Captain Oblivious tl;dr's In An Ironically Unoblivious Fashion: Racism Meta Ahoy
So the other day I was thinking about that whole SF/F racism kerfuffle again (people who are sick of it feel free to skip this post) and about trying to unpack some of my own unconscious issues. (I would like to note before I start that I am not holding my hand out for Nice White Lady Cookies here, seeing as people have been accused of that throughout and often rightly so. I'm just trying to verbalise this for myself and guess it might be food for thought for somebody else too.) I was specifically wondering why I felt oddly uncomfortable and defensive when bentley called me out on ignoring Australia's status as an almost South East Asian country during my incoherent ramble about Tolkein and Islands. (Typing that just now? I tried to write "on seeming like I was ignoring." Now, I was in fact referring to the dominant majority within the SF/F field at the time, but a) it was an unclear statement and b) that's not what this is even about, so why did I get the urge to frame it defensively, hmm?)
It occurred to me as I was reading a Jetstar inflight magazine (which was... in my bathroom... for SOME REASON... despite the fact that nobody in our family has flown anywhere since... idk my parents collect random stuff?) in which all the articles were translated into Chinese (I think) after the English versions. I had a slightly negative reaction to that too, and I thought, hang on a sec. It's the English language thing. I have heaps of Asian friends... who all speak English as their primary mode of communication. Most of the story plots floating around my head have plenty of Asian characters... who all speak English, except for some grandparents of main characters who I've framed as having the same English level as my own grandparents. (...yes, I do basically have family trees for all my characters, because I am anal like that, why do you ask?)
I'm a writer. The act of writing and my identity as a writer are incredibly important to me, it's a far larger part of my identity than anythign to do with race... but. But I am a writer of the English language. I speak Russian pretty well but I wouldn't want to have to write a sonnet in it. (Actually I think trying to write a sonnet in Russian is probably like trying to write a haiku in English... you get the point, but it just doesn't quite feel natural.) I don't speak any Asian languages at all yet. The idea of thinking about Australia as a South East Asian country (which it obviously could be, geographically speaking) entails the concept of an Australia in which English is not the dominant language, and that is apparently threatening to my writerly identity... And it's not out of the question that within fifty years most things will have a Chinese translation on the end, and it's within the realm of possibility that a hundred years after that most things would have an English translation on the end. I don't think it's LIKELY to happen, after all, the Jetstar magazine was obviously on an Asia-pacific flight and would have been read by a lot of people whose primary language is not English regardless of Australia's English status in general. But try telling that to my hindbrain.
Now, let's unpack this reaction on two levels. Firstly, hypocrisy - this is EXACTLY what I was talking about in the Islands post a few posts ago. Jetstar is actually doing what I said we don't do enough of, and taking a more European view of neighbouring countries - I expect plenty of magazines in Austria are translated in German, in Switzerland and Belgium are translated or even just written in French okay I just looked those up and uh. Austria's official language IS German *facepalm* while Belgium and Switzerland have three official languages each - French, Dutch and German and German, French and Italian respectively, says Google. Which just proves my point further - THREE NATIONAL LANGUAGES. Writing more things in various Asian languages is a perfectly natural thing for Australia to do, and does not threaten English any more than French translations threaten Italian in Italy. So I'm a textbook case of not practicing what I preach here.
And secondly, even if it did, what my subconscious is basically kicking up a fight about is that any work I write in English might in the future be marginalized because of being written in a language other than the dominant one of my country. You know... like Latino writers of Spanish or Mexican in the U.S. Or whoever the hell writes in Walloon in Belgium. Or Yiddish writers uh... pretty much anywhere, I guess. And this is NOW. Any challenge to the supremacy of the English language in Australia would go nowhere until LONG after I am dead, and this is what I am twitching over?
Now, there are almost certainly bog-standard racial issues bound up in this as well, because let's face it, I had a pretty insular upbringing. Russian culture is VERY casually, impersonally racist, I'm not sure if it's more so than ours or if I just notice it more because I'm one step removed from it, but even just examining the language is... yeah. And I went to a Jewish primary school. I basically remember two non-white people in my childhood, one of whom was a boy on my street that I played with when I was five and of whom I have maybe one clear memory, and one a Chinese girl who lived in the apartment next door for about six months. Aside from that it was Russians, Anglos and White South African Jews all the way, baby, at least until I hit high school. So I'm pretty sure there's subtle racially based reactions in there somewhere, just like everybody else, but it makes sense to me that they'd stay dormant, or at least passive, in the absence of something the brain percieves as a threat. Certainly a quick squiz back at the original posts reveals that the latest round of Internet Shoutyness on the topic is full of people bristling because their work, which they're obviously proud of, is perceived as being under attack, and in some cases also their status as Friend Of The Oppressed Minorities, which I guess they are proud of in a similar way.
And if there's nothing else we've learned from human history, it's that fear brings out the worst in people, that fear is infectious, that fear sinks ever so quickly to the lowest common denominator. ...this is where my thoughts cross over into a dissection of the horror genre and my/our attraction to it that I absolutely do not have time for because it is 2:19 am and I have to be awake at eight thirty to go to class, cripes. Ah, fuck it, I will skip the lecture, download the movie we're watching in the screening and go to the three thirty pm class to hand in my assignment. ...which I also have to finish WRITING tomorrow, so I'm going to go to bed now anyway. PS yay my thinky icon gets an outing.
It occurred to me as I was reading a Jetstar inflight magazine (which was... in my bathroom... for SOME REASON... despite the fact that nobody in our family has flown anywhere since... idk my parents collect random stuff?) in which all the articles were translated into Chinese (I think) after the English versions. I had a slightly negative reaction to that too, and I thought, hang on a sec. It's the English language thing. I have heaps of Asian friends... who all speak English as their primary mode of communication. Most of the story plots floating around my head have plenty of Asian characters... who all speak English, except for some grandparents of main characters who I've framed as having the same English level as my own grandparents. (...yes, I do basically have family trees for all my characters, because I am anal like that, why do you ask?)
I'm a writer. The act of writing and my identity as a writer are incredibly important to me, it's a far larger part of my identity than anythign to do with race... but. But I am a writer of the English language. I speak Russian pretty well but I wouldn't want to have to write a sonnet in it. (Actually I think trying to write a sonnet in Russian is probably like trying to write a haiku in English... you get the point, but it just doesn't quite feel natural.) I don't speak any Asian languages at all yet. The idea of thinking about Australia as a South East Asian country (which it obviously could be, geographically speaking) entails the concept of an Australia in which English is not the dominant language, and that is apparently threatening to my writerly identity... And it's not out of the question that within fifty years most things will have a Chinese translation on the end, and it's within the realm of possibility that a hundred years after that most things would have an English translation on the end. I don't think it's LIKELY to happen, after all, the Jetstar magazine was obviously on an Asia-pacific flight and would have been read by a lot of people whose primary language is not English regardless of Australia's English status in general. But try telling that to my hindbrain.
Now, let's unpack this reaction on two levels. Firstly, hypocrisy - this is EXACTLY what I was talking about in the Islands post a few posts ago. Jetstar is actually doing what I said we don't do enough of, and taking a more European view of neighbouring countries - I expect plenty of magazines in Austria are translated in German, in Switzerland and Belgium are translated or even just written in French okay I just looked those up and uh. Austria's official language IS German *facepalm* while Belgium and Switzerland have three official languages each - French, Dutch and German and German, French and Italian respectively, says Google. Which just proves my point further - THREE NATIONAL LANGUAGES. Writing more things in various Asian languages is a perfectly natural thing for Australia to do, and does not threaten English any more than French translations threaten Italian in Italy. So I'm a textbook case of not practicing what I preach here.
And secondly, even if it did, what my subconscious is basically kicking up a fight about is that any work I write in English might in the future be marginalized because of being written in a language other than the dominant one of my country. You know... like Latino writers of Spanish or Mexican in the U.S. Or whoever the hell writes in Walloon in Belgium. Or Yiddish writers uh... pretty much anywhere, I guess. And this is NOW. Any challenge to the supremacy of the English language in Australia would go nowhere until LONG after I am dead, and this is what I am twitching over?
Now, there are almost certainly bog-standard racial issues bound up in this as well, because let's face it, I had a pretty insular upbringing. Russian culture is VERY casually, impersonally racist, I'm not sure if it's more so than ours or if I just notice it more because I'm one step removed from it, but even just examining the language is... yeah. And I went to a Jewish primary school. I basically remember two non-white people in my childhood, one of whom was a boy on my street that I played with when I was five and of whom I have maybe one clear memory, and one a Chinese girl who lived in the apartment next door for about six months. Aside from that it was Russians, Anglos and White South African Jews all the way, baby, at least until I hit high school. So I'm pretty sure there's subtle racially based reactions in there somewhere, just like everybody else, but it makes sense to me that they'd stay dormant, or at least passive, in the absence of something the brain percieves as a threat. Certainly a quick squiz back at the original posts reveals that the latest round of Internet Shoutyness on the topic is full of people bristling because their work, which they're obviously proud of, is perceived as being under attack, and in some cases also their status as Friend Of The Oppressed Minorities, which I guess they are proud of in a similar way.
And if there's nothing else we've learned from human history, it's that fear brings out the worst in people, that fear is infectious, that fear sinks ever so quickly to the lowest common denominator. ...this is where my thoughts cross over into a dissection of the horror genre and my/our attraction to it that I absolutely do not have time for because it is 2:19 am and I have to be awake at eight thirty to go to class, cripes. Ah, fuck it, I will skip the lecture, download the movie we're watching in the screening and go to the three thirty pm class to hand in my assignment. ...which I also have to finish WRITING tomorrow, so I'm going to go to bed now anyway. PS yay my thinky icon gets an outing.