[ SECRET POST #2637 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2637 ⌋

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

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 070 secrets from Secret Submission Post #377.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 1 - broken links ], [ 1 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 1 - too big ], [ 1 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

There's a definite dichotomy here in how people view things. Personally, I see your approach as being full of good intentions, but still slightly racist in an institutionalized sense because it's still about assumptions that are based on someone's skin color. Of course you can't assume that other people are like you beneath their skin, but you can't make that assumption about anyone regardless of their skin color!

So if you only make this assumption ("they're too different for me to write about") about POC and not about other white people who aren't you, well yes, that's racist. It doesn't make you a bad person, but it does mean that your outlook on race is very us vs. them. There's a reason why people call this "Othering". White people (including people of the opposite gender) are enough like you where you feel you know them, but non-white people are somehow too alien for you to even guess. Doesn't that sound kind of odd to you?

[(Anonymous)]

NAYRT, but yes, it seems odd to me, and yes it is a dichotomy. However, it is essentially how the original race!fail discussions began, way back in metafandom. The original spark that set off the discussion was a write author saying that she wrote POCs just as she would any other characters; out of the avalanche of opinions that followed, there was a strong undercurrent of white authors have not lived the POC experience, therefore they cannot understand, therefore they should not write it.

But yes, I agree, it is ridiculously odd and surreal.

[(Anonymous)]

anon the previous anon was replying to!

Until RaceFail it never occurred to me that it might be 'wrong' for me, as a white person, to write a character of colour (though the situation had never actually arisen). I think that the world (of fandom) is now moving towards a place where it will soon be acceptable for white writers to include persons of colour in their stories, but we're not there yet, and I'm not there yet (given RaceFail), and I won't risk it yet.

IMO, that's more about self preservation than racism.

[(Anonymous)]

Copied and pasted from my reply to another anon above:

I were to write a person of colour, I would blithely write their character (whatever function that character happened to be playing in the story -- male, female, hero, villain) by reaching down into myself for the appropriate feelings/experiences and supplementing those with research and imagination. If you'd be happy with that, great! I'd be happy, too. In five or ten years' time I can see myself doing it. At the moment, though, I foresee that doing it could provoke a dog pile ... which I'm not prepared to risk.* In shying away from possible controversy, I'm aware that I'm privileging/respecting the views of some persons of colour over those of other persons of colour...

* And I do have a legitimate say in the matter!