Usually, in discussions of cultural appropriation, a white writer will say something along the lines of, "But you're saying that if I write anything about other cultures, you'll accuse me of cultural appropriation! If that's so, maybe I should just write about nothing but white people!" The usual (and, I think, sensible) response to this is, " ( Read more... )

I was talking to B about foreign policy, and had an insight about one way of viewing world politics. It's the view I've held more-or-less unconsciously for many years, and I don't know how relevant it feels to other people, but I thought I'd share ( Read more... )

About Patricia Wrede's new novel The Thirteenth Child.

But much more about the history of America, and First Nations people, and names, and emptiness. She's done that thing she does where she has a new and original thought and phrases it clearly and chillingly and eloquently. I love when she does that.

Go read!--R ( Read more... )

1. I am a white writer, about halfway through the first draft of a novel most of whose characters are people of color ( Read more... )

(Specifically the parts of the Internet currently arguing over whether African-American and Latino voters were the reason that Prop 8 passed in California):

These are Queer Black Pe o ple.

These are People in favor of Prop 8. Please note the demographics.

Also? These are the people who provided the most funding for the pro-Prop 8 ( Read more... )

So, the wise and thoughtful kmd has made an lj entry saying basically what I was trying to say last year, but much more clearly and persuasively. In her entry here, she talks about some of the extremely complicated emotions and power-dynamics going on, particularly for white allies, in anti-racism work. And about why bringing the snark is just not ( Read more... )

Happy International Blog Against Racism Week!

So, I’m starting this with a caveat: the below is not meant to suggest that I don’t think it’s a good idea to talk about race, try to educate, confront racism, etc. On the contrary-I’m incredibly glad people do, because it’s made a major change in my life. My first year of graduate school, one of my ( Read more... )

So, on Friday, I made a post about a thought I'd had about cultural appropriation*. Unfortunately, I got it all down really quickly and ran out the door, so it came out sort of half-baked. (And then I went down to see my wife and my friends for the weekend (yay!), and spent no time online to fix it). And people came and made interesting comments ( Read more... )

In a comment to a recent post of mine, homasse described "White Woman Syndrome," or WWS, a phenomenon discussed on a lot of the minority-focused forums on lj. She said that the usual explanation people there come up with for why White women sometimes act like complete, entitled twits is that "White women, being considered the ideal for beauty and such, ( Read more... )

The people from Teen Empowerment (a program in the high school where I work which hires high school students to do projects to "improve their school climate") came up with what seemed like a fairly daring project this year. They had an English class of students from our high school, E High (urban, almost all students of color and/or recent ( Read more... )