(no subject)

[rivka]

I've been following the Great Post-Wiscon Cultural Appropriation Debate with considerable interest. (If you haven't, rilina has a comprehensive link roundup here.)

My thoughts are a little bit scattered, and mostly focus on this observation by yhlee:

In four journals--mine, rilina's, oyceter's, and cofax7's (I believe that was the fourth; oyceter, correct me if I'm wrong)--discussion of cultural appropriation and authenticity kept turning to discussions of white cultures and distinctions, deflecting attention away from cultures that do not have white privilege.

My father has told me stories about ways in which, as a person of Jewish descent in Boston in the 1940s and 1950s, some people perceived him as Not White (and Not Acceptable). Those are interesting stories about my father, and interesting stories about the history of anti-Semitism in the United States. But if they're what immediately comes to mind for me to talk about when a person of color talks about racism he or she experiences today, I need to stop and ask myself why.

I was talking about this with Michael yesterday, and he pointed out that people are likely to perceive two potential characters to identify with in a story about racism: the victim and the evil oppressor. Well-meaning liberal whites genuinely don't see themselves as the oppressor, so the only way for them to slot themselves into the story is to find a way to analogize themselves with the victim. So the prejudice their Irish ancestors experienced a hundred and fifty years ago, or the suppression of a minority white ethnic group back in the Old Country from which their ancestors emigrated, is placed on the table as a token of which side they belong to.

I don't think that's necessarily a conscious process, by the way. I think that one of the ways that white privilege affects its recipients is that it makes distinctions among white cultures and white ethnic experiences genuinely seem like the really interesting questions about race. I think the people yhlee complained about had no perception of themselves as ignoring or minimizing the perceptions of people of color - I expect that they saw themselves as moving beyond racial dualities in a sophisticated way that looked at subtle distinctions among races generally perceived as monolithic. In one sense, they weren't wrong. Those are interesting questions. They just happen to be interesting questions that put the spotlight on white people and their feelings and experiences, at the expense of people of color who are pushed into the background.

I want to suggest that white people don't have to choose between slotting ourselves into a story about racial prejudice as the Victim or being forced into the role of the Evil Oppressor. There's a third option, a third role that one can identify with: The Person The Story Is Not About. It's possible to listen to people of color talk about race without either trying to ally your experiences with theirs, or explaining why you aren't the bad guy. It's possible, in other words, to just listen, and try to hear the story from the other person's perspective without immediately leaping to put yourself at its center.

That's not an easy thing for a member of a dominant culture. We're used to most stories being about us, in one way or another. (Okay, it's also hard for humans in general, because egocentrism is pretty much an organizing feature of the human brain, but members of minority cultures get a lot more experience with stories that are not about them and that don't even allude to them.) I recognize that it's not easy, and I don't claim to be especially or particularly good at it myself. But given the number of other things that are easier when you're white, I don't think it's unreasonable to expect us to spare the effort.

A final comment about egocentrism. In white folks' comments to the cultural appropriation debate, I'm seeing a lot of frustration that "there's no way we can win." If a white author depicts an all-white world in her books, that's racist; if she doesn't, that's cultural appropriation. Double-bind! It's a common theme in white folks' responses to discussions of white privilege in general.

Here's what I want to say about that: "how can I win?" is not the right question to be asking in this discussion, especially if "winning" means something like "not having to worry any more about being criticized on racial issues." "There's no way we can win," again, takes the focus off the problems of people of color and puts it onto white people. I'm sympathetic to the feelings it reflects, because I too am a person who wants to Do The Right Thing with respect to race. I don't think there's anything wrong with wanting that. What's wrong, I think, is expecting that I should be able to put myself into a position where my race doesn't ever matter because I am behaving correctly on racial issues. People of color don't ever get to be in the position where their race doesn't matter, and it's a reflection of white privilege to believe that if I "follow the rules," I should be able to be there myself. Race matters, and requires careful consideration and reflection and acknowledgement of double-binds and paradoxes and above all listening.

One doesn't get to demand rules that let one opt out of doing that work.

Comments

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Well, half of this is in how you define "historically oppressed or disadvantaged". I know I don't count to an American because of skin colour -- actually I didn't know that before this debate. "Historical oppression and disadvantage" in Britain would count my grandmother being beaten in school in Wales for speaking Welsh when she couldn't speak any other language, and certainly all Jewish people who left Europe in the thirties would be assumed to have been historically oppressed and disadvantaged. Not that this is the point.

If the issue is "how it sucks to have a different colour skin in the US" then obviously my personal experience is irrelevant. If it's "cultural appropriation in SF and fantasy" then I don't see that issue as limited in that way.

Of course, part of the problem in the wider meta-conversation may be that some people think the conversation is about racism in the US and others think it's about cultural appropriation in SF and fantasy. This is clearly a problem especially for those of us outside the US.

I was thinking how different this was from when roadnotes said that someone spat on her in the bank because she was black. Then the reaction was essentially "OMG! The bastard! You poor thing!" with a side of "I didn't realise things were still so bad!" -- "Oh yes they are!". Because there the conversation was one person reporting a personal experience, and I don't think anyone had the slightest urge to say "That's just like the time my bank clerk didn't give me the right change" or whatever, because it obviously wasn't.

But this conversation started in a different place. That's certainly why I felt I had something to contribute.

Well, it has certainly enhanced my understanding of US culture.

(Samuel Delany said in an interview on Slate that he expected in the future people would think the problem of gender and race were as silly as we think the problem of demonic possession.)

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

Thanks for making your original point. On reading the words "Cultural Appropriation" I really hoped that your point, writ large, was the topic. I generally cringe when people adopt foreign cultures as their own, and think anglophilia and its global kin are silly and an embarrassment to the person doing it at best, and misappropriation at worst. (Fantasy writing is of course a good example.) On the other hand, this is what humanity does. A discussion about sort of appropriation would be highly interesting to me, as I don't entirely understand my reaction and would like to. I have to say that I didn't expect white privilege to be the de facto theme of this discussion.

I found the Wikipedia article on the Cultural Appropriation useful in seeing how the face value of the words has veered off into a larger topic.

As you're a Canadian resident, I'd be interested in your take on how multiculturalism works there, and any comparisons you've made between that and the UK. I don't entirely understand how multiculturalism differs in practice between the US and Canada (where at least there is a stated policy of preserving many cultures living side by side). But it feels like the policy is not based on fear of other people, while I think that quite a lot of what goes on in the US is. Including, just to grab a recent local example, the current proposal to limit access to the alleys behind our houses in Minneapolis to the people to live there and their guests (and the trash man, etc.). Perhaps having that discussion, if you'd like to, in either of our journals would be better than doing it here.

Anyway,

K. [and as rivka says, the background rules of the conversation were laid out, although I didn't link-dive deep enough to understand that before hitting the disappointment that what I wanted to learn more about was not in fact up for further conversation]