a rare meaningful post

[sabaceanbabe]

I first read about this a couple of days ago and just wow. How wrong can one small group of people (author, artist, betas) be, not simply without trying but without even realizing? And that's not even mentioning the readers who initially had no problem with either the setting of the fic or the racism intrinsic to the story itself. For that

Comments

[beccatoria]

Wow, somehow I missed that enitrely (well okay, it's not that surprising since I have nothing to do with SPN fandom) but...wow. Thanks for linking me to this and for the reminder that people do this type of shit still, and yeah. I hope someone would call me out if I behaved with an ounce of that kind of privilege too. :(

[sabaceanbabe]

I'm not really part of the SPN fandom, either, but really the fandom/fic seems to be more of a catalyst for something larger, you know?

[beccatoria]

Yes, absolutely agreed - I'm glad it's traveling beyond the boundaries of the fandom now. I'm planning to link it in my next non-vid post. Thanks again for spreading the information.

[lee_in_limbo]

Sadly, most of western literature up to the 1960s was written blissfully without any such racial sensitivity, and yet most of our (i.e. ignorant white folk) narrative traditions derive from those classics. It's hard to unlearn what our culture still holds up as the pinnacle of human expression. We learn now to see the flaws, but it's hard to erase them entirely from our own sensibilities when creating fiction. The tropes are still embedded in our subconsciousness, and we have to think pretty hard when writing multicultural stories to do so without treading on the sensibilities of those who are more aware of the disparity in our upbringings

[tidal_race]

But I can honestly say that it would make me leery of even attempting to write other races into my fiction, which might be one way to avoid the problem, but it certainly can't help alleviate the problem of educating folks to understand one another's cultural identities better.

The same goes for me. I have been lucky to see posts on my flist that are about dialogue however, and not attacking. Both deirdre_c and medie made excellent posts about how we all make mistakes and that apologizing, learning, and not continuing the behavior are the important points in a case like this.

[sabaceanbabe]

...we all make mistakes and that apologizing, learning, and not continuing the behavior are the important points in a case like this.

Yes, exactly this.

[tidal_race]

That said, I can't imagine being the author right now. Even they do all those things, this will follow them for the rest of their time on lj more than likely.

[leelust]

I don't read rpf (or wincest for that matter) so i totally missed it. But i have a question about it and will PM you if that's ok.

[sabaceanbabe]

Sure, go right ahead. :)

[frolicndetour]

(and by this I mean writing something cluelessly racist), guys, please call me on it

God, me too. Though tbh if any of my LJ friends wrote something at all similar to the fic in question, I'd be too busy dying of shock to do much in the way of calling out. There's cluelessness and there's... that. o.O The only thing I can imagine is that the author is very, very young.

[sabaceanbabe]

I... don't think she is? Very, very young, that is. I could maybe go with very, very naive...?

[bets_cyn]

You're the 2nd to write of this in my Flist.... and I don't follow either fandom. Interesting discussions flowing from it.

But still, it shocks me now and again how much people can be unaware of things they say. I get that I work with diverse audience and am usually the minority so I get much more symantics, cultural awareness and such because of it. And I spent those 7 months living in another country but still, people surprise me with how unaware they are about things... especially things they say/write/do.