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I think I'll quote somebody out of context, because that's always worked really well for me in the past.
Saying "black characters are written too broadly in New Who, making them resemble stereotypes" rather ignores the fact that white characters are treated the same way.
Look. This is the problem with trying to raise white people on Sesame Street in order to cure racism: you get a generation of white people who think it's to their credit that they hold everyone to the same standard, and run around operating like the world is one big, happy block party -- people who think they're complementing themselves when they say they're "colorblind."
BLIND is not a moral positive. BLIND is an inability to perceive what the non-blind people around you can clearly fucking see. My grandfather was red/green colorblind. His family also had a strawberry farm. His father used to beat him for not obeying instructions to pick only the RED strawberries and leave the GREEN ones on the bush.
Now, I'm not recommending regular beatings for the colorblind. That wasn't a nice thing to do (my great-grandfather was not a nice person in general, for oh so many reasons). But the thing is, my grandfather's colorblindness? Was a problem, because there is actually such a thing as color when it comes to strawberries, and it's easier to work on a strawberry farm when you can see it.
And there is actually such a thing as race. If you can't see it, you're not doing yourself or anyone else any favors. There are cases where you can give the EXACT SAME script/character arc/iconography/etc. to a white performer and to a performer of color, and the overall effect WILL BE DIFFERENT. Race is real. People respond to it, often on levels they aren't entirely aware of. So it actually misses the whole entire point of discussing race and racism if your sole defense is "but we're just treating them the exact same way we treat white characters!" It may be true, or it may not be true, but either way it's singularly useless.
Some fans seem to find gender easier to understand than race, so think of it this way: if there's a character that isn't very bright but always uses sexuality to manipulate other people, does it make a difference if that character is a man or a woman? Isn't it more of a stereotype in one case than in the other? And if some writer or producer said, "Oh, it's not sexist -- this is just what we were going to do, and we thought we might hire a male actor, but we went with a woman instead, so we kept the same stuff!" that doesn't magically make her not a sexist cliche, does it? If they'd cast a man, the character would read one way; when they do cast a woman, it reads differently. Same character. Different, because of the baggage we bring surrounding gender. If you were somehow magically oblivious to any and all gender issues, you might not notice that. But you wouldn't thereby be a better person than the rest of us. You'd just be oblivious.
Unfortunately, in our culture, we are conditioned to see white people as Real People, and black people as sort of thin slices of people, operating in one of a very few available modes and with only a very few emotions and interests. Therefore it's just different to write a white character "broadly" versus a black character. It's not enough to write the black character "just like" all your white characters, because race is not invisible to most of us and it doesn't have no consequences. In order to challenge people's already racist assumptions about black characters, writers have to work that much harder, and they have to work not blind. They have to work with their eyes open and their brains engaged and with the awareness of subtle signals and context and connotation that anyone who writes for a living should damn well be conversant with. To do less than that is to write lazily, to write foolishly, to write contemptuously of one's characters and one's craft, and to do all that because you can't or won't go the extra mile to bring race into the universe of stuff that factors into your writing does, in fact, have racist implications.
"Colorblindness" may be one's reason for making all of those mistakes, but it isn't an excuse, and it doesn't magically make the product impervious from criticism. Be less blind.
Saying "black characters are written too broadly in New Who, making them resemble stereotypes" rather ignores the fact that white characters are treated the same way.
Look. This is the problem with trying to raise white people on Sesame Street in order to cure racism: you get a generation of white people who think it's to their credit that they hold everyone to the same standard, and run around operating like the world is one big, happy block party -- people who think they're complementing themselves when they say they're "colorblind."
BLIND is not a moral positive. BLIND is an inability to perceive what the non-blind people around you can clearly fucking see. My grandfather was red/green colorblind. His family also had a strawberry farm. His father used to beat him for not obeying instructions to pick only the RED strawberries and leave the GREEN ones on the bush.
Now, I'm not recommending regular beatings for the colorblind. That wasn't a nice thing to do (my great-grandfather was not a nice person in general, for oh so many reasons). But the thing is, my grandfather's colorblindness? Was a problem, because there is actually such a thing as color when it comes to strawberries, and it's easier to work on a strawberry farm when you can see it.
And there is actually such a thing as race. If you can't see it, you're not doing yourself or anyone else any favors. There are cases where you can give the EXACT SAME script/character arc/iconography/etc. to a white performer and to a performer of color, and the overall effect WILL BE DIFFERENT. Race is real. People respond to it, often on levels they aren't entirely aware of. So it actually misses the whole entire point of discussing race and racism if your sole defense is "but we're just treating them the exact same way we treat white characters!" It may be true, or it may not be true, but either way it's singularly useless.
Some fans seem to find gender easier to understand than race, so think of it this way: if there's a character that isn't very bright but always uses sexuality to manipulate other people, does it make a difference if that character is a man or a woman? Isn't it more of a stereotype in one case than in the other? And if some writer or producer said, "Oh, it's not sexist -- this is just what we were going to do, and we thought we might hire a male actor, but we went with a woman instead, so we kept the same stuff!" that doesn't magically make her not a sexist cliche, does it? If they'd cast a man, the character would read one way; when they do cast a woman, it reads differently. Same character. Different, because of the baggage we bring surrounding gender. If you were somehow magically oblivious to any and all gender issues, you might not notice that. But you wouldn't thereby be a better person than the rest of us. You'd just be oblivious.
Unfortunately, in our culture, we are conditioned to see white people as Real People, and black people as sort of thin slices of people, operating in one of a very few available modes and with only a very few emotions and interests. Therefore it's just different to write a white character "broadly" versus a black character. It's not enough to write the black character "just like" all your white characters, because race is not invisible to most of us and it doesn't have no consequences. In order to challenge people's already racist assumptions about black characters, writers have to work that much harder, and they have to work not blind. They have to work with their eyes open and their brains engaged and with the awareness of subtle signals and context and connotation that anyone who writes for a living should damn well be conversant with. To do less than that is to write lazily, to write foolishly, to write contemptuously of one's characters and one's craft, and to do all that because you can't or won't go the extra mile to bring race into the universe of stuff that factors into your writing does, in fact, have racist implications.
"Colorblindness" may be one's reason for making all of those mistakes, but it isn't an excuse, and it doesn't magically make the product impervious from criticism. Be less blind.
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no subject
Date: 2007-07-14 10:35 pm (UTC)From:The real question is if a black token is better than no racial diversity at all?
Possibly to someone who's foolish enough to believe those are the only two available possibilities because they're too racist to imagine the third option of fully rounded characters of colour. Luckily many of the other commenters in this debate aren't blinkered by your false dichotomy.
are we taking into account that Doctor Who (which I guess inspired this post) is British and has a less pronounced history with colored people in subservient roles? Has an entire non-American history where slavery was something that Britain profitted from but that never seemed to have happened on their own soil? Segragation never happened. No one ever sat on any backseats in any buses in Britain.
What? You clearly know nothing about the history of people of colour in Britain and if you'd watched old school Doctor Who you might remember the episode where Ace encounters the very real historical racist segregation and negative discrimination against people of colour. Just because social segregation and negative discrimination wasn't legally enforced in the same way as the U.S. doesn't mean it didn't happen or that it isn't still happening in subtle and not so subtle ways.
So perhaps, the problem is that Russell can afford to be colorblind, because his country never needed to have thousands of black people marching for their capital to claim their equal rights.
Have you heard of the Brixton riots in which British people of colour literally fought on the streets for their rights exactly as white Britons did from the Peasants Revolt onwards?
And your assertion that RTD thinks he's "colorblind" might explain, for example, the repeated racist acts of cultural appropriation in his episodes of new Who but it doesn't excuse them.
Who is ultimately an underserving topic because you're splitting hairs from an American and very subjective perspective.
Many British people of colour disagree with you. Luckily for us all, you're not in a position to decide what Britons, or anyone else, are allowed to think.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-14 11:23 pm (UTC)From: (Anonymous)No one is saying that Britain is racist-free paradise. I am Pakistani and know better. But this American cultural hegemonial attempt to judge British tv shows as if there is no difference between Britain and the US is culturally imperialist bullshit. Martha is not a character from Gone With the Wind. To act as if all culture all over the world can be tarred with the same American brush is presumptive and offensive all on its own.
Possibly to someone who's foolish enough to believe those are the only two available possibilities because they're too racist to imagine the third option of fully rounded characters of colour. Luckily many of the other commenters in this debate aren't blinkered by your false dichotomy.
So you think that every writer, even a middle-class, white writer like Rowling who can't even get the white upper-class right is capable of portraying black British culture in a fully rounded character without getting it potentially offensively wrong? The dichtomy here with the Harry Potter example is not between portrayal as a token and not-portrayal, but between portrayal as nominally-black and probable offensive racist shit.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-15 12:05 am (UTC)From:references to the American Hattie McDaniels
I didn't make any references to Hattie McDaniels and I can't see the OP making references to Hattie McDaniels. You appear to be arguing with your own inventions.
this American cultural hegemonial attempt to judge British tv shows
You seem to be under the delusion that it's only Americans who think new Who is problematic in racist ways. To repeat my previous comment which you don't seem to have bothered to read: "Many British people of colour disagree with you." Pretending they don't exist is "bullshit" (to use your choice of term).
Martha is not a character from Gone With the Wind.
I didn't make any references to Gone With the Wind and I can't see the OP making references to Gone With the Wind. You appear, again, to be arguing with your own inventions.
So you think that every writer, even a middle-class, white writer like Rowling who can't even get the white upper-class right is capable of portraying black British culture in a fully rounded character without getting it potentially offensively wrong?
Do I? I had no idea. ;-)
But that's not what I said. I said about RTD's writing, and I quote, that I think there are: "repeated racist acts of cultural appropriation in his episodes of new Who." His report card from me would read: "Must try harder."
no subject
Date: 2007-07-15 01:51 am (UTC)From:Amen for ammendations
Date: 2007-07-15 02:43 pm (UTC)From:Gone with the Wind, it's like Nazis in a way.
am i going to have to...
Date: 2007-07-15 06:50 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2007-07-15 08:01 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2007-07-15 10:08 pm (UTC)From:*shamelessly exerts power over you*
Re: Amen for ammendations
Date: 2007-07-15 07:01 pm (UTC)From:Re: Amen for ammendations
Date: 2007-07-18 05:11 am (UTC)From:Is that a bad thing?
Re: Amen for ammendations
Date: 2007-07-18 10:20 am (UTC)From:http://hth-the-first.livejournal.com/53171.html?thread=886963#t886963
and the concept of Godwin's law,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law
Re: Amen for ammendations
Date: 2007-07-18 10:24 am (UTC)From:OK. *shrug* I still thought it was a good novel.
Re: Amen for ammendations
Date: 2007-07-18 02:54 pm (UTC)From:Re: Amen for ammendations
Date: 2007-07-18 04:47 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2007-07-15 01:52 am (UTC)From: