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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 05:19 am (UTC)From:I mean, really, there are so very many issues, old and new, that I think fandom *should* be talking about seriously. Fandom doesn't handle inclusion and privilege well. I mean, not that fandom is unique in that, by any means; it's just a place full of people, like all the other places full of people that handle inclusion and privilege badly.
Hell, I still don't think we've dealt with misogyny in fandom, and I know that's been a subject of discussion for the ten years that I've been here. It's better than it used to be, but we're still so far away. And we've really only gotten serious about race in the last year, and there's so much yet to be said there. And I think you're quite right, American privilege within the international world of fandom has hardly been touched on in any serious way yet. I don't doubt that there are other realms that won't even occur to me at all until someone finally brings them up.
I got very angry not so long ago, and actually remain a little angry, about what seemed to a lot of people to be a very trivial issue of fan politics, but in its essence, my anger was (is) primarily about the way that fandom (like any other culture/subculture) seems to me all too ready to embrace its instincts toward pack mentality -- well, this is US, this is who WE are and what defines us -- and not half ready enough to listen to all those other fans who are saying in a million different ways, "Hello, hello, I'm right here along with you, but that doesn't cover me, that's not who I am as a fan." The answer to those fans who have said exactly that in the context of race has largely been go away, I'm comfortable with the "we" that I believe in already, and you don't fit in. My shock and sadness and anger over the way fandom has handled this issue is truly beyond my ability to express.
So I don't know how much faith I have in the ability of civil dialogue to fix fandom -- at least not very quickly! But I think people have to keep trying, and what you're bringing up is one realm where I'm sure we could all use some reality checks. I'm wary of any sense that the discussion of race is being hijacked or coopted to remove the focus from people of color ("yes, yes, we've heard your problems, now let's go on to something that matters to me!"), but I would love to be able to further incorporate nationality into the discussion -- particularly with Dr. Who, I feel much more strongly about seeking out the perspective of British fans of color, than I maybe do with, say, Supernatural, which takes place largely in the American midwest, allowing me to feel like the Primary Expert on my own regional culture. But that in itself is perhaps a limited way of looking at it: why would it only occur to me to seek an international perspective when it's a "niche issue" like an overseas show, and not just because nationality, like race, exists and should be able to inform American tv just as well?
Ah, there is indeed so much to talk about, and so little time. That's what keeps life interesting, I guess.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-15 07:29 am (UTC)From:Exactly. And I really wasn't trying to co-opt the conversation away from race overall, it's just when the person above was talking about how she was confused by some of the issues in the US, it was like 'Yeah totally, I so agree with you', it was more like an opportunity situation where I got caught up in another tangent.
And yeah :) That's about it. I wish I had more time to talk about this, but I'll be working tomorrow and life doesn't give me as many opportunities to post exactly my thoughts on various things, and when I just go for the knee jerk quickie post I'm not doing justice to the OP, myself or anyone else.