RaceFail 09

[poilass]

I have been following this for some time but rarely commenting. However I do not want my silence to be taken for apathy or assent, particularly not assent with this piece of condescending fuckwittery (a more elegant response to that here, also here, here, here and hereIf you don't know what I'm talking about (srsly?), various timelines & summaries

Comments

[dawnkiller]

Ahaha. I haven't been following this, but I'm guessing it exploded out of the white-washing of the live action Avatar movie.

This entire debate is interesting to me, in a "I want to stay away from this" thing. Don't get me wrong, being genetically biracial and considering myself culturally Japanese-American while generally being taken as white by society means I have a few opinions. But dear god, what a mess.

The thing is, I think the greatest damage is done by the parties who insist that there is no problem and people should lighten up on either side of the argument. If you want to piss someone off, tell them their opinion and own life experiences don't matter, or even flat-out wrong. A non-racial parallel would be to have someone tell you that clearly you can't be very smart if you didn't attend or finish college, HS, what have you. (As a cum laude graduate I feel I have some standing when I say assumption is complete BS.) And whites aren't the only ones guilty of this kind of behavior -- all those who rant about straight/white/

[bookshop]

it actually did *not* explode out of the white-washing of the live action Avatar movie. That actually is a completely separate issue that fandom communities have also been dealing with. While our awareness of both issues happening at once has certainly contributed to the discussion, I do not know of any instance where those discussions have overlapped.

The issue actually began because of the advice you mention by matociquala, who unfortunately throughout this debate has not proved as willing to extend her advice about accepting the "other" to the role of accepting critique about how well she had practiced multiculturalism and non-appropriative techniques in her own writing. This began a debate that spawned outward from her journal and Seeking Avalon's (whose timeline that Poi linked to is essential reading if you want to get a good overview of the debate and subsequent upheavals/flounces/violations of privacy

[dawnkiller]

Um, yeah, I gotta agree with bossymarmelade there. Sometimes I think the other side can fail to understand that the reason many people pursue things like gay/women/race -rights is because it's not just an abstract cause, but a personal reality

[poilass]

Bear's book was criticised -- politely -- by all of two people, at least one of whom also said that she had enjoyed the book despite having some problems with it. Bear responded in a post that was widely praised, apologising and agreeing the book had failed in that respect. The fail began when people made racist comments in that post, Bear didn't call any of them on despite having promised to moderate the discussion, and eventually started agreeing with them, saying she was just "taking a hit for the team" and, god, I don't even want to go into it now, the details are linked above if you want to search them out. In her most recent post she now says that the original criticism was shallow and never valid, and she only *pretended* to believe that she'd made a mistake because she "felt it was important to serve as an example of how to engage dialogue on unconscious institutional racism

[dawnkiller]

"Taking a hit for the team"? Yeah, I think that's the official sign that Reason has left the building because Martyrdom keeps elbowing it in the eye. *headdesk*

Well, the debate proved a kind of equality . . . If nothing else, we've got a good demonstration that anyone, regardless of race, sex, religion, finances and fandom, is capable of sticking their foot so far up their mouth they can kick themselves in the tonsils.

[trishalynn]

The fail began when people made racist comments in that post, Bear didn't call any of them on despite having promised to moderate the discussion

This I'm interested in seeing. Which link above goes to this part?