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Yet another failure to realise that POC/non-white people are people too
So, for anyone who reads fanfic but is unaware of the imbroglio, there has been a lot of discussion around an amazingly racist Supernatural RPF Big Bang fanfic using the Haiti earthquake as backdrop for pretty white boy sexing.
That link has lots to look at, note the ones with asterixes in particular.
But two that I think make a nice pair of points:
This Is Not JUST about Writing Characters of Colour about how it's only the VERY racist fanfic that gets this level of criticism so people should stop whining that "writing non-white/POC characters is SCARY because people will yell at me"
Itys (oh the hue and cry) This is about the silencing of POC/non-white people, which isn't my struggle to ramble about, so it informs the rest of this post more obliquely. Still, definitely worth reading.
Rambly thoughts:
I have written and drawn many fanworks with characters of colour(*). The ONLY criticism I have gotten that had anything to do with race/ethnicity has been (a)People very politely correcting my use of Chinese characters (which I always seem to screw up :/) and (b)Someone giving me crap for perceived anti-racist subtext.
What is a real fear for me is that I will create a horribly racist work and nobody will say anything, or they will and I'll belatedly realise it's TERRIBLE and can't be fixed. And given my Issues with beta-ing this is a genuine possibility but I'm figuring out ways around those Issues and thus far it's been a hypothetical fear (the closest I've come is deciding, based on further thought rather than criticism, to add a "This turned out a bit heteronormative" note to a fic).
On the whole I have experienced way more flack for being anti-racist than racist (though I've definitely gotten flack for being racist too), and it is the fear of being attacked for being One Of The Anti-Racist Meanies, plus the fear of BEING racist, that silences me more than the possibility of people pointing out that I've done something racially problematic. But I guess that just proves that I'm one of the Anti-Racist Meanies :/
EDIT: reading this comment objecting to the term POC got me thinking about the conflation of all people who aren't white into one homogeneous group despite the issues facing the various ethnicities often being quite different (even if the white people being racist against them don't always realise this). And it was interesting re-examining at this post from that POV. For a start, I've never created any works about Caribbean characters, though I have made a few about black characters from Africa and the U.S.
(*)Also, as it happens, in contrast to the discussion in the comments to the first post, a lot of my most popular works are about non-white/POC characters. Of course with Avatar the Last Airbender in particular it's not like fandom can concentrate on the white characters since there aren't anyyeah you heard me M Night Shyamalan.
That link has lots to look at, note the ones with asterixes in particular.
But two that I think make a nice pair of points:
This Is Not JUST about Writing Characters of Colour about how it's only the VERY racist fanfic that gets this level of criticism so people should stop whining that "writing non-white/POC characters is SCARY because people will yell at me"
Itys (oh the hue and cry) This is about the silencing of POC/non-white people, which isn't my struggle to ramble about, so it informs the rest of this post more obliquely. Still, definitely worth reading.
Rambly thoughts:
I have written and drawn many fanworks with characters of colour(*). The ONLY criticism I have gotten that had anything to do with race/ethnicity has been (a)People very politely correcting my use of Chinese characters (which I always seem to screw up :/) and (b)Someone giving me crap for perceived anti-racist subtext.
What is a real fear for me is that I will create a horribly racist work and nobody will say anything, or they will and I'll belatedly realise it's TERRIBLE and can't be fixed. And given my Issues with beta-ing this is a genuine possibility but I'm figuring out ways around those Issues and thus far it's been a hypothetical fear (the closest I've come is deciding, based on further thought rather than criticism, to add a "This turned out a bit heteronormative" note to a fic).
On the whole I have experienced way more flack for being anti-racist than racist (though I've definitely gotten flack for being racist too), and it is the fear of being attacked for being One Of The Anti-Racist Meanies, plus the fear of BEING racist, that silences me more than the possibility of people pointing out that I've done something racially problematic. But I guess that just proves that I'm one of the Anti-Racist Meanies :/
EDIT: reading this comment objecting to the term POC got me thinking about the conflation of all people who aren't white into one homogeneous group despite the issues facing the various ethnicities often being quite different (even if the white people being racist against them don't always realise this). And it was interesting re-examining at this post from that POV. For a start, I've never created any works about Caribbean characters, though I have made a few about black characters from Africa and the U.S.
(*)Also, as it happens, in contrast to the discussion in the comments to the first post, a lot of my most popular works are about non-white/POC characters. Of course with Avatar the Last Airbender in particular it's not like fandom can concentrate on the white characters since there aren't any