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$0.02
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.
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.