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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.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-15 10:47 am (UTC)From:I agree that racism here manifests differently in a number of ways, and it can be problematic if people view things exclusively in US terms.
But I don't remotely think that it means anyone over here can "afford to be colorblind", which was the claim I was replying to.
And plenty of things really aren't that different.
For example, the term "Mammy" may be a specifically US inflection of a stereotype - but I can certainly tell you that the "black women as destined to be domestics and clean other people's houses" stereotype exists here.
And the "black women are less desirable than blonde white girls" stereotype - hell, yeah.
So I really find it irritating when people automatically use "... but the UK is DIFFERENT!" as a "get out of accusations of racism free" card.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-15 11:08 am (UTC)From:Certainly it's not free of racism, and I'm totally convinced about the colour blind thing either, sorry, but I don't really want to get into a huge argument about that.
Personally, and this is just my opinion, I think of myself foremost as me, then I think of myself as Australian, then a women, then a person who has different heritages.
From my time in the UK I found that workers from Eastern Europe (mostly cleaners etc) and travellors were most discriminated against, and very much openly so. More then Indians, Pakistanis or African Carribean, although I'm aware of that as well and I only ever saw young Eastern European women in domestic service. Most of the doctors were Indian and Pakistani. (I worked in hospitals)
The friendliest people (other then other Aussies) in Manchester were the African Carribeans who I felt really easy talking to when I was lost, and weren't so reserved as the white British people.
I believe that the divide between nations is bigger then gender, race or class. Although I'm not blind to actual reality of the situation, my job doesn't allow me to be, even if I wanted to.
But I want to be treated like everyone else, I don't want to be treated better or worst and it frustrates me if I am (and it has happened, and I hated it, especially the difference you get when people find out about where you came from, or your heritage), and I treat other people on how I want to be treated, and then on who they are as a person.
And that's how I approach everything in life.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-15 12:26 pm (UTC)From:I respect what you're saying about your own efforts to treat everyone fairly as individuals but... Britain is a multicultural society with a long history of failed attempts to enforce monocultural assimilation (the Romans did it to the Britons; and the Normans did it to the Saxons, the Scots and the Welsh; and...) which has changed to become a successful multicultural society where an acceptance of diversity is a social strength. In a successful multicultural society, treating individuals differently from each other doesn't have to be the same as treating some people worse than others. :-)
no subject
Date: 2007-07-18 05:09 am (UTC)From:In a successful multicultural society, treating individuals differently from each other doesn't have to be the same as treating some people worse than others. :-)
I wonder if there is such a thing? Because it appears that the idea of a multicultural society means different things to different people, so by what yardstick do you measure a successful multicultural society?
But I digress. In the workplace, in social interactions I don't treat anyone differently, and how should I treat a person differently? You say that we should recognise everyone as different according to race, or heritage.
I don't see how I can approach anyone differently, or talk to anyone differently in any social situation based on race without causing offence. And what does that mean? Do I speak differently? I don't quite understand what the practical, every day application of what you're saying is, could you give me an example?
I work with people from different backgrounds and have done for years, and I've never been instructed on talk to anyone, or treat anyone differently according to where they were born, or where their parents were born.
no subject
Date: 2007-08-10 10:50 pm (UTC)From:Another thing that is useful is to learn about white privelege - if you're in a majority, or a subset of people used to weilding social power, then this applies to you. Being in the subset in power means not having to think about difference, because it never effects you personally. Being able to ignore difference is, in fact, a privelege.