NuKirk apologises to the wrong Orion. On the one hand I'm glad someone decided 'Yeah, let us NOT put that into our final product'. On the other hand, it got filmed.
And I post about it here just as a reminder to myself of why I do not want to get involved in NuTrek fandom past a few icons.
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Are you for real?
No seriously, that letter you sent that was full of "I'm a good white person" - is it for real? Since when do you give a fuck what my opinion of you might be? But since I highly doubt anything I say about your continued pattern of behavior will change that behavior; No, I do not want to have a conversation with you about your broken record.
There, you've been lashed. Proceed with your orgasmic self wanking now.
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Scans Daily on iJay. Full of RaceFail. Icerocket it. ![[info] - livejournal.com](http://s.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif) box_in_the_box, kali921 have posts up.
I'm too exhausted by it all to post more here. There's just not only the ugh that started it all. But the ugh of the mod posts and the ugh IN the mod post comments.
I need to buy the rest of Roughneck Chronicles and just watch it and Alien Nation and Juuni Kokki only for the rest of my life.
Just... ugh.
Also, one of the mods is a PoC. I'm not getting into that.
My energy level? I'm happy to think I might make it to the backalley curb to throw trash today.
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Comment snippet by mcgarrygirl78:
...I kinda feel like the whole post severed a group of people who were thus far enjoying an interracial relationship....I was honestly shocked by how many fans embraced it and loved it. And a hairdo nearly ripped it all apart at the seams...
When someone can make a statement like that, about a post that was discussing race and be so relentlessly focused on their enjoyment, voyeuristically of how they view a relationship - as interracial btw, not inter-species -
Then nobody better fucking asking me why my primary interaction with fandom is pointing out things pissing me the hell off, warning others, and blocking people.
I can't even...
I can't EVEN!
That is some Prime, Grade A, Cornfed, Privilege & Entitlement Honkeyshines right there.
Did you read what she said? Did you read it? Did you click the link and read it? A conversation about race almost destroyed her post-racial shipping community and oh, how awful, because fandom was embracing the black girl in a relationship with the cute white guy...until someone brought up race.
OMG, LOOK AT WHAT THAT COMPLAINING PERSON ALMOST DID....
*watches the clasped pearls and the reach for the iced lemonade*
Makes me want to punch miss thing in the fucking nose. I actually moved past that comment an hour ago and then finally realized I was not going to be successful letting it go. It was too upsetting.
For the record: I do not believe it is anyone's job to educate that cluelessness. No one is paying people of colour to put up with this shit.
Obviously I need to go back to watching Alien Nation, avoiding the news and avoiding non FoC focused fannish anythings. The last won't be too hard since I'm trying to explore GEN, which means moving away from white women hunting down white men they find 'hot' to smut about. Do WoC write the smut too? Yeah. But they tend to include a CoC - if I squint and hold my head sideways, it's far more bearable.
PS: If it is NOT obvious to you that half or three quarters the outrage over a conversation about a black woman's hair, as pertains to race relations of the future/of the current movie industry, is about white women not wanting to be reminded that the female pov character they've got to utilize/identify with if they want to write the grand het romance with Spock, actually IS a black woman - then you need to drop me off your reading list and block my ass. Cause damn, you're stupid, bailing out De'Nial on a failboat. And I call people on that shit. Loudly.
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I don't know why I'm so upset that iJay is purging usernames. I guess it's because some folk who got journals to interact over here missed the notifications and now....
It feels less homey to know that some people's online homes are being 'foreclosed' on. I probably shouldn't think of it that way.
In other news - an individual I thought was on the line between sort of racially clueless/incredibly preoccupied with face to face life stuff, has just bounded gleefully over into racist asshole. It doesn't hurt. I can't be more disappointed in them than when I realized they were fishing for a PoC Approval Editor for their stories, mining experiences and personal pain for their 'creative process'. But damn if I don't shake my head at the news that they're just - over caring about what other people think
ETA: Clarifying. This isn't a friend but a writer I knew and the situation is best summarized as her caring about racism when it might affect how people perceive her and her books but actually being proactive in changing the way people treat each other in the world? Wtf cares about those bigger issues.
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This post was actually started sometime last year, but I don't think I ever went through and posted it and on finding it I realize it was a perfect part two of the query and discussion I started here; Watching The Show In Your Head.
I had wanted to write about the tv show Monk. Then I had wanted to write about all the tv shows I'd liked and or dropped and how lately I'd realized that the tv show I liked, was NOT the tv show the executives inevitably decided to push. And so past the 1st season (or the season that caught my eye) - I simply didn't watch tv anymore. At least not on my own, without someone watching with me ie, bugging me and cajoling me to watch with them or keep them company.
Then later on I'd ended up thinking out and talking about the subject with a friend, (I believe it was ![[info]](http://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) kdorian). I realized there's so much more with Monk that I'd found disappointing. I found it the waste of a good actor. I found it a waste of a good premise...
I started watching a show about a man who'd been so traumatized by the loss/murder of his wife than his OCD went mega - total overddrive. He wasn't functional. But he was still a brilliant mystery solver. Solving mysteries was a way to make the world right and a way to hone his skills so he could track down the person who'd taken his wife away from him.
I loved that show. Yes it had silly moments and yes sometimes it also made me cringe. But I loved the show. It was about survival and growth and trauma and recovery and yes, I know I can take those themes very personally. But I was so happy with it. I wanted to buy the DVD when it came out. I couldn't wait for where they'd pick up in the next season to move along the arc involving his wife's killer. And where they would go with the friendship he was developing with his assistant's son.
And then I saw the Season 2 trailers. And it was all "Crazy man is afraid of germs. Watch him dodge monkey poop and try to solve crime!".
I was aghast. But the commercial played over and over again. Despite where the last season's arc had ended they were going to play up the disease/ the illness as a JOKE. They were going to play up the mental health issue and the trauma AS A FUCKING JOKE.
What whacky things will freak him out this season!"
Shock became disgust and I never went back. I even changed the channel when previews and ads came on. I still do. There was nothing I could salvage to continue to watch. There was no mental re-writing I could do. The ads made me afraid to go back and watch the first season, for fear I'd suddenly realize how exploitative it had always been.
SGA is another similar show. (To those currently mourning I suggest you skip. I'm not aiming to be particularly reverent).
( More here )
I started off both of my posts not sure why I mentally re-wrote on the fly and what prompted it, and what differentiated it from privilege. And the few responses I got back seemed to agree that privilege was denying that problems caused the need to re-write, vs just an active imagination.
So if there are other things that interest me(in a given media) then I have something to lose; I've been captivated and I don't want to have to come down from that experience. So in order to make the media palatable to me I have to work around/re-write/re-think the scuzzy parts - that is the problems.
But if the loss is far too big; if the scuzzy parts take over something conceptual I was waiting for, along with taking over too many other parts of the show/book, then there's no point in re-writing, because that'd be basically doing it all over from scratch - not imagining if this or that pitfall had been avoided / could be reinterpreted as something else.
This hints at a continuum for me and reminds me of when ![[info]](http://www.insanejournal.com/img/openid-profile.gif) zvi-likes-tv.livejournal.com wrote a post asking and eventually describing the attributes that make a show fannish. (I can't find said post now, so Zvi if you're reading and you remember what I'm talking about could you drop a line? I think you did tables and it had something to do with less content = more fandom filling)
Even without checking Zvi's post though, I think it's safe to say for me there does seem to be a continuum. If I place Memoirs of a Geisha on one end and SGA on the other, it feels Smallville is an example of a show that started somewhat near the middle and eventually drifted right into SGA's side of the fence and thus I dropped it completely.
(odd aside: I dropped Smallville before I dropped SGA I think. And yet SGA definitely feels like the best marker for the disappointed side of the spectrum. Maybe because the moment they changed Elizabeth I immediately started watching the show in my head, whereas that was something I turned to in Smallville until I couldn't anymore) When can't I watch the show in my head? When there's not enough to anchor me into the world of the show itself, I guess. When there's not enough to draw me in to be invested and caring if I 'throw out the baby with the bathwater'. But that phrase makes me think about privilege again and how I have heard that phrase used when I've complained about what a show or series of books or comic etc was lacking. I have been accused of doing that, while harshing someone's buzz about their show because I was letting a little thing upset everything. But the point is, it isn't little to me. Everyone probably has different things that cross the line from needing to Watch The Show In Your Head to being Unable To Watch. Maybe continuum isn't the best word choice. Scales suddenly seem much better. If a show starts off balanced with things that interest me and no, or little problems then I can watch it. As things go wrong, as problems begin, in order for me to keep watching, then I need to watch the show in my head. But as the problems pile up things become very lopsided and when I think of it in terms of weight, then suddenly I need energy to deal with that weight. I guess I feel like there probably needs to be respect for the fact that when you can't watch anymore, it means there's too much weighed on the side of dislike and disappointment. And those weights can be aspects of racism, sexism, classcism, national isolationism or just not enough plot (ala, in some Urban Fantasy novels - being unable to read the book you're reading in your head vs the actual text). *ponders* I doubt there'll be a part three, I'm currently tired of thinking and typing. But I think I'm going to pay more attention to when someone tells me they can't even watch the show in their heads anymore and I hope those who know me will pay attention to me when I say the same thing. Hmm, best thing about doing the opposite was in realizing that the very act of Watching The Show In My Head, means that I'm working around problems I see; whether or not I'm conscious of what I'm doing, whether or not the discomfort is momentary or even lucid.
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Discussing Memoirs of a Geisha with tatterpunk@LJ, here, I stumbled into the thought that watching the show in your head has similarities to privilege and how things are ignored or invisible or immediately dismissed when one re-writes the narrative on the fly.
As I stated here I began to wonder if the difference between watching the show you want to see as a fan (in fandom, discussing the source and interacting with it and having that mentality) and watching the show as a 'mundane' is that discussing the source and talking about it brings you moments of realizing just exactly how and where and why you ended up seeing what you wanted to see.
In Memoirs of a Geisha, I saw tropes I loathed and so I chose to interpret them in ways that made me feel more comfortable with the story and that gave the characters more depth. But I suddenly realized there might be no difference in the actions themselves to someone who chooses not to see the racial problems and dynamics of say SGA with Teyla and Ronon, or racial dynamics in any other tv show or book/fandom property.
When brought up in discussion I can tell you why I chose to see something in a particular way. But while watching it, I don't think I was at all consciously aware of what I was doing. I was so wrapped up in the music and the costumes and the cinematography that I didn't want to have shallow stereotypes ruin things, so I changed my view. I ignored things and created my own fannish reality. If I wrote a review analyzing Memoirs, for example, I'm not sure if I'd have written about the movie I wanted to watch, or the movie I actually did watch. And I wonder if it's only in fandom that someone would understand what I did and understand that my interpretation was my reactions to the things that bothered me and thus were an acknowledgement those things existed.
So I'm suddenly confused about how my re-writing of the story acknowledges what's wrong with it vs how someone else who watched what they wanted to see, might have been blinded by privilege.
Is it privilege to re-write like that?
Is this precisely what infuriates me about the fans who watch SGA for example and see Ronon the MoC Fantasy Fodder and completely miss or dismiss valid notes on racism, colonialism and manifest destiny?
I admit that slash is an example of re-writing thing on the fly. You watch the show and you see subtext and you fill in backstory even if you never write it out as fic (perhaps you postulate in a meta post). But the point is you filter your experience. Is my anger at the fans who dismiss my and others complaints about the hurtful aspects of some shows, as turbulent as it is because I'm already aware they have an ability to filter their experience and I'm angry that they don't consider using my filter?
I'd probably be writing a much less hesitant post if I could figure out the right words to describe this moment of confusilation (it's like illumination, but with confusion)
ETA: Pt 2 (I'm not sure why Metafandom listed it under an SGA tag. But I do discuss SGA in part 2, which I only just posted Saturday the 23rd Aug)
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This is mostly for me. Don't want to read it? Heaving a sigh? Skip it.
( Read more... )
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Tim J. Wise | Affirmative Action (Racial Preference in Black and White)
Pg 22. Excerpts
"...a survey by the National Opinion Research Center, sixty two percent of whites think blacks are generally lazier than other groups, fifty six percent say they are more prone to violence and fifty three percent say they are generally less intelligent"*
* Data quoted from Tom W. Smith "Ethnic Images," General Social Survey (GSS) Technical Report 19 (Chicago: National Opinion Research Center, January 1991)
"After all how can someone who believes blacks are lazy, less intelligent than whites and prone to violence be expected to treat members of that stigmatized group equally with their white counterparts."
"In other words, when evaluating black applicants for a job, whites who are prejudiced will be more likely to treat them unfavourably when the blacks in question have some negative quality that can be used as the 'real reason' for their exclusion. Yet white evaluators cut slack to whites with the same questionable attributes, indicating a tendency to magnify negatives for blacks while minimizing them for whites..."
How does this relate to fannish enterprises?
Well, despite what some fans would say, it's more than possible that some actors are being picked on race rather than merit. And those actors are the white ones.
This is episode one of: Harshing The Squee
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Getting ready to leave the house. Will be out the door, hopefully in 15.
Making a note to myself to come back here: http://alixtii.livejournal.com/254977.html?thread=1257985#t1257985
I may just create a journal soley for the purpose of identifying and labeling racist idiots in fandom.
Like some sort of scientific genus project.
British Politus Racist Idiotus - Peasant_
A) What I won't do is adapt my method of discourse to comply with the requirements of a model I don't believe in, especially if to do so would actively be harmful according to the model that I do believe in.
B) I'm not sure I entirely agree with that. The most successful changes seem to me to always arise when people work from within the system and use existing power structures, and those often happen best in the least confrontational and challenging fashion.
Cause if Race really is my fandom right now, then I want to plunge two fisted into it with the icon making, slogans and establishing right off the bat who's on the 'other side' of my fandom.
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http://kaigou.livejournal.com/442909.html
The OP has since locked her post, which sucks because I'd friends who couldn't read it last night and had planned to today. In this post, the OP was protesting the concept of a Protected Space for PoC (at Wiscon) because it wouldn't be followed up by an open panel/event where the PoC could then tell Whitefolk what they'd been talking about and discussing.
She claimed it was because her primary experience with protected spaces came from conflict mediation where one side met and discussed and the other side met and discussed and then they all came together to try and find common ground.
I think that's not the same as a protected space at all, as referenced in this conversation where the topic is being explored as a possibility (for Wiscon).
Bu after this comment thread, the OP then went on to discuss racism, and homophobia in her own journal, but put them in the context of (her words) appearistims and shippist/relationshipism.
Yes, no history, no power, no privilege, no fears of other, but "You look different than everything I've experienced in my whole life' and 'You have gone against the grain of the type of relationship I expect my child to have / I expect people to have.'
There was more too. At one point she brought up Transexuals as an invisible minority claiming that PoC could wink and nudge and direct each other to quiet corner but for people with invisible differences - what about them, what about 'to quote her' People like Me'. Do note She was not identifying herself as trangendered but as someone with differences not readily apparent who's being excluded. She did not say what those differences were. She just offended me by sticking Transgendered people in there as a token for why she was being unfairly treated.
There was more.
She also went in depth about how having a PoC Only Protected Space was hogging brilliant minds and possibly also writers and artists that she'd like to meet. It would be shutting her out of full participation in an event like a Con (Wiscon).
I learnt of Kaigou via metafandom when she did some wonderful pieces about how lots of urban fantasy writers get it wrong when they try to write about characters living on the streets and being disenfranchised in that manner. She wrote from personal experience.
Reading the above post gave me a shock of untold proportions to realize that even after being disenfranchised thusly, even after having society treat her as other and as something to be ignored and reviled and as someone who no longer counted - she could so positively reek with entitlement.
LET ME IN. LET ME IN. I DEMAND TO BE LET IN.
That's the essential cry of the now flocked post - along with an actual 'Fuck you' to the PoC who pointed out that the purpose of the protected space would be so that they could have a moment without explaining, without being 'on parade' or as 'living examples'.
Someone commented to me, about this, that if this is what friendlies really and truly think of People of Colour and all the struggling we're doing in fandom and all the discussions we're having - they really don't want to know what the unfriendlies think.
I commented back that I don't think Kaigou was a friendly. I think she thought of herself that way, but her inability to listen, her defensiveness, her lacking comprehension of the privilege she was so boldly waving around shows the difference between an Ally who has done the work, and someone who hasn't but would like to seem sympathetic.
I realize, by the way, that with the post flocked, you're essentially taking my word for what happened. So I let you know that this was my reading comprehension of her words.
And below the cut will be a c/p of a comment I typed - WHILE- reading said post.
( The liveblogged response to Kaigou's Post: We Need Some Neon Signs )
And yes, I didn't finish reading, I was so overwhelmed with rage. Kaigou, once finding herself in the lap of privilege again is holding on to it for dear life and doesn't seem to hold plans for letting go.
Now if you've made it all the way down here, thank you for reading.
If you're wondering why I've been posting so many race relation entries - it's because I'm fed up.
I AM FED UP.
When I get emotional - I write. So I'm going to be writing about this; About the people who want to seem well, but don't actually want to pay attention to the words that are coming out of their own damn mouths.
I am grateful as hell that I don't have to deal with the Klan, that I don't have to sit at the back of the bus. I am grateful that when teachers started shit in high school and my mother had to get involved, they at least had to pause and wonder/worry about the LAW. I am grateful I didn't have to go to an exclusively black college (though I ended up there any way on the 2nd try around). I am grateful for options.
But never. ever. think my gratitude means I'll put up with this bullshit. The old bullshit threatened my body first, my family second and my mind and sanity third. This bullshit goes straight for my spirit and I am not having it. I AM NOT HAVING IT.
This is my space too. This too is my retreat from when the world goes to hell in a handbasket and life disappoints. This community too is where I find comraderie and laughter and joy and friendship.
You have been warned.
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This made me feel a little bit better. amilliondays calls bullshit on "It's just too hard to befriends with / sensitive to/ considerate of - those people".
Still in pain though.
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So I get up feeling like ass today. My sleep was interrupted twice or thrice by the cat mewing and crying for company and scratching open my door and biting the door and pulling down things hung on the back of the door. (Said cat is now on my lap acting like the Queen of effing Sheba and demanding head petting everr two minutes)
The the fire alarm also went off in the building last night and someone decided to have an early Sat morning fight right outside my blasted window.
So I get up feeling like ass, craving caffeine, and sore like a mofo - expecting to see grey clouds etc. At the moment I'm not feeling very much like leaving the house to run some errands I sort of need to do.
And I see a link to this on my feeds.
I sum up the following as: "My white ass doesn't need to be schooled in public by intimidating black people and since I don't NEED to deal with privilege and I don't HAVE to deal with privilege I'm going to shut completely up and not engage cause if I was racist anyway someone would have told me."
Goddess Wept! What the fuck is this shit?
A discussion on race that's all about "Poor white me, I'll be stomped and I don't understand why my pov is wrong and no one's going to lead me by the hand to the gentle rivers of self revelation and baptize me and give me a certificate of racism free, so I'm just not going to engage."
I wake up feeling like ass and the first thing I'm going to be doing is banning someone?
And it's funny that I read yonmei's post yesterday and didn't think anything specific (other than the latest round of wrong) had prompted her to it and found myself nodding at what she was saying and how she related being a woman and being queer to being aware and thinking about things to do with race. Turns out she was prompted by elfwreck, by this shit.
* I can't think of any reason that understanding white privilege should be more important to me than, say, understanding christian privilege is to everyone else.
And then she goes on to say that becoming aware of privilege will serve no real life purpose in her life. And that it takes up spoons.
Fuck shit damn woman - like it doesn't take up spoons in the lives of PoC who have chronic illness and pain and have to think in terms of spoons in the first place???!
And what the fairy fuck is up with saying shit like:
* I 'm fairly good at that game; I bet that if I concentrated, I could make a whole lot of "get it right" comments. I could be known as a Cool White Person Who Understands Racism (as well as any white person can). Wouldn't affect how I think or feel much; identifying the "correct" side in a debate and confirming those concepts doesn't involve me personally.
Dear White Allies, apparently you're walking around making race sensitivity and tolerance and understanding into some kind of popularity and coolness contest. And in real life you're not applying it to your thinking and interactions.
Fuck shit damn! So apparently as these discussions have occurred more frequently in the past two - three years, all that's being learnt is how NOT TO PISS OFF THE BLACK FOLKS - not actually new perspectives.
And isn't that a scary thought considering the repeated hot jack ass messes that keep occurring in fandom - over and over and over and over and over a fucking 'gain.
On the plus side, at least it's brought people out of the woodwork so I can make a list of 'White folks to be banned'.
Shit fuck damn. SHIT. FUCK. DAMN.
* I have seen a few posts (I'd have to go digging for links; let me know if you'd like that) saying people were tired of being reasonable and calm and polite.
Yes, elfwreck I'm one of those people who says I'm tired of being reasonable and calm. I am tired of being the racism education fairy. I am a racism educator 201 and 301. 101 students need apply elsewhere.
I can't even finish reading this shit. Cause it's homicidally funny how women being angry about misogyny is alright. Women writing angry posts about being fed up about anti-feminist bull shit is alright. But best don't let a person of colour just shout out their frustrations. Then they become scary and intimidating and a reason not to self examine.
Shit fuck damn.
This shit is priceless.
Anyone who agrees with elfwreck about this just needs to get the fuck off my flist. Just unsubscribe me now. Cause if you stay and you comment along these lines, I will not be kind to you. I repeat, this is the add/drop period for Angry Black Queer Willow 201 and 301. If you can't hack it, leave. Because I will not be understanding when you come to complain to me about your F.
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Fail Glorious Fail
Brought to you by: Tune, Rage and Epic
Fail Glorious Fail
We're anxious to try it.
Three banquets a day --
Our favourite diet!
Just picture a Minority crushed
Crying, pissed or enraged
Oh, fail,
Wonderful fail,
Marvellous fail,
Glorious fail.
dum dum dum dum...
Fail Glorious Fail
Fresh horror called racism
They used a bad word
We don't have to listen
Imagine these uppities
Saying that we should think
No!
Fail, magical fail
Wonderful Fail
We want to Fail.
Fail, glorious fail!
Ch**ks, N****** or Hoodlums
Froth made from our ire
Gets discussion mired
Just think of our white burden
They want us to lose
No! fail,
Glorious fail
Marvellous fail
Fabulous fail
Beautiful fail,
Magical fail
Glorious fail
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There needs to be a People of Colour and Allies Fan Con. Cause I refuse to go to any con where I might run into these fuckwits.
*goes back to lengthening her lj and openid ban list*
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| 2008-01-30 19:06 |
| Dear people who're a product of their enviroment / era wtf ever - DIE IN A FIRE! |
| Public |
 want bitches to die in a fire |
| #race issues: fandom |
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Y'know what I want to do? I want to create a
PREEMPTIVE BAN list
Like if you want to have a pleasant journaling experience, avoiding reading entries or fic by these "cr**** *** *** ****"
And it'd list all the daily_deviant fuckwits.
The idots who say Black People are too poor and uneducated to be SF fans.
And the fart heads who say shit like 'But back in the 70's P*** was a compliment'
My list would encompass livejournal and ijay and you could copy and paste to preemtively ban. It might also maybe somehow combine with the greasemonkey killfile so you never have to see their rampant pig in mud, fly in garbage, maggots in rotten flesh happy ass, shot gun defending racism ever ever at all again. EVER.
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I thought I wasn't going to comment when I heard about this, but seriously, wow there's a lack of history and learning there. And knowing some of that history as I do, I did end up commenting. ETA: Seeing familiar names in the threads, I'm aware that some of the history was likely mentioned as well, or at least the American History.
But I might just delete said comment because I no longer have the proper patience for dealing with stupid white people or worse ignorant, appeasing, black people.
The point of the linked post regards Chad from High School Musical and his curly, fluffy, 'fro. It's about a boy with my hair when it's not in dreads. And the people on this community and commenting to the post who think it's excessive and hypersensitive and too PC to have a mod post asking people to think before they include a hair joke. Commenters have called the Mod Post and the request petty.
My response:
When was the last time someone white was beaten, brutalized, thrown in jail, had their children taken from them, their farm land taken away, their farm animals killed, lost their jobs (or were threatened with such) and had laws or policies passed against them having their hair a certain way?
While you're thinking on that, I'll let you know that the last time someone black had to deal with any of those consequences to having clean, but curly hair that was in anyway wild looking or could be alluded to as 'unkempt' was not just as recent as the 60's or 70's - though that too is recent - but in 2006. Yes, that's right, 2006. As in, up to last year, there are / were black people who had city government policies threatening their jobs if their hair wasn't relaxed straight.
When something has that much history and that much relevance to racism and racist actions in present day then yes, even if you thought it was a neutral comment, and even if you know white people who have hair like that, it's still a racially insensitive comment at best and down cold ignorant but confident racism at worse.
That's it. That's all I'm going to say. I'm not going to respond to comments to this, because I am so infuriated at the level of obstinate ignorance here that I will not be able to keep up any sort of civil conversation. And the mods of this comm at least deserve civil conversation because they noted this and spoke up and tried to explain as best they could.
______
I might respond to comments here in my journal, because I don't have to be polite, civil or respectful of another person's space in my journal. This is my space. So I can get as angry as I want about this.
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When I was a little girl I watched a movie about the Holocaust and Concentration Camps I thought it was fiction, very intriguing fiction. When I saw the notes at the end explaining this was all real and talking about something called the Holocaust I was in so much absolute shock, I couldn't think straight. I cried and cried and cried. I couldn't sleep, I cried so hard.
Growing up in the Caribbean I learned about slavery in school practically every day and about slave rebellions and about abolition. The attitude of imperialists to natives was (and technically/historically still is) something very recent. But what I did not learn then, was how different slavery in the Caribbean was to slavery in America (Or at least America beyond Louisiana). And at that age I did not learn about the Holocaust.
I can't quite remember, but I think watching that movie on late at night (the last movie of the night before the station went off the air) led to me finding and reading The Dairy of Anne Frank.
I wanted for ages to find that movie again, I hadn't even seen the beginning. I wanted to know more. I was in shock that I knew so much about slavery and so little about something so horrible - which seemed in my mind to be slavery boiled down from centuries into a much much smaller time frame but with all of the wrongness and suffering, death and degradation and to my small child thinking, plain unfairness, especially because there was no hope for the future.
When I ended up with relatives in America for a year, I can remember the first time my aunt mentioned something about her Jewish employers and how I practically interrogated her because I was so surprised and relieved and happy that they'd survived as a people! What I'd managed to find as a child had me convinced that there were no more. No more Rom (Gypsies to my child self) and no more Jews.
That's when my aunt told me about "Never Again." I don't remember if she showed me a synagogue, I don't think she did. But I do remember her beginning to point out certain names to me and to explain things like why certain shops closed so early on Fridays. I can sort of remember her being amused at my explanation that David was my favourite hero in all of the Bible, and I'd been so sad at the thought of his people being gone forever.
Because with the hijackings then going on, I was aware that other peoples from the Bible had survived to present day. But I only had a hazy understanding of what Israel was - it was a place over there in the countries with all the sand and biblical stuff. But that didn't connect to the Holocaust and Jews to me. But between the movie, that book, my own limited research with children's library facilities and talks with my aunt, I made the likely extremely childish decision that if I was ever on a plane and someone asked who was Jewish, I'd say I was. Because I didn't want people who'd been through all that to die alone without anyone sticking up for them again.
Man I was one weird kid, yes? And I traveled a lot back then too.
Still, when I hear about recent posts discussing the sensationalizing of the Holocaust and how it has the Jewish people self identifying as victims, while my more adult self recognizes the similarities in those speeches with speeches against affirmative action and that lean heavily towards racist ideology, the memory of my younger self reminds me that if I could be so moved all on my lonesome there are surely others out there who'd feel the same.
I mean, people are not born callous bastards. Individuals are not born automatically infused with the inability to appreciate true horror and how it might have affected an entire people. It's a sudden but good reminder to me that while there are bastards who I wish would keep their mouths shut and get the hell out of my fandom (if wishes were horses and didn't imply the squashing of free thought) there is always hope in the next generation.
Best of all there are parents on my flist raising that next generation and those kids are kick*ss, amazing, wonderful people.
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Comment One: Wherein I respond to Bellatrys journal entry in utter shock and full of wtf over Asian Representation In Comics (specifically DC).
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Also I'm reminding myself right here to go WTF over Sasha / Checkmate / Owen and torture. Because I only saw those scans in relation to Dick Grayson being a Dick. Seeing things even more strong together the prior wtf on the net over Sascha's depiction as weak - makes a lot more sense.
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Comment 2: So those outrageous Asian characters aren't ghosts of long dead racist/privileged creators. Oh no. This is new shit. This spins off from 52. The Great Ten especially, whose character designs were interesting doodles for Asian costuming.
I'm still going WTF over the 'Gives birth to a litter of 25 Chinese Super Soldiers'.
But go on and see how there's a Buddhist and a Tibetan all apparently working for the Atheist Chinese Government. And the Buddhist looks more East Indian than Asian. But that might be just me.
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PS: Tom Foss discusses the possibility that treated well, and written in depth none of the above characters might remain stereotypes. And he's right. A Stereotype can be just a short hand introduction and then the meat of things is gotten to. And I would enjoy seeing how individual characters react against the expectations of a government into who they are and how they perform and what they do.
However, Tom Foss isn't writing them. And no one writer likely will continue to write them for their entire existence. And there's quite a lot of writers out there who simply aren't trust worthy with tasks like this. They can barely handle White Women in their work, far less a minority character who's initial foundation is rooted in a stereotype.
And let us not forget the artists for both interior and covers. Blank stares, lego-bricks make up of women, appealing to stereotypes and the lowest common denominator because it's been shown to work.
And what about the executives and what they want and their suggestions and input and how all that factors a story? Some of them haven't been proven trust worthy either.
Face it. If Neil Gaiman or Octavia Butler (bless her soul) had put out on a website that their next series would cover these particular modeled characters - I know I for one would be intrigued and curious as to where they would take them and how they would form them. And the seeming stereotype would seem like the precursor to a twist.
Comics aren't single novels, written by a single artist. They're not even novels written by ghostwriters or various other writers where things are based on a bible so that even if character quality and depth varied from writer to writer at there was the chance that something new could be added to the bible and/or despite what the covers looked like, such and such a writer would be known to do 3 books a year in that universe.
Comics are collaborative in an invasive way and are currently controlled by people with whom I and many others have no consistent vote of confidence. That to me is what helps make this all so much more outrageous and makes me so incredibly sad.
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On days when God isn't running people's lives, they have to set their own priorities and live with them.
Just when I think individuals in fandom can't open their mouths, or type on a computer, and say anything stupider...
Just when I think that there's often too much a case of people wanting to stick up for their friends or being really upset at the mere implication of being racist or anti-semitic...
(And do note how the accusation is somehow more hurtful or more wrong than the fact that people actually deal with this every day or the concept of being racist or anti-semitic on its own. I'm sick of it)
Just when I think humanity isn't all odd spots of light, kindness, joy and good parenting in a sea of black, filth and sewage...
There comes this asshole.
There's a line between respectful accommodation and catering, and when you say "this day isn't holy, but I'll probably be busy and/or tired from the holidays so don't do anything on this day either" you're asking them to cater to your wishes rather than accommodate your needs. And I think that's too much to ask, no matter what the reason.
It's funny to me (funny ironic, funny fork in your leg) that words like those come up concerning Yuletide, an end of year fic exchange. Why? Because how much of Yuletide and Three Ships revolves around the concept that people are exhausted from those holidays so lets start sign ups early, or lets add a twist so things go live a few days after those holidays.
It's all funny (ha ha there's a knife in my side and it's on fire) that once someone says spews long enough, hard enough and loud enough, others come to back them up. Y'know the "I'm black and I'm not offended friend of.." or in this case "I'm Christian and Christmas time is just as restrictive for my tiny denomination and I'm not screaming persecution."
There's also an Anonymous Jew saying "Shame Shame for pulling the Jew Anti-Semitic Card."
Criss Love A Duck, I want to know where this fucking pack of cards come from. So far I've heard:
- The Race Card (for black folks)
- The Holocaust Card (for jews)
- The Antisemitism Card (also for jews)
- The Gypsy Card (for Rom, who somehow don't get mentioned on the Holocaust card)
- The Feminist's Anti Feminist Card (for apparently ugly, small breasted lesbians who want to chop off penii. Also called The Femnazi Card)
- The Paki Card (For all East Indians and South Asians everywhere since they all look alike)
Who the hell makes these cards and can I hit them in the face?
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People who go on and on about their PoC lover's skin are FETISHING. They're fetishizing. Just because they also appreciate said lover's eyes, brains, sense of humor doesn't change the fact that they've admitted fascination and that they could have spent hours pouring over his/her skin. Not because it was him/her but due to that fascination.
I can't continue to respond and explain, however, because the OP or Comm Mod has since turned off anonymous comments thus excluding openID. I made one comment with my lj, but I don't want to get drawn into using my lj at all.
Anyway, maybe I'm just one person who's offended by skin fascination and seriously believe that it's not something to be attempted by white writers in their first forays dealing with characters of colour.
When they get past the stumbling blocks of wanting to refer to people as food and inanimate goods for sale, when they get past the fucking fascination of difference and non-similarity and OTHERNESS, then maybe they can think about doing things like my Compare & Contrast where skin tone is brought up for a reason.
ETA: And no I don't think it's actually a positive portrayal for said fascination to be awe and full of liking vs disgust at the darkness of it all. It's still OTHERING you sanctimonious bitch.
ETA:Oct 1st - I've been banned from that community for 'stopping in and criticizing instead of participating in the conversation'. Do note, I've been banned after the moderator took away my ability to continue to respond via OpenID. And also after stating in my only comment using my old lj account that I wouldn't be communicating further without OpenID. I suggest people watch themselves around logophilos @ LJ. They might end up in fruitless, blood pressure raising arguments.
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There's a comic strip making the rounds in various blog carnivals and blog posts having to do with racism and colour. It's titled: This is dedicated to that one black kid. And the comic creator lives online here - check him out.
But recent conversation about the PoC SF Carnival lead to conversations about the new Flash Gordon tv show, which ended up with me thinking about 'That One Black Friend'.
You know what I'm talking about. There's a mainstream protagonist in a majority white environment and the creators of the show in order to show their diversity throw in, the one. black. friend. Not even one Asian friend. Or that one black friend out of three ethnic minority friends. It's just that one black friend. That one token.
Pete Ross in Smallville. He's that one black friend. Gunn from Angel? He's that one black friend. Nick Gilmore on Flash Gordon? Here let me direct you to the Flash Gordon Fan Wiki, because you won't find a picture or reference to Nick on SciFi's main site for Flash Gordon. All the important characters are right there for easy access and they're all white. The 'childhood best friend of our leading hero'? I had to hunt around on the memory basis of knowing they'd thrown a black guy in there.
Flash is supposed to be living in Maryland. Why is it my family and I can drive away from Baltimore, to go look at a house in the next county - get completely lost three miles from anything resembling a highway and run into a Trinidadian with his Jamaican wife, a Georgian from Atlanta and and a fellow black Marylander, all within a half-a-mile from each other. But the creators of a fake town in a fake Maryland can't think to have more than one black family in the whole damn fake state - oh yeah make that two black families if they ever decide the one black friend gets to date.
Tokens.
I finally saw 'The Devil Wears Prada' about a month ago and usually I enjoy Meryl Streep. But do you know what I kept thinking?
I kept thinking. "She lives in NYC and she only has one black friend? The protagonist is racist?"
And while I pondered how the protagonist's boyfriend could be working in food preparation and cooking and yet not run into any black Chefs, I realized that this was an incredibly white New York City. And then I realized that I hadn't seen one black or brown face among the career glamazons in the intro. Considering fashion is all about the exotic it became even more wtf to not see a mocha skinned sistah, or better yet a hard working amazon of a woman with skin so dark it's almost midnight blue. No dark skinned models, no dark skinned background extras - their concession to diversity was the one black friend, and the one glamazon who wore glasses.
Obviously the movie didn't make much of a plot impression on me. I was too busy going 'Manhattan isn't that damn white'.
( Tokens in Eureka )
( Tokens in Smallville )
Why do Dean and Sam Winchester travel all over the country and the only black people they ever meet are thugs, bad guys or obsessed criminals? But they have that one black friend psychic?
Why does SG Command not have any blacks in position of authority. It's the military, one of the few places where minorities can climb to the top? Why are all the scientists white? Except for that one asian chick who seemed deluded?
Why was Ford the only black soldier? Why was he Sheppard's one black friend.
Why was making the leading scientific mind, David Hewlett's character an excuse for not including a black scientist after all?
Why is Ronon now the one black male token PoC friend and one male alien friend combined?
Why are the only trust worthy dark skinned people in that show, black people who aren't from earth? While the earth boy becomes a demented junkie thug?
Why in SG1 were the majority of the Jaffa Black or Asian or somehow other people of color?
Why was Teal'c too much of a token for General Hammond to have one black friend who was a fellow general?
Why is it seemingly impossible to have more than two black people in a cast, far less on screen together and them not be tokens somehow?
( Tokens In BattleStar Galactica )
Harry Potterverse - Is Dean, Harry's one black friend (or is that Hermione)? Is Blaise Draco's one black friend?
Batman Begins universe - Is Lucius Fox, Bruce's one black friend? Or rather Alfred's one black friend?
Is Falcon, Captain America's one black friend?
Is Joseph 'Robbie' Robertson Peter Parker's one black friend? And also Spiderman's one black friend too?
Storm certainly felt to me for a while like Xavier's one black friend and the one black friend for a lot of the X-Men. I'm not even going to try and remember the movieverse since I've been mentally avoiding it ever since seeing trailers for X3.
I know that Tony Stark has a one black friend who also puts on a costume and fights crime with/for him.
It's everywhere isn't it.
I'm sure you can think of more if you try.
Tokens.
And progress is when there's more than one token, when there's also one Asian friend, one Native American friend (complete with beads and leather fringe and feathers).
I'm effing tired of it.
Aren't you?
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Clueless. White. People.
I've reached a point where I think part of what makes clueless white people, clueless white people is their steadfast determination to leave historical context behind.
Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.And so these clueless white people do repeat it. Granted their repetitious actions are not always on the same grand scale as the Cherokee Trail of Tears or Japanese Internment Camps or New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. But the scale doesn't change the fact that they go around acting as if the past never happened and only the now exists and thus based on that; Institutional racism what? How can that be if the institution only exists right now? However, since clueless white people can on occasion be white people filled with vim and vigor over equality for women, or better government than the current government then it seems obvious that some parts of the past are worth remembering and some parts of the past are seen as influencing the present and the possible future. Therefore clueless white people are racist, because they choose what part of the past to ignore, refuse to bring into context with the present. They're some of the nicest racists around.
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Spiralsheep: "* ETA 26-08-07: witchwillow, the poc carnival organiser, has commented here explicitly stating that when she calls non-white people "people of color" she's intentionally "bitchslapping" us. I think her abusive language speaks for itself and, unfortunately, also for the carnival. You can read her comments and decide for yourselves."
W.T.F?
My exact phrasing:
Are you saying because you use the term poc anyway even though it makes you uncomfortable I should have to use nonwhite?
Because I personally (I can't speak for anyone else) think that both of us feeling bitchsmacked doesn't solve anything. And I personally have a problem with saying that term. If you were to call me that term, it might make me twitch but I think I could handle it. It's being told that I have to use that term otherwise I'm disrespecting someone else. At which point then, yes, I get selfish and believe I owe myself self-respect first - that I owe myself not to feel vile. It's especially important when the terms come up in reference to discussions about empowerment and visibility. spiralsheep: (In a comment to someone else) "I feel as if, by supporting and promoting the carnival, I was in an abusive relationship without knowing it and I'm left wondering how many Americans who call me a poc are actually intending to "bitchslap" me every time they do it, which had never even occurred to me before. ::develops instant trust issues omg::"Where is the reading comprehension? Where? WTF? Help? I do not understand. I say that her calling me non-white would make me twitch. I say that both of us using terms we find distasteful would be us hurting ourselves and all of a sudden, what? Full link to the whole comment I made hereFull thread of conversation hereCan someone please explain this to me? I don't know whether to think it's lucky or not that I was skimming through deadbrowalking over on LJ and came across an old post I had and clicked her journal name instead of a link and ended up seeing her post. I sincerely believe there is something wrong with a person who has a need to paint themselves the victim and the abused victim at that in order to end a discussion. End? Win? I admit I have no idea what her intention is. To sabotage the Carnival? What?
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The thing about becoming aware of trends, tropes and absences regarding characters of color in scifi/fantansy/urban fantasy etc - is that now I can't stop being aware of it.
Roaming through the library or looking up books online that I could possibly like, I'm struck over and over again by the fact that once again I will be reading the adventures, troubles, sorrows and triumphs of Caucasian characters; white people.
White people fricking everywhere; Being important, fighting vampires, becoming vampires, falling into other worlds, becoming champions.
White white white white white.
And it's annoying, because I immediately take a mental step back now. I evaluate if I really want to read yet another story about some typical SF trope if it's got nothing new to say and is all about white chars.
I feel like I'm becoming prejudiced and bigoted somehow by taking notice and moving away.
I borrow most of my books from the library. Am I really not supporting the trend towards lack of diversity by not borrowing?
Does it mean anything if I become extra choosy about who I choose to read?
Am I limiting myself from being exposed to varied good writing styles?
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distressed & disappointed
tired
working
pissed off
angry
fed up