47 Responses so far

1. 1. Jim C. Hines on Sep 26th, 2007 at 11:00 am

   Huh … the only time I get that “punched in the gut” feeling in discussions of race/gender/etc. in writing is when someone calls me on my own laziness or cliches.

   Most of the discussions I’ve seen have been helpful, either as a reminder that culture requires as much or more research as anything else in your writing, or as inspiration for how to improve my writing.

   As for the idea that white authors shouldn’t write non-white characters? (Or men not writing women, or straights not writing gays, etc.) I don’t think I’ve ever been told that directly, and when I hear people saying it, I usually hear it from straight/white/male writers…

2. 2. tobias buckell on Sep 26th, 2007 at 11:03 am

   I also hear it from white/male writers, usually accompanied with some of the same things the above linked LJ’r says, that ‘they are saying I shouldn’t write this stuff.’

   It really gets me fired up, particularly after working so hard to spread the opposite message, see people take that message away anyway because its what they want to hear.

3. 3. Rick Novy on Sep 26th, 2007 at 1:27 pm

   And thus you run into the same old problem of some people wanting to keep the status quo and stay in comfort zones. Writing outside the comfort zone means taking a risk. The typical sf reader is still the straight-white-male, and the easy answer is to give those readers characters who look like them. That’s what sells books because that’s who buys books. And that is 1950s thinking.

   Maybe it’s easier for those of us who crossed some lines in our personal life. I’m a pasty-white slav who married inter-racial with cousins who married a different interracial and I have adopted siblings with a variety of colors. It makes inclusion normal for me because I live it.

   And speaking of being honest, if I have an escaped slave from the 1860s talking with a white male from 2007, do I avoid the obvious racial slur the slave will use on himself, or do I write it honestly.

   Slave: “I’m just a nigger boy.”
   White: “We don’t say that anymore.”

   At least not in my world-view. It’s unavoidable that the POV character will resemble the author. If my POV character is the white boy, then the statement that ‘we don’t say that anymore’ represents my thoughts, not necessarily reality. Is that being honest, or dishonest? Would it be dishonest to avoid using the inflamatory word completely?

4. 4. Mark Terry on Sep 26th, 2007 at 2:25 pm

   “a white male in a normative social clime”

   Well, I think that’s me. I’m not so sure how normative my social clime is (or what it is).

   These days I’m writing primarily about a white male. But my novel Dirty Deeds was written in the first person with a female narrator and I was repeatedly cited as being one of the few males who can write convincingly as a female. I take those reviews with a grain of salt… okay, I think they’re bullshit, but thanks for the kind words anyway. PLenty of males do so convincingly as women write from the male pov convincingly.

   I’m currently working on a thriller where the main character is a half-American/half-Chinese woman. Hell, if John Scalzi can write about genetically-engineered humans who look like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and live free in outer space, I guess I–hey, listen close–can write pretty much the fuck I want to.

   Do your research and use your imagination, dammit.

   A few years ago I was on a panel at Magna Cum Murder called “Writing As The Opposite Gender.” I was sitting next to Robert Greer, who is African-American, writes mysteries about an African-American and also thrillers about a Vietnamese-American female. Now, Greer was pissed off that day and he let everybody know it. The man’s an MD, African-American, a farmer, and a novelist. And he pretty much came out and said I’m not letting anybody tell me what I can or cannot do on the basis of my skin color or gender, and that includes what types of characters I can write about.

   He had a point.

5. 5. Mary Fitz... on Sep 26th, 2007 at 3:48 pm

   I’m a white middle class mid-western female. More than once that I should only write from a female POV, and usually it’s been by women. I don’t think this is because I write crappy male characters, because the comment almost always is something like “I really like this story, but why didn’t you tell it from the woman’s POV?”.

   I think somehow the people think since I’m a female writer, writing space opera style stuff, I’m somehow letting the team down by writing male characters.

   As for understanding “otherness” I’m dyslexic, I see everything differently in my head than the rest of you.

6. 6. Wyman Cooke on Sep 26th, 2007 at 4:06 pm

   I want to preface this by saying that I have not encountered the “You’re white. You can’t write about [insert race here]” meme here. I also want to point out that I haven’t followed the thread in Scalzi’s blog or elsewhere. All I know is what I encountered at WFC in Washington a few years ago. I was at a panel where one of the panelists spread that meme. I believe that she, the name has been changed to protect the innocent, and also because I don’t remember, said something like “White people can’t write American Indian characters.” I stood up and objected. The thought that just because of my race or gender I cannot write about characters of another race or gender is repugnant to me. That’s nonsense. Of course you need to research to breathe life into your character’s if you’re going to have them be from, say, Japan. Prohibiting Anglos from writing about Japanese characters is like only permitting the dead to write obituaries.

   I’m telling you Tobias, that idea is taught out there sometimes. It is a meme I want to stamp out wherever and whenever I find it.

7. 7. Mallory on Sep 26th, 2007 at 4:21 pm

   I think there is an effort to make writing across gender/race/culture wrong. I hear a lot of talk about appropriation when really everyone is in the business of appropriating from everyone else. If you take a good look you find out that monk over there would like to drive a Lexus. To some extent there is a desire to control others and pigeonhole their range as if appropriation only goes in one direction or as if feeling like a misfit is somehow attached to a specific set of personal experiences.

   My second novel was about a young woman with incredibly dark skin dealing with, no, not bigotry - dealing with ALLERGIES. Why was I attracted to this subject matter - because I share it. I have almost NO melanin in my skin and I’m highly allergic to modern civilization. Yes, I love my computer but I am aware of every gulp of offgassing that the plastics surrounding me exhale.

   My point is simply that human is human. I can and have successfully written from inside the world of men, inside the world of race, inside the world of orientation and inside the world of culture. I’m human. I’m curious. I’m interested.

   People bring THEIR STUFF to my writing and the writing of every author. It is incredibly important to remember that THEIR STUFF has NOTHING to do with the writing. It has to do with THEIR STUFF. If someone doesn’t want a white man to write about the experience of a black girl then it is that person’s personal issue. They can choose to ignore the work or rail about the work but in the end they shouldn’t be allowed to stop that exploration in advance of the creation of the work. How are we as humans supposed to understand the experience of others if we cannot take on the experience of others as much as we possibly can. We may fail but only if we never try at all. The effort to find that commonality of being alive and being human and not knowing very much is where we reach across the gaps to each other.

   I appropriate - I’m human!

8. 8. tobias buckell on Sep 26th, 2007 at 4:58 pm

   Well, see, appropriation is taking stuff from other cultures without sincerity. It’s not the same thing. I see lots of writers who will use elements of another culture without much care for how they’re doing it or why, and I view that as sort of blundering about. I’ve been one of those people on a panel talking about how to be sincere and have had people shouting at me that I’m trying to tell them I’m forcing them not write about whatever they want. I had one angry white man say “I’ll take anything I damn well please from anywhere I want, it’s my RIGHT!”

   The key word is ’sincere.’

9. 9. Ide Cyan on Sep 26th, 2007 at 4:59 pm

   Rick Novy wrote, upthread:

   And speaking of being honest, if I have an escaped slave from the 1860s talking with a white male from 2007, do I avoid the obvious racial slur the slave will use on himself, or do I write it honestly.

   Slave: “I’m just a nigger boy.”
   White: “We don’t say that anymore.”

   The word “nigger” is *still* used in 2007. You can’t write honestly by pretending it isn’t. Although your character may represent a POV of wishful ignorance and liberalism, this then brings up a second problem: of the very dynamic of having a white character tell a black character that his perception of himself is wrong.

   The word is “inflammatory” because it reflects a continued state of oppression. Recognising this underlying cause may be far more central to the honesty of the work than debating the use of the word itself.

10. 10. Nora on Sep 26th, 2007 at 5:36 pm

    I believe that she, the name has been changed to protect the innocent, and also because I don’t remember, said something like “White people can’t write American Indian characters.” I stood up and objected.

    Wyman,

    I’d be curious to know the context of that comment. Was she saying it as a prohibitive (i.e., “white people aren’t allowed to write Indians”), or as a complaint (i.e., “white people generally do a crappy job of writing Indians”)? Because if it’s the latter, I agree — most white writers who try to do PoC do it insincerely, i.e. horribly, which is why readers call foul on them and make them feel “punched in the gut”. (Writers who feel this way should remember that they’ve thrown the first punch by doing such a bad job of depicting their fellow human beings.) If she meant it as a prohibitive, then I’d also be curious to know — was she white?

11. 11. Rick Novy on Sep 26th, 2007 at 6:57 pm

    >>The word “nigger” is *still* used in 2007.

    I never said it isn’t. What I said was:

    > the statement that ‘we don’t say that anymore’ represents my thoughts, not necessarily reality.

    >>of the very dynamic of having a white character tell a black character that his perception of himself is wrong.

    But remember the situation I set up is not only a difference of race, but a difference of era. The black character grew up with oppression and attitudes that wouldn’t even begin to change for another hundred years. The white character has the perspective that things did start changing before he was born. The white character in that situation was telling the slave that he has value as a person, not as a commodity.

    As an aside, I grew up in the town where this story was set, which also happened to be a major hub on the underground railroad. The black population was under 1% while I lived in that town.

    There was a great guy in my highschool who happened to be part of that 1%. As a senior, I casually mentioned something about this guy to another classmate who I knew since grade school. his response was something to the effect of: “I don’t care about that nigger.”

    Up until that time, I had no idea this other classmate felt that way. I recall grunting and then walking away. I don’t believe I ever spoke to him again, but I know my opinion of him changed radically between the I and the period.

    In retrospect, that experience was like a frying pan upside the head. Yeah, there’s a lot that people think but don’t say things that stink like an overfilled outhouse on a warm August day. This guy opened the outhouse door as I walked past.

    So why, then, does the character’s words imply liberalism? Are all conservatives bigots? A conservative can’t tell another person to value himself? The story I pulled this dialog from is completely non-political, and you made an assumption about 6000 words based on 10 of them.

    Talk about a Rorschach test.

12. 12. Rob Darnell on Sep 26th, 2007 at 10:03 pm

    I keep beating around the bush with this. Not sure exactly how to ask my questions without sounding like a dickhead.

    It seems that generally only white male writers are getting a bad rep here. I guess I want to know why? Why white male writers? Or white writers in general? What is it about whites that causes them to be pointed out here? Is it just that whites are stupider than blacks and hispanics?

    Now I want to know, don’t writers who are black, hispanic or whatever write white characters in white culture, or is it just assumed that white people don’t have a culture? Do they pull their acts off well and does anyone get on their cases about their clumsy handling of a piece?

    I’m really not trying to stir the pot here, I just want to know why, and aren’t there any reports of the same crap happening on the other side of the line?

    Now about culture, at least here in the US, I don’t see that big of a difference between white, black, hispanic, and, and, and….

    I know enough people from different races, backgrounds, regions and religions–at least here the US–and I don’t see huge differences about us. Some of us have different life experiences or beliefs, but our behavior, our attitudes and all that, though sometimes flawed, is basically the same, far as I can tell. We’re all one culture, it seems like. Different views, different upbringings, different beliefs, different experiences, different preferences, but pretty much the same everyday people.

    Now that I’ve made a complete ass out of myself, I’m going to slink away and hide in a hole.

    Hasta.

13. 13. tacithydra on Sep 26th, 2007 at 10:05 pm

    As there is no link actually provided, this is a bit of a frustrating journal entry, as anyone reading Miller’s entry just has to assume (without anywhere to click and verify for themselves) that Miller’s interpretation of what the discussions said is the correct one. That doesn’t sit well with me.

    There’s a great article called “How to Suppress Discussions of Racism” which touches on just this issue. It was originally on coffeeandink’s LJ, but that’s offline right now, so I reposted it at my place. Number 1 on the list seems to apply here.

14. 14. tobias buckell on Sep 26th, 2007 at 11:34 pm

    Rick you are radically misreading Ide’s point, which was not about liberals vs conservatives, but apparently the word liberal just set you off. Be careful.

    Ide’s implication was that a clueless but well meaning liberal might believe no one says nigger anymore, but that that wasn’t the case. Your sarcastic but inflammatory last name about rorsach tests is not welcome, you’ve just upped the anger level of this conversation due to your own misreading and touchiness. Back it down.

    Furthermore, while I welcome your comments, If you’d like to see how people like that deal, read Frederick Douglas’s autobiography, where he meets with Northern activists and non-racists and racists alike, it gives you a good glimpse at how the full range of people interact.

    “I’m really not trying to stir the pot here, I just want to know why, and aren’t there any reports of the same crap happening on the other side of the line?”

    Rob, no one has said that black people don’t make mistakes or misrepresent people in fiction. But

    1) if you look at the most common tactics of denying discussions about race one of them is ‘but black people are racist too!’ is one of the first way people shut down a discussion about race. That is not the point, it’s a dodge to destroy the conversation.

    2) most minorities are usually very much more aware of the necesity for sincere representation b/c they’ve been denied it so often, as a result of being more sensitized, they are more aware of what it takes to do it right. No one says white people are making mistakes because they’re evil, but because they have a privilege of being surrounded by a world where they don’t have to sincere because most of their readers, colleagues, and fellows don’t have to do the extra work/research etc to get into another race’s head.

    That punch in the gut feeling people describe when being told they can’t write about X, or in their eyes they can’t do X, like Dru described. Imagine if that feeling was happening to you every day, until it wasn’t a punch, but an invisible layer that was assumed. That’s what it feels like on the other side.

    And when minorities ask that it stop, people react as if it somehow THEIR fault or they’re doing something wrong or impolite…

15. 15. Ed Greaves on Sep 27th, 2007 at 12:14 am

    Part of the difficulty as I see things, is that there is a danger for people to latch on to part of the argument, and focus so much on that portion, that they don’t see the rest of what is being discussed. I’ve been guilty of that in my past. Probably am sometimes even in the present too.

    So, when a discussion comes up–about Cultural Appropriation, for example–it’s possible to get locked into the part of the discussion that talks about why it is bad for someone (say a white male) to do this. It’s easy for me, or anyone else, to think: but I don’t intend to treat the matter with disrespect. So people should know that, and afterall, I’m one of the good-guys. Why are they telling me I can’t do that, who are they to tell me what I can and can’t do.

    I’ve had that gut reaction when reading on the subject, so I understand it. Everyone is the hero of their own story. No one wants to think that they are doing something wrong. Few people that I know, don’t get at least partially riled up when they get told they can’t do something.

    And that, is, in my opinion a part of the trap. If you focus on that part of the discussion, you trap yourself into a discussion about what “they” won’t let you do. Trying to defend yourself as being good, and your right to do what you want with your own words. You miss out on the part where what is being asked for is respect. The same respect you’d want for yourself. To be inclusive, not exclusive.

    Seperate from that whole issue, is another: fear. Fear of offending people. Fear of “getting it wrong.” Fear of straying from what you don’t all ready know. I know I’ve allowed that to hinder my options. I had myself convinced I couldn’t write a female protagonist, because I didn’t “get it.” So I did it anyway. The only way I know how to conquer a fear, is to tackle it head on. Was my story any good? Don’t know. Did I “do it right?” Don’t know. But if I didn’t, I’ll try again.

    My wife has a saying. I don’t know whether it’s hers, or if she heard it elsewhere. But to me it seems relevant.

    I did the best I could, because I didn’t know any better. And when I learned better, I did better still.

16. 16. tobias buckell on Sep 27th, 2007 at 12:24 am

    Exactly, Ed.

17. 17. Rob Darnell on Sep 27th, 2007 at 1:07 am

    Thanks, that pretty much cleared it up for me.

    Everyone makes mistakes, whoever they are. Just, I don’t hear about non-white writers much, so I was curious about that.

    Do you know of any black writers who have stories where the characters are mostly white? I might want to check some of them out, just out of curiosity. I’m not really expecting to see anything unusual about the POVs, but I think I’d like to check out something anyway.

    I know of quite a few white writers doing well with black characters, Cherie Priest being one of them. But if I read any black writers with white characters, I’m not aware of it.

18. 18. Tobias Buckell on Sep 27th, 2007 at 1:08 am

    Who are the black writers you are reading?

19. 19. Rob Darnell on Sep 27th, 2007 at 1:29 am

    I don’t know if I’ve read any fiction by black writers. If I did, I wasn’t aware of it. I otherwise wouldn’t care, but this discussion just has me curious.

20. 20. Ed Greaves on Sep 27th, 2007 at 7:25 am

    “I don’t know if I’ve read any fiction by black writers.”

    That you can say such a thing, in earnesty, is a sign of the problem.

    If ~10% of the population is black, then all things being equal, ~10% of the authors available for you to read should be black. If you’ve read 100 or so authors, then 10 of them should have been black. Even by random chance, having read 100 authors, some of them should have been black under the above scenario. Unfortunately, all things aren’t equal. And I don’t have the numbers, but I’m pretty certain that the percentages aren’t exactly representative of the population.

    “If I did, I wasn’t aware of it.” In this day and age of Wikipedia, it shouldn’t be hard to figure this out. Search out most of the authors you know, and you should be able to tell. Because if they are a person of color, odds are high it will be noted. You can also google, and find lists of black authors. This should provide you with ample opportunity to find authors to check out.

21. 21. Mary Fitz... on Sep 27th, 2007 at 8:41 am

    I’ve read a few Terry McMillan books, because the stories sounded interesting, not because she was Black, same with Octavia Butler, and I like both of them. I usually like female writers more than male writers, they tend to tell more of the sort of stories I want to read. That sort of thing plays into this discussion too, but I’m not quite sure how.

    Most of the time you have no idea what race a writer is because most books don’t come with author pictures, so unless you do google “black writers” to find someone’s race you don’t know. Unless you are some sort of scholar doing research I think it’s sort of lame to read a book just because the writer is “X” rather than because the book’s about something that would interest you. Maybe I’m shallow but life is too short for that sort of behavior.

    Sort of on a different topic, Ed’s comment about respect, and wanting to be see as one of the “good guys” make me do some thinking. For the piece I’m working on now I needed a character who came from a disadvantaged background and would have grow up w/o state of the art medical treatment. I made him a white rural Appalachian, because, I’m familiar with that culture and I didn’t feel I could write a Black or third world character without getting it wrong and stereotypical no matter what sort of research I did. Now, I wonder if I was being lazy and should have tried to do a character outside my comfort zone or if that would be the literary equivalent of tokenism.

22. 22. Ed Greaves on Sep 27th, 2007 at 9:27 am

    Mary,

    Part of why I value these discussions, is to deal with your last point. What people of color are saying in regards to tokenism, seems to be: if you only include one portrayal of a character it has a higher potential to end up as a token. If, instead, you include a multitude of such characters, so that it’s not the only black character in existence (for example) then it mitigates the probability of being a token character.

23. 23. Mary Fitz... on Sep 27th, 2007 at 9:37 am

    Well there is only one human character in the piece, so I guess he’s the token human

24. 24. Rob Darnell on Sep 27th, 2007 at 10:36 am

    I may not be a scholar, but I guess you could call this a sort of research. We’ve been saying “white writers”, now just because I’m curious, I want to see how black writers do white characters. I’m really not expecting to see a difference, but I just feel like checking it out.

    It’s probably just in my head, but I’m getting a funny vibe that you guys are a little on my back about this. I don’t know if I’m offending anyone, hope not. Don’t really think I am, but just in case, sorry.

    When I asked, I was wondering if you might have any recommendations of black writers, in particular those doing white characters. But maybe no one knows anymore than I do.

    I did google Black Fiction Writers. Found this: http://www.chipublib.org/001hwlc/litlists/blackfic.html

    There’s some names on the list that sound familiar, but I can’t honestly say if I’ve read them or not. I’ll look some of them up and see what they got.

25. 25. DKT on Sep 27th, 2007 at 12:27 pm

    I could be wrong, but I think Dru was talking more about the comments in threads from the blogs he named. I remember people giving Scalzi a hard time on his blog about how he wasn’t explicit enough about his characters’ ethnicities (I have no idea what he was citing in regards to your own posts and yes, it is frustrating that there’s no links in Dru’s entry).

    But Dru’s a sincere guy and a good writer and I think what he was really posting about was self-doubt as a writer. In his comments in the quoted post, he said:

    “My goal is to write well, not just churn out product. I want to transport and entertain and illuminate like crazy. I think really hard about the societies and cultures of my pieces in terms of how they connect, and now I’ve got this worry I’m not doing enough, and will never be able to do enough to satisfy the reader.

    I guess it’s a bit of imposter syndrome/self-doubt. Is my work just completely undifferentiated grist for the mill? Or do I have a style and voice that makes people want up to pick up the next novel, too.”

26. 26. Delux on Sep 27th, 2007 at 1:04 pm

    Thirty years of Callaloo and its that hard to find information about Black writers? Wow.

27. 27. Rick Novy on Sep 27th, 2007 at 2:30 pm

    >> Rick you are radically misreading Ide’s point…Back it down.

    My apology if what I wrote offended or became inflamatory, and if I misunderstood Ide’s comments, I apologize for that, as well.

    For the record, it wasn’t the word ‘liberal’ so much as an implication that political affiliation is relevant at all. Replace ‘liberal’ with any other view and my reaction would have been about the same.

    I could say more, but there seems to some orthogonality of thought process that fosters misunderstanding. (Pardon the linear algebra reference.) I don’t think there’s any substantial disagreement on the main topic from anyone who has posted.

28. 28. Wyman Cooke on Sep 27th, 2007 at 2:39 pm

    Nora writes:

    “Was she saying it as a prohibitive (i.e., “white people aren’t allowed to write Indians”), or as a complaint (i.e., “white people generally do a crappy job of writing Indians”)?”

    She was saying it as a prohibitive. I remember probing to make sure of that before objecting.

    And, yes, she was white.

29. 29. Nora on Sep 27th, 2007 at 2:57 pm

    Rob,

    There are writers of color who self-identify or are widely recognized as such, and there are WoCs who either conceal their race or prefer to be known as “just writers”. The latter are hard to spot if you’re looking for “black writers”, etc., for obvious reasons. These are the WoCs most likely to depict white characters in their work, because (often) they’re the only ones who are free to. See, there’s a perception out there that black writers should or can only write black characters or other “black subjects” (sorry if you can’t access this — I’m a subscriber, so I don’t know if it’s freely available to the public), and writers who have tried to step outside these boundaries have been (recent example of an old phenom) forced back into them at times. Publishers have also tried to hide the fact that a writer is black in various ways, when they fear it will negatively impact sales — a great SF example of this is Octavia Butler’s early novels, which sometimes got published with cover art depicting black characters as white. In those cases where the publishers have allowed black writers to cross racial lines in their content, especially where it was known that the writer was black, those works haven’t been received as well. A notable example is Zora Neale Hurston, who published several books featuring white or “unidentified-race” characters, and they got far less critical attention than the “black” novels. The Chronicle article I mentioned above suggests that these works had just as much artistic merit as the “black” novels, but because they broke white publishers’ and readers’ (and critics’) perceptions of what is acceptable from a black writer, they weren’t considered desirable.

    So what I’m saying is, if you want to read black writers who write white characters, you may not find them by searching for “black writers”. They may be a little more hidden than that.

30. 30. Wyman Cooke on Sep 27th, 2007 at 4:02 pm

    The subject of sincerity has been brought up. I would use the word realism instead. Stephen King is a wonderful writer, but he can’t write believable, realistic black characters to save his life. Stephen King is from Maine, where blacks back in the 60’s and 70’s were rarer than hen’s teeth. He tries to write them with love and care but somehow misses the mark. His inexperience shows through. And he sometimes deifies his black characters.

    OTOH Lois McMaster Bujold can write characters of all races and genders. And write them well. I think the way she does it is to start with the essential humanity of the character and work outward to characteristics of gender and race. The outward features are not tacked on, which is a failing I read in other writers work.

    If we can’t write realistic characters of different genders and races from our own, how do we hope to write about Aliens in a convincing way?

31. 31. David Moles on Sep 28th, 2007 at 5:19 am

    Rob, black writers could be doing a completely awful job of writing across race — though that’s not my reading experience — but, and here’s the thing: that would totally not get us white writers off the hook.

    It’s not some kind of Race vs. Race competition set up by a bunch of crazed 1920s eugenicists. It’s about writers’ responsibility to their readers, and to themselves as artists, to do good work.

    (It is also, I should add — like most everything else in writing — about taking your lumps. Getting defensive is a terrible way to become a better writer.)

32. 32. Matt Ruff on Sep 28th, 2007 at 10:39 am

    The key word is ’sincere.’

    Gotta disagree with you about this. I think many of the most stereotyped character portrayals are actually the product of great sincerity. This is one reason why white writers react the way they do when criticized: on the one hand, they feel they’re being unjustly accused of acting in bad faith; but on the other hand, their only defense, if they’re honest, is that they were really just naive/ignorant/stupid. That’s a tough spot to be in, emotionally, and a natural response is to try to deny the validity of the criticism.

    That punch in the gut feeling people describe when being told they can’t write about X, or in their eyes they can’t do X, like Dru described. Imagine if that feeling was happening to you every day, until it wasn’t a punch, but an invisible layer that was assumed. That’s what it feels like on the other side.

    And when minorities ask that it stop, people react as if it somehow THEIR fault or they’re doing something wrong or impolite…

    The “it” you’re referring to here is an entire culture of discrimination — someone that no one person can reasonably held responsible for. And I know that’s not what you’re trying to do, but I think it’s very difficult to criticize a specific action without also venting a little about the pattern that it’s a part of. Likewise, it’s natural for the person you’re criticizing to get defensive if they feel that (however inadvertently) they’re being made a proxy for the sins of an entire culture. (It’s also a great way to void the criticism, since if you’re being unreasonable, I don’t have to take you seriously…)

33. 33. Nora on Sep 28th, 2007 at 4:53 pm

    Wyman,

    She was saying it as a prohibitive. I remember probing to make sure of that before objecting.
    And, yes, she was white.

    Then it sounds to me like she was another of Miller’s ilk, misconstruing the pleas of writers of color to write PoC sincerely as a prohibition against doing it at all. And compounding the error by claiming the status of an authority on the subject, and admonishing her fellow white writers about something she doesn’t fully understand herself.

    I’m also not sure I agree with you about King and Bujold. King does have a problem with sticking black characters in the role of “magical negro”, granted — but the characters themselves usually feel realistic to me. (I’m black, if you’re wondering.) Bujold’s female characters, however, don’t feel quite as authentic; rather, I find them all fitting into a stock “spunky lady” type that’s starting to feel repetitive to me in SF. But that’s subjective, I know.

    All that said — I very much agree with David Moles. It doesn’t matter whether black writers are screwing up white characters. That’s a red herring, and I’m glad he pointed it out as such. It also doesn’t matter whether white writers are being disproportionately singled out for the sin of screwing up characters of color. It’s true that writers of color screw up CoCs too — we absorb the same stereotypes and implicit assumptions that white people do, though unlike white writers we usually have a handy-dandy source (ourselves) to help counter these misconceptions. But in the end, none of this absolves *all* writers of the need to do better in writing characters of color who have agency, who have nuance, and who are more than walking caricatures.

34. 34. Wyman Cooke on Sep 28th, 2007 at 6:06 pm

    Nora,

    “Then it sounds to me like she was another of Miller’s ilk, misconstruing the pleas of writers of color to write PoC sincerely as a prohibition against doing it at all.”

    I don’t think she was of Miller’s ilk. She really felt that whites had no business writing novels or stories from an American Indian viewpoint. She seemed to have a PC mindset, though that’s just my opinion.

35. 35. Randy on Sep 28th, 2007 at 6:26 pm

    Tobias said,
    “Well, see, appropriation is taking stuff from other cultures without sincerity. It’s not the same thing.”

    That seems like a rather specialized definition to me. If appropriation is taking (stealing?) from other cultures without sincerity, then what is the term for taking from other cultures with sincerity or good intentions? Please correct me if I’m wrong but I don’t there is a term - which would indicate that transcultural writing that is not accused of cultural appropriation achieves a level of transparency (i.e., where the reader from the culture/group in question can identify with the character-in-question without being jarred out the narrative flow by offensive cliches/stereotypes.) So, one one level the difference is between writing with well-developed characters-of-color (for example), and writing with stick-figures-of-color, but it seems there are other nuances to this definition: nuances of that interrogate the intentions of the author in political terms.

    For example, what did Joss Whedon mean to convey, by creating a world saturated with the iconography of Asian cultures (Chinese, and Japanese), but seemingly devoid of Asian characters? What ever he meant, what he did was piss off a whole lot of would-be fans ( Asian, and otherwise.)

    At what point is it OK to divorce a cultural practice from its originating culture, especially if you are writing SF, wherein the logic of future creation world seem to dictate the prevalence of such a phenomena? Is this cultural appropriation? Could t be done is such a way that readers-from-the -other- culture won’t necessarily feel like they have been erased, and all their goodies stolen?

    I would suggest that despite one’s good intentions, and even a decent level of research - the risk of bad appropriation is always present, and that even excellent transcultural writing is not free from the possible charge of cultural appropriation ( in fact, it might be at a greater risk because of its wider, and more critical audience.)

36. 36. Randy on Sep 28th, 2007 at 10:15 pm

    Tobias said,
    “Well, see, appropriation is taking stuff from other cultures without sincerity. It’s not the same thing.”

    That seems like a rather specialized definition to me. If appropriation is taking (stealing?) from other cultures without sincerity, then what is the term for taking from other cultures with sincerity or good intentions? Please correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think there is such a term - which would indicate that transcultural writing that is not accused of cultural appropriation achieves a level of transparency (i.e., where the reader from the culture/group in question can identify with the character-in-question without being jarred out the narrative flow by offensive cliches/stereotypes.) So, one one level the difference is between writing with well-developed characters-of-color (for example), and writing with stick-figures of color, but it seems there are other nuances to this definition: nuances that interrogate the intentions of the author in political terms.

    For example, what did Joss Whedon mean to convey, by creating a world saturated with the iconography of Asian cultures (Chinese, and Japanese), but seemingly devoid of Asian characters? What ever he meant to do, what he did was to piss off a whole lot of would-be fans ( Asian, and otherwise.)

    At what point is it OK to divorce a cultural practice from its originating culture, especially if you are writing SF, wherein the logic of future creation world seem to dictate the prevalence of such a phenomena? Is this cultural appropriation? Could it be done is such a way that readers from the other culture won’t necessarily feel like they have been erased, and all their goodies stolen?

    I would suggest that despite one’s good intentions, and even a decent level of research - the risk of ‘bad’ appropriation is always present, and that even excellent transcultural writing is not free from the possible charge of cultural appropriation, and in fact, it might be at a greater risk because of its wider, and more critical audience.

37. 37. Tobias Buckell on Sep 29th, 2007 at 1:13 am

    I would call Joss insincere. His inability to realize that divorcing Chinese culture and influence from it’s source is a problem. He did it well, don’t get me wrong, but I view it as fundamentally insincere because he never explains where all the Chinese disappeared to or why only their culture and language remained. If anything the situation posited by Whedon smacks of current American culture appropriating Indian symbology and words to slap on towns, sports teams, after they’re all but wiped out. Whedon’s universe reads almost like one where China and the US/Europe had a huge war, the Chinese were almost all wiped out, and the victors took the spoils, but various influences from the constant contact remained left over.

    Taking from other cultures with sincerity, check out authors like Ian McDonald, Bruce Sterling, Elizabeth Bear, who do it, as for what it should be called, I think some element of paying homage to what you are maybe inspired by indicates mutual respect. I’m not going to legislate anything, but it’s never hard to see the difference for me.

    I was in a very emotional panel once where I was trying to explain the difference and one author pounded the table and said “Damnit, I can take anything I want anywhere and I’ll be damned if anyone tries to stop me.”

    Well, sure, okay. It’s the Conquistador approach to fiction, it sums up everything I’m uncomfortable with .

    On the flip side, I read authors I admire who talk about the deep research they do, how broadened they become by exploring other cultures and traveling, and how it enriches their work. You see them acknowledge it in their fiction, and in talks they give. And even when showing off negative elements of another culture, it’s done with empathy of the human condition. Sincerity. Even if stumbling.

    That isn’t to say you can’t get published unless you’re being sincere. Good writing trumps just about everything, I read nearly openly racist subtexts in fiction, I see ideologies that are just out there, and people celebrate them, and sometimes those books are still good reading (ick) on top of all that (think Friday by Heinlein, which begins with that weird rape scene that suggests rape is no big deal if you have the right attitude) for many people.

    But, one can’t be surprised by the fact that if there is no sincerity or respect that people don’t pick up on it and feel squicky. As to whether it has an impact on sales or not who knows, its more about what you care about as a human being.

    I know from reading conservative websites that multi-culturalism is a dirty word, but I think it’s important human beings learn to blend, meld, and work together as the world gets smaller and smaller. I think that respect (and it goes both ways, ask me about what I love about the US and what I enshrine about this culture in my fiction with love and respect) is a good foundation.

38. 38. Wyman Cooke on Sep 29th, 2007 at 9:42 pm

    Randy said:

    “For example, what did Joss Whedon mean to convey, by creating a world saturated with the iconography of Asian cultures (Chinese, and Japanese), but seemingly devoid of Asian characters?”

    I take it to mean the world of Firefly, consisting of the truncated season and the movie Serenity? What Whedon was going for was to posit that American and Chinese cultures predominate in this universe. Thats why when you see a sign at a cook stand that reads “Good Dogs” one realizes that maybe hot dogs are not what’s being referred to. They had a translator to help spice up the dialog; usually you could figure out from context what was going on. My feeling was that he was trying to convey that the future would not look the way we might expect. It may take another space race to get Americans interested in space again. We will most likely be in competition with the Russians and Chinese the next time.

    As I understood it, there was a plan to have more Asian actors in guest starring roles instead of showing up in the background, but the show was canceled before that could happen. Considering the budgetary constraints, it’s amazing how well the show worked; in one scene, the military company was wearing outfits and helmets from the movie Starship Troopers.

39. 39. Nora on Sep 30th, 2007 at 4:53 pm

    I don’t think she was of Miller’s ilk. She really felt that whites had no business writing novels or stories from an American Indian viewpoint. She seemed to have a PC mindset, though that’s just my opinion.

    Wyman,

    She seems to hold the same opinion as Miller — namely that “please don’t use us, our cultures, etc., in your fiction unless you do it respectfully/sincerely” = “please don’t use our cultures, etc., period full stop”. No one (that I know) has said anything of the sort, but there’s obviously some selective listening going on in both cases.

    And there’s nothing PC about her mindset. Political correctness seeks to avoid offending people. I’m sure she meant well, but I can’t think of anything more offensive than declaring that entire cultures should be ignored and treated as invisible by the vast majority of English-language fiction writers.

40. 40. Nora on Sep 30th, 2007 at 5:00 pm

    Wyman,

    Oh, also —

    As I understood it, there was a plan to have more Asian actors in guest starring roles instead of showing up in the background, but the show was canceled before that could happen.

    I find it disturbing that in a China-dominated story setting, adding Chinese people was an afterthought rather than something considered and planned for upfront. Even without the real-life fallout, that’s just bad worldbuilding on Whedon’s part.

41. 41. Nora on Sep 30th, 2007 at 5:03 pm

    Randy et al,

    To answer your question about when is taking OK and when is it “bad” appropriation — there was actually a great article about this called “Appropriate Cultural Appropriation” by Nisi Shawl in IROSF awhile back. It’s here for those who have IROSF accounts.

42. 42. Rob Darnell on Oct 1st, 2007 at 4:34 am

    Here’s a vice versa of this discussion, if anyone’s interested.

    http://www.thumperscorner.com/discus/messages/5047/437.html?1059603198

43. 43. Wyman Cooke on Oct 1st, 2007 at 1:32 pm

    Nora:

    “I find it disturbing that in a China-dominated story setting, adding Chinese people was an afterthought rather than something considered and planned for upfront. Even without the real-life fallout, that’s just bad worldbuilding on Whedon’s part.”

    It _wasn’t_ a China-dominated story setting. It was a blend of Chinese and American and other cultures. Where else could you have a black character be named Jubal Early?

    As for the problems, they came early and often. The network hated the two hour pilot; they demanded a replacement in a hurry. “The Train Job” was the result. Not a bad episode, but it pales next to the pilot, which was finally shown after the series was canceled.

    But I’m done. You seem to want to change or disagree with my meanings. Without being at a convention panel you’ve come to your own conclusion about what I heard with my own ears. You seem to want the last word. Fine. Go for it. I don’t intend to comment in this thread further.

44. 44. Nora on Oct 1st, 2007 at 3:10 pm

    Wyman,

    It _wasn’t_ a China-dominated story setting. It was a blend of Chinese and American and other cultures. Where else could you have a black character be named Jubal Early?

    ::confusion:: Is “Jubal Early” a reference to something? I know several people, black and other, named Jubal, though mostly in my parents’ and grandparents’ generation. And Early is a common Southern American family name…

    And I meant political domination, sorry. In the few images we’ve seen of the Alliance flag in the series, the Chinese and American flags are merged. Whedon has said in interviews that the “core planets” (the earliest terraformed/politically and culturally dominant) of the Firefly solar system are half Chinese and half assorted Western — one is named Londinium, so we know the UK is involved in the latter. That doesn’t necessarily mean that half the population should be Chinese, granted, but it does suggest that about 50% of the political power in this society is held by Chinese people, with the rest spread among other nationalities/ethnicities.

    But I’m done. You seem to want to change or disagree with my meanings. Without being at a convention panel you’ve come to your own conclusion about what I heard with my own ears. You seem to want the last word. Fine. Go for it. I don’t intend to comment in this thread further.

    …Er… sorry if I offended you, though I’m not quite sure how I did that. I thought we were having a friendly exchange. I’m not trying to change your meanings; I’ve asked for clarification where I didn’t feel clear on something. I am disagreeing with you, and offering possible alternate interpretations of something you seem to be using to suggest that white people shouldn’t write PoC (or at least to suggest that someone somewhere, however wrongly, is telling white writers not to write PoC). But I thought disagreement and exchange of ideas was what a discussion was all about.

45. 45. Micole on Oct 1st, 2007 at 7:55 pm

    Wyman–

    One thing to consider is that not all POC are visibly minorities (as regular readers of Tobias’ blog already know). There was a woman at the Wiscon cultural appropriation panel who vehemently protested the use of American Indian culture by white writers without tribal permission, whom I assumed was white until she identified herself as American Indian (I am sorry to say I’ve forgotten which tribe).

    Some other things to consider: I’ve heard other people who were at that same panel describe the woman as “forbidding white people to write about Indian culture.” And the fact is, I’m sure that these people are honestly reporting what they heard, but what *I* heard was her saying, “Don’t write about my culture unless I give you permission.” This is not the same thing as “Don’t write about my culture at all.” It also opens up a lot of questions about what constitutes permission and who has the right to grant it for a culture, but those are secondary issues to the point Tobias originally raised, which is, Where are all these PoC telling white people they can’t write about PoC?

    Because your account doesn’t have a person of color saying not write about her culture. It has a white person saying that.

    The final point I’d like to bring up: People of color are not a monolith. All American Indians do not think alike, not even all members of a particular tribe, and when they do think alike, they may not think like African Americans, who may not think like Caribbean peoples, who may not think like Southeast Asians, none of whom all think alike any more than all white people think alike.

    If you encounter a person saying you may not write about their culture, or a culture, then sure, you can argue with them — but it would be more respectful to ask them why they hold that opinion, because they may have particular experiences to offer in explanation rather than the unquestioning “PC-ness” you’re assuming. It may not change your mind, and they may not change yours, but there will at least be some dialogue going on, instead of monologues in two different directions from people who can’t hear each other.

46. 46. David Moles on Oct 2nd, 2007 at 6:37 am

    Nora, Jubal Early was a Confederate general.

    (I assume the Firefly character’s parents had heard the name somewhere, so it came into their heads when they were thinking of names, but didn’t know the history.)

    Micole: “Where are all these PoC telling white people they can’t write about PoC?” Yes, thank you. I’ve been wondering that, too.

47. 47. Delux on Oct 3rd, 2007 at 6:20 pm

    “Where are all these PoC telling white people they can’t write about PoC?”

    At the Cranky POC Convention, doing the electric slide?

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