I raised some concerns about the panel with people on the concomm. First, it seemed to me that there was a multi-level discussion going on in at least two senses. First, there were people in the room who understood difference, oppression, and power and then there were a number of folks who did not. It was really tough for people in Group B to grok much of the discussion coming from Group A because of this lack of a common language or understanding.

Second, Cultural Appropriation is a pretty Deep End of the Pool conversation as well as holding a lot of subtopics under its umbrella. I find myself inclined rather strongly to want to break it up into Oppression 101, The Psychology and Sociology of Writing Authentic Characters from Oppressed Groups, World Building with Authenticity, and Writing Authentically and Respectfully from Cultures Not One’s Own. Or some other sort of breakdown. Feels like a lot for one session to me.

In response to my concern #1 the concomm folks answered, not unreasonably, that it is tough to get the people who need to go to them into the basic info sessions, and that topics that are rather sexier (my words, not theirs) are more successful at pulling them in. My thought there is that it is awfully hard to start out successfully in a Physics 400 course if you have never taken Physics 100… That is a stronger analogy than most people might think!

Victor R. pointed out that there was an effort in the past to have separate discussions for poc and white folks at Wiscon for some or all of this, followed by a “What Have We Learned” about our different understandings piece afterward. This is an excellent idea which I hope can come to pass in some form. I used to help organize National Gay & Lesbian Task Force’s annual conference, Creating Change, and that is part of the very successful format that we used there for many years in doing education on racism.

I’m giving some thought to ways that some more basic info about oppression and power might be worked into the program at Wiscon successfully. In know that it has been done there before in some form. This was pointed out to me along with the fact that there are a lot of new people at the con each year, thus making such education a bit of a moving target. However, that is an even stronger argument, imho, for having such info available at the con every year.

Otherwise you’re gonna have even more people talking past one another than usual! :-) What fun!

I call it racism, because it’s often done not out of a desire to be “colorblind”, problematic as that is, but because of an outright belief that actors/characters of color are unattractive, unappealing to a mainstream audience i.e. white people, and incapable of carrying a story by themselves. Pam Noles talks about the latest example of this re the Wounded Knee film by HBO.

It’s (I think) part of the white privilege thing. Race doesn’t cross the typical white person’s mind. Since whites are most of the writers, agents, editors, publishers and movie directors/producers, well, then, it doesn’t cross their minds.

But when a character is clearly described as of color and the person is cast by a white person (whether on the cover of a book or in a TV show), I just don’t know what to say. I hate to call people racist but I’m not left with too many choices there.

i had a teacher once who said that the coolest thing about star trek was that they didn’t tell you how everyone started getting along, they just did. like, the default culture was this wonderful melange of previously distinct cultures that brought about something new, and more human- bc at the root of all culture are humans trying to figure shit out. this idea of realizing and validating differences but connecting on similarities- makes me kind of go all warm and fuzzy.

Good question. They don’t. And it’s so accepted as the default state that no one calls them on their shitty worldbuilding. It’s just as bad as having a planet with only one climate. (“It was raining on Betelguese 9 that morning…” Really? The whole planet at once?)

Y’know, though… part of the problem may lie in the fact that most of the “teaching” books on writing that I’ve seen have failed to address diversity as an element of worldbuilding. Aspiring writers are often taught that Planets Don’t Work That Way, but not that Languages Don’t Work That Way, or Religions Don’t Work That Way, and certainly never Races (or physical adaptation to varied environments, or whatever you call it) Don’t Work That Way.

In response to that question, I have to ask how authors currently rationalize the absence or near-absence of other races in the future (if they do at all)?

Very true.

Re: the discussions–I think that would work very well.

Re: white appropriation–when you said that, I laughed, remembering the show ‘Black/White’ where the Black woman in whiteface with the group of white women said her interests were “clothes, shopping”, as though she thought that’s all white women were interested in. My daughter and I were watching the show together and we burst out laughing.

Although I’m not an expert on the subject, I can confidently say that the majority of white women are not nearly that shallow. ;)