Science fiction and race

[yendi]

Today's Boston Globe runs an article on the race gap in science fiction. There's not necessarily much new here (other than the obvious difference in venue between, say, a Wiscon panel and the front page of the Living Arts section of a major metro paper), and today's too busy a day for me to really go into the topic, but I wanted to bookmark it for myself, at least.

My biggest problem with the article is that it seems to have huge holes where it was cut for space (like the follow-up and examples that David Anthony Durham surely offered to his comment about the racism and sexism of epic fantasy); the online edition would be a great chance to expand the article to the length the subject deserves*. They also blow Nalo Hopkinson's gender once, but since they get it right elsewhere, I'm chalking that up to a typo.

*Okay, not really, as they probably don't have enough server space. But they could certainly expand it a little bit, at least.

Comments

[curt-holman.livejournal.com]

Did you see the angry piece Ursula Le Guin wrote about the TV adaptation of 'The Wizard of Earthsea,' and how although the characters are written as being people of color, they were cast, mostly, as regular white people?

I can appreciate Durham's frustration with the 'Lord of the Rings' casting, but I'm not sure how Peter Jackson et al could have rectified it without seeming like they were making A Statement. I wonder if he or anyone involved with the film has commented on that.

Sarah Silverman recently mentioned in an interview that most of the people who recognized her from her 'Star Trek Voyager' appearance were black, and implied that SF has a stronger African-American following than people realize.

[isis.livejournal.com]

See, after her death, I saw a lot of displays of Butler's work. Although, I admit, I was in New York City for a chunk of my witnessing it. One bookstore had a whole window display for her and her work.

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

Hmm. When I clicked on that link I was expecting to see something about, say, race in general, including things like Hispanic SF writers (since I'm Hispanic). But I guess race is still a black or white thing, predominantly.

Talk about feeling invisible. :,

[yendi]

*nod* You'll notice also the lack of anyone of Asian descent, either.

(They do, in fairness, give us the one line, He adds that blacks are part of a growing speculative writing community that includes gays, women, the working class, and other people of color, all of whom offer new takes on the colonialist perspective. It's possible that the scope of the article was one of the things that was cut for length).

Also worth noting is this list and the associated discussions. I think fandom is more aware of the divide extending beyond black/white; as a rule, the mainstream media is likely to be behind when they cover fan/genre stuff.

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure. For a while I read the Carl Brandon Society's newsgroup/mailing list (that was a long, long time ago, I think, as I barely remember it) because I remember thinking, "Hmm. It's like Broad Universe, but for us slightly differently-colored people. People of color--I'm one of those, right?"

They didn't make me feel unwelcome, but they didn't really discuss any other race's issues at that time. Maybe things have changed.

Personally what I've loved most about SF/F was that those things didn't matter as much... that they could become invisible, and we could all just hang out and talk about aliens or spaceships or whatever. Coming back to earth where it was still an issue didn't make me feel like I was adding flavor and relevance to the work, it just made it feel too contemporary. I wanted to believe that by the time we got to meeting the Klingons, the fact that they had brown skin had nothing to do with anything, except the purely visual. :,

[nnaloh.livejournal.com]

CBS listserve discussions go all over the place. Best way to change the direction is to speak up on the list. Though I know that the constant advocacy work can get tiring. Believe me, I know. :)

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

Oh, I know I should have stayed and tried to do something about it, but... there is a lack of comfort involved that I couldn't conquer that had to do with very specific issues--my parents were political refugees and wanted to make sure I was as American as possible, as they were proud to have escaped here.

The result is that my racial issues are about not having any roots: about feel alienated from where my family came from, and having people assume you're just another American mutt (lightly tinted ivory) when in fact your family history is this tumult of politics, high and horrible adventure and radically different culture.

I don't feel comfortable inserting that into a dialogue about the prevalent racial problems of America because it seems... presumptuous. You know? Like talking about not liking the taste of curry when people around you are starving. :,

[nnaloh.livejournal.com]

Kept meaning to get back to this response, but got sidetracked by that business of living.

Simply, I don't agree that you have no place in the discussion. For one thing, I don't see how your analogy of complaining about hating curry when other people are starving maps onto a discussion about race. Who's starving? We all got race a-plenty. Everybody has racial and cultural backgrounds; some of us have many. Sure, race doesn't exist, but as someone very wise has said, it'll still kill you. Everyone has a place in discussions about race. Your experience *is* part of the experience of race. If you don't feel comfortable inserting yourself into the discussion because you look "white," I can understand that; it's difficult and can be a pain in the ass to try to complicate discussions in a world that wants to essentialize them. But that still doesn't mean that you have no place. Of the handful of us who were founding members of the Carl Brandon Society, at least three of us could be taken for white, and one of us technically *is* white. Yet it'll be a cold day in hell before any of us would allow ourselves to be ostracized from the right to talk about race and being racialized. Your voice and experience are valuable, and you'd have support and validation if you felt like speaking up. And of course there'd be people who'd look at you and think you have no right. There always will be. So what? There are scads of people who feel I shouldn't be talking about it, either. (And you might want to check out writer Tobias Buckell's recent postings to his blog on this very issue.)

[nnaloh.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's irritating, isn't it? In the U.S., "people of colour" so often gets conflated with "black," and one has to work to keep wrenching the discussion back to inclusivity. (How many First Nations SF/F/H writers can any of us name?) I'm in Canada, where I don't experience as much confusion about the term "people of colour" as I do in the U.S. On the other hand, so many Canadians don't know that there have been black communities in Canada for centuries.

[daviddurham.livejournal.com]

Hi Yendi, thanks for starting a discussion here. I've got the same sort of mixed feelings about the subject as other folks here do. I think the article was pretty good as such things go, but that's because I have a low bar for journalistic essays. I agree wholeheartedly that it stayed too black and white. Actually, that's not at all what my work is about. Acacia is written by an African-American, yes, but the world it describes is as multi-cultural and diverse as our own. It's not a "black" fantasy. It's just a lot closer to being a fantasy that reflects actual cultural diversity. I'd also mention that our world's race hangups don't have anything to do with the issues that plague the novel. If anything, all the races of the Known World face the same demons, all are in danger or compromised by the same forces. It's been picked up enthusiastically by publishers in Italy, Poland, Russia and Sweden so far, and that wouldn't have happened if the focus was limited to some sort of African-American perspective. (I'm not saying that's a good thing; just that it's a reality. None of those countries published my first two books, which were about African-Americans. All of them and more published my third, Pride of Carthage, though - largely, I believe, because it was about world history instead of African-American history.)

That quote at the end where I talk about Lord of the Rings... Well, for one thing I think the wording is a bit wonky. A misquote that certainly doesn't say what I actually meant. It's close, but not quite. Do know that I loved LOTRs, both as a young reader and as an adult who has watched the films countless times alone and with my kids. I respect that battle between good and evil, light and dark, for the tradition it's based on. I just didn't care for the fact that Sauron's minions were the only humans of color in the movie. They had no identity, no point of view, no history or culture. They were just the Other, henchmen to evil. And... quite often they looked Arab. I do not believe that Jackson had to do this. Quite the contrary, he knew exactly what he was doing, and knew that one way to make his rather dark movie into a massive box-office success was to play into our post 911 fears. It's the "men of the West" against evil - and he gives that evil a human face that we recognize. It's brilliant, really, from a commercial perspective. (Admittedly, The Two Towers came out in 2002 and the Return in 2003. Almost doesn't seem possible that they could doctor the film to fit the political mood. I reckon they did a bit, though. And, anyway, whether intentional or not, I do think the effect was the same and the box office receipts and Academy Awards testify to it.)

It's also unfortunate. I made the same comment to a producer at Comic Con. We were at the dvd release party for 300, and I mentioned it being unfortunate that Eastern powers are so caricatured in the film - in ways with little historical basis. This producer - pragmatic and jaded - said something like, "Yeah, but that's the way it's always been. We always need an evil to find our nobility in comparison to. This is no worse or better. Just the flavor of the moment." (That's not a verbatim quote, but I think he'd agree with the content of it.) So there you go. By that logic - which is convincing - we (the public) get what we deserve/want/require. If that's true it's up to us to also prove that we want a wider and more diverse choice of options to pick from. And, for me, that's what I'm trying to offer in my work.

[terminusvox.livejournal.com]

Thanks for clearing up my question about the closing quote in the article. I was trying to glean meaning from the so-called quote and coming up confused.

On the subject of Jackson's version of LOTR I'd have to say I think he stayed faithful to Tolkien's original allegory. Each of the races depicted in the books seems to represent characterizations of the different peoples of Tolkein's era. I think it's accepted that the Hobbits represent the British with their fastidious gardens and conservative views. And come to think of it Arabs probably weren't all that popular in Tolkien's day. I don't have anything against color-blind casting but I think Jackson's goal was to get as close to Tolkien's work as he could.

[daviddurham.livejournal.com]

I will admit that it's been a long time since I read LOTR. I was a young man when I did and would likely notice things in it now that I didn't before. So I'll at least defer on having any hard and fast opinions on how Tolkein's ethnic groups are represented in the film. I've got feelings, sure, but I'm pretty relaxed about them. Either way, my thoughts remain the same for the films - regardless of how true it may be to the source material. And, again, my feelings about the films are positive in a great many ways. Honestly, wanting more diversity in fantasy is part of what drove me to write me own, and that's been a good thing for me in many ways.

What's color blind casting, though? I'd never ask for that or believe it's possible. We don't need to be color blind. Just smart, and as fair as we can be.

[terminusvox.livejournal.com]

It's also been a long time since I read the LOTR books. But of course having never been on the other side of the issue I can't say what my opinions would be if I were.

Color-blind casting is when a director chooses actors for roles without considering their race. Sort of like those adaptations of a Shakespeare play with black actors in the cast, i.e. Denzel Washington as Don Pedro of Aragon in Much Ado About Nothing.

[nnaloh.livejournal.com]

What's color blind casting, though? I'd never ask for that or believe it's possible.

Hear, hear.