"That's mighty white of you" - a prelude to a long post on privilege in America
"Despite his slant eyes and yellow skin, he proved to be quite a likeable fellow as well as an erudite scientist."
--Captain S.P.Meek, 'Awlo of Ulm,' 1931 (via Ansible 170)
Obnoxious or not? After all, our early SF writer was trying to pay his Asian-coded character a compliment - he says he was both likeable and smart. How is that an insult? Aren't being "likeable" and intelligent good things?
[/disingenuous]
--The answer, and it should be obvious, is that these positive traits are presented as surprising and unexpected in a person who also has "yellow skin" and "slant eyes," as something which exist in spite of the ethnicity of the individual under discussion. Unpacking it a little bit further, it is saying that by default Asian (and Asian-analogue) people are unlikeable and have inferior minds.
And trying to pay a compliment by saying "you're not like the unpleasant ignorant Yellow Peril immigrants I usually meet," is like trying to compliment a woman by saying "wow, you're unusually intelligent and interesting for a girl*!" only with less likelihood of being taken as flattering. It manages to combine bigotry (your group, as a whole, is bad) with privilege (as compared to the general goodness of my group) as well as condescension (Good for you! You've managed to transcend your natural defects and reach - or nearly reach, let's be honest - the high level of my group...)
It's easy of course to look back on "the bad old days" with smugness. But it hasn't gone away, it's just gotten more subtle.
Even if a white author doesn't intend to offend, even if they're too stupid to grasp how insulting and arrogant the proclaimed "colorblindness" that graciously allows that non-white people can be "just as good," that doesn't change the inherent degrading nature of the "compliment."
I mean, I really doubt that Meek intended it to be an insult to Asian readers: I think that he simply didn't think about Asian readers, about Asians existing as either a potential audience with the power to observe and criticize his stories, or as active and real human beings with lives out there in the world, at all.
Which is itself an obnoxious and insulting and bad state to be in...
Notes: It is remotely possible that Meek was writing in self-aware ironic mode, but from the brief summary of his stories I found here it does not seem likely to me.
"Colorblindness" as used by white liberals, and distinct from the concept of "colorblind casting" which is the radical idea that where the story doesn't revolve around the ethnicity of the characters, it's okay to have even main charas not be Default White Male; e.g., there's no intrinsic reason that the protagonist of I Am Legend absolutely HAS to be a blue-eyed blond, (and I would even argue to be male, but that's FAR too radical for Hollywood...)
* That is, unpacked, "despite your breasts and uterus"--
--Captain S.P.Meek, 'Awlo of Ulm,' 1931 (via Ansible 170)
Obnoxious or not? After all, our early SF writer was trying to pay his Asian-coded character a compliment - he says he was both likeable and smart. How is that an insult? Aren't being "likeable" and intelligent good things?
[/disingenuous]
--The answer, and it should be obvious, is that these positive traits are presented as surprising and unexpected in a person who also has "yellow skin" and "slant eyes," as something which exist in spite of the ethnicity of the individual under discussion. Unpacking it a little bit further, it is saying that by default Asian (and Asian-analogue) people are unlikeable and have inferior minds.
And trying to pay a compliment by saying "you're not like the unpleasant ignorant Yellow Peril immigrants I usually meet," is like trying to compliment a woman by saying "wow, you're unusually intelligent and interesting for a girl*!" only with less likelihood of being taken as flattering. It manages to combine bigotry (your group, as a whole, is bad) with privilege (as compared to the general goodness of my group) as well as condescension (Good for you! You've managed to transcend your natural defects and reach - or nearly reach, let's be honest - the high level of my group...)
It's easy of course to look back on "the bad old days" with smugness. But it hasn't gone away, it's just gotten more subtle.
Even if a white author doesn't intend to offend, even if they're too stupid to grasp how insulting and arrogant the proclaimed "colorblindness" that graciously allows that non-white people can be "just as good," that doesn't change the inherent degrading nature of the "compliment."
I mean, I really doubt that Meek intended it to be an insult to Asian readers: I think that he simply didn't think about Asian readers, about Asians existing as either a potential audience with the power to observe and criticize his stories, or as active and real human beings with lives out there in the world, at all.
Which is itself an obnoxious and insulting and bad state to be in...
Notes: It is remotely possible that Meek was writing in self-aware ironic mode, but from the brief summary of his stories I found here it does not seem likely to me.
"Colorblindness" as used by white liberals, and distinct from the concept of "colorblind casting" which is the radical idea that where the story doesn't revolve around the ethnicity of the characters, it's okay to have even main charas not be Default White Male; e.g., there's no intrinsic reason that the protagonist of I Am Legend absolutely HAS to be a blue-eyed blond, (and I would even argue to be male, but that's FAR too radical for Hollywood...)
* That is, unpacked, "despite your breasts and uterus"--