don't forget to watch the movie

[bantha_fodder]

So I've been reading these posts by hederahelix, parts one and two, and she's thoughtful and she's made me think about all sorts of things. She talks about privilege, and listening, and in a post inspired by race it really made me think about my own heterosexual privilege (which I'll talk about another time), but the first thing I want to talk about is this:

If there’s anything I’ve learned from my fen friends of color, it’s that I’m more likely to get listened to when I say something about race than they are.

You can't look at my lj, or at my style of typing, and tell that I am fen of colour over the internets. So I wear my colour on my sleeve: I post stories about little Chinese girls, encourage people to learn about Chinese New Year and the things that I find important, talk about racism in my life. And I'm clearly not hiding my ethnicity at all, and in fact I'm actively encouraging people to look at my ethnicity, because if I didn't, then you couldn't see it.

So now I'm wondering how much hederahelix's point applies in an internets only context. Ignoring whatever Fan A's argument is, and whatever Fan B's argument is, is either one more likely to be heard because of the colour of their skin? I want to say no, because how can you tell? But I don't want to say yes, either, because who am I to make these sweeping judgement calls? I'm just some chick on the internet.

Comments

[hobviously.livejournal.com]

I think what she's saying is that *within discussions of race,* a self-identified (because we volunteer our identities) FOC is more likely to be dismissed as biased, reactionary, overly emotional, angry to the point of confusion, and so forth. Whereas a white fan is given credibility for looking beyond her own circumstances and speaking "calmly" about issues on an empirical level, having gone the extra mile to acknowledge her privilege and try to do something about it.

Like if you and I were to both make posts about the lack of Chinese characters in Firefly, your post could be written off with "well, Bantha Fortune Cookies is always on about being Chinese, it's an obsession with her and she's clearly not objective" and my post could be read with the subtext "that Hobo sure is using her brain and being an ethical fan to be thinking about this stuff when HER people are already well-represented in the text."

And I suppose that if the discussion were about Willow's Jewish identity on BtVS, and I declared myself, in that context I would become the Fan of Ethnicity and it'd be interesting to see what kind of reaction I, an American Jew, would get as opposed to you, a Chinese Aussie, or Carrie, an American WASP. Maybe there's a bell curve to credibility, where having some experience with the minority issue makes you worth listening to (in the eyes of fandom), but too much personal investment makes you easy to dismiss?

If the discussion were not related to racial issues, I'd like to think you and I would be equally listened to. I haven't consciously encountered any overt racism towards fans in non-racial discussions. But I have been reading race-related meta and watching deadbrowalking long enough to know what she's talking about, as far as race discussion goes.

[bantha-fodder.livejournal.com]

I wonder if I am capable of not volunteering my identity. I mean, think of all the fandom thingies we've encountered (mostly via fandom_wank), people making up their identities and such. I wonder if I could actually not volunteer all those bits that make me up. Because then I could make a post about the lack of Chinese characters in Firefly, and no one would no about my ulterior motivs, and it would be great.

It's funny, but I only stumbled across deadbrowalking quite recently.

[monimala.livejournal.com]

I'm actually glad you boiled down her posts because, seriously, that was a lot of tl;dr. I couldn't get through all that *meat* to figure out what points she was making... and I don't know if I'm just not as intellectual as some people in fandom or what.

But, basically, I'm the same boat with Pen. My ethnicity is just part of me and present in my LJ and my discussions, but never some kind of "card" I play when the subject of race comes up.

However, I absolutely experienced the "it's an obsession with her and she's clearly not objective" factor in a discussion about race and a particular fannish text just recently with a WASP-y person and I was horrified. I had never been implictly accused of being some kind of paranoid race-baiting alarmist before and I was floored. Had my white friend jumped into the discussion and backed me up, I probably would have had more validity added to my argument.

Just in fandom alone, I find that minorities don't talk about race nearly as much as everybody else does... because how do you talk about something that's just part of your way of life? We live it. Analyzing it on top of that...? A little exhausting. Especially for fannish purposes. Dude, I'm just here for the porn!

[bantha-fodder.livejournal.com]

Do try, if you couldnt' get through all of her posts. Like I said, she made some really thoughtful points, not just about the race wank but about other things, about heteronormativity and privilege and it was a really great post.

I think maybe we don't always want to talk about our ethnicity because a little bit of what Tris was saying - talking about it too much reduces our credibility when we talk about the big stuff, and I know I want people to really think about my words when I'm talking about the really big stuff.

[monimala.livejournal.com]

I tried to read the first one and wound up feeling really, really stupid about halfway through. Great post, but way over my head. I'm not prone to using words like "heteronormativity" and pretty much felt like I needed a smart person to sit next to me and tell me what was being said. (Dude! Whoa! OMG!)

I think the problem that I faced this week was that maybe I don't talk about my ethnicity enough offline, so people think that I'm homogenized, Oreo-ed, and NOT the kind of person who gives weight to race issues. I have no accent, I'm easygoing, well-adjusted, a good little soldier. This was, obviously, a real-life situation and not an online one, so that probably brings a different weight to it. I think that online, I'm more prone to at least letting people into my cultural interests.

I wonder how much that vartes for people: Are they more or less culturally outspoken online?

[angualupin.livejournal.com]

a self-identified (because we volunteer our identities) FOC is more likely to be dismissed as biased, reactionary, overly emotional, angry to the point of confusion, and so forth. Whereas a white fan is given credibility for looking beyond her own circumstances and speaking "calmly" about issues on an empirical level, having gone the extra mile to acknowledge her privilege and try to do something about it.

I find this view very interesting, because it speaks opposite from my own experiences. Being just about as white as it is possible to get (100% Welsh and very vocal about it), I often find that when I weigh in on discussions of race I am dismissed as "patronizing", "trying to make myself feel better about my own inbuilt prejudices by siding with the oppressed", or simply "have no idea what I'm talking about because I've never been oppressed myself". (If I had a pound for every time someone has told me that I am a racist and don't know it merely because I have "never been oppressed", I would be distinctly less worried about next month's rent.) Whereas People of Colour weighing in on the same discussions are listened to because, obviously, they "know what they are talking about".

I think much of it is that everyone who gets involved in these kinds of discussion encounters, sooner or later, someone who dismisses their views out of hand. If they are a minority, it is because they are overly sensitive. If they are white, it is because they don't know what they're talking about. If there is one thing I have learned from discussions on race, it is that there are bigots of all colours, ethnicities, sexuality, and class, and very few people seem honestly interested in hearing anyone else's point of view.

[carmarthen.livejournal.com]

I have kind of the reverse reaction: I put more weight on the opinions of FoCs and wonder if, say, my issues with Firefly are me subconsciously fetishizing Asian people or something* (?) rather than reacting to a legitimate problem (certainly I've seen acceptable rationalizations of Joss's choices, although I don't agree with them). I worry that my enthusiasm for Grey's Anatomy is also some weird subconscious fetishization (and I also think it's interesting and disturbing that the white characters seems to have a lot more fic devoted to them in the fandom).

At the same time, I don't necessarily try to agree with every FoC in discussions about race because that would require a certain level of contradiction on my part. And I know that my opinions aren't representative of All Queer People (or even All Bisexual Women). Expecting one member of a less powerful group, or that member's creative work, to represent the Entire Group is a problem both from within and without (I read a lot of criticism of Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior in high school, and one of the common criticism by Chinese American male critics was that she didn't represent their experience; Kingston was pretty explicit in interviews about only intending to represent a heavily fictionalized version of her own experience. Whether or not you like her book, I don't think it's fair to expect her to represent anyone besides herself).

*And I really do worry about this, since I've always been very interested in several Asian cultures. Where is the line between interest and fetishization?