[ SECRET POST #2795 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2795 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.


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02.
[Law & Order: Criminal Intent]


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03.
[Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers]


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04.
[Jeeves and Wooster]


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05.
[Yahtzee/Zero Punctuation]


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06.
[Markiplier]


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07.
[Jackie Chan Adventures]


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08.
[The Parent Trap]


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09.
[Alexander]


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10.
[Starsky and Hutch]











Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 012 secrets from Secret Submission Post #399.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, well, white people have racism sort of hard-wired into them. The have to work damn hard not to accidentally slip up and show it. I can totally see where the subtleties of the African American experience might escape them. I don't excuse it, but as long as they're trying to overcome their society-guided worldview, and don't go back to burning crosses, I think I can live with a few minor slip ups.

[likeadeuce]

We're not ever told he's African American though right? Just non-specifically dark-skinned.

[(Anonymous)]

Sickle cell.
That is all.

[likeadeuce]

Ahh, right.

[nyxelestia]

Except sickle-cell is something people of all races can be born with, not just black people. It disproportionately affects people with African ancestry, but that's about it.

[dragonimp]

Maybe, but an off-hand mention of a character having sickle-cell is much more likely to imply the character has African or Mediterranean ancestry, since there was nothing to imply it was an unusual case. Taken together with the guard's racist remarks at the beginning (I don't know why people are looking at these separately, expect that it lets them say 'but not all--!' more easily), it's a PRETTY DAMN BIG CLUE that Shadow isn't White.

[nyxelestia]

Honestly, "his mother had sickle-cell" feels less like a 'damn big clue' and more like a 'vague, subtle hint'.

I definitely think that people should have figured out he wasn't white from the dialogue with the guard.

But when I read that she had sickle-cell, I just assumed it was meant to imply that Shadow's mom was too sick to take care of him a lot as a kid. Hell, I always knew Shadow wasn't white, and it didn't occur even to me, until this thread, that his mother's chronic illness could be in any way relevant to his mother's race/ethnicity.

I understand, that for a lot people, sickle-cell is a "black" disease - but that connection just does not exist for me. Diseases and medical conditions aren't that racialized for me, and I expect that the same goes for a lot of other people out there, including a lot of readers of American Gods.

[dragonimp]

You're the first person I've heard say they don't associate sickle cell with particular ethnicities.

[nyxelestia]

It's not that I don't associate it with an ethnicity so much as I don't do it automatically. Sure, if we're talking about sickle-cell, then yeah, one of the first things I'll say about it is that it disproportionately affects black people. But this book? Not talking about sickle-cell - the disease is mentioned in passing. I was thinking of everything in relation to Shadow, so when I read that Shadow's mother had a debilitating disease, the thing I thought it about was how it would have impacted him as the main protagonist and POV character, not what the disease would have meant for/about his mother.

[(Anonymous)]

The difference between 'damn big clue' vs 'vague, subtle hint' probably depends on how much you know about sickle cell. It's not about a disease being "racialized", it's just plain old statistics. 3/4 of sickle cell cases are in Africa. It's not just a disease that commonly affects people of African descent, it's a diseases where the majority of sufferers are of African descent. Sickle cell is famous for it, even among non medical circles.

Now, you're right, not everyone will know this. But that's not a case of it being a subtle vague hint, it's a case of people missing out on the significance of a damn big clue because they're uninformed on the subject, and if you're uninformed on a subject then everything feels too "subtle" to pick up on.

[nyxelestia]

Oh, no, I know that - it's just not the first thought that enters my mind when I hear about the disease in passing. As I mentioned above, if we're talking about sickle-cell, then definitely one of the first things I'll think about the disease itself is that most patients are of African descent - but in this context, I wasn't thinking about the disease on its own/for its own sake, but as a peripheral detail to something else entirely. I was reading everything in this book as it related to Shadow, so when I read that his mother had a debilitating disease, I was thinking about what it meant for him, not what it would have meant for/about his mother.

[(Anonymous)]

I've never read this book but when characters are referred to as dark skinned, I usually assume they're black. But I also wouldn't say that a coffee and milk type of complexion is dark.

[likeadeuce]

Y, though if you look at the quotes from the book upthread it's telegraphed that people can't tell from looking at him what race he is, so the narrator's subjective description of color does not necessarily clear it up.

(This whole conversation is confirming my whole opinion that Gaiman not just out and saying Shadow was black if he wanted him to be black is annoying.)

[(Anonymous)]

Err…no.

Human beings have racism (well…tribalism and protection of kin groups might be a better term) hard-wired into them. Look at how some POC treat other POC.

The reason it's most prominent with white people is because they're the ones who have cultural and economic dominance and thus can exert privilege.

But white people aren't inherently more racist than anyone else.

[(Anonymous)]

The reason it's most prominent with white people is because they're the ones who have cultural and economic dominance and thus can exert privilege.

Except for places where they don't. Yes, they do exist.

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, this is what I came here to say.

[(Anonymous)]

Nice US-centrism, there.

[(Anonymous)]

Gee, I have no idea why anyone would use the term African American in a discussion about a character in a book called American Gods.

[(Anonymous)]

I was talking about 'white people have racism wired'

[(Anonymous)]

I think you'll find that American Gods is set in the U.S., and the main character is American.

[(Anonymous)]

The subtleties of the African American experience might also escape those readers who aren't American. Seeing as race issues tend to vary based on where you are.