Of Death Eaters, Fans and Racism

[witchwillow]

The Daily Deviant

This post is going to be about a Harry Potter community here on livejournal. There will be no spoilers for Book 7, but I will be using analogies from the book's universe. Please use your own discretion.

This post will be about racism.

Comments

[liviapenn]

If this kink community is FOR racial mixing. In fact, they are writing sexual fantasies of racial mixing. How is this racist?

First of all, they are equating interracial relationships, such as Kingsley/Tonks or Luna/Dean, with bestiality kinkfic featuring "couples" such as woman/snake and man/goat. They are labeling them under the *same topic*.

How do you think the gay and lesbian members of fandom would feel if daily_deviant decided to have a challenge about "gay, lesbian and pedophie" relationships, all listed under a single tag, as if they were all basically the same thing and only needed one word

Second of all, they are using an offensive term (miscegenation) when there is a perfectly good neutral word (interracial) that would do. It's like purposely choosing to say "hey, you're a fag, aren't you?" when there are perfectly good neutral words (gay, homosexual) that do not have such an offensive connotation.

And, for the record, I don't believe this kink community has EVERY used the word nigger or anything remotely racist like it.

They have used the word "miscegenation." The word is racist. It was invented by racists as part of a racist smear campaign. It is most well-known as a word used by politicians and lawmakers in order to pass official-sounding racist laws. There is simply no argument on this topic. Porn producers don't even use that phrase when they're actually *making* exploitative, racist interracial porn. Because it's so racist even the porn industry wouldn't use it.

If this is a word out of a printed dictionary that people in an entire subculture understand to be a good thing, then I'd say you're out of context.

Many people in fandom were, apparently, ignorant of the context and history of the word. (This is not their fault; many are young, many are non-English speakers and many probably went to schools that did not, for whatever reason, focus on the history of racism in the United States.)

However, it is illogical to argue that because members of a certain community don't *know* a certain fact, that fact must therefore be *untrue*.

I'll bet the majority of my flist couldn't tell you the capital of Burundi. That doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

And just because many of the members of daily_deviant were unaware of the history of the term the mods chose, that doesn't mean its racist history and context does not exist. Many, many people, even in fandom, were already aware of it and were incredibly shocked to hear that anyone would use it to refer to interracial relationships (and that the mods would include interspecies and bestiality under the same label.)

[ciaan]

It shocks me that there are people who grew up in the USA and don't know the word miscegenation.

(I have also seen it used to refer to inter-species relations in works of science fiction or fantasy but only where the author/narrative/society/characters of the work viewed that as a bad thing.)