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you people are guests in our land
May. 12th, 2009 02:06 pmI think I need to have a rebuttal about the racist, classist implications of living in North America and denying climate change at the ready, because this morning my program manager blindsided me with gems like, "Gee, I wonder what kind of cars the DINOSAURS drove to cause the Ice Age!" and I kind of just was in stunned silence. Blargh.
In other and semi-related news, we have MammothFail. I think isilya gives a great summary, in case you've somehow missed it.
Anyhow. There's a lot of stuff tied in to this about silencing, and erasure, and pedantic derailing, and statements urging "fairness" to white authors blithely talking about a) "eliminating" the problem of Native Americans or b) astonishment that there are so many PoC (which sounds like Pirates of the Caribbean, tee fucking hee!), and basically so much of the same ignorance that was there for RaceFail ... shit, son, sometimes I wonder why any of us bother. But we do, and there have been some great posts so far, and I'm grateful for them.
I am staying a bit removed for self-preservation purposes, but I did notice that Bujold has amended her statement about being just BOGGLED that so many chromatic fans sprung into existence upon the invention of the Internet to this:
"There are more readers than ever before, of every color; the internet has made their cross-conversations visible, persistent, and potentially powerful, reaching into spaces where they were formerly invisible."
Formerly invisible! Persistent and potentially powerful! I like that. It makes it sound like we poor backward chromatics are finally catching up to this genre; something that I am grateful for, because heaven knows that my brown people have no mythological histories that have been used as the foundations of the genre's world-building, or extrapolated onto alien races, or pasted up as exotic backdrop and costumes. No, we brown folks would have had no reason (up until now that we've found the magical internet) to be invested in those SFF stories. It's all true! More of us are interested than EVER BEFORE!!
Oh, we few exotic dinocorns, indeed.
In other and semi-related news, we have MammothFail. I think isilya gives a great summary, in case you've somehow missed it.
Anyhow. There's a lot of stuff tied in to this about silencing, and erasure, and pedantic derailing, and statements urging "fairness" to white authors blithely talking about a) "eliminating" the problem of Native Americans or b) astonishment that there are so many PoC (which sounds like Pirates of the Caribbean, tee fucking hee!), and basically so much of the same ignorance that was there for RaceFail ... shit, son, sometimes I wonder why any of us bother. But we do, and there have been some great posts so far, and I'm grateful for them.
I am staying a bit removed for self-preservation purposes, but I did notice that Bujold has amended her statement about being just BOGGLED that so many chromatic fans sprung into existence upon the invention of the Internet to this:
"There are more readers than ever before, of every color; the internet has made their cross-conversations visible, persistent, and potentially powerful, reaching into spaces where they were formerly invisible."
Formerly invisible! Persistent and potentially powerful! I like that. It makes it sound like we poor backward chromatics are finally catching up to this genre; something that I am grateful for, because heaven knows that my brown people have no mythological histories that have been used as the foundations of the genre's world-building, or extrapolated onto alien races, or pasted up as exotic backdrop and costumes. No, we brown folks would have had no reason (up until now that we've found the magical internet) to be invested in those SFF stories. It's all true! More of us are interested than EVER BEFORE!!
Oh, we few exotic dinocorns, indeed.
