with their crooked stares

[maychorian]

For the interested, jujuberry136 has good thoughts about those Season 6 Criminal Minds casting spoilers. Well, more like good rants. But I found them very articulate and thought-provoking and I agree with everything she said.

In her extremely excellent link round-up on the recent unfunny business, amazonziti said something in this thread (which is also an excellent

Comments

[maychorian]

The tone argument really is a very strange argument to make, isn't it? Anyone who has experienced real discrimination based on things we can't control can see that extremely clearly. It comes from a position of privilege and defensiveness, from someone who has never had to notice racism or discrimination. And that is why I have to keep saying, over and over again, in comment after comment, that this argument is wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.

I'm sorry that you've experienced discrimination too. It's a horrible thing.

[maskedfangirl]

I agree with everything you said wholeheartedly. I'm finding all the discussions this incident spawned really fascinating - lots of intelligent discussion and information I didn't know, and by and large the discussion has been more respectful than I would've expected from something like this.

I'm curious to see what next step the fandom will take from here. Once most people are sick of discussing the racefail itself, will we take the next step and start talking about how to effectively write PoC in our own fic? That's the conversation I really want to see - especially since this incident seems to be scaring some white fic writers off writing PoC. I'm tempted to start this sort of conversation in my own LJ, but I'm not exactly an expert in that area myself.

[vikki]

will we take the next step and start talking about how to effectively write PoC in our own fic? That's the conversation I really want to see

I would love to see this conversation too, but in general I think we can all agree that to learn about experiences not like our own you have to ask people who have had that experience - which inevitably means asking people of color. Asking them to discuss their lives and experience in context of 'I want to use this information to write people of your color better' seems really insensitive and rude, you know? (It's not unlike what this entire post is about: PoC are not responsible for explaining to you why a racist statement/act is wrong.) There's always doing lots of research and reading accounts already published/posted, but this is probably insufficient for most purposes. =/

[maychorian]

I want to talk about it, too. I really, really do. I've had this idea for a fic that I want to write, and I'm nervous about it after this, and I want to talk to people about it. After a few days, maybe I'll write a post about it and try to get some discussion going. We'll see.

[maskedfangirl]

Ditto on the fic idea thing. All of these conversations have me thinking about ways to include characters from marginalized groups in fics about this white male dominated canon. Catherynne Valente wrote a fabulous post last year on why it's important to have PoC, women, GLBT people, etc. represented well in genre fiction, and I think the same is true for fan fiction - we look for heroes like ourselves in the safe spaces we make for ourselves in fiction. On top of that, fanfic has always been a great vehicle from which to rectify canon's points of fail - so of all places, this is where groups marginalized in Supernatural ought to be seen in the foreground

[gleeker13]

I'm not getting too involved in this, because I don't have the drive to devote hours to searching for discussion posts or to read the story, or even the excerpts. I do, however, want to throw my two cents in

[maychorian]

It would be nice if the author truly understood WHY and HOW she offended, rather than simply that her actions were offensive. Certainly. It's always good when one more person learns how to be a better person. That is my hope for her, personally.

But if she can't, I hope that the rest of fandom can have good discussions about this issue, anyway. I think we are moving toward that direction. I hope we can keep going.

[hold_onhope]

... Can I be sympathetic towards both?

(Look at me, asking someone else how I should feel. That is a mark of how freaked this whole debacle has made me the past few days.)

[maychorian]

Of course you can. I am. But my sympathy is definitely weighed more strongly to the ones who were offended rather the one who committed the offense.

[tonicollins]

It's not anyone's "job" to teach other people how to behave. But... if you berate the person who offended you and can't articulate why you're offended beyond typing: that's racist - what do you hope to accomplish?

[maychorian]

You answered your own question. You will have told that person that what they did was racist.

That's worth saying, even if you can say nothing else.

[tonicollins]

I see that you've told that person that you believe what they did was racist. And it may have been, overtly or not, but "because I say so" is hardly going to clue in someone who, maybe, had no idea what they did wrong in the first place.

[vikki]

It's so easy to educate yourself via the Internet that it's sick. So if someone only has the energy to say 'that's racist', well - look around. Ask someone else. Figure it out. It's not hard.