The last Blog Against Racism Week post

[sabotabby]

And it's an open thread, even though I know most of you guys don't like those. (Why not, by the way?)

Topics for discussion:

1. Actual Yahoo! News headline: "President Bush acknowledges racism still exists." Funny or sad?

2. Let's talk about writers who write about ethnicities other than their own. Some good starting points.

Comments

[mistersmearcase.livejournal.com]

1. Actual Yahoo! News headline: "President Bush acknowledges racism still exists." Funny or sad?

Confusing, in that they did not immediately rise and stone him to death with dinner rolls or whatever else was at hand, not for being such a clueless asshole and stating the obvious as if it were some deeply sensitive thing to say, but for pretending that he gives a damn.

[sabotabby]

I'm at least surprised that they're not all cracking up in the pictures that I saw. Or crying.

[realcdaae.livejournal.com]

1. Funny and sad. I mean gee, how insightful of him! Nice of him to have noticed! We all really care he gives a damn!

2. Interesting topic... I don't really know what I think. I wouldn't want to write about an exclusively white universe, part of writing is creating characters and that means learning about people and understand them. I do think that SF/F writing allows people to explore the issues in an interesting way though, because you can create beings who don't exist and use them to deal address the problems we have in the real world. I like that the first article there mentions Suzy McKee Charnas - she has some really good posts on her LJ at times.

[sabotabby]

For me, it's always about how to be responsible. (Two out of the three protagonists in the novel I'm writing are people of colour. I mean, people of colour in a future where race is defined in fuzzier ways. But that doesn't mean that I get to ignore contemporary issues.)

[goodlookinout.livejournal.com]

1. Both... funny in the "well gee goly, d'you think???" way... sad for the same reasons!

[groovitude.livejournal.com]

Check it out. I figured you'd enjoy this Hello Kitty icon (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v739/aerope4/Hello_Nazi_by_NormalBoy.jpg). It might come handsy in a flame war when it's just you and an emo Nazi.

[jhfurnish.livejournal.com]

I'm sure you noticed my reprint from Black Commentator. I highly recommend that you at least reprint my link. It would be helpful to make people wake up and see the truth that the Amerikkkan Media won't show people.

[bike4fish.livejournal.com]

1. I don't know yahoo's actual intent, bur when I read it originally, I thought the use of "acknowledges" was carefully chosen to imply that Bush finally had been forced to recognized reality, but still wasn't planning to do anything about it.

2. The big problem is not so much people writing about ethnicities other than their own, but when members of the dominant group try to write about others. A member of a non-dominant group is acutely aware of the dominant group's culture, and this awareness lends itself to awareness of ones own culture. On the other hand, most of the members of the dominant group have little reason to pay such attention to other groups, and even if they try, their status as a member of the dominant group can strongly affect what they see and what they are shown. Thinking on it further, I'm not sure that people comfortably in mainstream dominant group culture can write about people in their own group - I think that good writers (while there may be exceptions) must have a separation from the mainstream to get any realistic perspective.

[terry-terrible.livejournal.com]

1. Actual Yahoo! News headline: "President Bush acknowledges racism still exists." Funny or sad?


>>>>> I'd say it's progress on the march. I suriously doubted that he knew what racism is, nevermind whether it still existed or not.

[reverendgraham.livejournal.com]

for some reason that reminds me of when bush went to africa and asserted that slavery was evil. like, way to take a bold moral stand there, big guy.