seeing colors

[kaigou]

Over the past few days, for some reason I keep ending up reading a variety of blogs focused on racism (a number of which are due to following links through fascinating conversations about the current primaries etc). I came across one blog post that -- while I'm sure there was a certain amount of tongue-in-cheek mixed in with a clearly bitter and angry attitude -- I've been turning over and over in my head.

The short version was this: when a (non-color) person says, "I don't see race," what they really mean (according to the blog author) is "I'm not comfortable with the issue so I'd rather pretend it doesn't exist."

Uh.

Excuse me while I laugh hysterically.

Okay, I think I'm calmer now. I'm over the knee-jerk response of saying, "that generalization is ludicrous," followed in rapid succession by the impulse to cry in glee, "what amazing mindreading skills you have, my dear!"

Lack of ire isn't due only to maturity; even when younger, I had a hard time reacting defensively in a "are you talking to me" way. The best memory-example I have is of being cornered by angry classmates insisting that having my nose in a book meant I had to be saying I was better than them -- and that this behavior therefore made me racist. Given I didn't want to get the crap beaten out of me by a girl a head taller than me, I gave her words careful consideration, because she was bigger than me and if she had a point, I'd rather concede it than just argue for the sake of arguing. (Hey, self-preservation can save your front teeth sometimes.)

I ended up just being puzzled. I wasn't raised with a notion of racism -- my parents kept me carefully protected from that, and our family friends were a diverse and varied bunch (as you normally find among academia, as well as the military). So even in fourth grade, I didn't get that "skin color" meant anything other than, well, "how to a person gets described, like in a story or something."

(Incidentally, the girl ended up not hitting me. I think my baffled expression was the reason she stopped and asked -- half-teasing, I think, and half-serious: "how can you read so many books and be so stupid?" To which I asked, "stupid about what?" After that, she decided we were friends. I was just glad to not see the schoolyard pavement up close, and she was pretty cool once she stopped bullying me.)

But really: you've got to damn well be clinically blind to "not see race" after two years in Montgomery, Alabama. You can't not see it, in some environs, when every bloody fool around you is doing their damnedest to not only make friends, judge people, accept and deny people based on race (any race, so long as it's not the speaker's) and they do sure as hell want you to know that's exactly why they're doing, saying, being, going, acting, believing, leaving, dismissing.

Which is part of the reason I laugh, because although I can see that I've always carried a certain prejudice, I was most definitely raised within a military environment (which does tend to be the more diverse of any environment, especially in the Deep South). I was raised to be aware of race but not necessarily to use it as a factor for how I treat people: okay, so I see race in that yes, I register it, but I remain firm in my willingness to still treat people as I was raised to treat people: equally, and fairly, and with respect. Regardless of skin color.

Oh, we live in a racist society. We live in a sexist society, too. We live in a classist, heteronormative, damn near xenophobic, society. These -isms permeate our language, our behavior, and our assumptions. One of the hardest parts of dealing with those cultural assumptions is that unwitting parroting of something that's simply a part of the culture, something you take for granted, does not necessarily mean you're a bigot. It just means you've not actively or consciously stopped to see how that assumption fits into societal prejudice. I mean, look at blonde jokes: the idea that cute, blonde, girls with blue eyes who are cheerleaders must also be ditzy-stupid, that all redheads are hot-tempered sluts, and that boys don't make passes at girls who wear glasses. Those are, obviously, some of the lighter-toned prejudicial assumptions in our society, along with "raised in trailer park" being shorthand for "alcoholic father and shiftless mother and pregnant at sixteen".

Which means: we all say or do things, at some point, that will reveal an -ist point of view, and this doesn't mean we're bigots. It means we've absorbed something from the culture that we need to stop (or sometimes need someone close to us to tell us to stop) and think twice about. Then we can start to consciously change, or remove, that element.

The amusing detail of all this is that while I was raised to always treat people with dignity and respect regardless of skin color or gender... I sure can't say the same about how I was raised to treat people based on their class. Because, oh, yes, I am most definitely classist. Ain't no two ways about that one. I don't mean that I'm too snobby to hang out with working-class or that I'd aspire to be mistaken for upper class, but that I'm most offended by people who act as though their family's origins/class are a source of shame rather than simply "where they came from". Does that make me classist by virtue of being someone who gets most irritated with those who attempt to deny class and/or impose a certain fluidity on it? Or am I simply noting the dishonesty, picking up on the contrived pretense?

That's my biggest personal -ism. Naw, I don't judge people based on their skin tone (and in fact I'm more likely to see gender first, class second, and skin color third) but I sure as hell find myself struggling to keep a pleasant expression when my host offers me cheap American beer... and no glass. Oi!

---

So, with that slight tangent on my own issues of classism aside... to get back to the original issue: skin color. These are the thoughts bouncing through my head over the past few days. As a natural evolution of that contemplation, I started thinking about yet another essay, which called for more 'people of color' in the SFF world. I'd say it fell into the essay-category I consider "diversity now!" -- that is, any cry for more of a variety in our fiction. Anything other than Fabulous White Men With Perfect Hair (which is part of the reason a lot of the quasi-super-hero hard-SF bored me, until Gibson came along and reintroduced dirt).

I also know that we tend to overlay assumptions based on what we're used to seeing. How else to put that? I can give an example: while at the house of one of my two best friends in HS (AQ), we were talking about my other best friend. AQ's mother asks about T, and in the midst of explaining whatever funny thing had happened to T and myself, AQ adds, "she's the black girl."

I don't know for certain but I certainly hope my reaction didn't show on my face (and I don't recall any reaction from A or her mother), but I remember being suddenly and completely uncomfortable. Why was it necessary to add that T was black? Did it change somehow the value of the funny story? Did it add a facet to the retelling that I was missing? Was there some kind of clue in there that I'd never caught before, because I'd never thought to clarify about anyone's skin tone? I have never, in my life, said to my parents, "and so-and-so is white," any more than I've said, "and so-and-so is black" or any other color. I have said, "so-and-so is from X country," if the person is immigrant or first-generation and the information's pertinent to the conversation -- like saying, "Mitha gave me this recipe, and she's from Bangalore, so this is a regional dish from that area." If T had been from Kenya, I'd probably have seen reason to say, "she's from Kenya," but she was from the suburban neighborhood just north of us, in which case I said, "T's family lives right near the high school."

For a long, long, time, after that (up to through my days in the city), I listened to how people described other people, and paid more attention to how characters were described in books, too. I confess a lot of that attention has a lot to do with my own upbringing, as well: perhaps, thanks to the oddities of a dysfunctional family, we were also dysfunctional in that we didn't give out this apparently-important information when communicating and that this is what normal people did?

(I eventually decided, in my early twenties, that I'd have to remain abnormal, at least in that respect.)

I'm getting closer to the point, here, so congratulations for sticking with it this long... and that's that if you read a number of books, the narrative descriptions are often rather paltry. We get hair color, eye color, and outside the tags of ways of speaking, maybe a dose of backstory, maybe a surname (because chances are somewhat good that unless the author says otherwise, a character named Maria Antonelli is probably not of Chinese descent) -- but we don't often get skin color. Or the author might mention it once or twice, assuming it's a color that occurs in nature (as opposed to SFF stories where the blue skin or green skin is relevant to a plot or characterization element).

Thing is, sometimes, if you ask someone afterwards what skin color a character was, more often than not they're going to say a color that's pretty close to their own or is close to what they see around them the majority of the time. I know I've read essays and/or studies about this perception thing (along with the old joke of "all you ___ people look alike"), and I also came across it when I asked several friends what color was Ged's skin, in LeGuin's books. Most of the answers were "white, what about it?" and the kicker is that he's supposed to be black, and my mental image was always more of some Bollywood-style kinda rugged squarish looks. (Well, I read it before I knew what Bollywood was, but you get the idea of what I mean, and it's possible that's also because I read LeGuin right after reading Kipling...)

Okay, so we see what we expect to see -- even in cases where the author describes a character. I know I've read books where the author may've dropped a clue, and then halfway through mentions the character's blond and I'm sorry, but it's too late: the image in my head is not a blond. For the rest of the book, I mentally adjust any mention to make the character brunet, or darker-skin, or lighter, or bluer, or whatever 'fits' the image that popped into my head when I read the character's opening dialogue. (I did that through the entirety of Flewelling's triology, making the young hero mentally dark-haired because he just didn't feel like a blond to me, whatever that means.)

But going back to my discomfort over the notion that I have to explain the anomaly -- and the assumption that any character/person who is 'non-white' is therefore as much an anomaly as the blue-skinned tattooed lady at the helm -- I realize that this is why I could have two different crits tell me that my own writing's cast doesn't feel "diverse enough". At the time of the crit, I'd seen what they meant: I'd not clarified who was what, but much of that was because I felt like if I said "this guy, over here, has dark brown skin," then I should also mention that this girl has pale skin and freckles, and does that mean I should describe my Asian character as 'sallow' or 'yellow-skinned' and just how unattractive can you get short of "sallow" skin? I mean, really: eww.

And since I just plain couldn't come up with ways to describe all the different skin tones -- and I worried that clarifying it for every character would suddenly make it into an obtrusive issue for readers ("this is the eighth character for whom skin tone is given along with hair and eye color, what is this author's hangup, anyway!?"). So I just ditched it altogether, and stuck to describing hair and eye color and letting folks overlay whatever they wanted on top. I mean, if someone's comfortable seeing the cast as about 75% non-white (assuming 'asian' and 'hispanic' both = 'non-white'), then more power to them. If they really prefer to visualize Rat as a tall white guy with a shaved scalp and dark brown eyes because to them that's more handsome or more recognizable or more fitting, then more power to the reader.

And that brings me around to the next issue derived from this long mental path. (Well, not long for me, since this is only a few days' rumination, and not a month's worth.) That is: if I don't clarify each character's ethnicity or skin color or culture or whatever, and someone overlays not their own face but that of the dominant culture (in this case, white/anglo), does that mean when the reader gets irritated at "one more book with a cast of nothing but white people!" that this is a failure on my part? Is it a cop-out somehow to say, "oh, but I left that out because I figured it'd give more room for your mental picture," or to even say, "I didn't want to describe every blooming character's skin so I didn't do it for anyone"?

What's really amusing to me is that when I look back at the notes I had on the supporting characters, the lists contain hair color, length, and quality (curly, straight, etc), then eye color, and then educational level. Most of the notes don't even specify ethnicity or skin tone; the ethnicity I sorta note from the character names (mostly). That is, three characters are Norse, one is Welsh/Scottish, two are Japanese-American, a handful are Hispanic -- and for all those, the names identify them: Ericsson, Ross, Arakawa, Roderigo, etc. But boy are the classes apparent when you look at education: sixth grade, tenth grade, versus "doctoral student" and "master's degree". But I digress. Again.

Next, I'll be discussing antimacassars. Stay tuned!

Comments

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

The short version was this: when a (non-color) person says, "I don't see race," what they really mean (according to the blog author) is "I'm not comfortable with the issue so I'd rather pretend it doesn't exist."

I've heard this argument before. I've been banned from "anti-racist" blogs for daring to aruge the contrary -- that race simply isn't all that important to me, and so I don't see any point in harping on it. And that "affirmative action" is really racism going by another name.

I think the people who claim that "all whites are racist" or "everybody is racist" are revealing little about me, but much about themselves.

As a natural evolution of that contemplation, I started thinking about yet another essay, which called for more 'people of color' in the SFF world. I'd say it fell into the essay-category I consider "diversity now!" -- that is, any cry for more of a variety in our fiction. Anything other than Fabulous White Men With Perfect Hair (which is part of the reason a lot of the quasi-super-hero hard-SF bored me, until Gibson came along and reintroduced dirt).

A lot of SF set beyond the next 50-100 years is essentially race-blind, if for no other reason than that the existing Earth races are likely to disappear by intermarriage past 2100 or so. Though, of course, it is quite possible that borging, genengineering, and colonization may produce new races.

So I just ditched it altogether, and stuck to describing hair and eye color and letting folks overlay whatever they wanted on top.

I don't know -- skin tone is a big part of "appearance." Remember, though, that in a story not set in our history or within the next century or so, the "three major races" model current today probably won't apply. This is particularly the case in a fantasy world, which may actually share no history with Earth.

But boy are the classes apparent when you look at education: sixth grade, tenth grade, versus "doctoral student" and "master's degree".

Yes. That's because this can't help revealing itself in dialogue and occupation. In any story not set in the past, present or near future, one could simply ignore skin color entirely.

Btw, what do you think about universes with different racial dominances? Ones, for instance, in which the Oppressive Black Majority keeps down the Despised Asians, or whatever?

[autopope.livejournal.com]

Reading this, it occurred to me (a non-American) that one important point to note is that "color" in the USA -- especially the south -- has traditionally been an indicator of class, or possibly of caste. Freed slaves and the descendants of slaves weren't welcomed into the ruling caste; they were untouchables, dalits. Racism isn't unique to the USA, but it developed very differently in, for example, the UK, which had only a vanishingly small -- 0.1% or smaller -- black population until the late 1950s/early 1960s: it tends to be xenophobia-based, with a fear of immigrants with an alien culture, rather than caste-based.

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

Remember, though, that in a story not set in our history or within the next century or so, the "three major races" model current today probably won't apply. This is particularly the case in a fantasy world, which may actually share no history with Earth.

Except that I write urban fantasy, which is most definitely set squarely in this world and this current time. There is a great deal you can infer from some hair/eye combinations: like Maria Antonelli, one would figure that a character with curly red hair and gray eyes is probably a fair-skinned person who burns easily. A character with dark eye-color who shaves his head is probably going to be a bit more of a blank slate in some minds.

Btw, what do you think about universes with different racial dominances? Ones, for instance, in which the Oppressive Black Majority keeps down the Despised Asians, or whatever?

I think: yawn.

Sorry, but there were burning crosses in the yard down the street from me, growing up. The notion of an entire book pivoting on "omg your skin color is wicked!" is just tiresome. If that's what I want in my day-off fiction, then I'll re-read Invisible Man and at least then I know I'm also getting quality writing to boot.

It's another matter if the pivot-issue is "the Oppressive Ethiopian Cultural Majority keeps down the Despised South Korean Culture"... it's a lot harder to be reductionist with a notion as complex and varied as culture (not to mention one that's not an artificial contrivance like race is, in the first place). But then, I find culture clash to be one of the most fascinating topics in fiction -- and yes, the issue of 'race' is often a facet of culture clash... but not always.

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

Nod nod. Everyone's version of 'racism' is a different class -- that is, under it all, when we're expressing racism, I do think we're expressing a type of broad classism. It's just each group has different inclusions in what's okay to be classist against...

[Nothing quite like studying Mandarin and having to face head-on that you're getting lower grades because the (Chinese) professor is convinced that round-eyes "will never really get Mandarin" -- and then to find out that your fellow first-generation Chinese students got the lowest grades of all, because they can't even claim to be "pathetic Americans" -- they're like humans who defected to hang with chimps. Or something. Woah.]

I was raised in a part of the US where the predominant conflict is often black/white (with the random Asian thrown in for good, if confused, measure)... then I moved to New England where they're racist against everyone. I'd never heard so many cultural and racial slurs in my life as I did in three years among the Yankees -- and against everyone! Portuguese, Catholic, Irish, Italian, German, Jewish, cripes, those people have a derogatory word for every group under the sun! ... It was demeaning, dehumanizing, and infuriating, just listening to them (and knowing my southern accent would mean they'd jump on me as the "token bigot" because, y'know, Southerners are all bigots, not like them broad-minded Yankees. Sigh).

Color isn't always an indicator of class, however. I'd say neighborhood more often is, like to say your grandparents lived in Shaw (in Washington DC) which until the race riots in the 60s was a rather well-to-do upper-middle-class black neighborhood. Or to call someone "trailer trash" or "cracker", where color isn't the issue so much as the living conditions.

It's certainly not an easy issue in any culture, and every culture does have its insiders and its outsiders, and those differences are often based on appearance (which one can infer from clothing and speaking and gestures as much as skin tone). It's just that I, personally, was raised to judge a person faster on their grammar than on their skin tone. Then again, I think sometimes that having college-professor-parents just warped me.

Heh.

[I should add: I'm fully aware that the US, despite its claims of land of the free home of the brave blah blah blah is, in fact, one of the most classist first-world countries, currently. For all that we lack built-in class-identifiers in our language -- anything akin to Asian honorifics, for instance -- and we have no titled gentry, we're actually a lot less caste-mobile than most of our counterparts. It's like in trying to so hard to insist that it doesn't exist for us, that in fact we've fed the elephant until it's the size of the average office building.]

[haya5h1.livejournal.com]

brought to mind by, but completely unrelated to this thoughtful essay - when I was growing up, the elves in the fairy tales I read were always little teensy fairy folk no higher than my ankle. So when I read Lord of the Rings for the first time, I had to constantly stop and readjust my mental picture of Legolas and his kin, because I just could not see them as anything more than a foot tall.

It's been interesting reading your posts about the huge... controversy? debate? concern? over writers of "color" vs writers of... er... noncolor? I'm ignorant of the ways of publishing, so it's kind of mindboggling to me that you writer people sit down and have long discussions about something that's of little or no concern to me as a reader ...oh but wait, by that logic, does that make *me* a reader of color and therefore somehow responsible for all this?

Anyway, these days I find that the worst and most stereotyped portrayals of a race are usually perpetrated by writers who are themselves of that race, so you know, it's maybe possible that you shouldn't be listening to (some of) us tell you how to write us.XD

[clarentine]

I'm annoyed by proscriptions to "write more of this color of person!" into fiction. As far as I'm concerned, if race/color is to be mentioned at all, it should be for story-specific reasons, not because an author feels the need to soapbox.

(And oh, it's pleasant to meet someone whose experience of the color question somewhat mirrors my own - growing up in the South in a military family, living in enlisted base housing, desensitized my perception of skin color but heightened my awareness of different families' relative class standing.)

[vcmw]

The quote about "I don't see race" being equivalent to "I'm not comfortable with this so I'd rather pretend it doesn't exist" sounds like something I'd say. But I think quotes like that (like most casually tossed off generalizations) depend on the speaker's background context...

specifically, until I was 10 and we moved to Hawai'i, I'd lived most of my life in an environment where 97.5 percent of the population was white, and most of that tiny 2.5 percent lived (as far as I could tell) in Burlington and Rutland. My mom had some close friends who were Asian or African-American, but every different-colored person I'd ever met in person was a member of one family. In that environment, people really can choose to ignore race and racial inequality by just making no effort to see it. It's not like living in Hawai'i, or Chicago, or New York City, or even Seattle or Minneapolis (all places I've lived since). You're not likely to strike up a conversation with someone from a radically different background than you on the bus, in the grocery store, or whatever. A lot of people in that environment choose to put on a sort of front of sameness, if they can. As you mentioned, there's a lot of Yankee attitude that "we're not racist, not like southern folks, we outlawed slavery in 18--" at the same time as racial and cultural slurs prevail in the area and racist teenage guys with shotguns ride around in pickup trucks making threats about non-white folks. My high school integrated itself by importing non-white kids from New Jersey, and boarding them with local middle class and upper middle class families.

Of course, during the year I lived in Hawai'i, I'd have to have been struck blind to ignore the interplay of race/culture/class, and have to have slept through our whole year of history class (on Hawai'ian history) to not learn about different forms of economic and social discrimination and all.

Still if I don't think it through, and I'm making a comment on race/class perspectives, it's my childhood in rural Vermont that I'm thinking of - even though there are other experiences that I can draw on as an adult, that's my first reaction.

[mikkeneko.livejournal.com]

I want there to be some new word coined for people who have and act on mild prejudices, including unconscious ones, besides "racist." Because if you've only got the one word, then you're basically accusing all offenders of being equally vile.

Yes, people DO get defensive and denial-prone when they're accused of being racist; because it's ugly to get painted with the same brush as people who set fire to crosses on college lawns or hand nooses in trees outside of black households. It's not fair and it's not right to equate that with "will not date/have sex with a black person, given the option." But it's not necessarily right to declare yourself racism-free, either, because as you've said, that's not really possible when we are all products of our culture.

Anyway, my point is that semantics matter, and I think we need a new terminology.

[rogue53.livejournal.com]

And what about the rest of us who really don't see 'race' as much as 'attitude' toward other people?

I get really really tired of all the 'you're white so you're racist' by people who are *determined* to make the other into what *they* perceive.

And then I can pull the 'but my people were here first' card ('cause I have Lakota Sioux in my background) and that usually shuts them up.

But only if I'm pushed.

I live here in the US, and yes, it's nice to know where all of my ancestors came from, and no, it makes absolutely no difference in my day to day living.

And am I racist? Yes, against anyone who belittles another because of what sex they are, how they act, what they eat, whom they live with, how much schooling they received, what part of the country they live in, what color their skin is.

You will notice that skin just doesn't rate very high on my list.

I'm more apt to become nasty to someone who is sexist than racist.

And looking over my writing, yes, I have a tendency to write non-descriptions (well, except for hair and eye color) but since I only write in one fandom, everyone who reads it should already have a mental image of all of the characters involved. And my one 'it's all mine!' landscape? Haven't gotten that far. So I don't know what everyone looks like yet. But probably a hodge-podge, just like real life.

And besides, just because the character's name is of one ethnicity, it doesn't absolutely follow that that will be what the reader sees. Example: I had a good friend whose name was that of a famous person, and she was *not* of the same race whatsoever. So, unless prompted by some other comment, I have a tendency to see that name as she looks, not as the famous person looked.

But then, I'm more visually oriented anyway.

And I have to agree with classes and education. And I'm tired of that, too.

But that's another rant.

[crazy-toffee.livejournal.com]

When the author comes out and gives a complete blurb on the character’s looks I often skim through it, because those just don’t stick to my mind. I prefer it when the narrator drops in a few clues regarding character A’s looks, right after character A appears. Just clues, nothing too in-depth. To me, the mental image I get at first will also be the one I’ll hold onto, regardless of what the narrator will try to say later. A fully described picture won’t stay in my mind, but hints will create an image better than any description can.

I remember reading a story where a character appeared and introduced himself as ‘Malik’, which led me to instantly see him as a black man. But the narrator emphasized his friends’ bemusement, and – a bit later – made a snarky comment on Malik probably being the son of well-meaning parents who “truly believed in non-discrimination.” (I think that’s how it went, anyway…) Regardless of his actual hair colour or the shape of his face, I always remembered this character as being ‘White Guy Called Malik’.

Likewise, I never saw Ged as black. (then again, I never saw him as much of anything, so… *shrugs*)

I come from a country where discrimination is much more class-oriented, and what racial discrimination we have - which we DO have, and a lot - is also tied directly into our perception of a class system; which doesn’t focus a person’s skin tone per se, but on how it might reveal a person’s possible educational level and assets (same thing for how we speak, different classes pronounce some words differently… which hints at the problems we have in public education, mostly.). Culture is prioritized when discriminating here, if ‘culture’ is visibly absent, up comes money. Mostly, though, I end up seeing this from the outside, being the child of 1st and 3rd generation immigrants. A good portion of this was never ingrained into me as a child, so…

I don’t think making a note of certain salient aspects is, in and of itself, discriminating. Nor is pointing out the anomaly, for as long as you also point out some other fact about the characters who aren’t different from the dominant-culture-idea. You’re right about the fact that names already give solid clues as to someone’s origin, and fully describing each character’s looks won’t engage the reader all that much. Now… if the character’s skin-tone isn’t really relevant to the story, or to his own background, or the world’s background… then just giving the character an origin-defining name ought to say enough, no?

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

I'm ignorant of the ways of publishing, so it's kind of mindboggling to me that you writer people sit down and have long discussions about something that's of little or no concern to me as a reader

I do believe that with enough contemplation beforehand, a well-told and well-crafted story should be seamless. As the reader, you should be able to say: "that didn't really have an impact on how I read the story" because any impact we build in, as the authors, is both subtle and fitting. I think of it as the writerly version of my mother always saying you're not fully dressed without earrings -- you may never notice someone who's not wearing earrings, but you might be left with the oddest sensation that it "just wasn't complete" somehow. Insert whatever analogy works for you, but that's the general gist of such contemplations.

Anyway, these days I find that the worst and most stereotyped portrayals of a race are usually perpetrated by writers who are themselves of that race, so you know, it's maybe possible that you shouldn't be listening to (some of) us tell you how to write us.

I think the best and worst portrayals are by those who've lived outside their own culture for a short to extended period of time. There seems to be a stage one must pass, of being an apologist for one's culture, before you can really look at your original culture and your adopted/current culture with any maturity. I sure did enough defensive knee-jerk reactions to people attacking Deep South culture, when I moved to RI, and that was when someone pointed out to me that it really is a phase... I had to get through it, learn from my reactions, and move on to a fuller view.

We all have biases about our original culture, our parents' culture (which may not be the same as the one we grew up in, but will still inform our parents' world-view), and our adult culture... and while it may seem important to stand on a soap-box about culture, or to "get the culture right" in some ways, I think what's more important is to get the culture right for the specific character. It's true that not every Japanese person will feel A, B, or C, but if I can bring a verite to this specific Japanese character then it doesn't matter what culture I myself come from. I don't need to speak for, nor even remotely grasp, the entirety of Unfamiliar Culture X as long as I can write accurately just that one facet of it. I think, at least.

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

As far as I'm concerned, if race/color is to be mentioned at all, it should be for story-specific reasons, not because an author feels the need to soapbox.

I agree, but in the world of urban fantasy -- especially that written in a city-setting -- having a predominantly all-white cast is sort of like the chances of going to Bangalore and only hanging out with Aussie expats. It might happen, but it's not really an accurate portrayal of life in the city. So I guess you could say that in this specific instance/genre, diversity isn't an element of story, so much as a necessity of setting.

growing up in the South in a military family, living in enlisted base housing, desensitized my perception of skin color but heightened my awareness of different families' relative class standing

Ohhhhh, yeah! Because the skin color isn't nearly as important as whether or not you're dating someone "outside your rank". I knew officer's kids whose idea of rebellion was to date enlisted men OMG the travesty!! ;-)

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

Oi, yeah... I dated a guy who'd lived in Vermont until he was about 15 or so. He was 13 when he saw a black person, in the flesh, for the first time -- and he admitted he crossed the street and stared because he just had no idea how to respond, what to do or say. I wasn't sure whether to boggle at what I considered unbelievable rudeness (mostly in showing the reaction, and the discomfort it might've caused to others, there's my Southern upbringing for you, the appearance mattering more than the inner sentiment!) -- or to just feel sorry for him that he hadn't even realized just how narrow-minded such a reaction was, let alone to have lived that long with only seeing one kind of face (which I also recall thinking was kind of sad, because that meant he'd never experienced black southern gospel live, or dixieland jazz, and how could someone live and not have those in one's life!? ehehehehe)...

I actually find that the fastest way to get me genuinely pissed-off and knee-jerking defensive is not to charge that I'm racist because of my skin color... but to accuse me of being racist by virtue of being Southern. Even "it's just a joke" kind of statements -- if made by someone I don't know for a fact grew up in the Deep South -- will get me frothing.

Strange, eh?

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

Your point is why I'd suggested calling people "appearist" -- that is, judging based on appearances, be this gender or skin color or hair style or whatever.

While in some cases I think the label of 'racist' does, and should, stand: I won't argue in favor of using euphemisms to "gentle down" what's a truly nasty mindset, but when we're talking about "someone who generally does try to be fair, and unwittingly parrots a cultural assumption that's also race- or gender- or creed-biased" then some other term that's less loaded might be good.

I might stick with 'appearist' for now, until someone comes up with something less awkward.

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

And besides, just because the character's name is of one ethnicity, it doesn't absolutely follow that that will be what the reader sees.

Actually, my point was that my notes didn't remind ME of the ethnicity because I was using the surnames to indicate the character's original culture. (Also, in this case, all of the named characters are first-generation immigrants; for the longer-term American characters, the surnames are closer to 'generic': Barnes, Jones, Whittaker, Cooper, Lake.)

And then I can pull the 'but my people were here first' card ('cause I have Lakota Sioux in my background) and that usually shuts them up.

Hahahaha, I had a good friend who was Ojibwe/Navajo, and she was fussing once about sure-looks-white people who claim 1/32nd Cherokee. I told her I'd done the math, and figured it all out. I was 17lbs British, 12lbs French, 7lbs Irish, 2lbs Native American, and the rest an equal mix of Scottish and Dutch. Way I saw it, going on a diet was a great thing: I could finally get rid of that Irish ancestry once and for all!

And am I racist? Yes, against anyone who belittles another because of what sex they are, how they act, what they eat, whom they live with, how much schooling they received, what part of the country they live in, what color their skin is.

But that's not racist. That's some other term that would mean "I refuse to tolerate people who find outsiders lacking based on some set of insider standards." Like the idea of being tolerant of anything except intolerance.

There are exceptions to the education rule in classist setups, though: being a renaissance person. That is, being self-educated and worldly despite a lack of in-class time -- I ended up with someone my parents categorize as 'renaissance' in to some degree, it's a position that almost accords more respect than someone with just a bachelor's. It indicates someone who, for whatever reason, didn't follow the normal path and yet ended up far more educated/knowledgeable than those who just swallowed the education they were handed.

[clarentine]

So I guess you could say that in this specific instance/genre, diversity isn't an element of story, so much as a necessity of setting.

Yeah, but...IMO, that's a part of what the subgenre is doing, yes? Isn't urban fantasy a comment on the conditions that the characters must operate within? Each person's skin color determines the history and experience they bring to the streets in your universe, and those experiences directly influence their actions, I think. IMO (again), a character doesn't just happen to be brown or black or Hispanic or whatever; their racial make-up is determined by the plot's needs. Or, put another way, if I was reading an urban fantasy and came across a note in the text that a particular character was a white boy with a Puerto Rican mother, I'd expect I was told that detail for a reason that would matter later, and might very well wonder if I discovered it was only there for setting.

Because, of course, the POV character sees those faces and their ethnic and genetic makeup and it means something to him/her in terms of the plot, yes/no? That's the way I usually handle it - the things my characters notice are pertinent to the plot, including skin color and cut and color of clothing and cleanliness and the whole nine yards.

Or perhaps this is me making things far more complicated than necessary again. *g* I have to admit to being entirely plot-centric in my current thinking about novels.

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

I come from a country where discrimination is much more class-oriented, and what racial discrimination we have - which we DO have, and a lot - is also tied directly into our perception of a class system; which doesn’t focus a person’s skin tone per se, but on how it might reveal a person’s possible educational level and assets

Just like life in the military: it's not your skin color, it's the number of stripes on your sleeve! Nothing teaches a kid that skin color isn't the deciding factor in respect quite like seeing your parent salute -- and speak deferentially -- to someone regardless of what television might say about "people who look like that". So what if television says "maids are always hispanic" if the first recollection you have of meeting someone of hispanic descent is a woman who's also your father's superior officer! That gold leaf on her jacket was far more important than her ancestry or gender. ;-)

I can also recall my mother berating my sister and I about using cuss-words. (I think it was when a classmate tried to teach me about the word 'fuck' and my mom found the notes we'd passed.) It wasn't that it was a 'bad word' so much as "if you use language like that, people will think you're low class..." and there ain't no sin greater than acting like trash. Heh. All it'd take from my mom to shut us up, sometimes, was to ask: "do you want people to think you're ignorant?"

Back to writing, though: I do think I need to identify some aspects of teh city-diversity, though, given that one of the characters was raised in a strongly homogenous environment. For him, then, "seeing black people" may end up being as much a culture shock aspect as it was for the guy from Vermont that I dated (see comments above this one). I just need to figure out how to do it with some kind of grace...

[crazy-toffee.livejournal.com]

"do you want people to think you're ignorant?"

Oh. My. God. Your parents too? That was my dad's personal catch-phrase! (...and, hell, it worked wonders on us.)

it's not your skin color, it's the number of stripes on your sleeve!

Quite so! Though - alas - this system has been in Chile for over a century now, so the class division is pretty visibly genetic as well. And continues to be so because current 'upper class' generations refuse to give people with certain racial traits, or certain last names (ethnic ones, generally), a chance to get the better jobs.

"maids are always hispanic"

Lol. I went to England less than a month ago, and people kept giving me weird looks when I assured them I was South American. They'd stare me down and be all 'but you're blonde, you can't be latino!' Haha. Right.

[rogue53.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's very good! I'm going to have to do that, too!

Let's see, quarter Dutch (grandfather from Holland to Canada followed wheat harvest down into US), eighth Indian (and let me tell you, some of her children's children looked more Indian than she did!), Scots, English, Irish, German, French... ummm, I think that's it.

Oh yeah, and my grandfather always said that if the entire Dutch royalty died off, we'd be next in line. That always got a laugh and our cousins over there would object, mainly 'cause they didn't want to get killed off! Even in fun!

And the strange thing is, that when Scottish martial music is played, my daughter and I have a tendency to be more belligerent than normal. Kind of interesting, that.

And I have to agree with crazy_toffee, I really do have a tendency to picture in my own head what the characters look like, and so don't go to see a lot of the movies that are booked based because of that. (Well, and because so many butcher the plot! and characters! and everything!)

But your posts I like, you make me think, and believe me, living in the middle of nowhere (even though I really like it), sometimes deep thinking is just not the norm.

[rogue53.livejournal.com]

Just thought, doesn't that make us lile 100% American or something? You know, the whole melting pot idea (not that that's really true...)

[tanuki02.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure why someone would fail to notice the diversity in your city stories, unless perhaps they're so used to expecting none to be present that the author has to hit them with the Diversity Clue Bat. I thought there was diversity by the bucketful; actually, I was really kind of pleased at the way the details were clearly present but not shoved in my face.
And how could anyone think Ged was a pale-skinned Kargian? Clue Bat, hell- where's the Clue Bulldozer? Central theme, hello!

[kdorian.livejournal.com]

It's late and I'm tired, so I'm going take one small part of this post and focus on that for a moment:

The short version was this: when a (non-color) person says, "I don't see race," what they really mean (according to the blog author) is "I'm not comfortable with the issue so I'd rather pretend it doesn't exist."

Setting aside for the moment the ludicrousness of one sweeping statement covering all possible situations (I did say one part of this), there is such a phenomenon - it's what I personally refer to as "let's pretend everyone is white" syndrome. ("Let's pretend everyone is like me" might be better phrasing, but - it's late, I don't want to beat this thing to death.)

"Not seeing color" can be a case of pretending race issue don't exist when it's used to ignore real situations, real histories, and real issues. It can and has been used as whitewash for insensitivity and deliberate ignorance (real or pretend) in situations where "not seeing color" is inappropriate. If you talk about slavery in the US, you damned well better see color, because it MATTERS; likewise if you talk about 'the camps' in WWII, or even refer to a group as "you people", because the color of the people you're talking about or to makes a difference; refusing to "see color" shouldn't mean refusing to acknowledge that what an expression, a piece of history, or a type of music means to one group is not the same as what it means to another group.

No, that's not how it's meant every time it's used. A lot of people mean 'I don't see color' in the sense of not feel a person's color or culture has any bearing on their worth as a person, which is how I feel you mean it. But people can't tell how it's meant, they can only tell how they've heard it used.

It can be and has been used to dismiss cultural differences as trivial - so to some people who've had their different histories and situations waved off with that lame excuse it can become yet another trigger phrase, another example of having their own experience disregarded as unimportant.

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

Oh, I absolutely agree with everything you're saying; it can be a dismissive reaction, much like a man saying, "I don't see gender." (Yeah, sure, buddy. Heh.)

The problem is that the reaction requires a certain element of mind-reading -- not to mention also a bit of context -- to determine whether or not it's appropriate to then level a charge of "you're trying to ignore a reality that makes you uncomfy". I don't think it's entirely accurate (nor healthy, nor constructive) to go around convinced that every use of the phrase is automatically a dismissal.

I don't think there's a pat (or short, easily said) alternative to it. The best I've come up with is instead of "I don't see race," to say, "I do my best to treat all people with respect." Of course, this must include the caveat that if, then, someone points out that you just failed to do so, then it's time to ask for feedback, learn what you did wrong, apologize for the misstep, and don't do it again.

Unfortunately (at least IME), that's usually when it's sometimes a little too late. The instant someone takes the generalization path when it doesn't fit, and then takes offense, it can be really hard to derail someone who's carried away in the rush of countering with, "here's everything that anyone has ever done wrong, let me count the ways!" The global, becoming personal, just spirals into, well, a bad situation overall.

I remember in college, when I said, "oh, I didn't mean to offend--" and he cut me off with, "that's what all you people always say," and next thing I knew, I was backed against the wall with a litany of an entire set of bottled-up sins committed by people throughout his life, none of whom were me. I mean, I'll apologize for my mistake and make every effort not to do it again, but I'm not going to grovel over what some jerk did last week. Sheesh. However, it was a situation I just couldn't defuse. I had no idea how to derail him other than to let him wind down.

A'course, what's hiding under that back-and-forth is that a second power dynamic further complicates things: a man yelling at a woman. I actually found that nexus of two opposite power dynamics, clashing like that, to be rather curious -- but then again, by that point in my life I was very good at detaching myself from a crisis and observing it even as it happened.

*shrug*

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

Because, of course, the POV character sees those faces and their ethnic and genetic makeup and it means something to him/her in terms of the plot, yes/no? That's the way I usually handle it - the things my characters notice are pertinent to the plot, including skin color and cut and color of clothing and cleanliness and the whole nine yards.

Urban fantasy also has a strong element of "fish out of water" routine, which means that if you come from X background where 90% of all faces/styles/gestures/lingo is X culture, then seeing Y and Z is going to stand out twice as much. In that regard, I find it baffling when I read some UF and don't see more diversity: because for those characters, I'd expect they'd see it all over the place. It should be like the purple chevrolet syndrome, or something.

In other cases, though, some UF just feels very... well, I wouldn't say whitewashed so much as homogenous. I mean, the author(s) are often non-specific in terms of descriptions but I don't always feel like I'm actually in NYC, or Chicago, because the character voices don't vary in cadence. I actually don't mind stories where the descriptions don't vary, or aren't that detailed, as long as the voices show a huge range (because in a city, they will, or should).

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

I always think of Stripes whenever someone mentions mutt = american. Y'know, the line that goes something like, "we were kicked out of every decent country on this planet!"

;-)

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

Class, like culture, alternately fascinates me, and saddens me.

One of the most eye-opening treatises on class division I've ever seen was a PBS four-hour special on Irish immigration to the US, played on (of course) St. Patrick's day. It covered the very start, all the way up to a good chunk of time focusing on the "second wave" in the late 1800s, when the irish immigrants became almost exclusively poor Catholic families (compared to the wealthy Protestant-Irish/Orange families who came over in the 1700s wave).

I was stunned to learn that the majority of the anti-Irish rules created in some of the Northern cities were local laws created by, and pushed into reality by, and enforced by, American-Irish. Protestant, of course, but more importantly, it was an issue of "we don't want people thinking we're anything like you."

The former wave always looks to the next wave, to be the new "one on the very bottom."

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

I wonder if the impression of diversity comes from an expectation on the reader's part that city=diversity, or if there really is something in the narrative (or character voices) that's distinctive enough that this creates an impression of diversity -- without going into the specifics of skin tone or ethnic background or culture.

Hehehe, yeah: Ged. I think my own confusion was because the only story in the series that I read was Tombs of Atuan -- I recall that was just after coming off a kick of reading Kipling (all male protagonists) along with Dumas (more male protagonists) and I bloody well wanted some stories with kick-ass women in the lead, to balance out. So I wasn't really that focused on or interested in Ged, to be honest!... and besides, most of the time in that story he's in the dark, anyway. Heh.

Although I think of it now, and I think most of the male-hero stories I read in junior high and high school, I often visualized the guy(s) as either a sort of Native-American face/build, or like the young Indian man on the cover of my copy of Kim (because I thought he was really really cute, okay? sheesh). And, too, that kind of face/build was not something I saw around me all the time so it held both the familiar and the exotic.

Okay, and the cheekbones. I can't resist the cheekbones.

*cringes*

Heh. I'm so shallow.

[kraehe.livejournal.com]

Ditto. Definitely classist and more than a bit snobbish on the count of education, but my SOs are autodidacts and history buffs, which I think I respect a bit more, actually. Plus having similar taste in art and music helps.

[kraehe.livejournal.com]

Speaking of racism and classism, I had an odd encounter about a month ago with a young guy from India. He's been raised here enough not to have much of an accent. He's the acquaintance of one of the girls in my local knitting group, which meets at Borders.

Anyway, he'd bought a $600 scarf at Neiman-Marcus, and wanted the opinion of a weaver (i.e., me) on whether such a scarf was really worth that much. I opined that it was machine-woven, that the materials probably didn't cost nearly that much, and that most of the value was in the brand name. We had a bit of a discussion about how hand-made is the new Chic, since it's even more exclusive than Neiman-Marcus, but he clearly wasn't buying my pitch.

Later heard a discussion about how younger Indians are increasingly brand-conscious. (http://specials.indiatoday.com/indianmensurvey/Brand%20Consciousness1.php) Guess this was an instance, even though he's here in the US, not India.

I was raised (though the money was gone by my parents' generation) with the idea that to show off one's wealth in too ostentatious a fashion was gauche and actually showed bad breeding. That is also a classist attitude, in the sense that you have "the code", and can recognize other members of your class who also observe that code, whereas the nouveau riche did not know the code and therefore were known by their flashy ostentation. In the age of Paris Hilton, I don't know if this concept is still alive, but there it is. (shrug)