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

[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.