Category: Blog Against Racism

RaceFail Amnesty Post

By:  TempestBlog Against Racism
RaceFail Amnesty Post

Maybe Amnesty isn’t even the right word, but I can’t think of anything better right at this moment.

The point of this post is: there have been a lot of people involved in RaceFail.  A LOT.  Some of them failed and failed hard, some of them wandered in cluelessly and then proceeded to fail, and some people came in with good intentions but ended up failing for some for a myriad of reasons.  I feel like several people who fit into that last group have probably been lumped in with the first and second.  Not because of the OMG ORC HORDE, but because, in a discussion of this nature where emotions run high and you just don’t know a lot of the people who wade in, it’s easy to peg someone as clueless or harmful when they’re not, or when they’re not trying to be, or when, in a less tension-filled situation, everyone may have been able to communicate better.

I see this happen a lot.  I assign no particular blame to any one group or person, because it’s not anyone’s fault. It is, sadly, natural, given the state of things.

But I think it’s important to speak up when one sees something like this happen. Not to chide others for not knowing a person as you do, but to at least be on record as saying: “I think this person is all right.  When we have distance and have made something good of this situation, please re-evaluate how you feel about them. I think they’re worth it.”

There’s more than one person I need to say this about as regards RaceFail, but right now I can only think of one: rozk.  I haven’t known rozk long, but from our private conversations and her posts, I believe she’s one of the good ones.  I don’t see the problems others have had with her (as in, I don’t interpret what she’s had to say the same way), but I also recognize that, because I have an existing friendship with her, I might not.  Still, as I said above, I hope people who consider her one of the “bad guys” will reconsider later on.

As I said, there are more people.  I will add them in the comments as I think of them.  But I’m inviting anyone who reads this to do so as well.  Name names!  But in service of saying, “This person is worth re-consideration.”

Rules:

  1. I prefer people use the names most folks know them by when commenting (obviously if people know you by your LJ handle or nickname and you wanna use that, I have no issue).  The whole point of this is you speaking up for people you know, but that’s hard to do when you’re being anonymous.
    • If you really, truly feel like you need to be anonymous to the world, then please put your name or identifying name in the email field (then add @anon.com).  No one sees that but me.  I may nor may not publish your comment, but it has a better chance if there’s some identifier attached.
  2. I’m going to be as agressive about trolls and bullshit as I can on this thread.
  3. If someone mentions a person you really don’t like, I ask that you, just here, refrain from getting into an argument about them. You may still feel the way you feel in a few months, you may feel differently.
  4. When you comment, speak from your heart.  Opinions are welcome.

ETA: I will not post anon comments from people whose IPs match known proxies. Be a troll elsewhere, cowards.

ETA 2: Will also not post comments from a certain branch of the LA public library that is near the office of a certain LA lawyer that I have banned from this blog. Do you not realize that WordPress auto-logs IPs?  Well, you do now.

Peter David: Class Act

By:  TempestBlog Against Racism
Peter David: Class Act

Allies like you we don’t need.

More proof that RaceFail is an ongoing occurance in everyday life.  Or, at least, on the internet.

(It’s actually been a long time since I considered Peter an ally.  After watching his liberal cred fly out of the window during a discussion about sexism a few years ago, I just count him amongst those white dudes that like to pretend they’re not sketchy but are, nonetheless, completely fucking sketchy.)

Some thoughts on wikiwork

By:  TempestBlog Against Racism
Some thoughts on wikiwork

A few days ago I posted an idea on my LJ related to RaceFail 09. I thought it might be a good idea to collect posts, links, connections, and commentary in a wiki. Wikis are quite good for that sort of thing. I got several responses and a lot of people brought up good points about whether it’s wise or even useful to have a separate wiki just for this. It would go well with an existing wiki, perhaps one dealing with race and cultural issues in SF fandom and the community.

That was actually my original thought, and where I really feel this would go best is a wiki for the Carl Brandon Society. Thing is, CBS doesn’t have a wiki yet. There’s been much interest expressed, but the snag is (as always) time and peoplepower. CBS is a volunteer effort and most of the people involved are very busy – passionate people tend to be.

I was glad to hear that there is an impetus to create a wiki on race and media fandom, which would go perfectly with CBS, I think. The thing is, I don’t want the RaceFail stuff to be the majority of the wiki to start. I feel like the inauguaration of such a wiki should be first and foremost a place of win as it gets established. Then bring in the fail as it relates.

Maybe I’m being silly on that point, though.

Liz Henry indicated that documenting RaceFail on the FeministSF wiki would not be outside of the scope of that project. And since that wiki has been in existence for a while it would seem less weird to me.

In a perfect world, here’s what I would like to happen:

For all of the POC and allies who so passionately wrote about, commented on, documented and provided moral support around RaceFail to contribute to putting together that section on the FeministSF Wiki. You don’t need to document everything – if everyone mainly stuck to the aspects they were involved in, we’d have a pretty complete history of it.

For those same people to get involved with the Carl Brandon Society in general and to volunteer to help do some initial work on that wiki. Again, if we get a lot of people doing small but significant chunks of work over time (no wiki is built in a day!) then we can build something really wonderful. I think that the web committee would agree that media fandom is just as important an aspect as the lit side of the community. It’s all connected.

Eventually, we can copy stuff about RaceFail 09 over to the CBS wiki.

On a related note, I was talking to Victor Raymond the other day about the possibility of having some cultural appropriation discussions of non-DOOM either on the CBS mailing list or the blog.

In a perfect world everyone would belong to Carl Brandon.

Wait, that didn’t sound right…

Taking A Stab At Sincerity

By:  TempestBlog Against Racism
Taking A Stab At Sincerity

Once, long ago, there was an internet fight. Instead of being about race, it was about gender. And it started because there was a book, and that book was covered in penises male author names even though inside there were just as many female authors. The discussion/debate/wankfest became epic, but during the darkest part of it one of the people on the “other” side sent me an email asking if we could perhaps speak on the phone about the whole situation. We had that conversation, stuff was discussed in civilized manner, we both walked away still liking and respecting the other. I found that very valuable.

I often find person-to-person conversations about contentious topics valuable. I realize they are not always possible, but with the magic of the telephone or even my webcam-enabled Skype, they can happen.

So I’m making a limited-time offer — if anyone is interested in having a real and honest conversation with me about the issues raised in the current debate, be they from the core of it to the spiraling out of control reactions to rections to reactions, I am interested in having a conversation with you. If you’re in NYC, we can meet up for tea. If you’re in other places, we can arrange a time to call. I’m open.

Except:

If I have banned you from my blog or repeatedly expressed interest in never engaging with you again, then I ain’t talking to you anywhere else.

If you think that by talking to me you will gain Black Person Validation, don’t even bother. I am already trying to break certain people of the habit of treating me like a Special Black Friend, I don’t need to deal with it even more. I am not on top of the black chain of command or anything. So keep that in mind.

Contact link is at the top of my fluidartist blog (LJers, just click the permalink).

Update: As I was riding into work I wondered if I came off sounding like I am a person you should talk to, or should want to. Which is not the case. There are a lot of smart people involved, a lot of people who are feeling hurt, and a lot of folks willing to actually listen. I wasn’t even involved in a whole swath of the madness, so talking to me about it probably won’t help. If you’re keen for a conversation with a person over the phone or over tea, maybe try politely asking. You’d be surprised how many will say yes.

Drowning in Apathy

By:  TempestBlog Against Racism
Drowning in Apathy

I’ve been trying all weekend to write a post that will express several emotions and truths about this latest explosion of debate, discussion, and fail around cultural appropriation and other related issues. You’re all sick of hearing about it, yadda, yadda. I never could write that post. Because it would be pointless. Because most people just aren’t fucking listening. And those that are don’t need the post.

I love how it’s always those people over there causing the problem. I love how everyone gets to say “Oh, it’s those people who love conflict doing a circle jerk!” I love how people are complaining about the lack of listening to individuals and not reacting in a knee-jerk way while being completely unspecific, waving hands in general directions, and not listing or linking to anything specific or engaging with the ideas of the people you reluctantly admit aren’t necessarily a part of it.

It’s so easy to point to a group of brown people and hurl the label “mob”, isn’t it?

I love how when it’s you or someone you love who is hurt, other people’s hurts don’t matter. Not just the specific hurts involved in arguing in this climate, but the hurts involved in just being a person of color and having your very self dismissed on the basis of bullshit and, yes, racist thinking.

I used to think that it was possible to make a difference in this community when it came to this kind of thinking. Hell, I’ve had people tell me that my writing or my taking part in discussions has helped open their eyes, change their minds, make them see other points of view. But I’m not sure if it’s worth watching yet another of these discussions devolve again.

Once again certain people have made me question my participation in the SF community. Once again, the majority of those people are white folks engaging in racist thinking and activities, unconsciously or not.

A friend of mine recently complained of a lingering feeling of apathy over this whole issue. Recently as in 3 days ago. At the time I cautioned her against giving in to that feeling — it might not pass quickly, but it will pass, I said. Well, after this weekend, I am mired deep in that apathy myself. Though still pretty damn angry, as the several times I have had to stop and take a breath while writing this attests.

I’m not about to do a flounce-off. Mainly because if I do, nothing will ever get resolved. Or, more accurately, I will not be part of the solution, and I do strive to be.   But I am thinking about what I want to do going forward. I need to take some time on this, because my current instinct is to separate everyone into categories of “Worth my time” and “Worthless” and just go from there. In the long run, that’s probably a mistake. So I’ll hold off.

In case you were wondering, here are the posts I have either partially written or thought about writing:

  • I was going to write about how there’s a difference between someone saying you’ve engaged in a racist act or in racist thinking and calling someone a racist.
  • I was going to write about how the side of this argument that is mainly made up of white people using words against the side of the argument made up of POC and allies like “mob” and “horde” “oversensitive” and “attention whores” is extremely problematic, not just from a reasonable debate standpoint, but also from a racial one.
  • I was going to write about how divorcing yourself from the label of ally because of all the horrible people picking on you is not a form of bravery or self-righteousness, but a form of saying “I refuse to be an ally to you on your terms, seeing that you’re the one suffering from the hurt and oppression I’m allying with you against. It’s really more about what I’m comfortable with.”
  • I was going to write about how if you don’t want people react to your involvement in a conversation as if you’re just like the 10,000 people who have come before, then maybe you should shut up and not make the same statements or ask the same pointless questions that aren’t really questions as those other 10,000 people.
  • I was going to write about how this is the same thing I have seen happen in every debate about race and gender in SF and how we never get anywhere.

Online Cultural Appropriation Panel

By:  TempestBlog Against Racism

We talked about this a bit at WisCon last year, and since I recently did great mental harm to you all by pointing out that “discussion” over on Jay Lake’s LJ, I thought I would do something constructive.  I’m willing to host an in-depth discussion about cultural appropriation on the ABW so that we can attempt to cover all of the different angles and branches of the conversation as we usually cannot in a 90 minute panel discussion.

But before that happens I’d like to solicit input from veterans of these discussions for help determining the best way to begin, some links with background and context from other discussions (including the debate of DOOM from a few years ago), and suchlike.  I guess it could also help if we had panelists, sort of, but I don’t know how that would work in an online context.

Suggestions, links, and direction appreciated.

IBARW & Fantasy Magazine

By:  TempestElsewhere on the Internets

This week’s Blog For A Beer is a special IBARW edition.  Readers of this blog may find J T Glover’s essay on Bias in American SF interesting and the BfaB post uses that as a jumping-off point.  The crux is this:

…for those who would prefer a different SF: what do you want, and how are you going to get it? My frustration with Mr. Banker’s post was exceeded only by my curiosity. What sustainable alternative exists, now or in future, and how will it come about? Can it be created without alienating most of SF, and if not, does that matter? Even as the writer in me is most concerned with writing well and getting published, the reader in me wants both literary challenges and comfort food. The librarian in me believes that we must make room for everyone, whoever they are and whatever they believe, else we abandon the promise of speculative fiction.

Read the full essay and comment on it here.

We have two other pieces up this week that that fit into the theme.  As I mentioned yesterday, there’s a clip of Ghetto Man roasting the Superfriends.  Oh 1979, you were so crazy.  Also, N K Jemisin’s really, really excellent review of the latest Temeraire book that illuminates some of the big themes Novik explores in the books and also ties in why her fanfic roots make the series so amazing. And there’s a reprint of Broken Mystic’s essay on Dust, a Muslim character in the X-Men comics.

I love my job.