stripes, so to speak. I don't feel like I'm in any way worthy of being trusted and called friend and leaned upon in times of need.
I think that's why I was, actually, a little bit discomforted by the response that went down in my own LJ. Because I feel a bit like a phony.
And I'm afraid of being part of this, where a white person reiterates to other white people what PoC's have been screaming for ages and is more successful than the PoC because they're relying on the very thing they're trying to be an ally again. I'm afraid that I'm becoming the person that Nopper was talking about, the person who, even in trying to do go, is harming their very cause and harming the people who's cause it actually is. I don't want to co-opt this struggle as my own. I don't want to appropriate the things I ought not to.
I'm afraid every single time I go to write for a character of color in my novel, and whether I will be adding another brick in the wall that readers of color in SF/F have been bashing their head against. Yet, I know the answer is not to just have all the characters be white. I know the answer is not to step away from that which I might get wrong, but to do my level best to get it right. Not just my "I'll talk a nice game" level best. My actual level best. n
But I do this with an awareness that for me, the consequences are minimal. If I screw up, then some people say mean things at me. And some other people? They get stereotyped a little more, erased a little more, pushed down a little more, dragged out of a genre they have every right to be in. Because of me.
The fans of color in this genre have taken enough crap from white writers and white fans. I don't want to add to that, ever, and sometimes I wonder if it's ever possible for my very existence not to burden them.
Even as I write this? I'm afraid that it will be seen as bragging about how humble I can be and bragging about how aware and educated I am. And heaven knows that PoC's have had enough of white folks making trophies out of the struggles, using anti-racism as a bragging right.
So, if you're reading this. If you're one of the people who's been friending me, don't do it because you think I'm somehow smart or I've got my head on straight or I'm a great ally. I'm not. I'm a fraud. I'm still learning. I'm not even past the 101, not by a longshot. I'm going to mess up, I'm going to fall down, I'm going to hurt people without meaning to.
I'm not cool, I'm not smart, I'm not righteous. I'm just trying. That's it. No more, no less. I am just trying.
So, make your decisions accordingly.
no subject
Date: 2009-05-14 03:24 pm (UTC)These are the people who promote tokenism. Who pat themselves on the back because they have a friend of a different race (but not too different. They don't have an accent or wear silly ethnic clothes or have outrageous names), but still cross the street if too many people of a different race are gathered, if they're playing their music too loud, if they look like they're "in a gang".
I mean, if you act like that in my neighborhood, you'd be really lonely. The only people in my neighborhood I try to avoid are the crackhouses. And, actually, just certain ones. The crackheads nextdoor are really, really nice and polite to us. In fact, they're going to give us a kitten once their cat weens her babies.
I'm so confused. I thought we're all people.
(here via a link roundup)
Date: 2009-05-14 09:15 pm (UTC)Re: (here via a link roundup)
Date: 2009-05-15 12:04 pm (UTC)That's a good point. I hadn't though of that (told ya I wasn't that smart). I should definitely think of doing that myself, because it seems like that's a much better solution to the things I'm worried about. After all, the point is them, not us, right?
no subject
Date: 2009-05-16 12:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-18 08:54 pm (UTC)