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Okay, here's the thing: I was going to take a break from posting about this RaceFail stuff, because I've got four assignments due in the next week and I've been in a bad way for pain the last few days and I'm running out of spoons... and besides, as someone who's a) only peripherally involved in fandom right now and b) certified white (no, really. By a government), who says I'm someone who even should be making daily arguments about race issues in fandom?
The thing is, though, not saying what I think about stuff also costs me spoons. Spoons that, right now, I can't afford, because an out of spoons error quite literally could kill me. So for the sake, if nothing else, of my brother-out-law, who's having to deal with me trying to deal with everything, I'm not going to shut up.
I keep seeing this same whine pop up, in a couple of different forms.
If I try to write PoC but I do it wrong, I'll get attacked. I guess I just WON'T EVEN TRY.
So you're saying that you can't write an alt-history that removes a race, or any alt-history at all if you get right down to it. Because you'll get attacked. These expectations are so unfair.
I... FLAMES. FLAMES ON THE SIDE OF MY FACE.
*takes a deep breath*
See... here's the thing.
You are allowed to write characters of all races and ethnicities. You are. What will not pass unchallenged is writing them as stereotypes, or as nothing more than props for the betterment of white characters. No-one's stopping you doing that either, technically, people will just point it out as offensive, because it is.
It's also bad and lazy writing, anyway, so why would you want to be able to do that? Be grateful for critical readers - they'll make you a better writer if you let them.
This complaint is seriously akin to: "Man, when I go into shops, they don't let me steal what I want and piss on the displays. I GUESS I JUST WON'T GO SHOPPING THEN."
You are allowed to write alternate histories on any premise you choose. However, you have to think about it.
The problem with The Thirteenth Child is not, inherently, the unpopulated Americas. It is entirely possible to write a genuinely good alt-history on those terms.
The problem with The Thirteenth Child is that:
i) The author removed all native populations from the Americas, and then proceeded on the assumption that this would make no substantial changes to history. That the USA would be about the same. That is just bad history, and is therefore fundamentally a bad alt-history novel. You engage with history, you think about it, or... else. Seriously. We history types are slow to rouse, and not so quick and worldly... but we will fuck you up. Because we are persistent. We are the kind of people who will chase ideas through microfilm and archives, breathing dust for days on end, and we live to argue.
ii) The author explicitly did this because it "eliminated the problem" - HER WORDS - of having to choose between two disliked stereotypes of the Indians. "Eliminating the problem" is, historically, also code for attempted genocide. A genocide of which the author herself is essentially a beneficiary.
I am honestly bemused that someone could write that down and not realise what they're doing. That it didn't seem to occur to her that "writing the Indians as people instead of stereotypes" was an option. That she didn't see that the implication of subtracting the natives but leaving the development of the United States more-or-less the same is that she thinks that the contribution of the natives (and of slavery, which she also skipped over for her own ease) is negligible.
That's not all of what's going on, of course, but my point is: Writing an alternate history in which the Americas had no indigenous population is a valid choice. But you would have to recognise the vast changes that would wreak in world history. You just can't treat it as a minor choice.
As I said before:
I'm not saying it's impossible to write speculative fantasy on these premises - what I'm saying is that you can't do it as background. If you write a people out of existence as background, rather than as the setup for an exploration of how the world is different without their influence, then you're almost guaranteed to be doing it for reasons that are entirely offensive.
Apologies for the less-lucid quality of this post - ultimately, I'm really frustrated with these lines of argument, and it's harder for me to argue things that seem like they should be intuitively obvious. A part of me just wants to know why the hell do people want to be able to get away with bad, lazy writing? WRITE BETTER AND YOU DON'T HAVE THIS PROBLEM.
So, in essence:
Dear people who think the expectations of PoC-and-allies fandom regarding non-white characters/races are unfair,
It's fine. Lern2play.
STFU,
Sami.Current Mood: tired Current Music: Baseball: Detroit vs Minnesota
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I will, for the sake of the sanity of my readers, make the effort to edit this post, rather than adding new ones, however.
Usual practice: Notes are public, actual proper essay content is locked until after the essay is handed in. If people are interested, they can read the essay itself when it's complete (probably I'll just throw a PDF up). I'm pretty sure that I've granted access to everyone who's subscribed to me, now. Locked content tends to be either Very Personal stuff (although, since I've made a medium-grade effort to keep the hateful trolls who've made me reluctant to post in my own livejournal from knowing this one is here, middling-personal stuff will probably be reasonably open), fiction works in progress, and chunks of essays and the like; if you'd rather be dropped from access for easier filtering of my posts, let me know.
( Anyway, essay. )Current Mood:  working Current Music: Cold Fairyland - A-jia-li-yalai
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