I play ostrich so much--fingers in ears going lalalalala to most news shows and articles because they irritate my already-cyincal nerves--that until Moonrat's blog post this morning I hadn't yet heard of the recent and still ongoing talk about the issue of racism in speculative fiction and publishing in general.
That would be the "Racefail '09" debate. And I use the term 'debate' rather loosely.
This is definitely a hot-button topic, and one which I will not spend too much time on. In fact, I am considering disabling comments for this post because I both don't want to engage in that discussion here, and because I am not all that well informed on the topic. And, being as baldly honest as I can, I really don't want to engage in the discussion except to help inform those of you who hadn't heard this issue and would like to explore it further. It feels like 'white girl making excuses' if I do.
But, that said, I want to refer you to moonrat's article and the links therein, particularly the one providing a summary of the brouhaha. (3/21: Also, here are my thoughts on the matter, which I link to because I am getting a bunch of hits on this first post.)
Now, for the record, I'm white (you've seen the pictures) and although I grew up relatively poor I grew up educated and am now middle class by income. And I consider myself a screaming liberal except for a longing for a government that will actually spend its money wisely and maybe even balance the budget. And for the record, I don't consider myself prejudiced. (Which doesn't mean that I may not have some prejudices; I think we all have preconceptions and 'absorbed' attitudes that we have to stomp on when they crop up.) But I do not like intolerance or anybody-bashing, verbally or otherwise.
And yet.
There is decidedly something to the argument that there's prejudice in speculative fiction. And there's decidedly someting to the accusation that I'm subconsciously prejudiced, that my writing and reading assumptions are set to a default of caucasian middle-class American. I don't mean to slam any readers or writers of the genre; but the unconscious assumption that the default setting for characters is white is real, and it's something that should be addressed. People who write, people who buy books, need to consider this factor and consciously strive to change that--in themselves, in the publishing industry.
Sales options.
Now onto another issue that seems to go hand in hand with the recognition of prejudice within the stories, there's the argument of bookstores shelving in "ethnic ghettos."
This is also problemmatic. One person makes an argument on Moonrat's blog that 'most African American or ethnic writers do not really want their books shelved in an ethnic section in bookstores.' And that makes sense. It really shouldn't matter the ethnicity of a character or a writer, except as to how the character is portrayed, which is affected by that character's background to some extent. (Which doesn't mean someone who is Hispanic is an illegal or someone who is African American is going to act or speak any different from the 'generic white guy'.)
However, in a devil's advocate sort of defense of the ethnic sections, lumping so-called ethnic books together might improve their sales--if only to a select group of folks. But what I actually think of this is that bookstores are participating in a self-fulfilling prophecy, that their 'ethnic books' won't sell as well if they aren't lumped together, and thus they lump them together and limit the potential buyer pool to only those who deliberately seek an ethnic writer's work. Me, I go to the genre section for the genre I want. I don't ever check out women's fiction section either but general fiction if I want mainstream, non-genre fiction; so how is it intuitive that I scope out ethnic writer sections in order to find science fiction? It isn't.
This seems like if bookstores would shelve these books in the genre sections too, I would certainly buy them because I could find them.
But as a compromise, seeing as they want to reach the widest audience possible for sales of books, why not shelve the books in both sections? If the sales were tracked, it would likely be apparent that sales go up with the books alongside their genre-mates.
But really, the way to promote equality is both to buy it and write it. Subconscious assumptions are insidious, and even well meaning folks like myself fall prey to them. I intend to not do so in the future.
And, as far as the issue of prejudice within the publishing industry itself goes, I recommend you to Moonrat's post. Awesome stuff.
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Links.
Here's a link one lovely commenter provided on Moonrat's blog post for those who would like to explore more books by African American writers, Reading and Writing Diversity.
And Ellen Oh (aka Ello) has posted a lot about Asian writers or books with Asian themes. You can check out her site for some reccomendations. (Maybe we can convince her to make a book list for us if we ask nicely.)
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And finally. It seems the intangible things inside our minds trick us when we get complacent. We need to constantly look around us and actually see and hear and try to understand the world. If nothing else, considering how someone who is not middle-class caucasian sees the world will help you be a better writer as well as a better person.
None of us are perfect. But I would like to see writers and readers strive to render another unconscious attitude that has been called to our attention obsolete.
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