The Education of Little Tree: where is the racism?

I just finished The Education of Little Tree. I'd heard about it for ages, but everyone said it was wonderful, so I avoided it—I have little stomach for "wonderful" books. Then I heard it was racist and Oprah had disowned it, so I got curious: How could a racist write a book that many people of many races would love? Writers can write from perspectives that are not their own, but that calls for empathy, and racists have little empathy for anyone they do not identify with.

Still, it stayed low on my priorities until I saw it on a "Do not read! Racist!" list. So I read it.

I looked hard for the racism. Most of the characters are Cherokee. They're good people. Only one black shows up in a very minor role, but he's good people. A Jew shows up, and he's good people. Some of the whites are not good people, and some of them are. The book isn't racist in its depictions of races.

Now, it has no good people who identify as Christian and several bad ones who do, so the book may be racist against the Christian race. But some of the good people in it seem to be Christian. Given the setting, it's extremely likely they are. I don't think any Christian who gets Christianity would be upset by its portrayal of Christian hypocrites.

But it may be racist in one way: none of the greedy people are good people. The store owner is decent, but there's a general sense that the race of greedy people screw up life for the rest of us.

Which may be why Oprah decided to disavow this book. If you're a Christian living in a fifty million dollar mansion, you might be glad to denounce a book that suggests rich people are part of the problem.

I don't know how accurate this book is. I've lived in the Deep South, and I've lived next to an Ojibway reservation in Ontario, and I didn't see anything that was insulting to southerners or Indians. If you're hoping to learn about Cherokee ways, this is not a good book to read—it's about a kid and his grandparents who live in the mountains, far from other people. But if you're hoping to learn that Indians are good people who were horribly treated by whites, this is a fine book to read. I can't do better than the Atlantic's reviewer: "“Some of it is sad, some of it is hilarious, some of it is unbelievable, and all of it is charming.”

Sherman Alexie said, "Little Tree is a lovely little book, and I sometimes wonder if it is an act of romantic atonement by a guilt-ridden White supremacist, but ultimately I think it is the racial hypocrisy of a White supremacist." I think Alexie's a great writer, but he over-estimates the literary abilities of white supremacists. It's true the characters are idealized, but the list of books with idealized characters is long: some stories are realistic, and some are romanticized. The Education of Little Tree is drawn with broad strokes, but so is The Boondocks.

I recommend Christina Berry's write-up about the controversy at All Things Cherokee: The Story Behind The Education of Little Tree.

should be required reading for online life

The Drama Reduction Act of 2006, as amended 14 January 2009

Bonus! Via matociquala, The Drama Button.

free online writing tools

Zhura - Online Screenwriting Software

Writer: the internet typewriter

Don't Break The Chain!

1. Pick a goal.
2. Mark off the days on which you work toward that goal.
3. Use your chain of marked off days as a motivator.

The fundamental social division

I'm spared a rant today. I recommend it all, but if you're in a hurry, here are the key bits from The fundamental social division is class, not race or gender:

The newspaper quoted several Wall Street lawyers describing Sotomayor as a safe choice for corporate America. “There is no reason for the business community to be concerned,” said one attorney. Barry Ostrager, a partner at Simpson Thacher LLP who defended a unit of J.P. Morgan Chase in a lawsuit over fraudulent pricing of initial public offerings, cited Sotomayor’s role in an appeals court ruling barring the class-action suit. “That ruling demonstrated that in securities litigation, she is in the judicial mainstream,” he told the Journal.

...Black nationalism, “Chicano” nationalism, women’s liberation and gay liberation all emerged, to name only the most heavily promoted forms of identity politics. In each case, real social grievances of significant sections of the American population were divorced from their connection to the socio-economic foundation—the division of society between the relative handful of capitalist owners of the means of production, and the vast majority of the population who must sell their labor power to make a living.

...Madeline Albright, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton are all representatives, not of “blacks” or “women,” but of the most rapacious imperialist ruling class on the planet.

Barack Obama is the culmination of this process. Celebrated as the first African-American president, he has overseen the greatest handover of resources to the billionaires and Wall Street speculators in history.

America's poor are its most generous givers

America's poor are its most generous givers | McClatchy

...the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' latest survey of consumer expenditure found that the poorest fifth of America's households contributed an average of 4.3 percent of their incomes to charitable organizations in 2007. The richest fifth gave at less than half that rate, 2.1 percent.

some Paul Robeson to save my socialist soul

The Volga Boatmen:


Gloomy Sunday:


Stalin wasn't just an evil monster; he gave the USSR a crummy anthem:


The Chinese did much better:

the most messed-up song I adore: Marty Robbins - "Ballad of the Alamo"

Learn anything about history, and you know this is all right-wing nonsense. The Texans were fighting for "the right to be free" to own slaves.

But, damn, I love this song.

A Carnival of Caravans

The Hermitage: A Carnival of Caravans

"informational warfare"

The "Bitch" Evolved:

Findings from this study indicated a clear difference in aggressive responses between the genders, with women overwhelmingly compelled to retaliate by attacking the offender’s reputation, mostly through gossip. This gender effect panned out even after controlling for participants’ evaluation of the social appropriateness of such acts. In other words, in spite of the fact that the women realized malicious gossip wasn’t socially appropriate, this was nevertheless their preferred first point of attack. Men, on the other hand, were more evenly divided in their response, but failed to show the same preferential bias for acts of “informational warfare”...

mobbing and post-traumatic embitterment disorder

Bitterness as mental illness? - Los Angeles Times

Bitter behavior is so common and deeply destructive that some psychiatrists are urging it be identified as a mental illness under the name post-traumatic embitterment disorder.

This makes sense to me. PTED isn't the only response to mobbing, of course, but it may be the most obvious one.

anti-racism and classism: Shilpa Shetty vs. Jade Goody

The first two links are mostly for context. If time's short, just read the third.

UnNews:Big Brother accused of "classism" - Uncyclopedia, the content-free encyclopedia

Shilpa vs. Jade: Indian upper-class vs. White working-class « lenina 3.0

What annoys me though is that the media both in the UK and elsewhere currently focus almost exclusively on the ‘race‘ category, leaving out the class issues clearly at the centre of this argument.

Priyamvada Gopal: Anti-racism has to go beyond a facile representation game

...apart from the sterling work done by a few dedicated individuals and organisations, anti-racist politics has become a facile "representation" game that involves appeasing the fragile sensitivities of a vocal few claiming to represent the whole community. It is about harassing artists and writers, demanding that they conform to "right" ways of representing the community.

ETA: I'd been thinking about this for some time, but I was inspired to post this today by RL Wandering: Don't mess with Shilpa.

what my job is

Bear's got another smart post. From throw another bear in the canoe - What my job is not:

My job as an artist is to make you squirm.

Some of her commenters fail to take her at her word, but she answers them patiently. Smart and honest artists like Bear know we don't all have the same job description, or at least, if we do, we each focus on different parts of it.

That said, the line I quoted reminded me of something I sometimes forget: My job as an artist includes making me squirm.

a mobbing post and discussion at MetaFilter

Workplace Mobbing.

I especially recommend Mobbing and the Virginia Tech Massacre. It's easy to think the writer's taking the outsider's side too much, so I'll note this, from his conclusion: "This does not mean trying to excuse Cho's inexcusable crimes. Nor does it mean trying to shift blame and scapegoat somebody else. It means trying to get at the truth of what happened: empirical identification of the sequence of events, what led to what. Sound scientific explanation honors those who wrongly and unnecessarily lost their lives or suffered injury at Virginia Tech on April 16, 2007, and gives promise of preventing repetition of the tragedy."

ETA: From Amanda Howard's "Workplace Homicide":

If we turn a blind eye to toxic relationships at work because we fear being disrespectful to the dead, we are actually doing them an injustice. If positive changes come out of workplace tragedies, then at least those who died did not die in vain. At least we can have some hope that by addressing the complexities behind murders in the workplace, lives can be saved in the future.

Nathan, Emma, and me

 

Photo by the amazing Stu Jenks. My shirt by the amazing Emma.

1930s Futuristic Fashion Predictions

via

awesome steampunk: oriental or asian?

I love these pictures;

steampunk fashion - A brighter side to steampunk

And I'm charmed by something else: They're tagged "Oriental." The word was out of fashion for a long time, primarily because it's inherently "othering." Orient means "east"—which is to say, "not here."

But it was the word used in the 19th century. It especially makes sense to reclaim Orient for steampunk, where the point is to create a world that's "not here."

And, like a lot of words, if you look at old texts, sometimes it was used disrespectfully by racists, and other times, it was used extremely respectfully by people who were tired of the Occident and wanted something that seemed better.

Mostly, I want to see the movie that those are the stills from.

the Evanescent Web Movement

If you wonder about posts disappearing from this site, it's because I've got another one-man movement, the Evanescent Web Movement. Its principle: if you no longer agree with a post or find it boring, delete it to spare new readers.

If there are comments on a post, I'm less likely to delete it. But comments may not save it.

I agree that the past must be remembered. But the past must not be fetishized, and it must not be buried in data for thoroughness's sake. What's here is what I think matters. When that changes, it should change, too.

an interview about my comics

SHETTERLY CAPTAIN CONFEDERACY & CHARITY - COMICON.com Panels | Comic Book, Graphic Novel and Cartooning Discussions

class in Japan

from Google Earth maps out discrimination against burakumin caste in Japan - Times Online

In 2003 Taro Aso, the Japanese Prime Minister, dismissed the chances of Hiromu Nonaka — a burakumin who became Secretary-General of the ruling party — becoming Prime Minister. “There is no way we can make that kind of person prime minister,” Mr Aso was quoted as saying.

Companies sometimes hire private detectives to ensure that they are not employing someone of burakumin ancestry. Parents may run a similar check on their prospective son or daughter-in-law, and children may be excluded from good schools. Property prices in burakumin communities are lower than in the areas that surround them and public works projects take longer to be completed in the zones.

class in India

Fiscal deficit below billionaires' wealth in India

Forbes has pegged the total wealth of 25 Indian billionaires, both resident and non-resident, at about $109 billion (over Rs 5,65,000 crore) -- which is much more than the country's fiscal deficit of Rs 3,26,515 crore or $63 billion (the revised Budget estimate) for fiscal year ending this month.

In Bombay, India's Wealth and Poverty on Display : NPR

Some 400 million Indians still live on less than a dollar a day.

India - Caste and Class

The middle class is bracketed on either side by the upper and lower echelons. Members of the upper class--around 1 percent of the population--are owners of large properties, members of exclusive clubs, and vacationers in foreign lands, and include industrialists, former maharajas, and top executives. Below the middle class is perhaps a third of the population--ordinary farmers, tradespeople, artisans, and workers. At the bottom of the economic scale are the poor--estimated at 320 million, some 45 percent of the population in 1988--who live in inadequate homes without adequate food, work for pittances, have undereducated and often sickly children, and are the victims of numerous social inequities.

Cover story: 'India's middle class failure' by Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad | Prospect Magazine September 2007 issue 138

How should the Indian middle class be defined? According to the Indian National Council of Applied Economic Research, the term "middle class" applies to those earning between $4,000 and $21,000 a year ($20,000-$120,000 in purchasing power parity terms). But this definition suits only about 60m (under 6 per cent) of the population. Nevertheless, there seems to be an underlying intuition about the "middle class-ness" of those moving up from $5 a day to $10. A recent study by CNN-IBN and the Hindustan Times suggested a "simple consumer-based criterion" for membership of the middle class: ownership of a telephone, a two or four-wheel (motorised) vehicle, and a colour television. Under this definition, the middle class makes up nearly 20 per cent of the population—200m people. With such numbers, one can see why the global market thinks of the Indian middle class as a separate country; why else would Mercedes Benz, Louis Vuitton and Rolex bother with a country whose annual per capita GDP is still around $750? Around 10m Indians can buy the world's most expensive brands, but another 50m can aspire to the cheapest in a range, and yet another 140m can seriously think of Levi's jeans and Swatch watches.

"All amassing of wealth or hoarding of wealth above and beyond one’s legitimate needs is theft." —M. K. Gandhi

Republican proposal is more malicious than I thought.

I'd seen headlines like this: GOP struggles with push to rename Dems 'Socialist', so I thought it was all about saying the Dems were Commies. But they actually want to call them the "Nationalist Socialist Democrat" party. If you know your history, you know what that means. For those of you who don't: The Nationalsozialistische party, the National Socialists, are Nazis.

Standard footnote: Socialists can't be nationalists; socialists want a better world for everyone. Nazis included "socialist" in their name to say they were an alternative to Germany's communists, the first people the Nazis put in concentration groups.

P.S. Left by visitor in the comments: "One of the expedients of party to acquire influence, within particular districts, is to misrepresent the opinions and aims of other districts. You cannot shield yourselves too much against the jealousies and heart-burnings, which spring from these misrepresentations; they tend to render alien to each other those, who ought to be bound together by fraternal affection." —George Washington, Farewell address, September 19, 1796

facts about poverty in the USA

Poverty 2007 Highlights:

• The official poverty rate in 2007 was 12.5 percent, not statistically different from 2006.
• In 2007, 37.3 million people were in poverty, up from 36.5 million in 2006.
• Poverty rates in 2007 were statistically unchanged for non-Hispanic Whites (8.2 percent), Blacks (24.5 percent), and Asians (10.2 percent) from 2006. The poverty rate increased for Hispanics (21.5 percent in 2007, up from 20.6 percent in 2006).

How We Measure Poverty:

...the current system of measurement is out-dated and seriously underestimates the count of the number of poor people in this country. If the government were to acknowledge the true extent of poverty, it would need to dedicate a greater share of its resources to pay the costs of programs to help the poor. It is unfortunately cheaper to use an outdated system of measurement so that fewer people will be in poverty by government standards.

Numbers in poverty by race, via Income, Earnings, and Poverty, Data From the 2007 American Community Survey (pdf):

All races: 38,052,000
White alone: 22,284,000
White alone, not Hispanic: 17,404,000
Black alone: 8,807,000
American Indian and Alaska Native alone: 576,000
Asian alone: 1,376,000
Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander alone: 66,000
Some other race alone: 3,890,000
Two or more races: 1,054,000
Hispanic (any race): 9,219,000

Marx on the reason for the Civil War

Neo-Confederates misrepresent Karl Marx by quoting his summary of a belief he opposed: "The war between the North and South is a tariff war. The war is, further, not for any principle, does not touch the question of slavery and in fact turns on Northern lust for sovereignty."

Here's what he went on to conclude:

"The whole movement was and is based, as one sees, on the slave question. Not in the sense of whether the slaves within the existing slave states should be emancipated outright or not, but whether the twenty million free men of the North should submit any longer to an oligarchy of three hundred thousand slaveholders; whether the vast Territories of the republic should be nurseries for free states or for slavery; finally, whether the national policy of the Union should take armed spreading of slavery in Mexico, Central and South America as its device. "

ETA: A Metafilter post from 2008 that may be of interest: Black Confederates.

ETA 2: A quote that did not come up there: Frederick Douglass said in 1861, "It is now pretty well established, that there are at the present moment many colored men in the Confederate army doing duty not only as cooks, servants and laborers, but as real soldiers, having muskets on their shoulders, and bullets in their pockets, ready to shoot down loyal troops, and do all that soldiers may to destroy the Federal Government and build up that of the traitors and rebels. There were such soldiers at Manassas, and they are probably there still."

amazing material for a novel by a different writer than me

Philippa Schuyler:

Philippa Duke Schuyler (August 2, 1931-May 9, 1967) was a noted American child prodigy and pianist who became famous in the 1930s and 1940s as a result of her talent, mixed race parentage, and the eccentric methods employed by her mother to bring her up. Schuyler (pronounced /ˈskaɪlər/) was the daughter of George S. Schuyler, a prominent black essayist and journalist of pronounced conservative views, and Josephine Cogdell, a white Texan and one-time Mack Sennett bathing beauty from a former slave-owning family. Her parents believed that intermarriage could "invigorate" both races and produce extraordinary offspring. They also advocated that mixed race marriage could help to solve many of the United States's social problems.

Cogdell further believed that genius could best be developed by a diet consisting exclusively of raw foods. As a result, Philippa grew up in her New York apartment eating a diet predominantly comprising raw carrots, peas and yams and raw steak.

Einstein and Hitler on their religious beliefs

QUICKSWOOD: Einstein, Hitler, God has a number of quotes from both. These, I think, are the most significant:

"I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so." Adolf Hitler, 1941

"You may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the crusading spirit of
the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of
liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in
youth. I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness
of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our being." Albert Einstein, 1945

Peel Trident & P50 - World's smallest factory-produced cars

this is the method of the enemy

WWII-era poster via Vagabond Scholar: Torture Versus Freedom

Care less, do more

Put Things Off and Stop Caring to Realize Your Dreams. (Thanks, Grey!)

I also admire Robert N. Lee's version: "Be less and do more."

Ethics and Narrative: the Human and Other by Chris Abani

A friend sent this link: http://witness.blackmountaininstitute.org/archive/xxii/Witness_XXII-Abani.pdf

I hope to make time to read it again. All I'll say now is it's definitely worth reading once. I plucked this quote:

The point of the purposeful narrative, of the ethical story,  is to draw all the courage, kindness, goodness, and hope from the world into the open, where everyone can share it.

My friend plucked this:

To be human requires no action. What is required, though, is harder: the non-judgmental (and I don’t mean non-discerning) daily accounting of our lives and narratives to ourselves. It is owning all the power and privilege we have wielded that day, as well as its true cost. Perhaps this is what makes my work hard, and human—a difficulty I disguise in beautiful language like any good lover knows to do. One of my earliest spiritual advisers told me that to be human is to accept that there will never be world peace, but to live life as though it is possible. This is the core of my aesthetic: belief in a deeper humanness that is beyond race, class, gender, and power, even as I know that it is not possible. And yet I strive for it in every way, even when I fail. In the end, we may never know. Perhaps it is enough, as Emmanuel said, to know that it will always be hard. May we cry, but may we never die of heartbreak.

Thanks, Kari!

please throw me in this socialist hellhole

Norway Thrives by Going Against the Tide - NYTimes.com

Working Group on Extreme Inequality » An Icy Oasis from the Great Meltdown

P.S. If you're tempted to leave a comment like "it's the oil," read the articles first.

OddCon trip report

Emma and I had a wonderful time at OddCon. Probably the most fun was the Guest of Honor shticks. Patrick Rothfuss was hilarious, and Georgie Schnobrich was both funny and touching, and Emma was Emma. I wish there were videos of all of them. The text of Georgie's Fan Guest of Honor Speech probably doesn't do it justice. But then, the picture of Georgie's Cake for the Art Reception doesn't do it justice, either.

In addition to seeing many fine folk, the con's in an area with lots of ethnic restaurants, so we ate better than we usually do at conventions.

We went via Amtrak. The decision was made too late to get a sleeper for the trip up. I can't recommend three nights in coach, but you do figure out how to make the best of it. (Hint: take a blanket, a travel pillow, ear plugs, and a sleep mask.) There was a snack car with sandwiches and pizza and soup, but we mostly ate what we brought.

Coming back, we had a tiny sleeper compartment that Emma compares to tree houses. The convention picked up our travel tab, but here's some money info for people who might be thinking about train trips. The price of coach was about the same as a plane, or maybe a bit cheaper, if you didn't count food for the extra days. The two-person roomette added $190 to the return trip, but that included three good meals a day in the dining car. The food was decent, and the deserts seemed truly fine.

Meals were interesting because you never knew who you would sit with. The tables are for four, so we always ended up with someone. One time was grim, because we were with a woman who had clearly had a hard life, and she was so miserable that I was surprised she wanted to eat with anyone. When I'm feeling like that, I hide. Maybe she was just desperate for company, but when Emma and I tried to talk to her, she would answer with a detail about how bad her life was—and it really was bad—then look away like she wanted to be ignored. My bet is she'd been through drug treatment. She just gave the recovering addict vibe. All we could do was wish her a good trip.

The rest of the dining company was pleasant. The most notable were Australians taking a train trip around the US. The husband was a liberal Anglican priest who hated the growth of fundamentalism in his church, so I especially enjoyed talking with him.

And the scenery, of course, was great. Probably the prettiest moment was crossing the Mississippi with the arch of St. Louis in the background. The most memorable stretch, though, was not great at all. The train runs along the wall between San Antonio and Mexico. The difference between US and Mexican poverty is always appalling, no matter how often I see it.

The happiest moment was coming into New Mexico. The sky in the midwest is the wrong color. I'm definitely a southwesterner now.

ETA: The most depressing thing after that damn wall between us and Mexico? I only saw one person on the train reading a book. No one had magazines. People either slept or talked or looked at the scenery or watched DVDs on little dedicated viewers.

Shoestring Living

A site that may be of interest to folks in tough times: Shoestring Living | Living with what you have.

more "how groups see things now": young American Jews

Correspondence with a Zionist « Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist

According to a study funded by the American Jewish Congress, 44 percent of young American Jews would not feel sorry if Israel disappeared as a state.

If I'd written the last draft of the Star Trek movie

First, two things without major spoilers:

The quick review: Heaps of fun, but too much Old Spock and not enough Uhura.

And why didn't they change the sex of any of the characters? There's a fine answer at The Panopticon: Do Gay Martians Have the Right to Marry?

That out of the way, spoiler alert!

If I'd written the last draft of the Star Trek movie, I would—

1. Make Chekhov female.

The rationalization is easy: he was born a few years after Nero's alteration to the time line, so "his" moment of conception could've shifted, even just an instant, and the genes would unite differently. (This isn't to slight the actor they cast, who was great.)

2. Add more Uhura.

In the bar, she should enter the fight against her fellow cadets to help save Kirk—which would make him have an even bigger crush on her. There should be a scene where the universal translator misses something significant that Uhura catches to save the day. And when Spock and Kirk beam aboard Nero's ship, she should come along—having a Romulan speaker would be awfully useful—and get to do some buttkicking there.

3. Leave Old Spock in the future.

I might keep a cameo of him as Nero explains his motives. Otherwise, Old Spock's presence weakens every plot point he's in so much that I wonder if he was added in a late draft.

a. On the ice planet, Kirk should be saved by Scotty and Scotty's alien buddy.

b. Scotty should figure out the necessary equations without help, damn it!

c. When Kirk meets Spock on the bridge, they should argue simply because that's their nature. Spock loses it, then gets control of himself (maybe after Uhura knocks him aside?) and turns over command of the ship. And that moment of Spock doing the right thing under pressure should be Kirk's moment of realizing that Spock is an amazing person who should be his friend.

d. At the end, Spock should say farewell to his father, not his older self.

Even so, I was happy enough with this movie that I look forward to the next. Yes, the science was silly, but when you're accepting faster-than-light and time travel, you shouldn't quibble about red matter.

"Indian" or "American Indian", not "Native American"

When I lived by an Ojibwa reservation in northern Ontario, the question of "Indian" or "American Indian" or "Native American" never came up. People would refer to someone as Ojibwa or Cree if it seemed like useful information. I don't remember anyone using First Nations then, though they might've used it when dealing with the Canadian government. I did a quick google and found Native American Name Controvery, which confirmed my memory, "Many of those involved prefer Indian or American Indian to Native Americans," and provides some links:

Russell Means, I Am An American Indian, Not A Native American!

Christina Berry, All Things Cherokee: Article - What's in a Name? Indians and Political Correctness

what the first Americans gave us: "equal and free"

 From Jack Weatherford’s “Indian Givers” « Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist

Egalitarian democracy and liberty as we know them today owe little to Europe. They are not Greco-Roman derivatives somehow revived by the French in the eighteenth century. They entered modern western thought as American Indian notions translated into European language and culture.

If you love freedom and history as much as I do, this is must reading. Save me from having to quote nearly all of it and click that link.

Okay, another bit:

Describing it as “society against the state,” Pierre Clastres analyzed political institutions in Indian America to determine anew whether society could function without political oppression and coercion. He found that even in societies with chiefs, “the chief’s word carries no force of law.” He quoted the great cacique, or chief, Alaykin of the Argentine Chaco as saying that “if I were to use orders or force with my comrades, they could turn their backs on me at once.” He continued, “I prefer to be loved and not feared by them.” Clastres summed up the office of chief by observing that “the chief who tries to act the chief is abandoned”.

Also, Kant really was a racist idiot.

Over 100 Black Female Superheroes!

YouTube - Over 60 Black Female Superheroes!

YouTube - Over 20 MORE Black Female Superheroes!!!

YouTube - Black Female SuperHeroes Volume 3!!!!

I found them looking for black female superheroes who have been the title characters of their comics. Discovering that Captain Confederacy is included makes me feel right chuffed.

Kickbutt women of the comics: Kit Colby, Girl Sheriff of Moon Bow

via Golden Age Comic Book Stories

the racefail 09 flamewar

See also: Failfandom 101 cheat sheet

Note: The first draft of this was written in the heat of the flamewar. I'm tempted to make it more objective, but since few of the other histories of Racefail 09 make any attempt at objectivity, I'm only making minor corrections. In the original text, I used "racefailer" where I now use "failfan."

what went before

June, 2006. Micole Sudberg, aka Coffeeandink, a white woman who worked with several of the people she attacked during RaceFail '09, began her habit of using her first and last names, and sometimes her middle name also, in public posts on her LiveJournal. (See the pseudo-pseudonymity of Coffeeandink.)

July, 2006. William Sanders, editor of Helix SF, published Janis Ian's "Mahmoud's Wives." When it was criticized as anti-Islamic, Sanders defended it, referring to Islamist misogynists as "sheet heads." (See his Conversations With A Mean Old Bastard.)

August, 2006. The Harlan Ellison and Connie Willis Incident at WorldCon. (No link, because I haven't found any statement online by Willis, whose account should matter most, and whose silence must be significant.)

August, 2007. In "Blog Against Racism" week, many bloggers wrote about racism without discussing class issues. I argued this is like writing about bicycles as if they only have one pedal. Coffeeandink and Vom_Marlowe banned me from their LiveJournals.

May, 2008. Rachel Moss mocked WisCon on the internet. After being outed by badgerbag and others, including Coffeeandink, Moss became Internet famous, real-world notorious:

...she began to receive threats through email and at her office, with unidentified individuals threatening to render her unemployable. Moss filed a pair of police reports, one with the MPD after receiving what she describes as “vague physical threats” and another with the UWPD after somebody entered her campus office and left behind “a negatively-themed note scribbled on the back of a page ripped from the WisCon programming booklet.”

July, 2008. William Sanders rejected a story by Luke Jackson for Helix SF. The rejection letter was posted on the net and denounced as racist. If there's an objective third-party account of what happened, I haven't found it. Sanders' take is in Conversations With A Mean Old Bastard.

2009

January 8. Jay Lake wrote Another shot at thinking about the Other.

January 12. Coffeeandink dismissed Lake and Ben Peek as "white guys" who spoke "with the assurance of people who don't believe in the subconscious".

Elizabeth Bear wrote real magic can never be made by offering up someone else's liver.

January 13. Avalon’s Willow decided she didn't need to finish reading a book to know what it was about.

January 14. Coffeeandink dismissed Bear for giving advice that was not "sufficient."

Emma Bull and others said some critics are better at what they do than others. Vom Marlowe, a graduate of an expensive private school, denounced this as "privileged." Chickenfried Jo, a white woman, turned the subject from criticism to racism: "That to me says that the person reading it was not smart enough, educated enough, white enough..." K. Tempest Bradford upped the racial focus: "People of color spend far too much time wading through bullshit squicky race stuff to have to put up with it any longer than necessary."

January 16 - 20. Medievalist said Avalon's Willow was "engaging in orcing, performance art and pretty much blog-whoring." Though orcing has had a non-racial definition since it was first used to describe group-trolling, Coffeeandink and other failfans (fans of events they call fails) denounced this as racist. Because some women who were not white have been called whores, "blog-whoring" was denounced as racist. No one figured out how "performance art" is racist.

Mac Stone, reminded of real-life abuse, deleted her journal and was mocked because fans of racial "fails" enjoy making white women cry.

Copracat quoted Patrick Nielsen Hayden, implying "some people are smarter" was racist. Patrick answered, "It wasn't even remotely a discussion of racism. It was a discussion of people behaving badly in online arguments." zvi_LikesTV replied, "The discussion in the comments makes it clear that the conversation in which mac_stone felt verbally abused was the recent discussion on racism. The question of sufficient reading, specifically, was one in which racist asshole behavior was demonstrated by coffeeem and medievalist."

I answered, "Anyone who would say coffeeem or medievalist is exhibiting racist asshole behavior is, in turn, exhibiting racist asshole behavior." Because racefail fans reject dictionary definitions, this made me a racist. Or maybe a xylophone.

Coffeeandink quoted things I had said out of context in her post, "Will Shetterly: DO NOT ENGAGE". In the comments, veejane, icecreamempress, vom_marlowe, and others speculated about my life. In order to imply I thought racism was irrelevant or over,  no one linked to posts where I talked about the on-going evil of racism.

January 24. I posted an old newspaper article about my dad, Bob Shetterly, the only liberal in Levy County. After I mentioned that my family couldn't get fire insurance because word was out that the Klan would burn us down, sparkymonster said, "Will, if you were a black person the Klan wouldn’t have just called your mom. Or yelled an insult. THEY WOULD HAVE KILLED YOU. Being white saved your ass." I then wrote for those who don't know that whites died in the civil rights struggle.

I answered Coffeeandink with annotating madness and dancing to the jab of the "racist" stick.

January 26. David Levine said the response by failfans confused him. He was mocked for being racist.

Teresa Nielsen Hayden defended her husband and called his attackers "nithings." Failfans decided that was racist, perhaps because they had to look it up in the dictionaries they rejected. Or perhaps they decided that only racists defend people they love from charges of racism.

January 27. Framing her position while complaining about framing, Coffeeandink attacked Patrick and Teresa Nielsen Hayden.

January 29. Coffeeandink attacked Teresa and Mac Stone and said "If she's assuming the hate mail was sent by the people who were disagreeing with her in truepenny's LJ, I think it's a mistaken assumption." Why she thought anyone else would send hate mail, I dunno.

January 30. I wrote opponents of racism, separated by language.

Kynn "outed Luke Jackson, and Jackson "outed" Kynn.

February. The Feminist SF group decided to record what happened in RaceFail 09. Kathryn Cramer corrected an existing link on the feministsf wiki entry for Micole Sudberg that had gone to Catherynne Valente's LJ. When told that Micole wished to be pseudonymous, Kathryn accepted the wiki editors' decision, though she continued to argue that it was wrong.

February 24. I wrote looking at a few of my critics, champions of the upper class. Like Tempest Bradford in 2007, I hadn't known Coffeeandink was hiding her last name.

Because deepad's comment that she is "upper class" stuck with me, I wrote what is upper class “in India”?

February 26. Coffeeandink wrote me, saying she wished to keep her last name private. I removed it and wrote well, I think it’s funny, noting, "I just googled Micole's first and last name. The second hit connects her to her LiveJournal. Then I googled what she has publicly there, “coffeeandink micole.” The third and fourth hits brought up her last name. Now I’m totally baffled by her request. Oh, well. We all have our quirks."

On the same day, Vom_marlowe wrote, Fucking Will Shetterly Insults Me and My Family and continued to speculate about me. This time, I was grateful. She inspired me to write something for my mom and sister.

March 1. Not yet concerned about her privacy, Coffeeandink made a public announcement about the conventions she will be at, should anyone wish to find her.

Deepad wrote To burn a bridge is sometimes as necessary as to build one, saying that by quoting her, I was making "erroneous assumptions" about her.

March 2 - 3. Coffeeandink wrote RaceFail: Once More, with Misdirection, claiming, "He posted my full name and LJ on his blog, even though I deliberately do not list my last name on my LJ." She did not say I had done this in ignorance. In the same post, she said, "Kathryn Cramer has been linking my LJ to my full name on wikis and in other people's blog comments..." Coffeeandink's readers began attacking us for "outing" her.

I went to the feministsf wiki page and saw how Micole was being shielded while people on the other side were being attacked. My hypocrisy fuse blew. Knowing that she was extremely "out" in Google, I "outed" her with Own Your Shit! I failed to make this point explicitly: you can't "out" someone who has been using her legal name in public posts on her LiveJournal for at least three years.

A little later that day, when friends said I had over-reacted (which I fully agree I had), I took her last name off my site and wrote Fuck. That. Shit. And then is hypocrisy in fashion now? And which is worse, banning or anonymity? And is a nickname a pseudonym?

Coffeeandink wrote that I was "equating pseudonymity to belonging to the KKK." She did not say I also equated it to being Superman. On my LJ, someone said it was problematic to compare pseudonyms to Klansmen and cited Publius—a group that included James Madison, who owned about 100 slaves.

People said they couldn't donate to Shadow Unit because they couldn't trust me, so I wrote I'm leaving Shadow Unit. Then I wrote the first draft of this chronology and, realizing I needed to state explicitly that I would not "out" anyone again, I wrote about “outing” coffeeandink or anyone.

Then I closed down the LiveJournal copy of my blog, something I'd been wanting to do for ages. Keeping a copy is a nuisance, especially in times of heated debate.

Though her side had been attacking medievalist, Coffeeandink deflected the possibility that any of them might be the people harassing medievalist, and other failfans agreed the harasser couldn't possibly be a failfan.

March 4. Coffeeandink escalated the situation with Guess who managed to escalate the situation again! I wrote the second draft of this chronology.

March 7. In the vain hope of ending this peacefully, I began scrubbing everything that might compromise Micole's LJ identity from my blog.

March 8 (and 15). The failfans' blacklist from Author Shit List and Dan Savage joins RaceFail Writers for 2009 Fail:

Dan Savage
Elizabeth Bear
Emma Bull
Will Shetterly
Patrick Nielsen Hayden
Teresa Nielsen Hayden
William Sanders
Robin McKinley
David Levine
Charles Stross
Gemma Files
Kathryn Cramer
Harlan Ellison
Peter David
Dave Truesdale
Orson Scott Card
Anton Strout
Sarah Monette

John Scalzi was on the list, but apologized himself off it.

See also the condescending RaceFail Amnesty Post by K. Tempest Bradford

March 10. Jeff Vandermeer will make explicit announcements that people who aren't "white" may submit work to him.

Kate Nepveu decided to help bring people of color to WisCon.

March 11. I wrote Dear blogosphere, an apology.

March 12. Nepveu shamed WisCon into announcing that WisCon will welcome people of color from now on.

March 17. I wrote the cult of RaceFail ‘09.

March 19. stewardess: Reckless Eyeballing in the 21st Century compared RaceFail 09 to murdering Emmett Till. My first reaction was horrified astonishment. How can anyone diminish a brutal racist murder by comparing it to suggesting a reader should finish a book and "outing" a white Ivy Leaguer who had been "outing" herself for years?

March 20 - 22. I wrote reclaiming my dictionary, updated this timeline, and wrote A Farewell to RaceFail.

In an odd way, I'm grateful for RaceFail. I may have never learned about the psychological effects of mobbing otherwise. It forced me to realize that you don't change the world by arguing online. It's made me think about forgiveness—I'm still thinking about that. After all, both sides of the flamewar want a world without racism.

If any details are wrong, please leave a comment. Unlike Rydra Wong, Anne Somerville, the FeministSF wiki, and others, I don't ban anyone from correcting the record. Hell, I'd rather be corrected so I can get things right. Being wrong is embarrassing. The most accurate histories of RaceFail that I've seen are at the Fan History Wiki.

The comments on the original version of this post are here.

the problem with ideological anti-racism

During the civil rights era, opponents of racism worked for a "colorblind" future. That didn't mean we didn't expect to see the color of someone's skin—it meant we expected skin color would be no more important than hair or eye color. That's what Malcolm X meant when he said, "I believe in recognizing every human being as a human being, neither white, black, brown nor red." That's what Martin Luther King meant when he said, "I look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character." We thought the pseudo-scientific notion of race would disappear.

But racial division was embraced by anti-racists, whose name is so new you'll only find it in the latest dictionaries. Critical Race Theory andWhiteness Studies divide humanity into people of color, “white allies” and, by implication, white enemies. Ideological anti-racists reject dictionary definitions to redefine racism as “privilege plus power” and say only whites can be racist. Some say all whites are racist because racism is the white race's “original sin."

I stress "ideological anti-racists" here because those of us who reject the very concept of race are also anti-racists.

Class prejudice is such a taboo topic among capitalist anti-racists that they made "class issue" a square on their "racist" bingo card. They don't care that class divisions among blacks are so great that 40% of US blacks believe there are effectively two black races now. To them, Condi Rice is doubly oppressed because she's black and female, while a homeless white man is doubly privileged. They co-opt Gandhi and Malcolm X by ignoring Gandhi's sayings about wealth and Malcolm X's sayings about capitalism.

What if the Axis had nuked two US cities?

Jon Stewart made the mistake of telling the truth: Harry Truman was a war criminal. Stewart apologized a few days later, saying Truman wasn't.

So, your alternate universe moment: What if the Japanese had nuked Portland and Seattle just before losing the war? What if the Germans had nuked Boston and New Haven? What if the Italians had nuked Washington, DC, and Charleston? Would we consider those nations' leaders war criminals?

Yeah, Truman was a war criminal. And Stewart was right the first time, when he offered Kim Stanley Robinson's "The Lucky Strike" scenario.

ETA: That scenario wasn't the only option, of course. The US demand for unconditional surrender was calculated to make the Japanese keep fighting for as long as they could. If the US government had not wanted to show off its might to the Russians in the most graphic way in 1945, they could have blockaded Japan, or they could've simply said, "Mission accomplished," packed up, and gone home.

Also of interest: American Military Leaders Urge President Truman not to Drop the Atomic Bomb and Seattle Times Trinity Web: Dropping the Bomb.

ETA: A commenter at LJ brought up firebombing civilian cities. They count for war crime points, too. As does torture.

ETA: Cross-posted at LiveJournal and Blogspot.

Forgiveness

There are petty reasons to forgive people—if you want to annoy your enemies or if you want to look like you're better than them, forgive them pre-emptively and unilaterally.

There are selfish reasons—whether hating people is bad for your soul depends on your faith, but medical science suggests stress and anger shorten your life.

There are practical reasons—nursing a hatred distracts you from doing more important things.

And there are wonderful reasons—forgiveness opens the possibility of a better world for everyone.

But there are no bad reasons, so long as you know what forgiveness entails. It can't be conditional—that's a truce, not peace. It may be the hardest task anyone can take on—every war proves that. But all great teachers know its importance.

The Qur'an says believers are people who "when they are angry they forgive."

The Talmud says, "Who takes vengeance or bears a grudge acts like one who, having cut one hand while handling a knife, avenges himself by stabbing the other hand."

The Gospel of Luke says, "Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you."

The Adi Granth may say it best: "Where there is forgiveness, there is God Himself."

ETA 1: In the comments, Rob Wynne links to Real Live Preacher on "Forgiveness". That concludes:

You should be quiet about your forgiveness, except with close friends. If you need to tell the story, you have not arrived. Choose not to tell the story until you no longer want to.

Forgiveness does not always lead to a healed relationship. Some people are not capable of love, and it might be wise to let them go along with your anger. Wish them well, and let them go their way.

Whatever happens, forgiveness is good food for your soul.

G.K. Chesterton on Conservatives and Progressives

"The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected." —G.K. Chesterton

Thoreau on the English language and rules

"When I read some of the rules for speaking and writing the English language correctly, I think any fool can make a rule, and every fool will mind it." —Henry David Thoreau

about posts dated earlier than May 3, 2009

I managed to import some of my old blog posts after my blog disaster (see the pseudo-pseudonymity of Coffeeandink). To find the rest, visit it was all one thing.