This is a blog. I am against racism. Therefore, we are observing the week.
I waited until Tuesday to observe it because I figured it would be a nice idea to make one really good post rather than a series of slipshod ones.
My entire life, I have lived in mixed-race* communities. My best friend in first grade was Renee, my next-door neighbor, who was black. (We didn't have African-Americans yet.) As a little girl, I was given a dark-skinned babydoll (of the real eyes that open and wets herself when you feed her from a bottle variety) by a person of color who was a friend of the family. The reason my middle name is Bear (and the reason I use it as my nom de plume) is because it is the name I was given by a Metis friend of my mother's when I was in grade school, and I have adopted it into my legal name. I have had good friends and acquaintances who were Cambodian, Chinese, and Japanese; Trinis and Jamaicans; Indians and Nigerians--immigrants, and good old mongrel-Americans. According to DNA analysis, something like 90% of persons of American southern heritage are of African descent. My grandmother was from a proud old antebellum Alabama family, and I know there's Cherokee back there; I can only assume that, statistically speaking, by the one-drop rule, I'm "black" as well. (Although I can't claim to be of mixed race because I am acculturated white, working-class, Yankee/immigrant; I'm a third culture kid, but it's because I was raised queer/pagan.)
I was raised in the Lesbian counterculture in the 1980s, in a time when women of color were placed on a sort of pedestal of political correctness. Carel Bierce is modeled on a real person; so is Jenny Casey. Though none of the details of those characters lives are similar to the women I knew growing up, their personalities and their appearances are strongly influenced by these things.
I find it impossible to write a novel in which persons of color do not appear, unless there is some very good reason for it. (The book being set in not-Iceland in not-940 AD is a pretty compelling reason, say.)
I still manage to be a clueless white person more often than I'd like. There is no shame in being a clueless white person.
There is a fair amount of shame in willfully remaining one.
Kameron Hurley recently blogged about how "writing colorblind is writing white." I'm not sure this is entirely accurate, having not-too-long-ago read Neil Gaiman's sly Anansi Boys and smirked cheerfully when, two thirds of the way through the book, I realized that while there are black characters and Asian characters, the only time anybody is ever specifically identified by their skin tone is when they are white. That, I thought, was a lovely and subtle reversal, and a very nice way to point out the base assumptions of the reader and get them reassessed.
On the other hand, I can attest that characters of color are often mistaken for white people unless somebody specifically points out that they are not, you know, [default.] In my own work, I've experienced this a couple of times--with Elspeth Dunsany (she's Creole, if you missed it) and Vincent Katherinessen. (Apparently, the idea of an auburn-haired, freckled black man is outside of many people's default experience, even when his skin tone is described as reddish-brown. And, yanno, nanites. Ate all the white people.)
And that seems to me a huge part of the problem. The stereotype, the default, the assumption. We (the clueless white people) assume that black men don't have freckles. (Some do.) We assume that Creole women don't have hazel eyes. (Some do.) We assume all sorts of things. This despite the description of Vincent's cornrows, of Elspeths' corkscrew curls (and her ironing them) and "bronze" skin. This despite the fact that she jokes at one point about the inadvisability of falling for white boys.
The base cultural assumption is to not see black people until it is pointed out that they're black. As the base individual is assumed to be male ("he" is the neuter pronoun), the base individual is also assumed to be white.
Some of that is laziness. Some of it is institutional. Some is ignorance. Some is ingrained reflex. Some of it is growing up around a lot of other people just like us.
Well, wait. Let me try to explain by example.
Of the seventeen novels or mosaic novels I've sold (Jesus, seventeen? *checks* Erm. Yep. Seventeen.) in nine of them, there is at least one protagonist or major character who is non-white. (Yes, I'm on my website bibliography counting now. I do not actually keep a list.)
Three more (the Jacob's Ladder books) are mostly devoid of racial cues, because the important color difference is between the blue people and the not-so-blue people. ("Are you bluish? You don't look bluish.)
One has no white people at all in it. (All the white people were eaten by nanites. So sad. I hear there was a party.) This one is already included in the above count, though.
Two of the remaining ones are set in not-Iceland and two are set in Elizabethan England, both of which were mostly if not entirely devoid of nonwhite people (although there were a very few blacks in Elizabethan London), and one is set in contrafactual upper-class New York.
Number of my books with identifiably non-white people on the covers?
One.
Carnival. Which has Michelangelo Osiris Leary Kusanagi-Jones on the cover, with distinctly African features (despite the name (there are reasons for the name) he's from Cairo, and he's of subSaharan parentage) and if you look in the crevices of his mask, you can see very dark eyes and skin tone. And which has Lesa Pretoria on the back, looking more Brazilian than Asian/First Peoples (In my head, she looks a bit like Karin Lowachee). (That's Angelo over there in the icon. Man, I love that cover.)
Whiskey didn't even make the cover of his own book, alas. (If you're wondering, his human form looks a bit like Colin Salmon and a bit like the lead singer of the Fine Young Cannibals.) In fact, none of the people of color in that book made the cover. Jenny got bleached (she also got her head cut off, because she's over forty).
Admitedly, seven of these books do not yet have cover art. But...
I do not yet know what the covers for All the Windwracked Stars or The Sea thy Mistress will look like, although I have hopes we might get a brother on that last one, since the two main POV characters are both people of color. (I still need to flip a coin and see if the younger one is male or female.)
By the Mountain Bound, all Vikings. No hope there. Ink & Steel is going to be Elizabeth I, and Hell & Earth is going to be the Queen of the Faeries.
So if you, like me, are a clueless white person, and you ever wondered why people of color feel as if they are still marginalized, ignored, not the default, invisible?
Huh.
Maybe there's a reason for that after all.
*I'm very uncomfortable with the word "race" as used to describe people. But then, part of the problem here is that words are slippery and we don't really have the right ones.
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matociquala- it's a great life, if you don't weaken
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Comments
Not to sound like a college boy but sometimes I think the words are slippery because the ideas behind them are wrong: specious, facile, or just plain empty.
My mom raised me to be polite. I try really, really hard to be polite, but sometimes my heel ends up kissing my back teeth and I don't know what happened.
Sometimes there is no right thing to say. And politeness isn't always the right thing to do, which seems unfair, but there you are.
Anyway, I also put at least one MC (usually a love interest who shares the limelight with the female) in every one of my novels who has some other racial characteristic than white. Perhaps that's because, as you alluded to, I've spent my life surrounded by a variety.
I was recently given a whitey-assumption shock in a Margaret Mahy book of all places (it's called Kaitangata Twitch). The central character Meredith doesn't describe herself for quite some time, but she does describe her family members, particularly her golden haired older sister. They have an English surname and fairly non-specific first names that could come from any European culture. They are long-time inhabitants of a small semi rural seaside settlement, which could quite easily be somewhere on Banks Peninsula (Mahy lives over there).
THEN, in the second chapter, quite casually, Meredith mentions seeing an elderly relative (and subsequently important character) whose name is Lee Kaa. And just like that, you realise that somewhere along the way, the family's Maori as well. It was extremely clever of old Margaret, I feel.
1) Given what you've written in the past, I realize that you've lived outside new England. Based on that I'm guessing that you've noticed that regional "default" may include some of the specs you've listed, for instance a native from 'Nawlins is not going to be surprised by a woman of color with blue eyes (outside the X-Men), a dark-skinned man or woman with bright red hair, or, indeed, freckles. I won't exhaust the regional possibilities, but I think more "white-breads" are subconsciously aware of the breadth of genetic combinations.
Unfortunately, mainstream media tend to present a more proscribed range than most urbanites experience in their normal week. That reinforces unconscious assumptions, which leads into point two:
2) The Haydens, and others including Gaiman, have mentioned the lack of control over cover art. The marketing monkeys know full well that they are selling the pages based on a quick glance. They have the numbers to suggest the core SF/F audience is white and middle class, and they assume that we all want to read about our more adventurous selves. I don't say I agree...but I've listened to the monkeys talk about their ad campaigns and marketing strategies.
I can think of one writer I've followed more avidly than not, C.J. Cherryh, and it took her years to have more creative control over the depiction of her characters on the cover. I always assumed that you as a new(ish) writer had to deal with aspect with the Casey novels because marketing would rather capitalize on cybernetics and cyber punk overtones than go with the racial range you present. But I babble overmuch. Good luck with the fight...but I still think more of us are aware of the ranges and combinations than not.
But I base my comments on Elspeth and Vincent on the internets and the con circuit, not my local population. (Infallibly, every time I mention that Elspeth is black, I get reactions.)
I've always been uncomfortable writing other races, and a lot of it stems from not wanting to appear to be a clueless white person. In stark contrast to your upbringing, I was raised white, in a small town in northern Michigan. Said town is predominantly white trash and really old folk, so rascist terms are thrown about pretty casually. (Case in point--someone told me not to rent Blade because it was a "N****r flick.")
Since then, I've gotten to go to places where black people exist, and I've found quite a few of them...a lot like me. Except when they're into the whole gangsta culture, and I don't know if that's the right phrase for it.
Actually, I'm kind of wary of writing a book that includes people of other races because I don't have an insider's point of view. So if I include an Asian who is studious and honorable, am I perpetuating a stereotype? If I write a Native American who draws on his heritage, is that bad? What if he's bitter about how his people have been treated? I'm kinda afraid that writing any other race is going to reveal me as a cousin to the KKK. Personally, I love learning about other cultures, although being a country boy, the whole gangsta culture does trip a few alarms, probably because of the glorification of criminality (I can name a few rap videos, for instance).
Chris
Write individuals, not types. And then get somebody who *is* an insider to check it for you. *g*
(i use this icon because it's my ibarw icon, not to cast aspersions at you.)
That's a mirrored surface.
It was very frustrating to me that people were so determined to whiten my characters.
It annoyed the crap out of me.
Interesting that faeries are also stereotypically white, supernally so. At least, the "royal," "noble," "high" ones. They are considered paragons of beauty, and are always snow-pale.
In your last post on a similar subject, you said something to me along the lines of "it's easy to {incorrectly) write minorities [I hate that word but it seems to be the generally accepted term here in the UK] as straight white middle-class people in disguise".
I thought about this a lot... maybe too much, but I decided I should push myself and try and write something with the points you made in mind.
I came up with a short story called "The Bug" about loss of a partner and made a decision to try and write it about a gay couple rather than a straight couple. Now it'll probably be awful, and I'll probably introduce a load of non-intended stereotypes and ignorance along the way, but it's challenging me in all the right ways. The idea is to do a series of short stories where I challenge myself to be more and more diverse.
Whilst the stories I write all seem to have minorities in them, I think an exercise to ensure characters are as three-dimensional as possible is always a good thing.
Anyway.
One story I keep trying to write is of my idealized notion (well, kinda sorta) of what the meeting of the Pacific Northwest Natives/Brits/Americans should have been. Well, except that it's a different world, and there's magic.
By all accounts, the PNW natives should have kicked butt big time on the white-eyes when my ancestors got here (and as a 5th gen PNWer, yeah, I've got cred that way. Fortunately, my ancestors seem to have been on the side of the Natives, guess that's why they are among the only damn obscure early settlers that aren't written up somehow).
But--immunity and illness issues took care of the natives.
You look at the culture of the Nimipu (Nez Perce), however--and things could have happened much, much differently from the way they did.
I dunno. Maybe it's more marketable now than it was when I talked with a certain Big Name Editor about the concept 18 some years ago.
....wha?
//flips through copy of book
Right there, p. 153: "Golden hazel eyes crinkle at the corners, eerily pale in a face darker than my own."
Okay granted on the COVER, Jenny's neck and chin and hand (and earlobe, a little bit of it) are, uh, pretty white. But....
Yeah.
Jenny's a dark-skinned Metis too, not somebody who can pass. Go figure.
I don't mind being cited at all, however. Just curious.
Apparently, the idea of an auburn-haired, freckled black man is outside of many people's default experience, even when his skin tone is described as reddish-brown.
I'm having an *awfully* hard time visualising someone with reddish-brown skin and freckles. My own freckles are reddish-brown themselves, so I'd think they'd blend in. I don't suppose you know of example images I could look at?
Vincent's got a redder complexion than she does, more like this woman's (and she is a bit of a redhead):
Another, more-auburn redheaded person of color:
Actually, he has freckles too, if you look closely.
Oh, here. This one is almost perfect. If you imagine this lovely young woman's middle-aged male brother, with darker skin and heavier freckling you'll have it about right:
*She* absolutely looks like one of Vincent's multiferous sisters. Even the nose and the facial structure are right.
I'm sure there are non-white fairies, maybe associated with mines. I'm fairly sure "Darky day" is unrelated to minstrels blacking up, although I can't remember where I read this.
Elspeth's dad is white. She's brown. The protagonist of the books, Genevieve Casey, is Mohawk. (Casey's actually not an uncommon name on the Kahnawake Territory.) Jenny comments, actually, repeatly, on the amount of culture she's lost to colonial encroachment and assimilation.
It's problematic to assume; that's part of the point of the post.
(Every single major character in the Jenny books is bicultural, which is something that I'm not sure any reader has twigged to without having it pointed out.)
But, seriously, in the current history book, i get seriously into all that mess. Provisional title, "Bopping Down the Color Line; Blues along the Black/White Interface"
Research shows that it is a pretty damn fuzzy line. Just finished a chapter (this is turning into a book of essays, stuck together with bull gravy) on black slaveowners, which gets into that whole mulatto children of white men morass, and a whole bunch of heavy shit.
Current research book is about Louis Armstrong's childhood and the racial discrimination that the more or less "bright" Creoles practiced against the "ratty" darker freed black slaves.
And the funny thing is that the "white" author is so politically correct, that whites show up only as "swag-bellied, evil-smelling racists"
Other sources indicate that the lowest class in turn of the century New Orleans were actually the Sicilians, some of whom became jazzers, and did alright until the invention of politically correctness.
And yes, i do realize how much trouble this is going to cause..
In every other case, I only make mention of race if it's relevant to the piece. If there's a photo of the subject, I think folks will figure it out for themselves.
Once that was out of the way, of course, I could just make reference to them by name.
I meant to say...
We're not a "race." We're a "species." Maybe if we stopped calling each other the "human race," we'd get past some of this dang racist BS.
I hatehatehate the use of "race" when talking about different species in SF stories. I keep thinking it just contributes to the subconscious problem.
Of course, your standard Icelander would not be carrying a matronymic....
We are. Straight white middle class people in disguise. In fact, if it were not for our clever brown disguises, you might notice we're EXACTLY like you. Except maybe we don't eat meat.
Because all this handwringing about The Difficulties of Representing the Other is, I'm sorry to say, just as racist as the refusal to Represent the Other. As if we are some exotic species of insect who are somehow Differently Human!
Would you feel as anxious about writing, say, Russian characters? No, you'd get out your Russian/English dictionary and do your research and maybe travel there and talk to Russian friends and learn about the impact of the Soviet Union on people's experience.
So why is writing Indians or Carribeans or African-Americans different? If you put the same level of care you'd put into writing, I dunno, 16th century Scotsmen, you can't go wrong! And if you don't, why are you bothering!
Speaking as little old Brown me. I can't speak for Every Person of Color Out There, but I'm a lot more troubled by the public acceptance of Guantanamo than I am by what color the characters are in an SF novel on the shelf at Barnes and Noble.
So if you guys are really troubled by racism, do me a favor: go give a donation to Amnesty International and write your senator (if in US) about shutting down Gitmo. Write a few Urgent Action letters. And then sleep peaceful.
*And* trying to represent diversity in our art, which some people tell me there is a need for.
O.o Wow. That's really telling, isn't it? And thank you for pointing out the 'default setting' problem. It's one I know I am often guilty of and need to be better about stopping.
(If you're wondering, his human form looks a bit like Colin Salmon and a bit like the lead singer of the Fine Young Cannibals.)
You have such good taste. :)
When I started thinking about that, it made it suddenly very clear to me why non-white friends of mine say they feel marginalized in popular culture.
Perhaps because... they ARE?
(mmm. Colin Salmon. Oh, that voice.)
You are not a "clueless white person." You are an individual, unique, and a fantastic writer.
I don't know why I have suddenly come to this opinion (or if my response to Joyce showed up).
I think that nobody wants to eliminate "race" - as in white, pink, brown, "black," "red," yellow or any "alien color" or noncolor or a-color.
It's raCISM that needs to go.
Because race is a part of who everybody is. I want to be who I am. I think everybody wants to be "who they are" and should respect themselves first. Then it's possible to respect others.
And I just know you're so far from "clueless."
What I mean by "clueless white person" is that I can still have a heck of a time understanding what it is like to be subjected, constantly, to the reminder that one is not encompassed by white privilege.
Because when you're used to it, you don't notice it.
I mean, I can extrapolate from my own epxerience, but it's different from knowing.
BTW, have you ever noticed that LJ allows provides a link for people to trackback to your post - but doesn't provide a field to specify trackbacks when creating posts?
Totally off-topic: I was floored to see "it's a great life if you don't weaken" at the top of your blog; I recently changed my LJ's subtitle to that! It's kind of a family motto! Sadly, I don't think we're at all related; on my mother's side (the side where I got the saying), a cousin has done extensive genealogical research, and I'm pretty sure I'd know if I were related to you.