Mostly, this is what it sounds like when I think out loud.
So, I'm catching up with a lot of sci fi fandom meta that's been blowing all around the house the last month in the wake of RaceFail and the pissiness between the old school book fans and the media fans. I don't really have a lot to add to that discussion, except for two things:
1) I don't claim to be anonymous online (as a matter of fact, I'm actively opposed to anonymity, for better or worse), and I've spent a lot of time trying to build an online social network of my own and to be recognized for what and who I am. It doesn't matter that chebonne isn't my real name, it still has everything I am and all my opinions behind it, and every comment or post I make is going to be enforced by that history. What I want, and what I'm trying to do, is to be recognized online, not as a BNF or anything that ridiculous, but as a person, and this is she. Doesn't matter if her signature happens to be chebonne or Linn. To accuse someone of being dishonest because they have a pseudonym is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. If I wanted to be anonymous online I'd use my full legal name and nobody would be the wiser.
Issue #2 on the agenda today, and the more important, I think, is the RaceFail. Media fandom has been going back and forth on feminism, sexuality, disability and race for years now, but it appears that the old school book fandom is just now getting in on the discussion, judging by the reactions that's been coming from the old guard (essentially "I KNOW YOU ARE BUT WHAT AM I?") So, of course, as an SF writer (well, technically) I started thinking about this kind of a lot.
Now, this is me, so this is of course going to be a little insulting and a lot generalizing, but bear with me. Being a privileged 20-something white girl of upper middle class background, race isn't the first thing I think about when I read or even when I write. TJ and Elyse are two of the very, very few characters in my novel who are, shall we say, chromatic, and I have to fight to actually manage to get that into a description of them (of course, I have similar issues describing almost everybody, unless they have some sort of striking feature). I end up talking about how big TJ is, or Elyse's piercings, not about their respective skin colors.
Sometimes I do wish I had a more diverse cast. I keep thinking that I want more main characters who are gay or black or fuck it, even behorned and green. More disabled people in key positions, for example. The problem I have is that my characters have gotten to the point where they're mostly kind of locked. Oh, Sirius can get new tattoos and Alex can go through the entire rainbow and then some when it comes to hair color, and Kamion can get some new wrinkles, but their general appearance stays pretty much the same.
Oh, I know why this is. Children are racist whether they want to or not -- my cousin innocently asked why a black girl she saw in town one say was all "dirty" when she was about five years old, to much facepalming among the rest of us -- and I grew up in Hicksville, North Sweden. I was a teenager before I met my first black person. I didn't befriend a person of color until I was in senior high school. Oh, I saw people of various colors and creeds on TV, but if you haven't noticed? Middle Eastern and black people are sometimes not portrayed as very kind and friendly people on TV, and that is NOW, approaching the 10's.
There is something fantastically threatening about dark skin when you've lived your entire life in a white environment and this is coming from a girl who has ALWAYS been nervous around men, no matter what their skin color. I was nervous around my BROTHERS when I was a kid, for heaven's sake, what do you think a black dude on television is going to do to me?
I started writing the universe I'm writing in when I was nine years old. When I was nine, black people didn't exist. When I was nine, gay people didn't exist. My first chromatic character was written in when I was twelve -- mixed race, girl named Joey -- and my first gay character showed up when I was fifteen. The old gang of characters I've got hanging around is still depressingly heteronormative and white. And I kind of wish I could change that. There are two reasons why I don't.
First of all, most of my main cast is related in one way or the other. Thus, if my main character is white, most of his family is going to end up being white. The Moonsilver clan (all 60 or so of them)? White. Demonic, but white. The Thompson family? Whiter than white bread. Well, sort of. They might be kind of the yellowish gold persuasion, judging by the way I keep describing Shea. The Starchildren? Well, I'm kind of thinking about turning them blue, but generally speaking? WHITE. Actually, those girls are whiter than white people. Mixed breeds (if Starchildren were capable of producing those) would be GRAY, okay?
The number two reason is that I invented most of them while I was still in junior high. That would be, what, 12-15 years old. Almost every single one of them. Man, I fucking WISH I had more aliens in key positions, but goddammit, it's like a fucking old school Sims feature. Once you've done them one way, there's no going back.
Now, this post may seem like it's all about me trying to excuse myself from having a diverse cast, but that wasn't actually the point. My point is this: racial discussions make me sad. Why? Because I don't know how to make it better. Don't we all want to revolutionize the world a little bit? It's kind of depressing to realize that I won't be the one to do that, that I can't force myself into being the person to do that.
That being said, I think a lot of the race question in SF in particular is dependent on cultural context. The world I'm writing doesn't have black vs. whites. It's the black and whites and fucking purple vs. the furry, behorned ones. And on a couple of memorable occasions, the black, white and furry ones vs. the homicidally inclined, whatever color they may be. So TJ, for example, being black, hasn't grown up with the kind of misapprehensions and racism that most black people in this world have. People of his persuasion were never enslaved or treated like cattle. Now people of Draco and Sunniva's persuasion, on the other hand...
I think I'd try to be more conscious of skin color if I was writing something in the vein of Star Trek instead, because those are Earthlings (and I really have to stop myself from using the term Tellan Humans, seriously, my novel has warped my brain), and they have that history.
Oh, I really don't know. I think I lost sight of what I wanted to say. Maybe I just wanted to whine. Maybe I just wanted to say that there is something fantastically stressful about trying to be a professional writer these days, with the PC Police hovering over your shoulder at every turn. Maybe I just wish I was a better person that could write about a disabled, gay, Middle Eastern/black middle-aged woman as my protagonist and have it be interesting. I don't know.
1) I don't claim to be anonymous online (as a matter of fact, I'm actively opposed to anonymity, for better or worse), and I've spent a lot of time trying to build an online social network of my own and to be recognized for what and who I am. It doesn't matter that chebonne isn't my real name, it still has everything I am and all my opinions behind it, and every comment or post I make is going to be enforced by that history. What I want, and what I'm trying to do, is to be recognized online, not as a BNF or anything that ridiculous, but as a person, and this is she. Doesn't matter if her signature happens to be chebonne or Linn. To accuse someone of being dishonest because they have a pseudonym is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. If I wanted to be anonymous online I'd use my full legal name and nobody would be the wiser.
Issue #2 on the agenda today, and the more important, I think, is the RaceFail. Media fandom has been going back and forth on feminism, sexuality, disability and race for years now, but it appears that the old school book fandom is just now getting in on the discussion, judging by the reactions that's been coming from the old guard (essentially "I KNOW YOU ARE BUT WHAT AM I?") So, of course, as an SF writer (well, technically) I started thinking about this kind of a lot.
Now, this is me, so this is of course going to be a little insulting and a lot generalizing, but bear with me. Being a privileged 20-something white girl of upper middle class background, race isn't the first thing I think about when I read or even when I write. TJ and Elyse are two of the very, very few characters in my novel who are, shall we say, chromatic, and I have to fight to actually manage to get that into a description of them (of course, I have similar issues describing almost everybody, unless they have some sort of striking feature). I end up talking about how big TJ is, or Elyse's piercings, not about their respective skin colors.
Sometimes I do wish I had a more diverse cast. I keep thinking that I want more main characters who are gay or black or fuck it, even behorned and green. More disabled people in key positions, for example. The problem I have is that my characters have gotten to the point where they're mostly kind of locked. Oh, Sirius can get new tattoos and Alex can go through the entire rainbow and then some when it comes to hair color, and Kamion can get some new wrinkles, but their general appearance stays pretty much the same.
Oh, I know why this is. Children are racist whether they want to or not -- my cousin innocently asked why a black girl she saw in town one say was all "dirty" when she was about five years old, to much facepalming among the rest of us -- and I grew up in Hicksville, North Sweden. I was a teenager before I met my first black person. I didn't befriend a person of color until I was in senior high school. Oh, I saw people of various colors and creeds on TV, but if you haven't noticed? Middle Eastern and black people are sometimes not portrayed as very kind and friendly people on TV, and that is NOW, approaching the 10's.
There is something fantastically threatening about dark skin when you've lived your entire life in a white environment and this is coming from a girl who has ALWAYS been nervous around men, no matter what their skin color. I was nervous around my BROTHERS when I was a kid, for heaven's sake, what do you think a black dude on television is going to do to me?
I started writing the universe I'm writing in when I was nine years old. When I was nine, black people didn't exist. When I was nine, gay people didn't exist. My first chromatic character was written in when I was twelve -- mixed race, girl named Joey -- and my first gay character showed up when I was fifteen. The old gang of characters I've got hanging around is still depressingly heteronormative and white. And I kind of wish I could change that. There are two reasons why I don't.
First of all, most of my main cast is related in one way or the other. Thus, if my main character is white, most of his family is going to end up being white. The Moonsilver clan (all 60 or so of them)? White. Demonic, but white. The Thompson family? Whiter than white bread. Well, sort of. They might be kind of the yellowish gold persuasion, judging by the way I keep describing Shea. The Starchildren? Well, I'm kind of thinking about turning them blue, but generally speaking? WHITE. Actually, those girls are whiter than white people. Mixed breeds (if Starchildren were capable of producing those) would be GRAY, okay?
The number two reason is that I invented most of them while I was still in junior high. That would be, what, 12-15 years old. Almost every single one of them. Man, I fucking WISH I had more aliens in key positions, but goddammit, it's like a fucking old school Sims feature. Once you've done them one way, there's no going back.
Now, this post may seem like it's all about me trying to excuse myself from having a diverse cast, but that wasn't actually the point. My point is this: racial discussions make me sad. Why? Because I don't know how to make it better. Don't we all want to revolutionize the world a little bit? It's kind of depressing to realize that I won't be the one to do that, that I can't force myself into being the person to do that.
That being said, I think a lot of the race question in SF in particular is dependent on cultural context. The world I'm writing doesn't have black vs. whites. It's the black and whites and fucking purple vs. the furry, behorned ones. And on a couple of memorable occasions, the black, white and furry ones vs. the homicidally inclined, whatever color they may be. So TJ, for example, being black, hasn't grown up with the kind of misapprehensions and racism that most black people in this world have. People of his persuasion were never enslaved or treated like cattle. Now people of Draco and Sunniva's persuasion, on the other hand...
I think I'd try to be more conscious of skin color if I was writing something in the vein of Star Trek instead, because those are Earthlings (and I really have to stop myself from using the term Tellan Humans, seriously, my novel has warped my brain), and they have that history.
Oh, I really don't know. I think I lost sight of what I wanted to say. Maybe I just wanted to whine. Maybe I just wanted to say that there is something fantastically stressful about trying to be a professional writer these days, with the PC Police hovering over your shoulder at every turn. Maybe I just wish I was a better person that could write about a disabled, gay, Middle Eastern/black middle-aged woman as my protagonist and have it be interesting. I don't know.