In which I cannot tell which icon to use

[zeborah]

There's my pretty rainbow-zebra icon which I use for posts about privilege and such.
But then there's my Diddums icon, which I don't get to use very often.

Hmm. I'll go with Helen (whom, incidentally, Facebook recently recommended as a friend for me).

So Avalon's Willow wrote an open letter to matociquala about race issues, and matociquala responded gracefully, and matociquala's commenters promptly started off with things like:

1) "The open letter was an overreaction."

2) "Us poor oppressed white writers just can't win: if we don't include people of colour we're racist and if we do include people of colour but get them wrong we're racist. What's a poor white writer to do?"

Oh, wah wah wah.

1) As a person of 100% white extraction, I feel I can speak for my race in saying that the open letter wasn't an overreaction.

2) Of course white writers can't win. No writers can win. If you don't write any words you don't have a novel, and if you do write words but get them wrong you have a bad novel. What's a writer to do?

Learn how to write better, you freaking idiot.

Of course people will always criticise you. That's life. Listen to the criticism, learn from it, and keep improving.

Edited to add: Some people seem to think this is all about telling people what to say and what not to say. It's not. It's just about me telling people who say words like 'overreacting' that they're freaking idiots. They can still say it. They're just freaking idiots.

Anyway, I'm bored with talking about censorship, so I'm going to exercise it instead.

Any future comments that are primarily about how woeful the plight is for the white writer, and how repressed those politically correct people are being, will be summarily repressed.

Any comments, however, that are primarily about "Yes, this is an issue, and I want to do something about it without being a freaking idiot," are most welcome. Because I'd quite like to have that discussion if I can do it in an environment where I don't have to continually justify why I feel that myself.

If you think I've repressed your comment unjustly you can put it up on your own LJ.

Comments

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

Glurk! I have an African character in my WIP who - if not stereotypical - has had something happen to her which would be very unlikely to have happened to any woman outside of African society.

[zeborah]

I don't think that's necessarily problematic. I'd expect how she reacts would be more important, and her role in the book. And these would probably be more important if she's the only African character in the book because then the whole metaphorical weight of representing an entire continent inadvertently falls on her. But even then, you do what you can with what you've got; and I think as long as one is mindful of the issues, and does one's best, then it's better than throwing one's hands up and writing an all-white cast just because it's safer(1).

Oh! It's like the Parable of the Talents!

(1) NB that I'm not saying that writing an all-white cast is in and of itself inappropriate. The Scandinavian Novel has an all-white cast, and I don't think that's problematic in and of itself. But if I wrote an African Novel with an all-white cast _because I was scared to write PoC_ then I think I oughtn't to be shocked if people weren't happy with the results.

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

My setting is vaguely early to mid 17th century Polish so I'm guessing that it would be inappropriate to have a lot of African faces there, though Poland at that time seems to have been very accommodationg to other creeds and desoite being largely Catholic there's a high proportion of Jews and Moslems - at least in the major cities - and Gypsies , of course. (And I do have a Rom character.)

My African character, Dahnay, is not in there as tokenism. She's Ethiopian, a warrior, tall, strong, athletic and loyal and (surgically) sexless. She's quiet until she needs not to be and has a quality of stillness that almost makes her disappear magically at times (though there's no magic involved.) She's very dignified and the one woman who my main character, Jarek, can't have, but what she can't change, she copes with. I like her a lot.

[nycshelly.livejournal.com]

Was it an overreaction? I can't say. I can give my opinion about that, and that is my opinion, not someone else's opinion. It's a judgment and some people judge more harshly than others. Which is why I usually try to not make such comments. As someone who reads AW's blog (for quite a while, including earlier versions), I found the post typical, so not an overreaction, unless people think she always overreacts.

Someone can say I overreact. I might not think so, but hey, they're entitled to think so. And I'm entitled to think they're too judgmental. ;)

I'll add: Listen to the criticism, decide if it's valid or not for you, ignore if not, learn from it if you agree, and move on to the next thing.

[brownnicky.livejournal.com]

I am quite resistant to being told what to write about and who to write about.I don't really see that it is up to me to redress society's ill or make my characters people who fulfil readers' very particular requirements.
I am interested in equality and social injustice but I explore those things in a way that suits my stories and my way of looking at the world. No one has to buy my books (and indeed an unimaginably large number of people don't.)
I explore ideas that are interesting to me. I am ill equipped to start exploring other people's.
Re writing better - sorry writing in a way that would suit the letter writers is not writing 'better' by my aesthetic only writing more appropriately by theirs.

[zeborah]

No-one's telling anyone what to write about or how. They're just reserving the right to say what they think about the product, without being accused of overreacting. The same way anyone has the right to say what they liked or disliked about any book.

"writing better" was specifically within the context of people who argue "Damned if you do, damned if you don't, so what am I meant to do?"

If you're not arguing in that way (and it sounds like you're not, since you explicitly reject the idea that anyone has the right to tell you what you're meant to do), then it wasn't aimed at you.

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

I think the problem is that making too much of the issue means that the safe route (for white writers) is to avoid writing non-white characters. You'd only be damned faintly, if at all. Also writing well is hard enough without handicapping oneself with extra weight in the form of going too far beyond people like oneself, so the temptation is to not even try. Therefore I think making too much fuss can be counter productive as it might put off the more sensitive sort of writer that the protesters really wanted to encourage. Not raising the issue at all, of course, just leads to the status quo continuing, so the protesters are also damned if they do and damned if they don't!

Or in the words of oursin, "It's all much more complicated!"

I am careful not to enter such debates as a rule because the situation in the UK and the US is very different and though we have issues here, they're not the same as the issues in the US, though writers from elsewhere, like the LJ poster from India, don't seem to recognise that and people in the US often seem to assume that we must be like them when we're not. To add to the complication, I live in a rural area with very few non-white people and where the English/Welsh conflict re culture and language is the one that dominates. I thus feel very unqualified to provide what the non-white posters seem to want.

Having said that, the main POV character in the magic FE college seems to want to be black, so I am proceding cautiously and with much trepidation!

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

I'm either writing fantasy or future SF and I largely don't mention skin colour unless it's in passing. My characters could be black, pink, brown, yellow or red.

For the science fiction I figure that a few thousand years in the future it's not going to be an issue - or if it is it's not going to be driven by the same issues as now (which as you say are very different in the US and the UK and probably in India and South Africa and Germany and, well, everywhere, too).

For the fantasy it's only a problem if anyone relates the setting to a historical situation and starts quoting context, though my settings are always 'a bit like' but not exactly _that_ place and time.

[zeborah]

My characters could be black, pink, brown, yellow or red.

No they couldn't. If the skin colour isn't mentioned, then it's white.

The majority of readers - and I include myself in this - if they aren't told otherwise, they'll assume white. Everyone in Cora and sequels - in my mind, they're all white, because you didn't say otherwise.

That's because we live in a society where white is the default. In fantasy and sf in particular, white is the default.

So if, as a writer, your intention is that not all of these characters are white, then you have to say so explicitly. Because otherwise your readers will be visualising white.

It just the same as the sky or the grass. If you don't say they're not blue and green respectively, the reader will assume those colours. If you want green sky, you've got to say it's green; if you want purple people, you've got to say they're purple.

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

I don't think the default is necesserily white - much depends on the way it's written. Names, for instance. Ramirez wouldn't necessarily be white WASP, and neither would Patel. I'm going to doublecheck my names list and make sure I have some in there that definitely sound more ethnic.

[zeborah]

Yes, this is true: names are important and useful.

(I consider first names just as important: if there's a mixture of ethnic surnames but all the first names are Anglo-saxon, then I know the world is culturally, even if not skin-wise, white. And I'd like to see more worlds that are as culturally as skin-wise ethnic.)

In the stories with Paul (Faith, Hope and Respectful Attachment and its sequel) I did the mix of names. I still want to describe skin colour more because I'm convinced that Paul is some shade of brown _but I haven't said so_.

The other thing I did was, when there were jokes and stories being tossed around, to try and have some non-European-tradition ones. I got a Mongolian one in there, and I think I was trying to do something with the tiger, but I'm not sure how successful I was.

[brownnicky.livejournal.com]

IME putting a book out there means that anyone can say what they damn well like about it. Some of the comments you will get, if you get any at all, will be rude and hostile, others sweet or barking mad, some will criticise the writer for not writing the book the commentator wanted the writer to write. I am only surprised that the writer in this case responded to what was effectively another version of the latter.

I don't see why it is OK to have an opinion but not OK for other people to have an opinion on the opinion. If anyone is free to write whatever they like about an original piece of writing, why isn't anyone free to write about the criticism? I don't think criticism/review/comment should be regarded as privileged writing.I would argue that no one has the right not to be accused of overreacting.

(frozen)

[zeborah]

Because "overreacting" is a euphemism for "hysterical", and secretly means "Stop telling us that we're hurting you because we're tired of hearing it and having to worry about the fact that it might be true."

Only privileged people get to define what "overreacting" means.

[nycshelly.livejournal.com]

I agree. I'm one of those people who hates being told what to do, even if it's what I'd do, anyway! :)

I find the open letter to Bear and the resultant discussion of interest because it might spark imagination or inspiration. It might just be food for thought.

What I try to not be is judgmental, at least in public, because my judgment is based on my prejudices and expectations.

And I think there's enough of a difference between works by committee (movies, tv, theater, where more than one person is responsible for the work) and works by individuals (books, although editors do get a say). I think there's a difference in trying to ensure that TV gives equal opportunity to minority faces and views and what people write in books.

[zeborah]

"Trying to ensure" I don't know. You're probably right.

But if books don't give equal opportunity (and they don't) then I think there's discussion to be had.

I've never seen anyone tell anyone else they had to do anything. Seriously, I've never seen that. It's a straw man.

[nycshelly.livejournal.com]

I agree. The topic is worth discussion. It won't change what I write or like to read, mostly because I have the awareness. I don't like creating and writing characters I'm not comfortable with, because they drive the story. If I don't get them right, the story will suffer. But I think more needs to come from the publishers, in buying a larger variety of books, which might encourage more submissions of the kinds of book we need more of. Right now, books (fic and nonfic) by Indian, Pakastani, Afghani, and other mid-east regional authors (from there or those who were born there and emigrated elsewhere) are getting published in mainstream fic and are proving very popular across broad reader demographics, which encourages more of that sort of book.

The tell someone what to do tends to come from advice that says what you should do. And from the tone of posts that come across as rants rather than thoughtful essays. And as differentiating between those is subjective, it's not for me to say which is what.

[kiya]

The question of including POC in my writing is one that I've actually worked on fairly consciously because I recognised that I wasn't doing a good job of it.

And sometimes it's incidental, and sometimes it's essential; the fairy tale thing has a central character who is essentially and fundamentally conflicted over her experiences as a child of immigrants, and this is not something that can be extracted from the colour of her skin. And she runs into racists, though they're not a part of the main plot; they're a part of the world she has to live with.

[kiya]

Do tell me what I have said even tangentially or plausibly related to the word "overreacting". I am not whatever strawman you're arguing with, and I am not in the mood to be dragged into your delusions.

[brownnicky.livejournal.com]

I was responding to Zeborahnz not to you ( lilairen) is there any particular reason for the rudeness of your response?

[kiya]

You replied to me. Look at the threading.

[brownnicky.livejournal.com]

Then I apologise for technical incompetence, but it actually makes no sense as a reply to you.

[zeborah]

It doesn't make much sense in response to me, either. Summarily repressed and emailed to you.

[brownnicky.livejournal.com]

Your journal - your rules. Quite strange though.

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

I notice that you tend to do that a lot on my journal, too - when you reply, you're rarely replying to the post, and much more often replying to a comment. It's not a problem, just something to watch out for. (I sometimes do it myself - click reply without realising I'm replying in the wrong place.

[zeborah]

It's definitely something I have to work on consciously, having grown up in a white family at a white school in a white suburb reading white books and watching white TV. And issues in NZ are different from issues in the UK and the US... but then they're kind of the same too.

I've decided I need to read more. These days I don't read much to start with is the problem, but if I'm going to not-read-much then I might as well not-read-much of a more diverse set of books.

Because so far the way I've been including POC has been, I think, rather pasted on. Better than nothing but not good enough to satisfy me.

And there's a story I think I want to write which wants to be set 'somewhere in Africa', which <rolls eyes> Well, Needs Research.

[via-pigeon.livejournal.com]

As a person of much the same extraction (lol) - I don't think we can speak for 'our race' at all. All we can ever speak for is ourselves. Having said that, I entirely agree with you that the open letter wasn't an overreaction.

As regards number two: writing better would of course be the ideal. However, for those who "don't like being told what to write" I'm inclined to point out that in life, things happen you don't like. I'm sure PoC don't like being silenced and disadvantaged and marginalised and watched by store security and told that racism is over now so just be glad for what you've got. In the scheme of things, I suspect their dislike of massive societal injustice weighs a little more heavily than my dislike of having to work a little harder on my writing to make sure it's not racist.

IMO.

[zeborah]

Now you're making me think about the differences in the ways we were extracted and actually I'd rather not.

'speak for my race' was a joke based on how often I see "My friend's a PoC (or occasionally 'I'm a PoC') and she thinks it's overreacting too" as if this were proof definitive that all non-overreacting PoC would agree. I thought of explaining this when I wrote it but it lost some of its punch when I tried.

Oh hey, I forget, were we going to do dinner tonight or tomorrow or something?

[via-pigeon.livejournal.com]

Tomorrow night, but how would you feel about lunch instead? I'm not too well and I'd like to get an early night.

[zeborah]

Sounds cool. Name a time and I'll be there. Or don't name a time and I'll be there at about 1pm.

[annafdd.livejournal.com]

Woman, you rock.

[zeborah]

Thank you!