![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92.1){kind=small}
OK, let's get all these out of the way at once.
Avatar Casting
Yeah, that was pretty dumb, but the "Inuit=parka" business was dumb too. Not as dumb as all the white people, though.
Avatar Casting Part 2
Did you know that there are Asian people who are not from China, Japan or Korea? Did you know that not every brown person in the world has something to do with the fallout of the US Civil War?
Dev Patel was obviously cast partly out of image management, but the comments that he wasn't "really Fire Nation-y Asian" were idiotic (and yeah, a little racist, but in a manner aceptable to the anime-nerd set). The idea that the Fire Nation is now all South Asian does have troubling colour-coded symbolism, but what's at least as annoying is that we have an entire fake culture colour-coded according to the casting of one guy.
RaceFail
I am conflicted, because I have a nuanced position to share, but this is the Internet, where someone will quote it out of context and repackage it in various inaccurate ways. Elizabeth Bear sure should have known this, which was the beginning of her problem.
Let me *try* to explore this topic:
1) Obviously, everyone has reflexively bigoted positions that they don't hold out of malice. The moment someone like Elizabeth Bear forgets this, and assumes that those positions are merely ignorant, rather than active, damaging agents, you have problems. Opinions about identity are not blank slates - they're black bug rooms. When you open the door, people are gonna see something ugly because it is ugly. Everyone is ugly. An ugly position expressed in the context of unequal power is even uglier.
2) On the other hand, absence of malice does count for something. It means that this ugly thing ought to be confronted with some compassion - but still confronted firmly. There really is a difference between malice and ignorance. How should that translate into what someone says? I'm not sure and it's not my call. It should just be in the equation. A lot of the time it was -- but sometimes it wasn't.
The RPG Pundit
His real name is John Tarnowski. He's not really trying to hide his identity (he uses his real name in Spanish-speaking circles) as much as maintain his persona, or I wouldn't say anything. This business with him and his name is kind of like insisting on being called "Elfstar" after you finish playing D&D.
May 15 2009, 21:36:54 UTC 3 years ago
May 15 2009, 21:59:38 UTC 3 years ago
May 15 2009, 22:02:32 UTC 3 years ago
May 15 2009, 22:02:42 UTC 3 years ago
May 15 2009, 22:03:29 UTC 3 years ago
May 15 2009, 22:46:18 UTC 3 years ago
May 15 2009, 23:08:36 UTC 3 years ago
May 15 2009, 23:21:19 UTC 3 years ago
May 15 2009, 23:41:12 UTC 3 years ago
May 15 2009, 23:42:06 UTC 3 years ago Edited: May 15 2009, 23:50:04 UTC
May 15 2009, 23:51:10 UTC 3 years ago
May 16 2009, 12:30:57 UTC 3 years ago
True, IMO but that doesn't have much to do with the major racefailers of Racefail. Does it?
May 16 2009, 18:11:04 UTC 3 years ago Edited: May 16 2009, 18:15:59 UTC
May 16 2009, 18:57:48 UTC 3 years ago
Yeah, I've noticed the difference in hair-styles.
To be a little more serious, there's a difference btw white supremacists and those who moonlight as white supremacists, but the difference is mostly relevant to the people themselves. You fuck me up and I'm fucked up whether you fucked me up because I was a PoC and you hate me or because I was a PoC and you thought I was going to steal yr wallet.
May 16 2009, 19:32:35 UTC 3 years ago Edited: May 16 2009, 19:32:54 UTC
Back up and engage the reality of this being a conversation on the internet, and acknowledge that some SF writer is not in fact the same as a white supremacist who is part of a conspiracy to murder real people, in the biological sense.
The fact that this is the aim of real white supremacists makes the difference really fucking relevant to you, me and everybody. Lois McMaster Bujold and Patricia Wrede and Patrick Nielsen Hayden do not look forward to and plan on a glorious day when PoC don't like will hang from lamp posts.
This rhetorical stance where stupid words are just like a mugging and it doesn't matter why they're there is pretentious and blind. A mugging is like a mugging. Nobody can pretend their intentions override their statements but nobody can pretend that intentions don't matter, especially when the actual effect and analogies differ.
May 16 2009, 20:09:09 UTC 3 years ago Edited: May 16 2009, 20:19:33 UTC
On the internet, if a person is a racist to X,Y, Z because of ignorance or because of insistence in their racism, it can amount to the same. Sometimes, in the case of racism through ignorance, to more pain and aggravation because while everyone is outraged by outright WS supremacist culture, subtler forms of racism are missed by the privileged and dismissed as hypersensitivity, wanking or exaggeration. Offline the differences are stark, but, again, I was talking about Racefail.
This:
This rhetorical stance where stupid words are just like a mugging and it doesn't matter why they're there is pretentious and blind. A mugging is like a mugging. Nobody can pretend their intentions override their statements but nobody can pretend that intentions don't matter, especially when the actual effect and analogies differ.
has nothing to do with this:
You fuck me up and I'm fucked up whether you fucked me up because I was a PoC and you hate me or because I was a PoC and you thought I was going to steal yr wallet
I'm saying that the reasons and intentions you have when speaking to me, should be taken into a account, but for the people getting hurt? Intentions are not always relevant to the one who's getting stepped on. I understand if that makes you angry, that I'm being so dismissive of the ones who accidentally and repeatedly step on PoC feet, but that's how it feels on my side.
I think there's a big disconnect btw what I'm saying and what you're understanding. Perhaps you think I'm comparing Wrede to Pedro Jose Cuevas or something. No, I'm just talking about Racefail, because talking about how Bujold is much nicer than the neonazi Panzers --it derails the conversation-- Unless you rly want to talk about all the people who are much more racefaily than Wrede and bring Godwin down upon us.
May 16 2009, 22:24:06 UTC 3 years ago Edited: May 16 2009, 22:24:36 UTC
Er. I was making a comparison about how for the people who are hurt in Racefail the pain can be the same whether somebody hurts them because of racist beliefs based on WS ideology or racist beliefs based on "accidental" ingraining through WS culture.
Sure. This doesn't mean it's a good idea to respond the same way to both.
But before we go on, I want to make some things absolutely clear:
1) I think Elizabeth Bear, Patricia Wrede et al did bad, stupid things. Things that were rightly called out.
2) I'm not campaigning for their forgiveness because it's not my business to do it.
That said, I think a reasonable person can distinguish between the intentions here and respond accordingly. I think this is largely what happened -- but not completely.
Now it's easy to just default to Nazis here when talking about malicious racism, and I'm liable to do it myself because I have had direct, violent contact with white supremacists (this man tried to kill me about a decade and a half ago), so they loom large in the way I think of racism.
Look at the analogy you used: an act of physical violence. That's serious stuff. Real people suffer real cuts and bruises from that situation. It's not fiction. And because it's real, it takes the rhetoric to a place that I don't think is useful unless you clarify it -- as you did in your followup. If your followup and initial statements were one thing, then I think it would have worked better.
I'm saying that the reasons and intentions you have when speaking to me, should be taken into a account, but for the people getting hurt? Intentions are not always relevant to the one who's getting stepped on. I understand if that makes you angry, that I'm being so dismissive of the ones who accidentally and repeatedly step on PoC feet, but that's how it feels on my side.
Do I think that people have to take others' intent into account? Yes I do -- and that's probably the most contentious part of what I'm saying. Maybe it's even presumptuous, though I personally don't think so, and Avalon's Willow's open letter is one of the models I'm drawing from. That's some smart commentary right there.
I think nuance also makes it easier to open both barrels on people who really have been maliciously bigoted during this thing -- and they were out there, threatening people's offline safety.
It's more useful in my view to distinguish and maybe even say, "See that bastard over there? Your mistake starts a process that ends in that guy. You are helping that guy." Because they were. That's why you can't take Nazis (or other extremism) out of the equation. But when it's put in a certain context I think it's useful, and that context should be more sophisticated than saying the main difference is the hair.
Here's my question: How would you prefer I modify my opinion? It's not set in stone.
May 17 2009, 00:07:21 UTC 3 years ago
The thing is that I agree with your opinion, to a point. I do think there's a difference btw malice and ignorance. I do think motivations matters, but in the case of Racefail it's a bit different. I can be compassionate with someone who called me a big fat dirty cow in a way that I don't think I can be if I hear them call all Mexicans big fat dirty cows.
Because examining the motivations of well-meaning racists? For the well-meaning racists, so that they can change and go out and convert others. IMO, I don't get to tell PoC's that they should examine the intentions of the foot stompers. They're busy enough trying not to get their foot stomped. It's putting the responsibility, once again, on the PoC.
I like this comment a lot though. I'll bite on it some more and look at that link. My opinion is not set in stone either.
(Maybe you could personalize it. Say something like "I feel compassion when" instead of what read now as "You there. For Z's sake, have some compassion for the racefails. They didn't mean it!")
May 17 2009, 02:43:06 UTC 3 years ago Edited: May 18 2009, 07:35:47 UTC
At the same time, making it sound like it's the recipient of bigotry's responsibility to deal with it is lousy, so that's a problem. I think it would be more useful for people to, say, read bell hooks talking about this with a better sense of the particular dynamics than me.
My own opinion exists in the contexts of my particular intellectual limits and biases, so I would encourage anyone to consider my thoughts only in that context.
Certainly, I wouldn't want it to translate to "You can't say that!" I believe that there are more and less useful ways to say things - that beyond mugging and foot-stomping you can (as you did) bring it back to something more precise. That is something of a rhetorical burden and possibly unfair, but I do feel there's an ethical argument to be made for basic compassion that I'm reluctant to sidestep.