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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: 2007-07-15 04:35 am (UTC)From:A big problem with saying this is that *not* everyone in fandom talks about race and gender. A relatively few people bring up those issues because they're personally bothered enough by how they're handled that they want to encourage discussion and change. A lot more people then try to stifle that discussion. They respond that race and gender are not issues or that they are problematic issues but that fandom's not the place for discussing them.
Certainly, US cultural imperialism is also a problematic issue. And I agree that it'd be terrific to see, for example, storylines on SGA that dealt with conflicts between different nationalities on an international mission. It'd be cool if, in at least some of the many pieces of SGA fanfic that have an American or Canadian referring to "Earth culture," another person from Earth got after them about the generalization. But bringing up the issue of US cultural imperialism in a discussion of race ends up being just another way to stifle the discussion that some people want to have about race.
It *would* be good to see more people realizing that US cultural imperialism is problematic in fandom. But the way to do that is to make one's own post about that and try to encourage discussion there, not to to tell people who are discussing race that they ought to discuss something else. Otherwise, no matter how nice and civil one's tone is, it sounds like, "People should be talking about cultural differences instead of race and gender, because that's more interesting and important to me," and that'll get up the hackles of people who are already discussing something they find important.
In contrast, I think there are people--including many of those who are concerned with race and gender--would be glad to participate in a separate discussion that started, "I'd like to see more fannish discussion of cultural differences than I've seen thus far. Here are my thoughts about why the issue's problematic and how I think the it could be handled better." (And this, of course, would also apply to other problematic issues in fandom, like class.) Now, sure, there could be end up being a lack of response to such an overture for discussion or there could be a very negative response from people denying that it's a worthy topic of discussion. But that's also what could happen to people who bring up race or gender or class--it's the risk people take when trying to start discussions about issues that are important to them.
I do agree that cultural differences influence how people view issues of race, gender, class and so on. When people from the US start talking about the ways something is racially problematic, people who aren't from the US can't necessarily participate in the discussion in the same way. However, that doesn't mean those discussions are unfair. The reason people bring up those issues is because, based on the cultural connotations that they know, the issues are hurtful and offensive. The best response there is not to say, "Well, based on my background, here's why I don't think that's hurtful and offensive," even if that background is based in perfectly legtimate cultural difference rather than the blindness of unjust privilege. Not finding something hurtful and offensive, for whatever reason, doesn't make it less hurtful and offensive to people with other experiences. If someone felt compelled to participate in a discussion that involved issues about which they had little knowledge, instead of just listening and learning, a truly nice, civil contribution would be something more like, "Oh, I'd had no idea that was problematic. I'm going to be more aware of that now and try to avoid it."
no subject
Date: 2007-07-15 04:43 am (UTC)From:I'm bringing this up, not to stifle the conversation, which is totally not my intention, bu to point out that race issues in America are unique to America. And there is no recognition that race issues in the UK are different, and that perhaps we shouldn't impose values on another culture. Or think more about how race issues are different in other nations.
And that's how I went off onto the other topic over how generally, a lot of issues are imposed culturally.
Does that make sense?
no subject
Date: 2007-07-15 05:55 am (UTC)From:I do think it's true that there are times, in fannish discussions of race, that people from the US--who are the majority in many segments of fandom and so they get unfair privilege in knowing that they can be understood without having to explain their US-based assumptions and perceptions--seem to assume that anyone who doesn't see a racial problem doesn't see it because of white privilege. And when the issue is racially charged to people from the US due to US-specific experiences, that's not fair to people from other countries.
For example, it's not really fair to expect someone who has little experience with US culture and American-English to know without being told that the phrase "colored people" almost always sounds offensive in the present day to racially-conscious people in the US, while "people of color" does not. Without all the US cultural and historical baggage, it'd be logical to assume the phrases are simple synonyms. They're not, though, and using the phrase "colored people" while talking to or about people from the US when there was no intent to give offense would be an example of ignorance. At the same time, an assumption that it's an example of racist ignorance would certainly be an example of US privilege. And, apparently, if at some point a US fan who got after a South African fan for using the label "coloured" to describe a character, the US fan would be displaying just as much cultural ignorance as the South African, plus would be trying to exercise the privilege of being in a fannish national majority to control the discourse. (Because of my own ignorance, I have to rely on my dictionary when it just told me that coloured is a perfectly legitimate, nonoffensive ethnic label in South Africa.)
However! It's important to note that not all race issues in the US are unique to the US. And white privilege is a pernicious force in other countries, too. So when someone from another country says, "Well, the Americans love to complain about this, but it just isn't problematic here," that's not necessarily true. (For example, some fans of color from Britain have said they also find problematic what happened with Martha in Doctor Who, not just fans from the US.)
It's also important not to conflate discussion of issues that people find racially problematic, offensive and/or hurtful with the imposition of values on another culture. I don't think many fans who bring up issues that bother them in fannish sources from another country think they can impose any change in how the show's made or how it's received by people with a very different cultural background than their own. However, that doesn't mean it's illegitmate for them to discuss how the material affects them.
Finally, even when one doesn't mean to stifle discussion of race, going off on another topic--even when it's interesting and there was a logical segue to it--does end up having that effect. It's true that in most conversations, letting the discussion flow to a new topic would be unproblematic. Of course, though, that tendency is curtailed in discussions more formally dedicated to particular topic--which are the kinds of discussions that structured meta-type posts are often meant to inspire). And with discussions on race in particular, because so many people are already so anxious about discussions of race and so eager to change the subject every time it comes up, even a natural and innocent change of subject can be upsetting.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-15 02:30 pm (UTC)From:Um. Or at least, race issues in America are not directly transferable to race issues elsewhere.
Because I think that's a very important point, and a discussion we need to have, but I still think we can learn from US discussions of race, and besides, I don't want to let RTD off the hook just yet.