Fen of Color United and me as a white creator
There's a new LiveJournal-based community, Fen of Color United (with the great acronym foc_u). Tomorrow they're having a consciousness-raising event, and I'll be posting one of their nifty banners in support. Today I want to write a little bit about how I see the general topic of race and its representation in genre fiction, including the science fiction, fantasy, and horror that are my professional stomping grounds, and I want to do it with my author hat on.
The #1 lesson for me as an author of pallor is that my colleagues and I are really howlingly ignorant about our readers of color. I keep going back to the wild unicorn herd check in on deadbrowalking, and it staggers me every time. (27 pages and counting!) I recognize some of the sorts of folks represented-I grew up in an ethnically diverse community and schools, and with Caltech and JPL nearby, we had geeks and nerds in all colors. But there are others I don't have any experience with, separated as I am from them by (along with race) class, geography within the US, national boundaries, all kinds of things. And yet I recognize them at once as my fellow fans...and as people I'd like to sell stories to.
But how can I avoid putting my foot in it, when I didn't even suspect they were there as a potential audience? Well, I can start by listening. And then I can continue by listening. And then I can keep listening some more. Oh, and while I'm doing that, I can listen.
Since I've started, I've learned a fair amount about ignorant decisions that have driven off readers of color from books they might otherwise have enjoyed, and about the ways ignorant decisions can get reinforced, pass unchallenged, and end up damaging the work in ways they didn't have to. I've read some enlightening discussion about how to assess whether something is incidental or crucial, and about dealing with the realization that there are critical flaws in either part. I've seen great suggestions about important questions to ask myself very early on, and also some pretty heated debate about the merits of any particular formulation in light of someone else's experience.
All of this makes me a better writer. I've gone back over my notes about stories I might write, and had to toss several. But I've also seen unexpected potential in a couple others, which seem like they might go from iffy to having real potential if I rethink my approach to them and put race more centrally in the mix. Maybe something will come of these, maybe not. But the process is productive. It's also, I think, morally desirable. It's not just unwise to carelessly write off whole categories of people. If I want to say something through the symbols and possibilities of genre fiction-and I do-then I need to make sure I'm not tossing huge chunks of the species overboard without even knowing that I'm doing it.
Someone may want to start up a tone argument. I'm not inclined to have that argument now. And I'll explain why based on my own experience with disability. I have been, at times, in such pure agony and so impaired by other symptoms that I would indeed have gotten down on my hands and knees (if I could have bent so far) and begged for relief. But it's not just relief that authority figures sometimes withheld from me, it's basic paying of attention. I think of the doctor who cheerfully told my parents that he knew from the moment I walked in what my problem was, and so he didn't actually pay any attention to the test results, for instance. I have gotten angry and shouted at doctors, nurses, and bureaucrats. And I've been told that my getting angry just shows that I'm irresponsible and that I don't deserve to be taken seriously until I speak nicely.
You know what? The hell with that. That's wrong. I get heated because I'm the one suffering and they're not. If they hurt the way I did at that moment, and I was refusing to pay attention, they'd get angry too, and with good reason.
That's what I think about when I read white complaints that fans of color are being too mean or harsh or whatever. Maybe in some objective sense some are. Unfair, unfounded criticism certainly exists. (I've gotten my share in gaming and there's some that still makes me flinch, years later.) But I know what it's like to hurt and rage and be dismissed, and I think to myself, "I am not qualified to sit in judgment." I'm not the one suffering, when it comes to race. And I know for absolute, 100% sure that right now, fans of color do not need any more white people lecturing them about etiquette while failing to think of them during creation and driving them away with callousness after publication.
So, pretty much, I'm not doing any of that stuff. And I don't propose to host a discussion of how mean some fans of color are. Take that somewhere else. I'd rather put my time into learning important things and, yes, making some new friends, so that I can do my part to be less of the problem in the future.
The #1 lesson for me as an author of pallor is that my colleagues and I are really howlingly ignorant about our readers of color. I keep going back to the wild unicorn herd check in on deadbrowalking, and it staggers me every time. (27 pages and counting!) I recognize some of the sorts of folks represented-I grew up in an ethnically diverse community and schools, and with Caltech and JPL nearby, we had geeks and nerds in all colors. But there are others I don't have any experience with, separated as I am from them by (along with race) class, geography within the US, national boundaries, all kinds of things. And yet I recognize them at once as my fellow fans...and as people I'd like to sell stories to.
But how can I avoid putting my foot in it, when I didn't even suspect they were there as a potential audience? Well, I can start by listening. And then I can continue by listening. And then I can keep listening some more. Oh, and while I'm doing that, I can listen.
Since I've started, I've learned a fair amount about ignorant decisions that have driven off readers of color from books they might otherwise have enjoyed, and about the ways ignorant decisions can get reinforced, pass unchallenged, and end up damaging the work in ways they didn't have to. I've read some enlightening discussion about how to assess whether something is incidental or crucial, and about dealing with the realization that there are critical flaws in either part. I've seen great suggestions about important questions to ask myself very early on, and also some pretty heated debate about the merits of any particular formulation in light of someone else's experience.
All of this makes me a better writer. I've gone back over my notes about stories I might write, and had to toss several. But I've also seen unexpected potential in a couple others, which seem like they might go from iffy to having real potential if I rethink my approach to them and put race more centrally in the mix. Maybe something will come of these, maybe not. But the process is productive. It's also, I think, morally desirable. It's not just unwise to carelessly write off whole categories of people. If I want to say something through the symbols and possibilities of genre fiction-and I do-then I need to make sure I'm not tossing huge chunks of the species overboard without even knowing that I'm doing it.
Someone may want to start up a tone argument. I'm not inclined to have that argument now. And I'll explain why based on my own experience with disability. I have been, at times, in such pure agony and so impaired by other symptoms that I would indeed have gotten down on my hands and knees (if I could have bent so far) and begged for relief. But it's not just relief that authority figures sometimes withheld from me, it's basic paying of attention. I think of the doctor who cheerfully told my parents that he knew from the moment I walked in what my problem was, and so he didn't actually pay any attention to the test results, for instance. I have gotten angry and shouted at doctors, nurses, and bureaucrats. And I've been told that my getting angry just shows that I'm irresponsible and that I don't deserve to be taken seriously until I speak nicely.
You know what? The hell with that. That's wrong. I get heated because I'm the one suffering and they're not. If they hurt the way I did at that moment, and I was refusing to pay attention, they'd get angry too, and with good reason.
That's what I think about when I read white complaints that fans of color are being too mean or harsh or whatever. Maybe in some objective sense some are. Unfair, unfounded criticism certainly exists. (I've gotten my share in gaming and there's some that still makes me flinch, years later.) But I know what it's like to hurt and rage and be dismissed, and I think to myself, "I am not qualified to sit in judgment." I'm not the one suffering, when it comes to race. And I know for absolute, 100% sure that right now, fans of color do not need any more white people lecturing them about etiquette while failing to think of them during creation and driving them away with callousness after publication.
So, pretty much, I'm not doing any of that stuff. And I don't propose to host a discussion of how mean some fans of color are. Take that somewhere else. I'd rather put my time into learning important things and, yes, making some new friends, so that I can do my part to be less of the problem in the future.