A few privileged pants-droppers

[megwrites]

I'm taking time out of my frantic rush to finish the last few chapters of Soul Machines to blog about this because a) it's important and b) it has me so pissed that I want to throw things and damage furniture and start putting my fist through the door.

Yes, I'm talking about What Neil Gaiman Said and the enraging "a few dead Indians" comment he made during a 2008 interview pertaining to The Graveyard Book and his responses to the criticism of it.

I think one of the best responses I've seen come from yeloson who speaks of words, context, and power. This, especially:

They might be offended by a little invisibility or absence, after all, it's just like being the survivors of a centuries-long genocide that covered two continents along with being written out of history and being silenced to this day? Right?

"A few dead Indians" is exactly the history told in this country, every day.

Context. Without context, nothing means nothing.

Germans gassing Jews might as well be Aliens vs. Robots*. Product placement is just as bad as lynchings.

"I don't see what everyone's upset about!" (You people don't matter anyway!).

Of course, there is kynn's righteous, so spot-on takedown of the entire thing concerning neil gaiman's racist fail.

I just, I don't know where to start with the bad or the wrong or the privilege or the ways in which this is just another privileged author who thinks that Native Americans/First Nations/Indigenous/Aboriginal peoples don't really count.

We did this dance with MammothFail and it made me sick and tired then. To see the same old song being replayed with new verses has me so angry I can't begin to articulate it in a way I think worthy of such an important, vital topic.

Because we do need to be having this very conversation. We need to talk about the textbooks and literature our young people (of all races) are being handed concerning Native American/First Nations peoples here in this country, we need to talk about the language that erases and excuses and even rewards genocide, we need to talk about the benefits to the privileged, and more importantly the cost to the oppressed. We need to talk about the stereotypes, the prejudice, the racism, the ill-treatment.

We need to stop acting like it isn't important, because it DAMN WELL IS IMPORTANT. It is vitally, crucially important.

All I have is rage right now, and there needs to be more than that. Especially from me as a privileged person who benefits each day (and always has) from the atrocities that my nation was founded on.

ETA: (because I realized I hadn't finished that sentence) - and that continue to this very day is a wide array of forms.

Comments

[madwriter.livejournal.com]

At the very least I now want to go write a derogatory story about a few dead Brits.

[fiction-theory.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it didn't escape me either that Gaiman is English and that his country has historically profited and continues to profit from the colonization (and murder, rape, enslavement, and oppressive) of other nations and peoples. So for him, as a beneficiary of so much of the suffering of other folks around the world to sit there and say "a few dead Indians" kind of smacks of the rankest ignorance, hypocrisy and privilege waving.

*rolls eyes*

And honestly? He could've answered that question in a way that would not have been so offensive. If someone asked "why not set the Graveyard Book in America" why didn't he just say, "I wanted to explore the type of graveyards found in England"? It's a perfectly legitimate reason and it has the advantages of not treating entire groups of people as unimportant, unworthy of respect, unremarkable, and as just "a few dead Indians".

If you want to right that A Few Dead Brits story, I will totally give it a beta-read for you.