$0.02

[truepenny]

1. White middle-class American child of privilege. Yes, that's me.

2. Three and four generations back, there's hefty chunks of Irish and Scottish in my ethnic heritage. This, however, is so far back as to be nearly meaningless, and is completely irrelevant to my own experience of race. So the fact that some of my ancestors were oppressed minorities? Gets me no bonus points. I'm still a white middle-class American child of privilege.

3. Americans--especially though not exclusively white liberal Americans--are so fucked up about race that we don't even know how to start having a conversation, even with the best intentions on all sides. Does this mean we shouldn't try to have the conversation? Hell, no. It means the opposite: we should try, and KEEP TRYING, and learn. One painful lesson at a time.

4. Because the alternative is for us to keep ignoring it la la la can't hear you la la la. And that is stupid and wrong-headed. And leaves the oppression right where it is.

5. Even writing this post makes me acutely uncomfortable because I know I'm probably saying it wrong.

6. The obverse side of cultural appropriation is that if nobody except people of a particular minority (class, race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, etc.) write about that minority, then representations of that minority will never get out of the ghetto of being "minority writing." Which reinscribes the problem very neatly on itself.

7. "Race" itself is a slippery and problematic term. And in America it is very much bound up with class--another slippery and problematic term.

8. Yes, I am focusing on race in America. Because that's what's under my nose and what I've been engaged with, willy nilly, since I was born. I do not believe that what I'm saying about American attitudes and perceptions and fallibilities applies anywhere else.

9. I don't have any answers.

10. I know good intentions aren't enough.

11. But they're better than bad intentions. Or disingenuity.

12. And as a fiction writer, I have to believe that imaginative empathy is achievable. And that it is worthwhile.

13. And I have to believe that human beings can learn.

14. I'm also fully aware that pronouncing my opinions is another exercise of my white middle-class privilege. Because what right do I have to talk about any of it? But see #6: I think the discussion needs to be had, and I think the people with privilege had damn well better show willing.

Comments

[ithiliana.livejournal.com]

Speaking as another white middle class child of privilege (Scots and Welsh, fourth generation from immigrants who came to the east coast and were able to get land grants in the West, land taken from Native Americans)--I like what you're saying here.

One of my areas of teaching is "multicultural literature" (which, translated, means literature by minority cultures in the United States). It's a slippery dangerous term because it tends to reinforce the idea that only "minorities" have a cultures (and not "whites" -- which is of course a racial term, not an ethnic term). But it's something I'm heavily committed to because, adding another note to your list:

#14. If the only people who teach and learn literatures from different cultures (ethnic minority cultures epecially) are people from those cultures, then the problems of past segregation are repeated in current separatism.

I have to be careful here myself because "academics" are often perceived (perhaps rightly, perhaps not) as showing up on the internet and lecturing people. It's an occupational hazard, but when I saw your post, I wanted to share some of my own experiences.

People can learn, and one of the most important ways we learn about other cultures and each other is through the stories we all tell -- and the amazing and wonderful similarities and differences. And just about every ethnic group in this country is ignorant of many other cultures (but there are also a huge amount of interactions that are lost in the eurocentric history that is taught -- one of my favourite books to bring in to class is titled Black Indians -- forget the author but if you're interested, I can dig it out when I get to work Monday). Talk is important, but I also hope that reading can be part of this process.

I teach in Texas, in a rural area, which adds whole interesting levels because I am a native northwesterner ('yankee' to some of my students), and I must avoid the myth that only Southern whites are racist (Northern racism takes different forms and has a different history, but it exists).

I often use popular literature (mysteries, sf, film, television) and not just the literary canons--Octavia Butler's Kindred is one that has been popular with all my students. So have BarbaraNeely's mysteries.

Something I emphasize to all my students is that the concept of different human races is itself a product of 18-19th century racist science. Genetically, biologically, we are one species. The belief that blacks and whites are a different race is itself a racist one. We talk about race all the time as if it's a physical reality when it's not.

That doesn't mean race does not exist as a social construct (like gender, class, etc., and I agree--the intersections and connections are important and complicated). It just means we have to keep in mind the limits of that concept, and how the meanings shifted at different times/places.

And I am fascinated by authors who create characters from different cultures than their own -- it's a risky thing, but so important. I gather from this post and perhaps others that you're doing this sort of thing in your own writing? (My summer classes didn't make so my book buying budget is nonexistent this summer, but I'm always interested in making lists for future buying.)

One author I've watched with great interest (besides Charles de Lint) is Barbara Hambly, who has one series about a black character in pre-Civil War New Orleans (a freed slave who is always at risk, if caught in the wrong place even with his "papers", of being returned to slavery). He was educated in Europe and is trained as a doctor but of course cannot work as one -- so earns his living as a musician.

[jaylake.livejournal.com]

Being a native Northwesterner, I presume you're familiar with the bizarre racial history of Oregon's state constitution. Me, I'm a native Texan (technically) who relocated to the Northwest...

[redbird]

Yes, it's difficult.

Yes, it's necessary.

The flip side of you asking what right you (and I) have to talk about any of it is to note that we don't have the right to make non-whites do all the work of fighting racism, just as men don't have the right to make sexism entirely women's problem and responsibility.

We can do our best to talk about our experience and perceptions, as well as to listen to people of other cultures or races. Sometimes a naive white person may be more willing to listen to you or me on this subject than to our non-white friends. That might be just because we look more like them, for some values of "like" (among other things, they might be less likely to get defensive than if they hear the same things from someone not white or not middle-class. It might also be precisely because they have racist ideas or assumptions, and consider a white voice/writer/viewpoint valid and a non-white one less so. We should do our best to be aware of the limitations of this, but limited doesn't mean useless.

[ethereal-lad.livejournal.com]

6. The obverse side of cultural appropriation is that if nobody except people of a particular minority (class, race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, etc.) write about that minority, then representations of that minority will never get out of the ghetto of being "minority writing." Which reinscribes the problem very neatly on itself.

You have no idea how important that is. Reading Andre Norton's LAVENDER GREEN MAGIC when I was a kid was influential to me because she opted to have African-Americans a protagnostics. Norton started a dream for me.

[copperwise.livejournal.com]

14. I'm also fully aware that pronouncing my opinions is another exercise of my white middle-class privilege. Because what right do I have to talk about any of it? But see #6: I think the discussion needs to be had, and I think the people with privilege had damn well better show willing.

Pronouncing your opinions is an exercise of your humanity. If we have made any stride in 2006, it's the option for everyone to pronounce their opinions. Your opinion being valued over that of someone non-white, that is an illustration of privilege. But venues such as publishing, music, lecturing, the Internet...we all have the opportunity to speak. Getting everyone to hear it is the challenge of the 21st century.

Privilege carries opportunity as well. If we have the privilege of the wider audience, it's our responsibility to speak to that audience about issues that are important. To say that we have no right to do so is to willfully waste an opportunity to reach as many minds as possible. Isn't that counterproductive to the goal?

[jaylake.livejournal.com]

Yep. Ditto pretty much all of it. Though I have offbeat experiences of race, having grown up mostly in non-white countries. There, I was a distinct minority, albeit a member of the extremely most priveleged class. Sort of a simultaneous exaggeration and reduction of the white American experience.

But yes, talking is always better than not talking, even when that means getting it wrong. Silence is wronger.

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

someone has to start or nothing's there to talk abou

Amen

[jaylake.livejournal.com]

(You probably did pass me in the hall, as I was at WisCon. My apologies for failing to greet you.)

As for speaking up, isn't that what fiction is for? I have an upcoming story in Aeon, "White Boyz", which deals very explicitly with race. In general, I'm afraid that as often as not I'm still writing about white people and their imaginary friends...

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

I listened to a piece on NPR today in which a man who had shipwrecked on the coast of Newfoundland in 1942 described how the experience changed his life. The man, in the Navy at the time, is black. The St. Lawrentians who picked up him and his white shipmates, washed, them, tended to their injuries, fed and clothed them, were white. (So white than one woman tried to "scrub the black off him" - she literally through he'd gotten coated with tar that had soaked into his pores.

What changed his life was that the people who helped him treated him as a human, as deserving of help as his shipmates. It made him see the whole world, white people and himself differently for the rest of his life - he was 83 when interviewed. Whenever he gets a little spare cash, he donates it to St. Lawrence, so they will know what they did for him. And all they did was what a decent human should do for another in need - only literally no one had ever reated him as a human of equal worth before.

My point is that I agree with you: it's always worth it to keep trying, even if you're not sure you're doing it right. You never know what little thing will bring a great change.

[firecat]

if nobody except people of a particular minority (class, race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, etc.) write about that minority, then representations of that minority will never get out of the ghetto of being "minority writing."

That's only if no members of the majorities read or promote those writings. If it's the case that members of the majorities will only read works by other members of the majorities, that's a huge problem.

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

This is the thing that happens if you live long enough: somebody returns the argument right back to where it was thirty years ago or more. Now, that's a lousy argument, I know, but it's tiresome to think that we've made no progress on this.

When I teach, I teach at-risk adolescents who are mostly "minority" -- though they're a majority where they live (and almost a totality in my classes). I tell them they have a right to all the culture of humankind -- it's all their legacy -- it's all their legacy. And then I have them contemplate Shakespeare and anime and rap in the same breath.

I'm not going to apply a different standard to my own legacy from the one I apply to theirs. If I was to limit myself, my writing, to only what comes from -- what? what culture? I'd be lost: the subculture I come from is tiny (though overrepresented in the arts, I guess). Well, all subcultures are tiny, compared to the vastness of human experience. Are we supposed to limit our sensitiviy, our appreciation, our understanding, our comprehension the same way?