So get your tea, coffee and some delicious food, because I’d like you to read this all the way through, even if you don’t like some of the things I have to say. I’d like to start this out with a little less personal statement:
In 2016, Let us make the decision to not pin the actions of a few on the whole.
This post from Slate does a good job of articulating why, in a discussion of oppressive behaviors, it’s not helpful for people in the oppressive group to chime in re: why ALL the people in that group aren’t like that. It’s framed within the context of gender issues/discussion, but the same concept applies within discussions not just of racism but specifically white supremacism (which the original post you commented on was discussing-white supremacism in fandom and the way people perpetuate it):
It’s not HELPFUL to come into a discussion about SYSTEMIC problems and point out the ways specific individuals work to not contribute to the problems; the people talking about an oppressive system are WELL AWARE there are always individuals within that system who both (1) are members of the oppressive group(s) nevertheless (2) working against/to dismantle the system. The existence of those people does not mean the system is not still a problem. Pointing out that Not All White People are racists doesn’t change the fact that racism and white supremacist ideology are SYSTEMIC and INSTITUTIONALIZED problems people have to ACTIVELY learn to not enable; no one comes to an anti-racist mindset in a vacuum. It’s a process of active and conscious UNlearning of years of societal indoctrination about the value of Whiteness above all else.
The other problem with your post is its touting of color-blindness. That’s not helpful either. People’s racial identity informs not only how they view themselves but how the world views and treats them. Acting like race-even though it’s a social construct-doesn’t exist or doesn’t really mean anything is naive. My Blackness is a part of who I am. It’s not ALL of who I am, but it’s a part of who I am and for you or anyone else to say, ‘Well, I don’t see you as Black/I don’t see your Blackness’ isn’t you being progressive. It’s you denying part of my humanity.
So I’ll admit it to all of you, I made a mistake. If you haven’t seen this little post of mine from yesterday, here’s the link. And I got schooled. Thank God I did, because the original poster was fine in what they were saying and I was wrong. And the biggest problem is that, although I tried to be clearer than I was, I came off as one of those “I don’t see you as black” kind of people, which I’m not. So let me make it clear here.
If you claim “I don’t see you as [insert ethnicity here]”…
YOU.
ARE.
RACIST.
If you were really not a racist, you would not need to say that just to be around them. God made them as their race, and it’s not by any accident. It’s because humans are beautiful in every single shade. All of them. So if you go around trying to compliment someone by saying “I don’t see you as black”, you’re subtly/non-subtly saying that a black person is a lesser human being. Very simply, that is crap.
So don’t do that.
Rant complete.
Thoughts on the Church Shooting in South Carolina… #CharlestonMassacre #BlackLivesMatter
So, I just recently finished watching FOX News with my mother, and I saw some more information on the church shooting in South Carolina. I am angry. I am straight-up pissed off. I had to just stop watching partway through because it was just bothering me so much. It caused me wonder a lot of things. Mainly, why we can be so judgmental over something as simple as skin color difference, to the…
So, I just recently finished watching FOX News with my mother, and I saw some more information on the church shooting in South Carolina. I am angry. I had to just stop watching partway through because it was just bothering me so much. It caused me wonder a lot of things. Mainly, why we can be so judgmental over something as simple as skin color difference, to the point where we shoot each another over it? Let’s face it, this wasn’t a religiously based attack. This was a racially based attack of terrorism.
I wish we could live in a time where such things aren’t an issue. I constantly want to believe good things about people as a whole. I want to live in a time where we are, as Martin Luther King Jr. said, judged based on the content of our character and not on the color of our skin. I watch the news and I consistently see that’s not the case.
Let’s put some things in perspective. St. Augustine? Black. Jesus Christ of Nazareth? Also likely dark-skinned. Yet I don’t see anybody saying anything about their skin color when they talk about them. No. They talk about their sayings, their teachings, their life, their philosophies. I’m not seeing that we can’t notice the differences in color. Unless you’re completely blind or seriously colorblind that’s not going to happen. Hopefully, we can even celebrate the differences. God made humans as beautiful creatures in every single pigment. When He made male and female and called it good, and He did not exclude future generations or diversities. He said it was good. End of sentence.
But just because you’re not religious like me does not give you have a right to be racist. Please, let’s realize that we’re all human. We are all one race. That’s why I don’t like referring to color differences as racial differences. You don’t hear about basset hounds that hate only chihuahuas. That’s mainly because they don’t speak, but that’s not the point. We’re all humans, and hating a human for any other reason than for them doing something terrible is wrong. If you find yourself doing otherwise, or someone else doing it, stop it! We may never get rid of racism, but we can start with fixing our own thoughts and actions.
For my final thoughts on this summarized in a better way than I could, please see a fellow blogger’s post linked here. It’s an excellent conclusion.
This is a continuing thought from something I reblogged recently on Tumblr, but I didn’t want to spam the post with a giant paragraph of stuff. I may have written something similar before, but I’m upset about it all over again.
I think we need to be far more aware of our use of race in novels. From what I am told, it has been determined that Aragorn from Lord of the Rings is neither white nor fully human. But that is never made clear in the books. Because of that, Tolkien lost an excellent chance to have slightly more ethnic representation in a movie series that’s criticized for having so little. He didn’t think about it at the time, I’m sure. But what if he had? The legacy of Lord of the Rings could have been very different. Tolkien could have paved the way for ethnically diverse fantasy novels everywhere.
But the fact is that nowadays unless it is distinctly explained that a character is not white, it’s assumed that he/she is white in a fantasy novel. If it’s set in Ancient Western Europe, this makes some sense. There were a lot of white people in Ancient Western Europe. But most modern fantasy stories are not in Western Europe. A lot of the time, it’s in an alternate Earth universe of some sort (ex: Middle Earth, Alagaesia, Narnia, etc.). So why are we automatically assuming everyone’s white in this a.u.? Why even assume that white skin is the dominant group? Why assume there’s white skin at all? Why can’t these humanoids have blue skin? I have no idea. Perhaps it would make people think of it as a Sci-Fi novel if we went that far.
Because of this, I made sure in the novel that I’m writing, The Dark Soldier, that there is plenty of ethnic diversities. The main character is not white, not because I have anything against white people. I’m white. But we have too many white male protagonists. That’s boring, cliché even. So yes, while nations like Africa, Europe, Asia and Latin America do not exist in this fantasy world, ethnicities similar to theirs do. There are characters distinctly pointed out to be black, white, golden, olive skinned or in-between shades. There are many mentions of racism in the series. And not one piece of this bothers any of my friends or my illustrator. She’s made sure to paint people with the skin colors that I described them, for which I am very grateful.
Maybe it’s about time we stop being scared to talk about race in novels. It’s the best way we can stop being racist ourselves.
NOTE: It has occurred to me that I might need to explain something. I do not write this in some feeble attempt to make up for white people being racist throughout the centuries. Literally everyone’s a little bit racist, as the song goes. I don’t know why we as a culture have decided to focus on white people doing so. If I was doing that, I would be writing a book without any white people at all and making sure everyone knew it so that I “didn’t appear racist”. What silliness. I’m writing this book for every tribe, culture, nation and human that has any prejudice towards any group of humans at all. I hope that maybe people who were racist against a certain group before will think to themselves, “You know what? I know this character is [certain race they are racist against], but they’re cool. I like them. Why am I even racist against their group in the first place?” That’s the idea. I hope it works.
This is a continuing thought from something I re-blogged recently, but I didn’t want to spam the post with a giant paragraph of stuff. I think we need to be far more aware of our use of race in novels.
From what I am told, it has been determined that Aragorn from Lord of the Rings is neither white nor fully human. But that is never made clear in the books. Because of that, Tolkien lost an excellent chance to have slightly more ethnic representation in a movie series that’s criticized for having so little. He didn’t think about it at the time, I’m sure. But what if he had? The legacy of Lord of the Rings could have been very different. Tolkien could have paved the way for ethnically diverse fantasy novels everywhere.
But the fact is that nowadays unless it is distinctly explained that a character is not white, it’s assumed that he/she is white in a fantasy novel. If it’s set in Ancient Western Europe, this makes some sense. There were a lot of white people in Ancient Western Europe. But most modern fantasy stories are not in Western Europe. A lot of the time, it’s in an alternate Earth universe of some sort (ex: Middle Earth, Alagaesia, Narnia, etc.). So why are we automatically assuming everyone’s white in this a.u.? Why even assume that white skin is the dominant group? Why assume there’s white skin at all? Why can’t these humanoids have blue skin? I have no idea. Perhaps it would make people think of it as a Sci-Fi novel if we went that far.
Because of this, I made sure in the novel that I’m writing, The Dark Soldier, that there is plenty of ethnic diversity. The main character is not white, not because I have anything against white people. I’m white. But we have too many white male protagonists. That’s boring, cliché even. So yes, while nations like Africa, Europe, Asia and Latin America do not exist in this fantasy world, ethnicities similar to theirs do. There are characters distinctly pointed out to be black, white, olive skinned or in-between shades. There are many mentions of racism in the series. And not one piece of this bothers any of my friends or my illustrator. She’s made sure to paint people with the skin colors that I described them, for which I am very grateful.
Maybe it’s about time we stop being scared to talk about race in novels. It’s the best way we can stop being racist ourselves.
heyitskrisss asked:
Is it ever ok to have a POC be the villain? (i also have a POC for my main character)
This post is a little more general than your specific circumstance because other people have asked this question and we wanted to be able to help the most amount of…
I realize I just put up a post on race in fantasy, but this is also important. Luckily, I have a lot of diversity of race in the series, and the villain in this case is a species other than human. But for those writing in which this is not the case, this would be important for you to see.
I want to talk about a little thing called race today. Don’t worry, I don’t believe this will result in any rioting.
When writing fantasy, or any other genre, do not be afraid to talk about different races. There is nothing that upsets me more than a book than only has one race of people because people are afraid to talk about
anything else. Sadly, this is prevalent in much of today’s fantasy
books. I’ve read quite a large amount of fantasy and even just regular
fiction books where the protagonists are all white humans. Goodness
gracious. The world is not just made up of white humans. Diversity is
awesome in our world, why not make it awesome in yours? Basically, don’t
be afraid to have more races than your own. If you aren’t, come up with
a good explanation, or make up for it with different races of other
creatures.
I think Lord of the Rings did an excellent job talking about this
using the animosity between dwarves and elves. The two hate each other
intensively for some time. Yet, there are those like Gimli and Legolas
who eventually learn that they can enjoy each other’s company and even
develop a friendship regardless of the matter of birth. They
successfully talked about racism without having a single mention of skin
color. (Not that there were any other ones than white, but the fact
remains.)
Still, don’t be afraid to break the fantasy norm or even call
attention to it. Have black-skinned elves! Have asian dwarves! Have
Middle Eastern fairies! Have half-elves and cross-breeds! The
possibilities are as endless as the universe you make!
I want to talk about a little thing called race today. Don’t worry, I don’t believe this will result in any rioting.
When writing fantasy, or any other book, do not be afraid to talk about different races. There is nothing that upsets me more than a book than only has one race of people because people are afraid to talk about anything else. Sadly, this is prevalent in much of today’s fantasy books. I’ve read quite a large amount of fantasy and even just regular fiction books where the protagonists are all white humans. Goodness gracious. The world is not just made up of white humans. Diversity is awesome in our world, why not make it awesome in yours? Basically, don’t be afraid to have more races than your own. If you aren’t, come up with a good explanation, or make up for it with different races of other creatures.
I think Lord of the Rings did an excellent job talking about this using the animosity between dwarves and elves. The two hate each other intensively for some time. Yet, there are those like Gimli and Legolas who eventually learn that they can enjoy each other’s company and even develop a friendship regardless of the matter of birth. They successfully talked about racism without having a single mention of skin color. (Not that there were any other ones than white, but the fact remains.)
Still, don’t be afraid to break the fantasy norm or even call attention to it. Have black-skinned elves! Have asian dwarves! Have Middle Eastern people! Have half-elves and cross-breeds! The possibilities are as endless as the universe you make!
“Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of hope.” — Maya Angelou
Making the link between anarchism and Christianity.
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Gabriel to Earth 