Racism
There is an episode "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip" where DL Hughley's character Simon is talking to Matt Alby (Matt Perry) about hiring a black writer for the show. Matt, an award-winning writer, is offended that Simon believes him incapable of writing "black enough" and cracks a joke then and there to prove it. Simon says that yes that was a good joke but it never would have made it on the air because his liberal guilt would have prevented him from ever actually saying such a joke in public.
It had never been articulated to me in that way but as soon as I heard it, it hit me like a hammer. He was absolutely right. There are simply certain ethnic situations that I am incapable of writing because I would feel guilty doing so. Granted, I am not a master of urban dialect (and we're not just talking ebonics, as urban drawl changes based on the urban environment, Baltimore being different than St. Louis being different than Atlanta, etc). At the same time, I get bothered when my writing is dismissed out of hand as something I should never attempt given that I'm white. Especially when writing about St. Louis. I didn't just work down by the river. I didn't just post job openings in the River Front Times. I explored that city from neighborhood to neighborhood, I listened to the people that were around me. I watched what was happening. (I should probably stop comparing the May Day celebration on North Grand and Natural Bridge to a Nelly video because anyone that wasn't there never believes me and thinks I'm being racist.) While I certainly did not live the urban black environment (I grew up poor white, not poor black), I have more exposure to that culture than some of the black girls I've dated!
Yet when I write, I feel guilty. And when I describe what I'm trying to accomplish, I'm pre-judged.
This makes writing Jehovah's Hitlist particularly difficult. The wealthy have moved to new cities built on platforms above the old, high enough that if the oceans rise again, they won't die. The rich have segregated out all the minorities they tried to marginalize of the years, so easily accomplished because of limited resources and the right connections. Now the INner-city (really the under-city) of Denver is organized into segregated neighborhoods, creating the illusion of the stereotypes that damned them to that existence in the first place. Gang life is the only way to survive and those gangs form on neighborhood lines, the blacks in one, the poor white trash in another, Jews in another, and so on. That racism is so ingrained in a young man who's grown up knowing nothing else that he uses that terminology without any consideration to what it means or that any other epithet might be more appropriate. How difficult is it for me to intentionally put racism into my work just to create the world in which he lives. Jehovah starts the story infiltrating Hadi territory where all the Mohammeds live and thankful he doesn't have to deal with the Jew Crew or the Kendall Street Queers. I have, through all my effort, avoided the N word and I honestly don't know if I'll be able to use it, a word that I abhor when not repeating Chris Rock or Bernie Mac (again, something I should stop doing, I know).
(Of course, the Jews don't call themselves the Jew Crew, but that's neither here nor there.)
I'm setting my jaw and plowing forward and while readers won't ever know how hard it was for me to write that way and how committed I am to illustrating the ingrained horror of the guy's life, they will quite promptly and matter-of-factly dismiss that effort as the pathetic attempts of a white guy trying to write a black character. If any of them are stupid enough to say as much to my face, I may have to kick them in the teeth.
It had never been articulated to me in that way but as soon as I heard it, it hit me like a hammer. He was absolutely right. There are simply certain ethnic situations that I am incapable of writing because I would feel guilty doing so. Granted, I am not a master of urban dialect (and we're not just talking ebonics, as urban drawl changes based on the urban environment, Baltimore being different than St. Louis being different than Atlanta, etc). At the same time, I get bothered when my writing is dismissed out of hand as something I should never attempt given that I'm white. Especially when writing about St. Louis. I didn't just work down by the river. I didn't just post job openings in the River Front Times. I explored that city from neighborhood to neighborhood, I listened to the people that were around me. I watched what was happening. (I should probably stop comparing the May Day celebration on North Grand and Natural Bridge to a Nelly video because anyone that wasn't there never believes me and thinks I'm being racist.) While I certainly did not live the urban black environment (I grew up poor white, not poor black), I have more exposure to that culture than some of the black girls I've dated!
Yet when I write, I feel guilty. And when I describe what I'm trying to accomplish, I'm pre-judged.
This makes writing Jehovah's Hitlist particularly difficult. The wealthy have moved to new cities built on platforms above the old, high enough that if the oceans rise again, they won't die. The rich have segregated out all the minorities they tried to marginalize of the years, so easily accomplished because of limited resources and the right connections. Now the INner-city (really the under-city) of Denver is organized into segregated neighborhoods, creating the illusion of the stereotypes that damned them to that existence in the first place. Gang life is the only way to survive and those gangs form on neighborhood lines, the blacks in one, the poor white trash in another, Jews in another, and so on. That racism is so ingrained in a young man who's grown up knowing nothing else that he uses that terminology without any consideration to what it means or that any other epithet might be more appropriate. How difficult is it for me to intentionally put racism into my work just to create the world in which he lives. Jehovah starts the story infiltrating Hadi territory where all the Mohammeds live and thankful he doesn't have to deal with the Jew Crew or the Kendall Street Queers. I have, through all my effort, avoided the N word and I honestly don't know if I'll be able to use it, a word that I abhor when not repeating Chris Rock or Bernie Mac (again, something I should stop doing, I know).
(Of course, the Jews don't call themselves the Jew Crew, but that's neither here nor there.)
I'm setting my jaw and plowing forward and while readers won't ever know how hard it was for me to write that way and how committed I am to illustrating the ingrained horror of the guy's life, they will quite promptly and matter-of-factly dismiss that effort as the pathetic attempts of a white guy trying to write a black character. If any of them are stupid enough to say as much to my face, I may have to kick them in the teeth.