Somewhere in here is a valuable conversation...

[jimhines]

Can someone please tell me what Racefail 2009 is really about?*

I mean, I've read some of the posts, as well as pats_quinade's wonderfully biting write-up. I saw Elizabeth Bear's original response to a critique of her work, which I think was one of the starting points to this whole thing, and I very much respect the way she tried to handle it. I've seen the

Comments

[cat_mcdougall]

I've seen a lot about this, and... still don't know what's going on. I mean, the wank comms have picked up on it, and normally, I can get a gist from following links and reading and all that fun stuff, but... this time, I'm kinda lost. The best round up I've seen is here.

As for writing "the other": The best advice I ever got from someone about writing people of a separate race than I am was this: "Write people. Write human beings. Their skin colour doesn't matter." And I try to live by that.

[jimhines]

You know, in a way, I think that's good advice. Characters have to be people, and defining the character by race or sex or whatever is going to result in a fairly flat character. But I don't think you can say skin color doesn't matter, either. It does matter, at least in our current culture. It's not the only thing that matters, and it's only one piece of who a person is, but it's not irrelevant. Does that make sense? Overall, I think you're right on the mark that characters have to be human beings first.

[cat_mcdougall]

I think (and may she come back and thwap me with a newspaper, should I be wrong) what she was getting at was that stressing, or worrying about the skin colour is usually when you go too far the wrong way into stereotypes. Because you're trying too hard to add that... "flavour" of skin colour to it and it's just not going to work.

(Of course, I write mostly fantasy, so race, and skin colour only counts when I say it does. ;)

[jimhines]

That makes sense. I have a (thankfully unpublished) fantasy novel where I did exactly that. It was a learning experience for me as a writer, and I thank Shadowstar that book never saw print.

And I know what you mean. My first trilogy was mostly blue-skinned and yellow-skinned folks :-)

[pats_quinade]

That's really good advice. It made me think of two things

[joycemocha]

Characters have to be human beings. But I don't necessarily think that when I write about other cultures, that we are limited by the boundaries of our own cultures. So if I want to write about a culture where skin color doesn't matter, well, it's my world, my say, and skin color doesn't matter there.

(at least, that's what those characters believe. Though there are cultures in that world where it does matter, and my characters think they're barking mad bigots. Well, yeah, they are. And they're power-hungry, barking mad, megalomaniacs).

[dharma_slut]

Try ,a href="http://wiki.feministsf.net/index.php?title=RaceFail_09"> this link which goes to the wiki entry at feministsf.net.