Uhm, clueless much?

[maygra]

Look, I can be as stupidly offensive as the next person. However, you don't need to have been brought up or live in the deep south to get what [[Witchqueen]] is explaining in incredibly patient and very clear terms. And you don't have to be a Person of Color to understand how deeply, deeply offensive and coded this word is, regardless of its etymology. How it was and has been used, in this case, is everything.

Also, see liviapenn's round up [[here]].



I haven't had much to say about the current fandom discussion/debate on race and racism. Mostly because I don't have much to contribute, and because living where I live, and having grown up here, I know without a doubt that that there are racist undertones to some of the ways I think and even some of the ways I act and react. Most of them I'm aware of and actively try to overcome, with lesser or greater success. Reacting to people on the basis of their skin color or race or religious persuasion in this part of the country is like breathing for most people. For others, it's like a sideline sport. You can ignore it, but you can't be unaware of it.

I don't know that I'll ever be rid of all of it. But I do know enough to understand that being a white woman in Georgia doesn't actually nominate me to be the know all and end all of what is or isn't offensive to People of Color.

When another white woman told me she was offended that I used the word "pissed" in what was, admittedly, a pretty angry diatribe, my concern that I'd offended her because I was cussing was markedly less than it would be if a person of color told me a word I'd used was offensive because it was racially coded. I'm pretty clear that if I'm really angry at someone, it's about something they've said or done, not the color of their skin.

I've got nothing more, because to say more would risk me either offending more or being offended more.

It's an effing fic prompt. Change the damn word.

Comments

[ginnytonnick.livejournal.com]

It's not just the mods. The members are supporting their decision.

http://reddwarfer.livejournal.com/304747.html?style=mine

http://celandineb.livejournal.com/569475.html?style=mine

http://faraday.livejournal.com/341260.html?style=mine

I just... I'm confused by the willful stupidity. Even when it's all carefully explained, these people are sitting there with their hands over their eyes and ignoring it all.

[nestra.livejournal.com]

Wow, that's depressing.

[batdina.livejournal.com]

wow. I'm just struck speechless.

[wrenlet.livejournal.com]

That is a stunning amount of fail on display. I know some people come from backgrounds that lead to less... awareness of racial issues, let's say, but even when the point is clearly, carefully, RATIONALLY explained it sails overhead without even ruffling their parts. How does that happen?

[halfshellvenus.livejournal.com]

"Willful stupidity" was exactly the term I used in commenting to witchqueen.

There's a concept that surrounds language called "connotation." It's why intelligent people use a particular word and not another which has a similar meaning but different overtones or slant.

The OED definition quoted doesn't show the connotation (most dictionaries don't, for crying out loud). That doesn't exempt an English-speaking person from understanding that "interracial relationships" and "miscegenation" have different meanings.

Unless a knife and an ax are the same thing, because both can cut. :(

[amireal.livejournal.com]

Best part so far is I think they're using the word censorship wrong. *ponders*

[amireal.livejournal.com]

Well okay. Not wrong perse-- but not quite right either. I'm not sure how it would be censorship to change the word, they're not withholding any information in any real sense so much as changing how the information is presented.

[maygra.livejournal.com]

yes, they are using it wrong because Zv didn't ask them to stop writing to prompting, she asked them to change the label. It would take five seconds to change over the prompt and the tags to what she suggested.

[amireal.livejournal.com]

God she's used it like 4 times now even to claim that changing the manner in which they choose the prompts would be censorship. *twitch* I'm not the person to go in and correct, I hope someone else does.

[elynross.livejournal.com]

These days it seems like anytime someone says anything resembling "This is a bad way to use language, and I wish you'd stop," someone cries "CENSORSHIP!" which, since none of us are really capable of institutional suppression of their use of however they're using language, is just flat wrong.

[sheron]

I find it very amusing when people change dictionary definitions to suit them. For example, I recently had the following conversation with someone on a blog regarding a famous person who we are both fans of:

Person A: He doesn't have a girlfriend.
Me: He said he does in his blog. And I'd like to believe he said the truth.
Person A: Sometimes people say things that aren't true to protect themselves.
Me: So you think he would lie about it? Why?
Person A: I don't think he is a lying, but he was probably afraid.
Me: Afraid of what? And what do you mean by he lied but he isn't a liar?
Person A: Sometimes an honest person can lie.
Me: liar, n. person who lies.
Person A: He is not a liar but he didn't speak the truth about it.

etc, etc, in circles we go. That's the general gist anyway.

What I think is happening with that community is that they've decided on a definition of the word and from now on that's how they're using it and that's what it means, the end! Whenever an argument arises, it's almost impossible to pin down the exact definition of any word because someone somewhere will have grown up on a remote island and uses it differently. And of course to go with the most common meaning used by your target audience is sheep-like behavior and must be abhorred!

Or something.

[maygra.livejournal.com]

What I think happened is Zvi said: "This word is racist. Please change it."

And what they said was, "How dare you call us racist? We're not racist! And because we're not racists, we can use this word and it won't be racist either!"

Way to miss the point, kids.

[sheron]

I think there's more of a general sense on the internet that it's "good to be stubbornly defending your opinions" that's playing into it, too.

[quicksylver-btg.livejournal.com]

You can't just change a word because you wish it meant something else. This reminds me of all the attempts to reacquire words like "bitch," "fag," and "queer" as positive terms for womanhood and homosexuality. But people aren't really redefining the terms so much as saying, "Look, we are so comfortable with ourselves that we can use this label that you think has a bad connotation." They aren't denying or changing the negative connotation so much as defying the connotation of the word by using it anyway. No matter what the situation or our intentions, we have to realize at as a community that some words are too charged to use with impunity or flippancy.

[wrenlet.livejournal.com]

I once tried to explain to someone why "cultural appropriation" is not a neutral term to me and... yeah. Circular arguments that left all parties unsatisfied.

But this is... come ON. Break the word down into its roots, prefixes, etc. and it is clearly negative, even absent its long negative usage in US-ian history.

[sheron]

"But it's not to meeeeeee!"

*facepalm*

[shay-renoylds.livejournal.com]

Thank you for mentioning this.

While it is understandable that they may want to keep things as "is" (indeed, censorship by its very nature brings about these issues) the instance in question seems ridiculous.

Racial coding is common. A slightly irreverent look at it ("Everybody's a Little Bit Racist" - Avenue Q) even brings out some rather heated responses.

However, while I think being overly PC can be negative because no issues are ever brought up -- when the issues are discussed it seems beyond stupid to simply ignore the definitive quality of the words.

[maygra.livejournal.com]

And if Zvi was say, "Stop writing about interracial or interspecies sex like it's a kink" we'd be having a different discussion, but she's not. She's asking them to change the label on a prompt and a handful of stories to something less loaded.

Someone else said it before me -- Interracial sex is a porn kink. Marketed and labeled that way, which is offensive in and of itself, but leave it to fandom to be go out of their way to be more offensive than the porn industry.

[shay-renoylds.livejournal.com]

Zvi mentioned that in her (very articulate) first post. But the "offence", of course, ends up being different for everyone.

I honestly think that, offencive or not, this has started some really amazing dialogues on the discussion. I'm not condoning it; however, I do think it's important to keep these concepts in the open. I'm, personally, glad that there are as many intelligent thoughts being thrown around on both sides.

[maygra.livejournal.com]

I don't disagree, although the bugger of it is that people who are willing to talk about it and aren't really the problem. The problem arises when people who aren't willing to talk about it use their privilege to be able to ignore or obsfucate, in order not to address it because it is their right and privilege to do so even while denying they have either the right or the privilege.

I'm one of them. Racial issues are very much like a thorn under my skin, that I keep scratching but refusing to remove, mostly because while I like to think I'm smart enough and good enough to rise above it, I fear that's not true. I fear I use my own white privilege far more often than I'm aware of because I can and because it's easier than wandering back into what I perceive as an unattractive and intimidating briar patch.

Sorry, Shay, I'm not meaning to dump all over you. But in even making this post I've had to confront the fact that I don't denounce racist attitudes (intentional or otherwise) nearly as often as I encounter them, and do in fact ignore them, more often than I address them. I'd like to think I'm a better person than that, that the POC's I know I respect and adore for themselves as opposed to in spite of their skin color.

But sometimes, I'm not sure if I'm lying to myself or them.

[shay-renoylds.livejournal.com]

I fear I use my own white privilege far more often than I'm aware of because I can and because it's easier than wandering back into what I perceive as an unattractive and intimidating briar patch.

I hate to say it, but we all do if we're white. It's not really something you can get away from. Here is Peggy McIntosh's article "Unpacking the Invisible Backpack" Warning -- it's a .pdf. Now that article was written in the 80's, and has been used in feminist arguments for ages; however, I feel it's still relevant today.

And don't think of it as dumping at. all.

Seriously, if I were to be more irreverent I'd link you to Avenue Q's Everyone's a Little Bit Racist -- but that's irreverent so I won't.

I think, honestly, it's just going to have to be a "people are people" thing in my mind. There are some people who are jerks who go out of there to be assholes to everyone. Generally hardcore racists also tend to be misogynists and yeah... it just spirals. That's an overgeneralization, but hate tends to instigate more hate rather than anything else. It's rare to find someone who is hatefully racist who is generally "nice" the rest of the time.

[shay-renoylds.livejournal.com]

Cuz I'm a nob -- the link to the song here.

[acostilow.livejournal.com]

*laughs* My dad was a Navy SEAL, right? And one time he was asked, "Well, surely you notice your CO is black, right?" And he was like, "Yeah, so?"

"Well, doesn't that affect you?"

"Ma'am. When I see a CO, I look at their uniform color (to see what branch), I look at their left arm (to see the rank), and then I look at their face."

They just didn't get it.

[boogieshoes.livejournal.com]

that would be because CO = 'i can totally *bust your ass* any time i want to, dammit!* heh.

but yeah, some people really *don't* get it. i'm sure i've got some racist undertones to my interactions, mostly because i was brought up in an almost all-white town. literally, we had like, two latino families in *the whole town*. and i'm certainly not PC. but i do try not to let my internal race style sheets rule my interactions, because you know, people are individuals. as a rule, they're not going to match up with stereotypes.

-bs

[halfshellvenus.livejournal.com]

The good that came out of this, for me, was reading the incredibly well-worded and reasonable arguments of witchqueen and witchwillow.

The community response to the use of such a horribly laden term was callous, to say the least. They simply didn't care that the term was offensive, that they were representing the term as being something other than what it meant-- which was the equivalent of the term they were asked to substitute and refused to do, or that it crossed over to equating bestiality with interracial relationships and managed a new level of offensive.

And lost in all of this, even to me, was the notion that interracial relationships AS A KINK is racist in itself. They set up a very rigid policy of not rejecting the word choices they got out of their book, but once you've run into something that's racist instead of kinky, you should reconsider.

Because after all, who's going to tell on you? Sheesh.

[maygra.livejournal.com]

I don't disagree that seeing interracial as a kink is pretty exemplative of racism on the sly, especially when "Race" has no genetic component whatsoever. I mean I can kind of dig on the contrasts of body and skin types, but then wonder if that isn't just fetishizing the "Exotic" again.

Life would be oh so much easier if we were all some kind of mutual and undifferntiated medium brown in skin tone. Although, given the nature of the human race, we'd probably end up dividing ourselves up on basis of eye color or something.

[quicksylver-btg.livejournal.com]

I remember reading a sci-fi short story about just that. These kids come to find out that they are the result of some experiment to return to several "pure" racial types. Everyone else in the world has brown hair and eyes and toffee-colored skin. The kids are matched up and expected to breed more of their type. In the end, the kids escape the experiment and the author hints that none of the kids will match up with who they were supposed to. Not sure of who the author is though.