When is the sports thing over?

Almost everyone has some reason to care about the Olympics. Whether it's the one event that they watch or some record-breaking something or that picture of the Black Power salute in 1968 or they just think some famous athlete is hot. Or they think the opening ceremony was cool/awful/loltastic. Even I am contributing by making this post. I can't avoid it, even with my Olympic content blocker (for some reason it also blocks references to disco).

Non-sports people are frequently apologetic when I bring up the fact that I feel like an alien during times like this. "I'm not interested, except...” It's like the Scumsucking Parasite Wedding, except in that case I at least had the rest of the extreme left on my side. But not so here. Even those who object to the totalitarian measures required for the Olympics to happen get misty-eyed over its ideals.

Fuck that.

Things that make me care about the Olympics:

• The purging of the poor and mentally ill from London.
• Surveillance cameras everywhere.
• The godawful branding (seriously hilarious).
• Rocket launchers on the roofs of apartment buildings.
• Banksy doing Banksy things.

Of course, even if these things were not an issue, I would still be apathetic at best, as the Olympics involves two things I could not possibly give a less of a shit about: sports and nationalism. It's not that I hate sports—I would be loathe to fall into the nerd-vs-jock dichotomy–I just don't care. It's probably how some of my fandom friends feel when I start going on about politics, or vice versa. Or any of you when I talk about home decor. (Or how the people at work feel when I start spouting off about any of my interests.) You just skim over those posts, right? Which is cool. There's always something that someone is Just. Not. Interested. In. It's fine if you're into these things but it's about as interesting as someone reading a calculus textbook out loud.

Nationalism is a different matter. I resent the implication that I'm supposed to "support Team Canada." What, by praying to the Sports God? With my tax dollars? Is this how ordinary Tim Hortons-swilling hosers felt about $1.8 million to buy "Voice of Fire" for the National Art Gallery? Borders are arbitrary and demarcated by violence. I have an opinion on nationalism and it generally involves me making angry faces.

Anyway, it is irritating me profusely that I can no longer easily read the news, or even be in a public space and avoid this stuff. You can't even sit down in a pub these days and not have the TV blasting or people talking loudly about some 'roided out athlete. It's a low-level but persistant irritation that gets worse when I think about how ordinary people's lives are shat-upon to turn London into a playground for rich fucks.

So. How much longer am I going to have to be pissy about this?

Yo, is this racist?

When I was in high school, we had to read this anvillicious fantasy about a Chinese dude who gets stranded on some Island of the Ladies, where they bind his feet and completely oppress him. I'm guessing that it was well-intentioned, and written by a well-intentioned dude who probably considered himself a male feminist, but it angered my 17-year-old wannabe PoMo self so much that I argued about Foucault until I got myself kicked out of class.

I get the same vibes, times approximately a million because I don't think the author is all that well-intentioned, when I looked at Save the Pearls. It's one of those post-apocalyptic YA fantasies that is all the rage with Kids These Days. The central conceit is astoundingly original: What if, instead of racism against black people, there was racism against pretty white teenage girls?

Yes. Really.

There's also a cute little video where a white teenager dons blackface because we're making an Important Social Statement here.

It's the kind of concept that a reasonably bright high school kid would come up with ("What if straight people were discriminated against just like gay people are? How would you feel?") and that would be fine, except this is presumably the work of an adult, and loaded with far more problematic imagery—dehumanizing language (coals vs. pearls, mating), the threat of a young white woman forced to have sex with a black man, and the aforementioned blackface. You can't just flip racism upside-down and have it be a serious critique. Obviously, because it's not a problem of simple prejudice where any group can be a stand-in for any other group. I'm preaching to the converted here.

I gather that I'm not the first (or second, or tenth) person to find the whole thing objectionable, because there's a hilarious post by "Eden" (the name of the book's main character) on the site blog:

First, consider that the basis of all prejudice is judging a book by its cover. To condemn any book on the basis of its cover is hardly different than condemning a total stranger because of the color of his/her skin. How can you critique or damn a book if you haven’t read it? This kind of blind attack is exactly what creates racism or condemned many progressives as communists in the Fifties.

If you critique this book, you are just like HUAC! I guess that's better than pulling a Godwin, but not by much.

The author seems to be unaware that no one is trying to censor her here. Pointing out that the imagery in a novel is problematic as all get out is not the same as suppressing an author's ability to write said problematic imagery. It's probably even going to help her, given that this is a little vanity press and any publicity is good publicity.

Also, judging a book by its cover is awesome. I moonlight as a book designer. If we didn't want people to judge our covers and buy or not buy the book accordingly, all books would have plain covers with just the title and author.*

And there is reason to support my belief when you consider that the novel has won five literary awards, including the Eric Hoffer Best Young Adult Novel 2012 (Eric Hoffer was a great humanitarian), or that Marianne Williamson called it on her Facebook page, “A fascinating story…for lovers of all ages!” or that dozens of reviewers from the San Francisco Book Review to Fresh Fiction to many book bloggers have embraced it with glowing reviews.

And if you ask if all these reviewers are white then consider that you have a racist point of view.

The Lurkers Support Me In E-mail! Also, pointing out racism is just like racism.

Basically, this imagery isn't neutral. You can't read it outside of its cultural context, outside of this or this or this. It's particularly difficult for a white author to try something like this, and a good example of why we can't have nice things.

Here's a bit of unsolicited advice: If people are already calling you out, author, it is best to listen to them rather than to post defensive things on your blog. They may in fact have a very good point.

ETA: Ah, I see it's already made sf-drama. Carry on, then.

(Hat tip: audrawilliams)

* See Ursula K. LeGuin's The Dispossessed for a nice example of this.