I promised this post would be made

[megwrites]

If you've ever watched the new Doctor Who, particularly the 9th Doctor's run, you'll see there's a bit where the Doctor gets into an argument with one of the people running a game station where the games actually result in the deaths of those who lose. And that person, who otherwise seems like a decent human being, says, "We were just doing our jobs!"

In that moment you hear an echo of every person who's ever decided to keep their head down and maintain the status quo at someone else's expense. You hear the trials of the Nazis at Nuremberg, the the people in America who rounded up the Japanese into internment camps, the slave traders and slave owners, the soldiers who massacre civilians and all the others who have been just cogs in the great machine of someone else's oppression and devastation.

And the Doctor (so very brilliantly) says, "And with that sentence, you just lost the right to even talk to me!"

So it shall be with anyone who feels the need to come to me and argue that racism isn't a problem in this country or in the SF/F genre, or wants to ask me why I make such a big fuss over these "race things", or that it doesn't matter.



It does matter. It matters when someone as intelligent and vibrant in the SF/F community finds that for merely saying that she'd like it if women weren't the only ones who bodies were put up for display, especially on the cover of a magazine with a 4-to-1 female readership that on a mere rumor, someone who has a lot of fans, pull, respect, and clout in her field will see fit to call her a racial slur and then offer only a half assed apology for invoking his White Male Privilege to ignore, demean, and humiliate her, her identity, and the history of race relations in this country at will.

Why? Because, he, Harlan Ellison, does not have to think about that. It doesn't follow him home, it doesn't mediate his interaction with everyone from publishers to police officers in a negative way. He does not have to worry that a term commonly used to identify him will become a term of derision or insult in the mouths of others. He need not worry that someone will laugh and say that "white" isn't real, that "white" is just a politically correct term someone made up and he's a Cracker With Attitude. No one will say "whayht people" to him and mean it to be taken seriously.

Nor does he need to worry that someone will come up to him and say, "You can't accuse me of anything! I discovered [insert famous old white male SF/F writer of which there are thousands]!"

K. Tempest Bradford, of course, being black, must owe something to Harlan because he "discovered" Octavia Butler. Never mind that Bradford and Butler are not the same person at all, and that besides being black, (for the purposes of the discussion about RoF), they have nothing in common. Add to that the uncomfortable implication that she, who was a writer of enormous talent and genius, would have been nothing without him, and you have a Racefail Twofer.

It's sad that Octavia Butler has been used as a RaceShield by white people who want to deflect criticism concerning racism or just criticism from a person of color. Who say "I knew her" or "I read her books!". As though she's the only author of color in SF/F, as though if you read Parable of the Sower you're instantly Not Ever Racist Ever.

He need not worry that a discussion of an issue that is important to him will be derailed by focusing on his race. He has that magical White Male Privilege to shield him from it. The conversation started with Ms. Bradford just saying that maybe it'd be nice if somebody would either equalize the show of naked alien fantasy flesh by showing some naked men ended with her being called an "N.W.A" (which is an acronym for N***er With Attitude).

Unfortunately, ktempest didn't have privilege, so suddenly in a conversation about sexism, her race became the main attraction. Because that's how this privilege thing works. That's why it has to stop.

This "race thing" matters when an author writes a novel about a young black protagonist only to find that her publisher, against her protests, puts a white face on the cover because:

Editors have told [her] that their sales departments say black covers don’t sell. Sales reps have told [her] that many of their accounts won’t take books with black covers. Booksellers have told me that they can’t give away YAs with black covers. Authors have told [her] that their books with black covers are frequently not shelved in the same part of the library as other YA—they’re exiled to the Urban Fiction section—and many bookshops simply don’t stock them at all.

For those who didn't get MammothFail, for those who don't understand what's going on here, let me spell it out. When you have publisher who whitewash a cover, you have publishers, booksellers, and inadvertantly even authors, who are telling children/youth of color (in Justine Larbalestier's case, African American youth) that their faces, their aesthetic is clearly inferior to those of whites. You are telling them that they are either too strange, too scary, or just too ugly in comparison with pretty white faces.

You think they're not hearing that message loud and clear? You think because we elected Obama that suddenly all this goes away, and all the years that people have been told what White is Right just evaporated and everyone's hurt, everyone's lack, just vanished?

There's some kids from Philadelphia and a professor from Cambridge who have some things to tell you.

So to those who still don't get it, fine. Be that on your own heads. I'm not interested in you, frankly. You're a drop in a big sea of The Problem and I neither have the time nor energy to go a drop at a time to turn the tide of this thing. Nor should I. Being part of the solution is your own damn responsibility.

But don't come here and try to tell me that you think racism doesn't exist or you, as a white person, don't really benefit from it or that it's not important or that you don't see what the fuss is. The clue-by-four will hit you when it hits you.

As for me, I believe there is a bad machine at work in my society. It's called racism. I will not be a cog in the wheel of this machine, even when it is easy to be. Especially because it is so easy to be. Because I'm white. Because if I wanted to, I could just let the wheels keep grinding people up and never I mind what happens to them. Because I'm part of this machine. I've benefitted from it.

I won't. That's a hard task, because I've been in this machine so long it has shaped me, trained me to keep the status quo operation efficiently, rewarded for doing so even when I didn't want it to. Sometimes, to my great shame, I have accepted those rewards without question. Sometimes I still do. The grease and grime of this machine are on me, too.

But for those who have been ground up in this machine, I can't just keep doing my part. I can't close my ears and eyes and conscience. I can't keep my head down. I'm just one cog, but if a lot of my fellow cogs do the same we can bring this machine down from the inside. After all, it's the least and only decent thing we can do for those who have been suffering in our place, who have lacked so we might have. Starting by listening carefully to them.