Sophie's Secret LJ

Oops, posted this to the wrong journal, it's now at my Dreamwidth.

Two related topics I have strongly held opinions about which I can't quite put into words are cultural appropriation and the flaws in an overly individual focussed point of view.

But as it happens posts on both have come up in racism_101 in the last few days which deal with them reasonably well, so here they are, plus some attempts to express myself:

First: A link to, and discussion of, the video "yellow apparel: when the coolie becomes cool", about american appropriation of asian culture (while american and australian attitudes to race and culture differ in some ways, I think the history and treatment of people of asian descent is pretty similar)

It doesn't spoonfeed it's ideas, it's more a series of images and interviews which add up to a pretty compelling experience if you watch it all the way through (thus I included the discussion, for those who can't be bothered. There's also Cultural Appropriation 101, and more cultural appropriation links at my delicious)

Second: Individualism as enabler for racism about the way treating everyone as an "individual" allows people with unfair advantages to avoid taking responsibility for the inequalities of society.
( thoughts on individuality, going more into class )

A question that has come up in two comments I've been pondering my reply to ¹ and on which I think I may actually have a really basic ethical difference about:

Lets assume a certain act is "bad" under your ethical code. It's hurtful, unethical, immoral, etc. If you did it yourself you would be being immoral/unethical.

If there is something bad going on, and you're aware of it, and you could (try to) stop it, and you don't, are you complicit in that bad act? Are you being somewhat immoral/unethical?

Because I say yes. Inaction is itself an action. It's not the same as doing the "bad" act yourself, but it's not completely different either.
( Read more... )
So, do people agree? Or do you not see inaction as just another form of action, subject the same moral/ethical rules (whatever they are, depending on your own POV) as, uh, active action? (You can tell I never studied philosophy, there's probably proper jargon for this stuff) Is there some hole in my argument or description?
( An embarrassing number of footnotes )

I'm pretty sure I've said this before but I was probably obscuringly wordy about it so (lol, not like this post): I choose to use my lj to talk about social justice (especially race) a moderate amount.

I think this is the right thing for me to do for various reasons and will argue against anyone who says it isn't.

But that doesn't mean I think you all should do it, and are bad people if you don't. People use their ljs for different things, and are suited to different types of conversation, and have different focii and numbers of spoons.
( in which I ramble )

And while I'm at it: If you feel like you should be doing something but don't think posting is it, here are some positive easy somewhat-fannish anti-racist things (3 of which I discovered in the past 2 days :)):
verb_noire (who are taking donations), racism_101, 50books_poc, 12films_poc and The Indigenous Literacy Project.

(*)Ok, if you write a long rant about how racism doesn't exist or whatever, I will be pretty judgmental about it. Just so you know. But hopefully you get my point :)

12th PoC Carnival has some great stuff as usual

Fish-wives, Mr Premier? Colin Barnett is a sexist prat (I feel like I never talk about local stuff, so here you go :))

Doodling 'may help memory recall'

Mermaid dream comes true thanks to Weta

Also, reading through my twitter reminded me I forgot to go Eee eee a famous author responded to my review of her book! Plus there's another Steampunk suffragette. Which in turn makes me think of artists and art: I need better walls.

And now finish watching "Psych" (more mysteries!)

I am feeling sick and grumpy but also chatty. So, some links from metafandom with rambly commentary.

Failboat! The Cruise Ship of the Damned Sails On summarises a bunch of stuff.

veejane asks what sff fandom is going to do about this crap.

On safe spaces talks about, well, safe spaces.

Re the Will Shetterly/Kathyryn Cramer vs coffeeandink thing(*): outing someone under their real name because they disagreed with you and banned you from their lj? Is unbelievably low. Dismissing the opinions of everyone who disagrees with you "because all their IPs come from Ivy league colleges"? Low and stupid. Arguing against the use of pseudonyms on the internet? Just..argh. The stupid burns.

Also, given that Worldcon is in Australia next year I find myself putting together my opinions on aussie fandom with all this stuff going on in international fandom. I feel a bit stymied about what I can do personally to try to cut down on the fail, though, apart from trying not to contribute to it myself and encouraging anti-fail.

So since coffeeandink asked people to focus on positive things: I am currently reading "Devil in Blue Dress" by Walter Mosley after being recced it on 50books_poc. It is quite good, even if it's not spec fic :)

(*)People are avoiding saying their names because apparently they google stalk and harrass them, but if NOONE says their names noone will know whose been talked about. I feel too obscure to be worried, but incase they do: seriously, you're going to pick on a no-name australian rambling while sick? This will not help your PR.

Something I realised I left out of Various axioms of my anti-(racism sexism etc) (this extended conversation is definitely making me express a bunch of interconnected ideas I hadn't properly articulated before :))

EDIT: This is not a self evident truth, it's an axiom of the way I think. This does not mean it's right, but you'll have to work pretty hard to convince me otherwise :) (But one of my other axioms is question everything)

As I said there, if there is a society wide inequality which puts one group in a position of less power with regards to another, then the group with more power cannot be trusted to judge how best to fix that inequality. No matter how good their intentions(*).

Feminism and the fight against sexism needs to be mostly run by women.

Anti-racism needs to be mostly run by POC.

The left needs significant input from the poor and lower class. (Unfortunately once you have the power to change things you generally aren't lower class any more so this gets a bit catch 22ish)

etc.

And if you're in the more powerful group then you cannot rely on the opinions of other people in the same group.
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One of the ideas that comes up in anti-racist discussion from time to time and I find very challenging is the idea that "white anti-racist", "anti-racist ally" etc are meaningless or even destructive terms. EDIT: I'm talking about criticism from POC in the anti-racist movement who have a problem with us self describing as "allies", not white people who don't like being called 'white'.

Note that Disclaimer 3b applies (I keep meaning to revise this and then post but always end up posting about something else instead!).
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EDIT: In this post I am using "white" as shorthand for "people who do not experience race based prejudice". The two are fairly correlated in Australian and American society, which is the two contexts I'm thinking of. But they haven't always been and aren't everywhere (certainly one can be very pale skinned and still experience racism) This post is about people who definitely don't experience racism and never have derailing conversations about people who have and do: the skin colour of the people involved is not the main issue.

Also there is nothing wrong with talking about the experiences of white people in general, either specifically white experiences (being anglo-irish, say) or issues which affect people of all ethnicities (class, gender etc).

One of the things that comes up in any discussion of cultural appropriation is scads of white people talking about how irish dancing has been appropriated etc and how this affects their feelings.

The Current Race Discussion and That Caught-in-the-Middle Feeling is a mixed race person who passes as white talking about how this complicates their reactions since it not the same as being white nor is it the same as being obviously not-white.

And again people bring up the experiences of white-but-have-a-family-history-of-oppression people. A jewish person talks about why she thinks we do this. And I must admit, this is a topic I've pondered myself, so since this is my lj and talking about it here is not derailing anyone's conversation, I will. I'm going to go into a bit of detail since I often get the feeling white people feel like sure, those other white people have (EDIT: ethnically, see caveat below) privileged lives but they have a unique understanding of (EDIT: ethnic) oppression (also I just feel like talking about it. Part of the point of this post is getting it off my chest so I'm not tempted to bring it up elsewhere).

But I think most of us have stories like this in our pasts (if you go back far enough there's always the romans), the point is that non-white people have this stuff in their present.

EDIT: Also stuff like class/gender/sexuality etc is even more irrelevant. It's not that those things don't cause huge important problems and injustices which deserve just as much attention in the right time and place, but they are not the same as race and so shouldn't be brought up as equivalent in a conversation which is about race. Same way as it would be inappropriate for a POC man to come into a conversation about sexism and say "But what about racism?" (this is different from "Let's consider the way sexism and racism interact").

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Off metafandom, a very good post : I Didn’t Dream of Dragons. An indian fan (and possibly writer?), deepad, talks about her experience reading sff in english about european people in an european world, and how a lot of the arguments white american etc authors make about "Writing the Other" are flawed. EDIT: She responds to some common criticisms here.

EDIT: Disclaimer 4a applies *sighs at self*

Something she said which touches on a topic I've been thinking about for a while is "I have spent a lifetime reading well-written books with nuanced characters that hurt me by erasing or misrepresenting me".

One of the axioms a lot of creative types seem to work from is that their only priority should be The Art. Great Art broadens the soul and civilises society etc, so an Artist should not let themselves be swayed by worries about social responsibility/hurting people's feelings etc. Any times questions like this come up they are either dismissed as making false assumptions (which is often true: playing violent video games does not in fact make you a murderer, and it is very hard to predict what effect if any a work will have on the population as a whole etc) or it's argued that these consequences only happen as a result of bad art, and the solution is to work even harder at making True Art. Which is what the artists were doing anyway, how convenient.
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Reading the article I mentioned in my last post I was reminded of stuff white people like, specifically this video of the creator talking about his experiences was interesting, the way he went from making a blog for fun to book deal in like a month is intense.

Something he said, which took me a while to realise when I first saw the blog, is that it's not about "white people", it's about upper middle class left wing types and the way they we see ourselves as free-thinking unique snowflakes¹. Really most of the digs are about class not race but since "White people" care more about being seen as non-racist than non-classist² and are very self conscious about white guilt etc that name is more effective. Kind of annoying for white people who aren't White People and don't get the joke, I imagine.

See for example #62 Knowing what’s best for poor people. I am often amazed at how openly "left wing" people despise the poor. They watch Today Tonight! And have badly dyed hair! And use bad grammar! (Unlike poor people from other countries who are adorably authentic and charming. Unless they chop down trees or eat McDonalds or something)

Also there was a link to this black guy who set up a stall so people could have their photo taken with him, I salute his bravery :)

I've often pondered talking more about class but am worried about (a)Coming up against the fairly unselfconscious classism a lot of people have³ and (b) Collapsing in self consciousness as I ponder my own class.

1)And I think a large part of the appeal of the blog for White People is feeling smug at how much more self aware they are compared to all those other White People.
2)Which is very different from being less racist
3)Cue my friends from the country saying "Bah! You have it easy!" :)

I keep meaning to post about cultural appropriation since I think it's a really important and interesting issue, but since I'm still figuring it out my ideas never quite coalesce. But in the meantime White American culture is General Tso’s Chicken and Chop Suey.

The video (by Jennifer 8. Lee) is definitely worth watching, about the way that "chinese american" food is as american as beer and pizza and the history of it's invention and misrepresentation.
It's interesting as someone from a different non-chinese country, with it's own different "chinese" food. It took me years to figure out what "egg rolls" and "pot stickers" were :)

The article (by Restructure) is more interested in why this is bad.

Something Restructure brings up in the comments which really pinged for me is that people go on about "authenticity" and it gets this social cache (ie "authentically exotic" food/clothes/music etc as a sign of being cosmopolitan) when what we should worry about is if something is representative.
( my thoughts )

delux_vivens posted to deadbrowalking asking for manips of Vanessa Williams as Galadriel (there's been an ongoing discussion about the whitewashing of Avatar etc and the question "If it's ok to make non-white characters white, why not vice-versa?")

Normally I lurk there since I don't trust myself not to say something dumb (it's aimed at POC, but I find it's the only decent place to get an anti-racist POV on scifi), but I decided it wouldn't do any harm to have a go, and I've been pondering trying my hand at photoshopping for a while but didn't have any inspiration.

So, rather chucked together since there was no way it wasn't going to be fairly crap as a first attempt:
Vanessa Williams as Galadriel.

So, I've done: fanart, fanfic, fancomics, a vid, cosplay, and now a manip. Anything I'm missing? Macros, I guess. I can do that :D

( Rambly thoughts )

I am So Sick of the way hollywood hollywoodises stories, taking out anything unusual or interesting and making it all bland and same-y. And what I am most, angrily sick of is white washing.

First we have Earthsea.
And then 21.
And now Avatar.

A short synopsis of how the usual excuses are wrong.

The one that most often annoys me is "But they just cast the best people for the part and they happened to be white." Would these people feel the same way if a story about white people was cast all with non-white people? Would the Harry Potter films be an ok adaptation if the main characters were all black(*)? Or played by 50 year olds? Even if they were really good actors? You cast a role like that with certain prerequisites in mind, and in all three of these cases the ethnicities of the characters was important. You shouldn't even be auditioning white people.

If you make a conscious decision to do colourblind casting (which is, imo, a valid choice for certain stories. But not these ones) then statistically,you would very rarely end up with all-white major characters, and you'd get non-white protagonists a hell of a lot more often than we do. (In america, about 1 in 9)

Anyway, to wash the taste out of your brain, Someone makes some better casting suggestions for Avatar. Those are some pretty people :)

All this discussion is making me want to get around to watching Avatar (the tv series!) properly, I've seen a few episodes and thought it was ok but never really got into it.

(*)Actually, I was thinking about it, it would be interesting if Harry or Ron wasn't white, given they're from "old wizarding families" (is it ever said they're old english families?) Hermione not being white is too obvious. So a better example is Pride and Prejudice: I liked "Bride and Prejudice" but it certainly wasn't strictly accurate to the characters as written :)

So, we have group X. They have a cause (sexism, racism, the environment etc). You support this cause in principle, but don't like the way they pursue it. That's fine, but there are certain arguments which result from this situation which come up again and again and I thought I'd address them here. I've been pondering it for a while but this was a big "inspiration" :/

Note that if you do have a problem with that cause then that's a different thing, though then you still have to be careful not to conflate the medium with the message so the arguments below are still problematic. In fact a lot of the time I think people use these arguments (especially the last) to mask the fact that they don't want to support group X, but aren't willing to say that due to peer pressure or not having any rational argument beyond "It's hard" or "it makes me uncomfortable".

( They're just not nice )
( It's in their own best interests to be nice )
( They have a moral obligation to be nice )
( If they're not nice I'm justified in ignoring their cause, maybe even actively opposing it )
( Links )

(This grew from a comment I made on this entry of shineys_are_us's, and then today I got all inspired to post it by the american election)
( Various ponderings on nations and togetherness )

New york times article: the evidence is that Senator Obama is facing what scholars have dubbed racism without racists. Via nico_wolfwood, who sends me lots of articles (to my gmail account, which I never check!)

I found this interesting, but a little surreal, since I've been hanging out with people who have specifically chosen to use a broader definition of "racism" which includes this much more common and persnickety sort. (Also my main reaction is "Duh", but hey :))

And yes, this is a sign that I'm feeling smart enough to deal with comments on tricky topics again (and notice that I've forgotten birthdays etc), yay my brain! I make no promises as to feeling this smart by the time anyone replies...

Oh, and I rang my family, and her party isn't for a week and a bit. And is at Annalakshmi, where I can't eat any of the food, but on the plus side means I won't feel so bad if I end up having mine somewhere with no vegetarian options :)

Someone at femmeconne asked me for some examples of times I'd screwed up talking about race on the internet, which I decided was justification for this tl;dr screed (which I've been working on for ages) I've done "not X" for pretty much every "Do X" listed here, this is basically everything I wish someone had told me a few years ago :)

EDIT: This lays it out much better, read it instead if you like :) Race Relations 101 - What if I screw up?
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(A follow on from Speaking about bad ideas...atheism and race! since a lot of the same arguments came up in the comments)

Why I see cultural intolerance as racist: VERY few people in polite modern western society are explicitly racist in the "I hate everyone with dark skin" way. I tend to use "racist" to mean any tendency in society which consistently and unfairly discriminates against people of a particular ethnicity, even though most of these justify themselves using cultural rather than explicitly racist ideas. If you scratch the surface, a lot of the time these ideas are being applied arbitrarily or inconsistently and it really is about race after all.

I covered the basic ideas in Why you can't trust your values, so this is just a "few" *cough* extra things.

I mean you can't help but have values and judge other people by them, and since you don't grow up in a vacuum chances are you're going to end up seeing people from your own culture as being (on average) better since they follow your values more closely. But you have to be very careful about thinking about where those values come from, and if you're applying them fairly, and what consequences you bring from them.

Short version:
It's ok to say "I don't understand why more americans don't oppose the death penalty, though I guess I can see how it ties in with the emphasis their society tends to place on justice"
It's not ok to say "All christians are a bunch of bloodthirsty savages, just look at the bible and the way they all support the death penalty"
( Read more... )

(A continuation of my basic principles, inspired by this discussion)

In general, if everyone from group A (women, the poor, immigrants etc) just happens to violate seemingly coincidental and objective value B then:
(a) It really is a coincidence
(b) They're just inferior in general
(c) There's something skeevy going on with the way your values are contructed
(d) You're not applying your values consistently
( And no, you don't get to just assume it's b... )