Race, writing, links, and thoughts.

[megwrites]

Wow, this turned into an epic internet hopping journey, but that's a really good thing.

To give you the story, matociquala wrote this post here about writing for the Other. After which there was debate, discussion and even disagreement. Including an open letter to her.

From there, I went on to read this really compelling, wonderful post by deepad. She is writing on her experiences in dealing with the effects of colonialism and cultural dominance in something as simple as what she reads. I think I was most struck by this: "The other argument that causes me to flinch reactively is the one which talks about writing the Other just like you would write any character—with respect for their individuality and uniqueness...I have spent a lifetime reading well-written books with nuanced characters that hurt me by erasing or misrepresenting me."



Having read this, I went on to go hopping around the internet, reading about this topic and the related topics of race - not just in relation to writing, but in relation to society at large, particularly American society.

I came up with some really interesting things, which I encourage you to read:

A post on intersectionality by yeloson. I think this is a good link, because it's easy for those of us who have privilege in one area (say, race) but not in another (sexuality, gender, age etc) to, as the author says, step on someone else's neck and only care that someone else is stepping on ours.

The Gospel of Race in America by karnythia.

Why being colorblind is a BAD thing. I think this should be required reading for everyone. Pretending like everything is okay, and that you don't see race is basically saying "I don't see racism" and if you don't see racism, you're either not paying attention in a way heretofore unknown to science or delusional.

The Art of Defending Racism. Another really wonderful post from yeloson. A lot of the things that white people do wrong when getting into discussions about race are addressed here.

How To Stop Those Pesky Discussions of Race by coffeeandink. Complete with illustrations for your fun, sport, and edification.

A great post on cultural appropriation by cryptoxin.

A lot of great articles, essays, and links on race for clueless white people. If you read nothing else from this selection, get thee hence to Dr. King's "Letter From A Birmingham Prison"

The White Anti-Racist Is An Oxymoron by Tamara Nopper. I will warn you now, that the essay contained within will probably anger a lot of you. I first read this essay two or three years ago and it infuriated me. I've had to read it several times before I finally understood what was truly being said and could come to the table without getting emotional. I think the big misinterpretation comes when people assume that Nopper is addressing all white people everywhere and telling them that they're evil just for existing. No, she's not. She's first off, addressing white folks who jump in the fray of protesting racism and the things they do wrong, things that Aren't Helping One Little Bit. Yes, I know a lot of my fellow white folks will be left wondering, either confused or angry or both, "What the hell do I do then?" And the answer is there: "In short, they must be willing to do what the people most affected and marginalized by a situation tell them to do.". Or, simply: listen. Don't make this about your feelings, your discomfort. Make this about the people who need help. Let them have the authority and the power in this. Surrender dominance.

When Nopper speak of destroying an identity, she isn't talking about individual identities. She is talking about destroying the idea of Whiteness, of there being a cultural identity that is more real, valid, and dominant than others.

I think the New Abolitionist takes up this issue well when the editor responded to a question from a 16-year-old girl who asked if what they meant by "destroying white people" meant killing everyone who was white: "We are against conferring social privileges on people because of their color. We believe that to eliminate the privileges of whiteness is to abolish the white race, and that is what we want to do. To offer a parallel, we are against monarchy, but that does not mean we want to kill the king or queen. It simply means we want to get rid of inherited titles and the rest of the trappings of royalty. You say you are a 16-year-old female of British, Irish, and Bohemian descent. Without whiteness, you could still be all that, and a lot more.

Yes, Nopper's tone is angry and exacting and does not make concessions or appeasements. She bulldozes across the landscape and doesn't say "excuse me", "pardon me", "so sorry" - which a lot of us are used to. I think it should be mentioned that when we're talked to politely by people who are hurt, angry, and upset - it's a courtesy, not a requirement, and we certainly shouldn't feel entitled to it. Nopper has every right and reason to be angry, and she asserts her right to be so.

As for the letter's entire thesis and assertion, she's right. So long as you are White in America, you have privileges. Even if you never ask for them, like them, or appreciate them - you have them and sometimes, even without your permission, you use them or people give them to you. The cop that doesn't stop you on the street, the job you get, the resources you have. And when you exist in that system, even if you try to use your privilege for good in the name of protests and activism, you're still using your privilege thus, keeping privilege alive and well.

I also think she's not saying absolutely that there can never be someone who is light skinned, caucasian and anti-racist - but that if you deal in White privilege, you're racist. Even just a little bit.

Fighting fire with fire just creates more fire. We, white people, are the fire. We need to be willing to go out and become something else, because otherwise, we're just going to keep burning people.

De Caro's commentary and response to Nopper's letter. A really fascinating letter from the perspective of biographies and historical narratives, as well as race. I think this may help some people digest Nopper's letter much better, as well as being a really good read.


From all this reading, I'm left with a lot of thoughts, some of which I can articulate, and some of which I don't think I'll ever be able to.

I guess I should start with full disclosure: I am Caucasian. I'm not going to scroll out all the various heritages I have. All but one are European, and thus I am white. I can list as many of the countries in Europe as I want. I can even probably list all the things that were weird and different about my childhood (I had many non-white friends, even a few neighbors! My schools were almost 50/50 black and white! I have a black stepfather! My best friend in college was Iranian! Aren't I so cool and cosmopolitan and better than thou?).

I hate when I see other white people do this. When they scroll out all their various "heritages" or circumstances of their childhood that somehow make them less white.

The weirdnesses of my childhood mean nothing. Non-whiteness doesn't rub off, okay? I'm white. People look at me, and they see a white woman. They treat me white. They give me all the extra goodies that come along with it. I check the "White/Caucasian" box on forms.

I'm not going to spit in the faces of people who suffer for things I never have to think about it by trying to some how mitigate my responsibilities or my undeserved rewards, especially through somehow borrowing other people's races and heritages for my own use.

Trying to do so would be counterproductive and undermine any good I want to.

Although, by the by, I could out-Cherokee you all (well, most) because my great-grandmother was a full blood, and my grandfather was somewhere over half-blooded (his father was, IIRC, half blooded himself). Except, I won't, because I am *not* Cherokee. Because neither my great-grandmother (who I met several times before her death in 2003) and my grandfather (who passed away in late 2008) were particularly proud of their heritages.

They lived very much in a world which told them that being Cherokee was not a fun little factoid you could trot out at parties to seem sophisticated and cool, or a discount ghetto pass. It was something they had to feel shame over. Something they felt the effects of all their life. Something they suffered for. My grandfather could, as he got older, pass very well for white and did so as much as possible. For crying out loud, his favorite books and TV shows were old school Westerns.

They never talked about it when I was a kid and when I tried to speak with my grandfather about it before his death, when I wanted to know if he knew what tribe, what ancestry he had, he would barely admit it was true to me. My grandmother (who is as white as I, complete with reddish hair and pale skin) was the one who had to answer my questions.

So, anyone who's white and wants to come to me and tout their Cherokee heritage in my face as though somehow they're less white for it loses the right to even talk to me. You can shut all the hell up for everything these people who I loved went through. You can shut it and keep it shut, because unless you've had someone assume you're going to be drunk or assume you're a thief or assume you're lazy because of your "Cherokee heritage", you can just get away from me because here the polite discussion stops and the merciless snark and rage will begin.

I find it really convenient and smug when white people do this. So, you're Cherokee when it's to your advantage to be so. Funny how when you're out getting a job or writing novels or living your life, you're white. It's funny how you're not white or part of WASP-y white culture when it's coming under fire, when it comes time to write up a nice essay on Not Being Racist so we can all see how enlightened you are.

But somehow, when you need to get a job, when you write books, when you decide who's mythology deserves the careful treatment, and who's gets backgrounded and ignored and never once mentioned, and especially when you go out into society and interact, you're miraculously able to acculturate and blend in.

Getting raised by strange people and thinking that you know about normal, mainstream white people from TV and friends makes you less white, makes you somehow less culpable for all this mess, and less on the hook for getting it right, for not stomping all over people's feelings and identities is the biggest damn cop out I've ever heard.

I'm white. I'm totally WASP-y in my make up. I was raised in Tennessee, as a Methodist, in a family that went from lower middle class to very upper middle class in a few short years because my father had rather easy access to not only the completion of his bachelors but his M.B.A and my mother also had most of her B.A. (them not finishing, btw, was their own faults, not anything society did).

I fit all the boxes, and even I looked at TV and friends as though they were another world. I don't identify anymore with the Happy White Mainstream Families on TV than you. But that's not because I'm somehow less white. It's because TV is just that exclusionary and unrealistic.

But you had the privilege of picking out individual differences between you and them because you didn't have the race issue beating you over the head every time you turned on the TV.

If a person of color says they didn't identify with the Cosby family on TV, didn't identify with any of the PoC's that have been shown on mainstream TV, are they somehow less a person of color, less part of their culture?

So how come you get that privilege? Oh, wait, that's right. You're white.

I can't think of anyone who does go around saying, "Gee, my family is just like on TV!" or "my family is just like my friends' family!"

I suspect that most people tend to believe their family is somehow outside the norm, and that other people's families are better/more normal. Nobody completely matches the Stereotypical White American Mainstream. Even I don't.

Doesn't make me less white. Doesn't make people of color less hurt by the fact that they're even less like the Stereotypical White American Mainstream.

It might make you a unique little snowflake, but it still makes you a unique little WHITE snowflake. Individual nuances do not make race disappear. If they did, we'd be over this entire race thing a hundred year ago. If being individuals was enough to take care of the issue of race, we wouldn't be having this discussion. It's not. You still have to pay attention to race, to what it means, to how it's used, to what you're doing to help or hurt the problem.

I can only imagine the number of POC's who've been in racist situations who know how stupid this idea is. The guy getting pulled over by the cop for just being black, or the lady who gets searched every single time at the airport for being Middle Eastern don't get to be people who like jazz and long walks on the beach and have cats named Melvin.

In that moment, they're Black. They're Middle Eastern. Latino. Indian. Asian. Native American.

You grew up thinking that adults helping kids with their homework at the table was only a fantasy seen on TV? So did a lot of kids. Grew up in a troubled home? So did I at some points. So did a lot of white people. Doesn't make us any less white. Doesn't make us any less the recipients of white privilege.

It certainly doesn't excuse any of us from divesting ourselves of privilege and being mindful of people of color and doing our utmost to help out.

How about an exercise, my fellow faux-erokee? Take all your childhood, all the weird things you can dream up that you bring up to mitigate your whiteness, think really hard on them.

Then imagine having to go through them when you're a child of color. If your image doesn't get a lot worse, then (not to put too fine a point on it), you're full of shit and you need to take a big dose of STFU.

That's why I don't tell people I'm Cherokee. I'm not. I've never once suffered for my race. I've never had to deal with the stigma, with the poverty, with the backlash of society. Me, my father, my grandmother, my mother, we're white. We get treated that way by society, whether or not we want to.

So that's me.

I suppose I should move on from identity to motives.

I read these things about race, I think about them, and I post entries about them not because I give a damn about approval. In fact, I'm rather sure nobody is going to read what I write. I'm some wanker on the internet. What should my opinion matter (answer: not more than anyone else's. Certainly not more than people of color's).

But when I read posts like deepad's, or karnythia's, I realize that there is one common thread in all this. People are being hurt by racism, and I just don't like to see people being harmed. It is my nature, whenever possible, to stop people from hurting and to want to make them happy.

I believe in joy and squee and positivity. I believe literature should make you happy, at least on some level. So when I see that there's this BIG HUGE THING which might make some people happy, but prevents a whole host of other folks from getting their squee on, well, I just don't like it.

Especially when it's perfectly clear to me that it's possible for us all to get our happy happy, joy joy on if we bother to be thoughtful, mindful, respectful, and open. If we stop hurting each other.

I can't claim any big philosophy or deep thinking. Hurting people sucks. I don't like being responsible for it.

When someone says that they are being profoundly hurt, psychologically, economically, socially, politically, and even physically for something that I can do something about, something I'm part of, I damn well want to make it stop.

Except, this isn't a simple knot we can just untie. This is a huge tangle of history and politics and socio-economic statuses and intersectionality and individuals and collective groups. It's a big complicated problem, which requires big complicated thinking. It requires a willingness to listen, to stand by your guns when you know you're right, and apologize when you screw up. But that first one I believe is the most important.

Listen, listen, listen, listen. The old adage about have two ears and one mouth is very true.

Having read all these things, I have questions. I have questions about cultural appropriation, about race, about how to apply what I know and feel as a writer and a human being.

What, precisely, counts as cultural appropriation and what doesn't? When someone writes about an outside culture, is it always a form of cultural appropriation? It is possible to write about a culture that is not yours without doing this?

I thought I understood the concept, but I'm finding maybe I don't, and I'm trying find way to relate. The closest I can come though, is an episode of Doctor Who that pissed me off. In Last of the Time Lords, they show a fictional American President-Elect getting off a plane to join up with The Master who is masquerading as the Prime Minister getting off a plane and then going to a ceremony to make first contact with aliens, only to show the American President being a jerk and then getting dead, because he's kind of dumb.

And I was pissed because a) I felt like it was clearly a case where the American was there for the purposes of being the Dumb, Arrogant Person and b) they got it wrong when they could have looked it up on Wikipedia for cripes sake. The President-Elect would not be going to a ceremony like that. The President would. I mean, they wouldn't even take the nuclear launch codes out of Reagan's hands until the oath of office had passed Bush's lips. It's called a "lame duck" period. Like we're experiencing now. And anyone who can operate Google can find out about it.

I then realized that it pissed me off more than just having a dumb American because they were taking something that was distinctively American - our President - and using it badly and using it to make themselves look good and "serve their story". Our Presidency is unique in our history, and it's something that, mostly, I'm quite proud of. The Presidency, for us, is Kennedy, is Washington, is Roosevelt, is Obama. We get up at 6am to go vote, we wait up 'til midnight for the victory speech, we argue, fight, poll, post, and panic over it every four years. It's heartbreak and triumph and history for us.

To have that office, that key figure turned into a wrong, empty-headed pawn in someone else's tale, even if it's a someone I usually like, makes me angry.

But I also wonder if that's even close to what Deepa D. was feeling, to what she's gone through. I wonder if it's just some hollow little example that really just illustrates how much privilege has been heaped upon me, that I can only think of one little thing in a Doctor Who episode, because every other thing I've read, seen, and consumed in my life has gotten it right.

I'm also trying to find well known examples of cultural appropriation, if only so I know what not to do. If anyone can think of really good examples, please fire off a comment.

My current fantasy novel project that I'm at the tail of end of, is very concerned with race. These are races which are not precisely ours, but I'd like to think they're informed by them at the very least and do a good job of metabolizing the way race is thought about in our culture and applying it to the made up cultures in my book. Pretending like race doesn't feature in even the most far out, high fantasy is silly to me. That's like pretending that flavors and smells don't exist in fantasy novels, either. They may be flavors and smells we don't have, but dammit, they are flavors and smells and they do relate to the real world.

But I worry that because I get a lot of my ideas for what the cultures in my book should do from cultures that aren't mine have done and are doing, that I will be guilty of doing this, of taking someone else's culture and using it for my own purposes, and in doing so, become abusive and hurtful.

I don't want someone to pick up my book and feel like they're being excluded, ignored, erased, or outright slapped in the face. I don't want anyone to feel that way. I don't want someone like deepad who's been through enough cultural trauma, literary and otherwise, to pick up my book and feel like I'm doing it to them all over again.

I'm also now going to take a careful lens to planned projects in the future, with all this reading on cultural appropriation I've done.

I suppose the answer is to do more listening and more reading. And then to do more thinking. And after that, I think another large helping of listening the hell up, to be shortly followed by even more reading and some more listening with a side helping of SHUT UP AND LISTEN.


ETA: Some stuff added that I thought of later.