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

[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.