Conversation about all things Aqueductian is this blog's remit, and for the next week or so its founder has left it in my hands, desiring me to "enlighten and entertain" you. If my posts aren't entertaining you probably won't bother reading them. But I would rather endarken than enlighten.
Showing posts with label race. Show all posts
Showing posts with label race. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 7, 2012
Friday, April 23, 2010
Collective Liberation - An Alternative to "Oppression Olympics"
by Kristin King
The concept of "intersectionality," also referred to as "the intersection of oppressions" has been cropping up lately in feminist thought. The general concept is that class, gender, race, ability, orientation, age, and other types of oppression intersect with one another and reinforce one another, and that you can't address one while ignoring the rest.
Another, related term has also been appearing in both feminist and activist circles: collective liberation." It's a tantalizing term, nearly self-explanatory. In contrast to "women's liberation" or "black liberation," terms popular in the 1970s, it means everybody getting liberated all at once, together. Where did it come from, and how is it being used? I don't know, but here are a few dots on the map.
In "Circle Unbroken: The Politics of Inclusion," Aurora Morales explains the concept:
Solidarity comes from the inability to tolerate the affront to our own integrity of passive or active collaboration in the oppression of others, and from the deep recognition of our most expansive self-interest. From the recognition that, like it or not, our liberation is bound up with that of every other being on the planet, and that politically, spiritually, in our heart of hearts we know anything else is unaffordable.This is not the work of one person, done in a vacuum. Rather, it's the continuation of theory done by many women, stretching back for decades -- at least.
One precursor, written by black lesbian feminists in 1978, is the Combahee River Statement. This is a must-read. The authors drew their conclusions after doing organizing work and seeing the particulars of how racism, sexism, heterosexism affected their daily lives and their organizing. It was also a step toward consciousness-raising for black feminists who had previously been doing their work in isolation.
Here, the authors introduce the concept of intersectionality:
[W]e are actively committed to struggling against racial, sexual, heterosexual, and class oppression, and see as our particular task the development of integrated analysis and practice based upon the fact that the major systems of oppression are interlocking.This analysis came out of the authors' understanding of their own oppressions:
We also often find it difficult to separate race from class from sex oppression because in our lives they are most often experienced simultaneously. We know that there is such as thing as racial-sexual oppression which is neither solely racial nor solely sexual, e.g., the history of rape of Black women by white men as a weapon of political repression.The authors noted that their liberation was necessary "not as an
adjunct to somebody else's but because of our need as human persons
for autonomy." At the same time, they also felt their liberation would
benefit everyone:
We might use our position at the bottom, however, to make a clear leap into revolutionary action. If Black women were free, it would mean that everyone else would have to be free since our freedom would necessitate the destruction of all the systems of oppression.Which brings us full circle back to Morales' quote: "our liberation is bound up with that of every other being on the planet."
Works Consulted
The Combahee River Collective. "The Combahee River Collective Statement." Copyright 1978 by Zillah Eisenstein. Found at http://circuitous.org/scraps/combahee.html
Derek Shannon and J. Rogue. "Refusing to Wait: Anarchism and Intersectionality." November 7, 2009. Found at http://jenrogue.wordpress.com/2009/11/07/refusing-to-wait-anarchism-and-intersectionality/
Morales, Aurora Levins. "Circle Unbroken: The Politics of Inclusion. " Medicine Stories: History, Culture and the Politics of Integrity. Cambridge: South End Press,1999. Article text available online at books.google.com
Thursday, September 17, 2009
"Pattern Recognition" at Transformative Works & Cultures
The third issue of Transformative Works & Cultures, the peer-reviewed academic journal on fan studies produced by the Organization for Transformative Works, has some articles that may be of interest to Aqueduct readers, including:
- an interview with Verb Noire by K. Tempest Bradford
- Pattern recognition: A dialogue on racism in fan communities, transcribed and edited by Alexis Lothian, with participants including me, Deepa D., Jackie Gross, Liz Henry, Oyceter, Sparkymonster, and Naamen Tilahun.
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Proposal: Open Source Book Re-Covery Project
In response to the whitewashing of book covers, films, and mass media, I'd like to propose the Open Source Book Re-Covery Project.
Let's create a central repository for fan-created alternative covers for books. Covers with people of color on them. Covers with cool but not stereotypical designs. Covers that demonstrate the diversity and richness that's already inside the text, or that reimagine white texts as more diverse, male-dominated texts as more feminist. This project should be centered on race, but I personally think we should pay attention to other issues with mass media representations as well, particularly the misrepresentations of beauty, weight, age, and gender-queerness, and that we shouldn't leave out reimaginings that are just plain fun. Ideally, people could print out replacement covers for whitewashed texts, or libraries and bookstores can create displays that will let readers know that there's more out there with people of color than they think.
I'm envisioning a wiki, which will make it easy for people to update with new covers or to search for books by author, by genre, by race of author, by race of protagonist, by any characteristic the wiki users think are important. Each individual book page can link to the multiple available covers as well as to publisher contact information, to make it easy for readers to write or email the publishers to protest white-washed covers, to praise books by authors of color, to counteract the many ways in which the publishing industry continues to maintain white supremacy and racism--from the white-washing of covers to the de facto implementation of POC quotas or bans to the ghettoization of books by people of color to the reduced advances for POC authors writing about people of color to the preferential marketing of white authors.
So. Anybody have Webspace they care to donate?
Obligatory links
For reviews and recommendations of books by authors of color, check out Color Online and 50 Books POC.
Let's create a central repository for fan-created alternative covers for books. Covers with people of color on them. Covers with cool but not stereotypical designs. Covers that demonstrate the diversity and richness that's already inside the text, or that reimagine white texts as more diverse, male-dominated texts as more feminist. This project should be centered on race, but I personally think we should pay attention to other issues with mass media representations as well, particularly the misrepresentations of beauty, weight, age, and gender-queerness, and that we shouldn't leave out reimaginings that are just plain fun. Ideally, people could print out replacement covers for whitewashed texts, or libraries and bookstores can create displays that will let readers know that there's more out there with people of color than they think.
I'm envisioning a wiki, which will make it easy for people to update with new covers or to search for books by author, by genre, by race of author, by race of protagonist, by any characteristic the wiki users think are important. Each individual book page can link to the multiple available covers as well as to publisher contact information, to make it easy for readers to write or email the publishers to protest white-washed covers, to praise books by authors of color, to counteract the many ways in which the publishing industry continues to maintain white supremacy and racism--from the white-washing of covers to the de facto implementation of POC quotas or bans to the ghettoization of books by people of color to the reduced advances for POC authors writing about people of color to the preferential marketing of white authors.
So. Anybody have Webspace they care to donate?
Obligatory links
For reviews and recommendations of books by authors of color, check out Color Online and 50 Books POC.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
RaceFail '09: This hurts us all
Micole (a poster here) was outed by W*ll Sh*tt*rly and (eta: name removed per request3). Although they have now removed her legal name, neither of them have prevented others from outing her in their comments, and WS has deleted his LJ1 and (eta: name removed per request) has taken down the entries (be warned, the one outing Mely leads to a malware site). WS has noted he will not out anyone, but quite frankly, given that he had apologized to Mely, Willow, Deepa D, and Vom Marlowe only a month before, I do not trust anything he says (the apology was on his LJ, which has been deleted). In interest of full disclosure, I note that Mely is a good friend of mine, as well as an ally I value a great deal.
I am disturbed and frightened by WS and (eta: name removed per request)'s actions, not in the least because they tie directly back in to issues of gender, race, class, and other social injustices.
Here's a timeline of RaceFail '09, so people can decide what they think themselves.
SF media and book fandoms and power
RaceFail has, from the very beginning, had authors and editors on one side and readers and consumers on another. Although authors and editors and readers and consumers are not and never will be mutually exclusive categories, it is fair to say that those who have more power in the SF/F publishing world (Elizabeth Bear, Sarah Monette, the Nielsen Haydens, Emma Bull, W*ll Sh*tt*rly, (eta: name removed per request)) were arguing against people who did not have power in that world (Willow, Deepa, Mely2), with the exception of some SF/F authors and editors such as Nora Jemisin, K. Tempest Bradford, and Liz Henry (eta: Nora and Tempest and Liz are also arguing against that power, as they are not as firmly established and are therefore risking more).
Veejane has posted about SF book fandom versus SF media fandom. I generally do not agree with posts that hold up media fandom (eta: this circle of media fandom, not all media fandoms) as something to be learned from, as it is not a haven to fans of color or a hotbed of diversity. However, the divide between SF book fandom, particularly the segment that is directly involved in the publishing industry, and SF media fandom exists, and as a whole, SF book fandom has had more professional power in terms of the publishing industry, more men, and probably more white people. It's not some accident or random twist of fate that created this divide. The unofficial nature of media fandom is indirectly responsible for its relatively larger diversity—and I never thought I would say this, because being more diverse than media fandom is not that high of a bar—institutional power makes it that much easier for white people, abled people, male people, middle-aged people, middle-class people to get in and to stay in. There are, of course, disadvantaged people in SF book fandom and in SF publishing, and I personally benefit a great deal from people like Nalo Hopkinson and Tobias Buckell and organizations like the Carl Brandon Society and Wiscon. But the face of SF book fandom is very limited.
This is why WS and (eta: name removed per request)'s attempts to reframe the argument in their own terms is so harmful. They are attempting to force a conversation which started in LJ and make it follow their own rules. WS is doing so after having had an LJ for many years, and both WS and (eta: name removed per request) are doing so after many people have told them repeatedly about pseudonyms and about the dangers of outing. It is widely agreed upon by nearly everyone in media fandom that outing someone is unacceptable; furthermore, this is not LJ specific. Political and personal bloggers around the internet have lost jobs by being outed, and that's only one consequence. The important thing is not that they are reframing the conversation around pseudonymity and outing, it is that they are reframing the conversation so that it once again leaves that of race and racism in SF fandom. This reframing of the argument is not dangerous simply because of this one incidence of race fail; it is dangerous because it is representative of what happens when a group with more power and a group with less power argue.
This reframing is a cousin to the tone argument (search for "tone"). Both are ways of asserting power, of staking metaphorical ground; they are rhetorical forms of control that deliberately uphold current power structures. Mely writes, "This conviction, in the face of public conversation and well-documented timelines, that a discussion about race in science fiction is about the personal grudges of white people -- this inability to recognize, hear, or speak to the people of color involved in the discussion -- this in itself contributes to the institution of racism and the continuing whiteness of science fiction." Note how frequently WS and (eta: name removed per request) refer to race and racism in their posts. There has been an amazing moving bar of who has the "right" to speak; first, Deepa and Willow didn't critique Bear's book properly because they were too "emotional;" now we are too educated, not oppressed enough. Furthermore, WS in particular has had a long history of changing the subject. The arguments happening don't start with WS talking about classism; they start with someone else talking about racism. This is power at work, trying to keep itself in power.
SF book fandom, where are you?
Although a few authors and editors have come out against what WS and (eta: name removed per request) have done, where is the rest of the fandom? Like Jane says earlier, "Where are the con-comms, going apeshit to distance themselves from these serial fails of race and culture? Where are the guests-of-honor, specifically inviting underserved communities to visit at an upcoming con? (Where are the "discount if this is your first con evar" programs?) Why aren't the SF organizations like SFWA (okay, bad example) having a cow and putting out official position statements on outreach? Where are press-releases from the publishing houses, explaining their diversity efforts (in their lists and in their workplaces)?"
Why the resounding silence? Editors, authors, fans—all the people who were not talking about RaceFail and what people in their field were doing: where are they?
If the prior months of RaceFail were "both sides behaving badly" (which I disagree with), what is this, and why has no one said anything?
Mely previously wrote, "Is group protest always right or good? No, it's not. It's a way to establish and enforce community norms, and it's only as right and good as the community norms are. It can be profoundly oppressive and profoundly abusive. But silence in the face of injury is also a way to establish and enforce community norms. You don't opt out of a community by remaining in it and never commenting on its big controversies; you just opt to abide by whatever party wins."
What SF book fandom is telling me—a woman, a person of color, and a long-time fan of SF books and a con-goer—what you are telling me is that you don't care. That these are, in fact, your community norms, that you are all right with people who have more power in your community (by virtue of profession, race, and gender) using that power to harm other, less powerful, members of your community. That you are fine with the erasure of women, of people of color, of those without the same professional privileges you enjoy, and that you are willing to stand by silently and let people be hurt. This is how it affects us. This. And this.
Your silence speaks volumes.
The intersectionality of threats
Even though this started as RaceFail, it does not affect "just" race. For one, that assumes that people of color only suffer from a single oppression. Secondly, as many, many people have noted, outing can be threatening on many levels, and I would like to highlight that it can seriously harm women who are being sexually harrassed, GLBT people who are not out, POC who have been threatened, and etc. Media fandom is a safe space for some people. Again, this is something I never thought I would say, as it has proved time and again that it is not a safe space for all people. But in this particular case, it is more of a safe space than SF book fandom because of media fandom's lack of business deals and money-related matters, because of the general lack of ways to retaliate in the offline world. The act of outing comes out of the attempt to control conversation and thereby acts as an attempt to control the people having the conversation, and it comes from not just from two individuals trying to silence an anti-racist ally, but also from a community with more power in terms of gender and race.
WS and (eta: name removed per request) did not do this in a vacuum; they did it in an environment in which they could reasonably not fear many consequences (and as far as I can tell, they will not suffer consequences at all, save being banned from some blogs they probably never visited). They may not have knowingly taken advantage of this power, but they did regardless. And right now, that same environment's reaction is saying that it's ok.
This is why I think a threat to one of us is a threat to all of us. It is upholding a social norm that makes it ok to make threats against people talking about issues of social justice, and even more, it is upholding a norm that says these issues of social justice do not exist at all. I do not think feminists or GLBT activists or anti-classists or anti-ablists will be attacked right this second. But I do think the reduction of social justice is something that affects us all. If nothing else, these few years in my communities have taught me that yesterday's classism is today's anti-Semitism and becomes tomorrow's misogyny. And quite frequently, these attacks hurt the same people, because oppressions do not come singly.
What I want
I want to know if this is the norm for SF fandom. I want to know what SF fandom is doing to welcome oppressed groups—actively welcome, because simply saying "Come in" to someone who has just been assaulted in your house is not the same as showing them the precautions you have taken against further assault. I want to know if I and my allies will be safe.
But mostly, I want to know what you who have been silent are going to do.
I say this because it is all too easy for me to stay on the periphery. So don't tell me. Show me. Not via links or comments, but by making changes—in yourself, in one aspect of your life, online or offline, public or private, large or small. Help us all change.
What I'm going to do
I'd like to spend this week focusing on POC; in particular, I will try to catch up on all my backlog of book write ups by and about POC. I am going to read the 12th POC in SF Carnival. I will continue working on making my blog a safe space for oppressed people and issues of social justice. I will work on my pieces for the Asian Women Blog Carnival and the Remyth Project. I am going to continue to deal with these same issues of safety and trust and social justice offline.
eta: Also, any pointers about bringing up these things and dealing with them offline are incredibly appreciated.
Rules of discourse
I will be on- and offline periodically tomorrow, but I will still be moderating comments. I will also attempt to coordinate any ETAs on this post and the one in my LJ, although there may be a time lag depending on my internet access.
Notes:
1 It was deleted when I wrote this, and he restored it while I was editing this prior to posting. (eta: deleted again as of 3/5)
2 No, I don't think having worked nine months for an SF/F publishing house thirteen years ago is the same as being an editor or an author right now.
3 I removed the poster's name to prevent Aqueduct from having to suffer any consequences for my own statements, which are not associated with those of Aqueduct Press.
x-posted here
I am disturbed and frightened by WS and (eta: name removed per request)'s actions, not in the least because they tie directly back in to issues of gender, race, class, and other social injustices.
Here's a timeline of RaceFail '09, so people can decide what they think themselves.
SF media and book fandoms and power
RaceFail has, from the very beginning, had authors and editors on one side and readers and consumers on another. Although authors and editors and readers and consumers are not and never will be mutually exclusive categories, it is fair to say that those who have more power in the SF/F publishing world (Elizabeth Bear, Sarah Monette, the Nielsen Haydens, Emma Bull, W*ll Sh*tt*rly, (eta: name removed per request)) were arguing against people who did not have power in that world (Willow, Deepa, Mely2), with the exception of some SF/F authors and editors such as Nora Jemisin, K. Tempest Bradford, and Liz Henry (eta: Nora and Tempest and Liz are also arguing against that power, as they are not as firmly established and are therefore risking more).
Veejane has posted about SF book fandom versus SF media fandom. I generally do not agree with posts that hold up media fandom (eta: this circle of media fandom, not all media fandoms) as something to be learned from, as it is not a haven to fans of color or a hotbed of diversity. However, the divide between SF book fandom, particularly the segment that is directly involved in the publishing industry, and SF media fandom exists, and as a whole, SF book fandom has had more professional power in terms of the publishing industry, more men, and probably more white people. It's not some accident or random twist of fate that created this divide. The unofficial nature of media fandom is indirectly responsible for its relatively larger diversity—and I never thought I would say this, because being more diverse than media fandom is not that high of a bar—institutional power makes it that much easier for white people, abled people, male people, middle-aged people, middle-class people to get in and to stay in. There are, of course, disadvantaged people in SF book fandom and in SF publishing, and I personally benefit a great deal from people like Nalo Hopkinson and Tobias Buckell and organizations like the Carl Brandon Society and Wiscon. But the face of SF book fandom is very limited.
This is why WS and (eta: name removed per request)'s attempts to reframe the argument in their own terms is so harmful. They are attempting to force a conversation which started in LJ and make it follow their own rules. WS is doing so after having had an LJ for many years, and both WS and (eta: name removed per request) are doing so after many people have told them repeatedly about pseudonyms and about the dangers of outing. It is widely agreed upon by nearly everyone in media fandom that outing someone is unacceptable; furthermore, this is not LJ specific. Political and personal bloggers around the internet have lost jobs by being outed, and that's only one consequence. The important thing is not that they are reframing the conversation around pseudonymity and outing, it is that they are reframing the conversation so that it once again leaves that of race and racism in SF fandom. This reframing of the argument is not dangerous simply because of this one incidence of race fail; it is dangerous because it is representative of what happens when a group with more power and a group with less power argue.
This reframing is a cousin to the tone argument (search for "tone"). Both are ways of asserting power, of staking metaphorical ground; they are rhetorical forms of control that deliberately uphold current power structures. Mely writes, "This conviction, in the face of public conversation and well-documented timelines, that a discussion about race in science fiction is about the personal grudges of white people -- this inability to recognize, hear, or speak to the people of color involved in the discussion -- this in itself contributes to the institution of racism and the continuing whiteness of science fiction." Note how frequently WS and (eta: name removed per request) refer to race and racism in their posts. There has been an amazing moving bar of who has the "right" to speak; first, Deepa and Willow didn't critique Bear's book properly because they were too "emotional;" now we are too educated, not oppressed enough. Furthermore, WS in particular has had a long history of changing the subject. The arguments happening don't start with WS talking about classism; they start with someone else talking about racism. This is power at work, trying to keep itself in power.
SF book fandom, where are you?
Although a few authors and editors have come out against what WS and (eta: name removed per request) have done, where is the rest of the fandom? Like Jane says earlier, "Where are the con-comms, going apeshit to distance themselves from these serial fails of race and culture? Where are the guests-of-honor, specifically inviting underserved communities to visit at an upcoming con? (Where are the "discount if this is your first con evar" programs?) Why aren't the SF organizations like SFWA (okay, bad example) having a cow and putting out official position statements on outreach? Where are press-releases from the publishing houses, explaining their diversity efforts (in their lists and in their workplaces)?"
Why the resounding silence? Editors, authors, fans—all the people who were not talking about RaceFail and what people in their field were doing: where are they?
If the prior months of RaceFail were "both sides behaving badly" (which I disagree with), what is this, and why has no one said anything?
Mely previously wrote, "Is group protest always right or good? No, it's not. It's a way to establish and enforce community norms, and it's only as right and good as the community norms are. It can be profoundly oppressive and profoundly abusive. But silence in the face of injury is also a way to establish and enforce community norms. You don't opt out of a community by remaining in it and never commenting on its big controversies; you just opt to abide by whatever party wins."
What SF book fandom is telling me—a woman, a person of color, and a long-time fan of SF books and a con-goer—what you are telling me is that you don't care. That these are, in fact, your community norms, that you are all right with people who have more power in your community (by virtue of profession, race, and gender) using that power to harm other, less powerful, members of your community. That you are fine with the erasure of women, of people of color, of those without the same professional privileges you enjoy, and that you are willing to stand by silently and let people be hurt. This is how it affects us. This. And this.
Your silence speaks volumes.
The intersectionality of threats
Even though this started as RaceFail, it does not affect "just" race. For one, that assumes that people of color only suffer from a single oppression. Secondly, as many, many people have noted, outing can be threatening on many levels, and I would like to highlight that it can seriously harm women who are being sexually harrassed, GLBT people who are not out, POC who have been threatened, and etc. Media fandom is a safe space for some people. Again, this is something I never thought I would say, as it has proved time and again that it is not a safe space for all people. But in this particular case, it is more of a safe space than SF book fandom because of media fandom's lack of business deals and money-related matters, because of the general lack of ways to retaliate in the offline world. The act of outing comes out of the attempt to control conversation and thereby acts as an attempt to control the people having the conversation, and it comes from not just from two individuals trying to silence an anti-racist ally, but also from a community with more power in terms of gender and race.
WS and (eta: name removed per request) did not do this in a vacuum; they did it in an environment in which they could reasonably not fear many consequences (and as far as I can tell, they will not suffer consequences at all, save being banned from some blogs they probably never visited). They may not have knowingly taken advantage of this power, but they did regardless. And right now, that same environment's reaction is saying that it's ok.
This is why I think a threat to one of us is a threat to all of us. It is upholding a social norm that makes it ok to make threats against people talking about issues of social justice, and even more, it is upholding a norm that says these issues of social justice do not exist at all. I do not think feminists or GLBT activists or anti-classists or anti-ablists will be attacked right this second. But I do think the reduction of social justice is something that affects us all. If nothing else, these few years in my communities have taught me that yesterday's classism is today's anti-Semitism and becomes tomorrow's misogyny. And quite frequently, these attacks hurt the same people, because oppressions do not come singly.
What I want
I want to know if this is the norm for SF fandom. I want to know what SF fandom is doing to welcome oppressed groups—actively welcome, because simply saying "Come in" to someone who has just been assaulted in your house is not the same as showing them the precautions you have taken against further assault. I want to know if I and my allies will be safe.
But mostly, I want to know what you who have been silent are going to do.
I say this because it is all too easy for me to stay on the periphery. So don't tell me. Show me. Not via links or comments, but by making changes—in yourself, in one aspect of your life, online or offline, public or private, large or small. Help us all change.
What I'm going to do
I'd like to spend this week focusing on POC; in particular, I will try to catch up on all my backlog of book write ups by and about POC. I am going to read the 12th POC in SF Carnival. I will continue working on making my blog a safe space for oppressed people and issues of social justice. I will work on my pieces for the Asian Women Blog Carnival and the Remyth Project. I am going to continue to deal with these same issues of safety and trust and social justice offline.
eta: Also, any pointers about bringing up these things and dealing with them offline are incredibly appreciated.
Rules of discourse
I will be on- and offline periodically tomorrow, but I will still be moderating comments. I will also attempt to coordinate any ETAs on this post and the one in my LJ, although there may be a time lag depending on my internet access.
Notes:
1 It was deleted when I wrote this, and he restored it while I was editing this prior to posting. (eta: deleted again as of 3/5)
2 No, I don't think having worked nine months for an SF/F publishing house thirteen years ago is the same as being an editor or an author right now.
3 I removed the poster's name to prevent Aqueduct from having to suffer any consequences for my own statements, which are not associated with those of Aqueduct Press.
x-posted here
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Great Cultural Appropriation Debate of DOOM, Part II
There have been a number of recent posts, mostly on LiveJournal, revisiting topics raised in the Great Cultural Appropriation Debate of DOOM (see also Cultural Appropriation Revisited). If I had to single out one post as most critical, it would be Deepa D.'s I Didn't Dream of Dragons:
Other posts, roughly in chronological order (with much reference to helpful index posts by Rydra Wong):
Jay Lake, Another shot at thinking about the Other
Elizabeth Bear, Whatever you're doing, you're probably wrong
Micole, I blame Tempest
Avalon's Willow, Open Letter: To Elizabeth Bear
yeloson, The Remyth Project
Elizabeth Bear, Real magic can never be made by offering up someone else's liver
Micole, Resistance and Individuality
She Who Has Hope, Cultural Appropriation and SF/F
Deborah Kaplan, Race and reviewing
Cryptoxin, Cultural appropriation
Sarah Monette, race-(class-sex)
She Who Has Hope, Cultural Appropriation and SF/F (Once More, with Feeling)
Friendshipper, Cruel little lies
Yeloson, Othered, Only Because You Say So
Betsy, Getting called on your white privilege
Deepa D., White people, it's not all about you, but for this post it is
Vassilissa, About the Current Racism and Othering Discussion
The Angry Black Woman, What Is Cultural Appropriation?
When I was around thirteen years old, I tried to write a fantasy novel. It was going to be an epic adventure with a cross-dressing princess on the run, a snarky hero, and dragons. I got stuck when I had to figure out what they would do after they left the city. Logically, there would be a tavern.
But there were no taverns in India. Write what you know is a rule that didn’t really need to be told to me; after having spent my entire life reading books in English about people named Peter and Sally, I wanted to write about the place I lived in, even if I didn’t have a whole bookcase of Indian fantasy world-building to steal from. And I couldn’t get past the lack of taverns. Even now, I have spent a number of years trying to figure out how cross-dressing disguise would work in a pre-Islamic India where the women went bare-breasted. When I considered including a dragon at the end of a story, I had to map out their route to the Himalayas, because dragons can be a part of a Tibetan Buddhist tradition—they do not figure in Hindu mythology.
There are far more eloquent writers who have pointed out how difficult it is to growing up reading books (and watching movies) about a culture alien to you, and how pernicious the influences thereof can be. I am lucky in that Indian culture is more widely represented in Western media than other colonised regions—when I talk about Bollywood in the yuletide chat room, there are people who have an idea about what I might be referring to, bastardised ideas of ‘pundit’ and ‘caste system’ and ‘karma’ and ‘reincarnation’ are present in the English vocabulary. Yet still, my ability to connect fannishly with people from different parts of the world is mediated through the coloniser’s language and representation. Enid Blyton, with her hideous caricatures of African tribal boys helping the intrepid British children is read from Johannesburg to Jaipur—Iktomi stories are not.
These imbalances of power are what frustrate me in several discussions regarding issues of representation and diversity in writing that I’ve seen recently. I am summarising some positions that I have heard, and my responses to them.
One of the most frustrating arguments I’ve encountered is—If you hate it so much, stop bitching and write your own.
This naive position stems from the utopian capitalist belief that all markets are equal, and individuals are free to be what they can driven only by their inner divine spark.
Other posts, roughly in chronological order (with much reference to helpful index posts by Rydra Wong):
Jay Lake, Another shot at thinking about the Other
Elizabeth Bear, Whatever you're doing, you're probably wrong
Micole, I blame Tempest
Avalon's Willow, Open Letter: To Elizabeth Bear
yeloson, The Remyth Project
Elizabeth Bear, Real magic can never be made by offering up someone else's liver
Micole, Resistance and Individuality
She Who Has Hope, Cultural Appropriation and SF/F
Deborah Kaplan, Race and reviewing
Cryptoxin, Cultural appropriation
Sarah Monette, race-(class-sex)
She Who Has Hope, Cultural Appropriation and SF/F (Once More, with Feeling)
Friendshipper, Cruel little lies
Yeloson, Othered, Only Because You Say So
Betsy, Getting called on your white privilege
Deepa D., White people, it's not all about you, but for this post it is
Vassilissa, About the Current Racism and Othering Discussion
The Angry Black Woman, What Is Cultural Appropriation?
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
Third International Blog Against Racism Week
For 2008, IBARW will take place between August 4 through August 10.
If you would like to participate, here's what to do:
For inspiration, here are the previous years' IBARW posts and last year's People of Color in SF Carnival: IBARW edition, which includes a history of the event and recommended posts. You can also check out this post or delicioused recommended reading for further resources.
If you would like to participate, here's what to do:
- Announce the week in your blog.
- If you use a blogging system that allows post icons/pictures, switch your default icon to either an official IBARW icon, or one which you feel is appropriate. To get an official IBARW icon, you may modify one of yours yourself or ask someone to do so. Here's a roundup of IBARW icons.
- Post about race and/or racism: in media, in life, in the news, personal experiences, writing characters of color, portrayals of race in fiction, review a book on the subject, etc. The optional theme this year is intersectionality.
- Comment on the daily links roundup post at the IBARW LJ community or tag your post at delicious.com with "for:ibarw" with your post's URL, title, and tag suggestions for it to be included in link compilations.
For inspiration, here are the previous years' IBARW posts and last year's People of Color in SF Carnival: IBARW edition, which includes a history of the event and recommended posts. You can also check out this post or delicioused recommended reading for further resources.
Saturday, July 12, 2008
modified in the guts of the living
Thomas Disch killed himself July 4. Reportedly, he'd been suffering from health issues, depression, the death of his partner of thirty years, financial straits because of the cost of his partner's final illness, and a threatened eviction from his apartment (because the lease had been in his partner's name). I have read a very odd selection of his work, not the novels or the short fiction or even the poetry, but The Brave Little Toaster Goes to Mars, and a peculiar and delightful fable called "The Happy Turnip," which no one else seems to remember, but which I would snatch up in an instant if someone put it out as a children's book. I have several of his novels, and have been planning to read them; I have been planning to read them, and sometimes I would pick them up and look at them and put them down again.
Because I found his LJ, you see. I found his LJ, on which he published much excellent and bitter poetry and, on one of the days I happened to check, a rant against Muslims. I decided I didn't need to read his books just then.
I decided I didn't need to read his books just then, or his LJ at all; but I didn't respond to his posts, either in his LJ or mine, and I didn't decide I'd never read his books. I still haven't made that decision. I still haven't sold them.
Maybe Disch would have killed himself anyway, but he shouldn't have had to worry about eviction in the meantime. It is unjust. It is laughable, almost, in New York City, the city with the most tenant-favorable rent laws in the entire country; laughable, with the kind of laughter that hurts.
Heterosexism: if Disch had been married to his partner, if Disch had been able to marry his partner, he would have automatically inherited all his property, including his lease. This is why marriage equality is so important.
Classism and capitalism: Regardless of marriage, regardless of income, no one should have to beggar themselves to provide medical care for themselves and their loved ones. This should be treated as a basic human right, not a privilege reserved for the middle class, the propertied, those employed by large corporations. No one should have to fear losing their home. This is why marriage equality is not enough.
I've loved so many things that hurt me: so many books, so many TV shows, so many stories. So many things that tell me women don't count or brown people aren't human or Jews are disgusting. I love them still. I take what I can and leave the rest, or I try to; the hurt is hard to leave behind. But I do get how reasonable people can hate what William Sanders said and still support the magazine he edits, why people of conscience were still considering submitting new work to Helix yesterday, why I'm still reading John Milton and Ezra Pound and William Butler Yeats, not to mention watching rather less transcendental TV shows about ghost hunting brothers, not to mention keeping Thomas Disch on my bookshelves and planning to read his work sometime.
But. But. I am so tired, people. I am so tired of the hatefulness, the racism and sexism. I am so tired of looking in the Asimov's forums being a slap in the face because all the decent people in there can't drown out the racism and sexism spewed by S.F. Murphy and David Truesdale. I'm tired of having to forebear it.
Look, I understand why people have published with Helix in the past, especially people who were unaware of Sanders' history. But if you know and you continue to publish there, then you're continuing to support Sanders' racism. I really can't separate the personal from the political support aspects of this--I'm not sure I should, but it's an irrelevant question, because I can't. Sanders didn't separate the personal and the professional. He sent out a piece of professional correspondence with a racial/religious slur in it. Even ignoring the implications of his comments on the types of fiction he'd be willing to buy, what this says is that he expects people to accept and support his racism/religious bigotry during professional interactions. What this says to me is that supporting his business transactions is supporting his behavior as acceptable professional behavior in the sf/f field.
I won't do that. And, to be honest, I don't think other people should, either.
And also -- and this is a lot scarier to write, because it is a much bigger bridge to burn -- I do not think people of conscience should be supporting The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction as long as Dave Truesdale's columns continue to be published there, either by buying the magazine or submitting stories to it. It would be another thing if he were publishing fiction or even if he were publishing nonfiction unrelated to his sexist and racist behavior on the Asimov's forums. But he's not. The same venom and prejudice displayed in his attacks on K. Tempest Bradford are displayed in his columns about science fiction, both as a literature and as a community, and clearly and demonstrably affect his reviews of books and short fiction.
[ETA 7/12 11:55pm: After I posted this on my blog, Gordon Van Gelder informed me that David Truesdale has one more column to write before the end of his contract. It doesn't sound like the contract is going to be renewed. This makes boycotting F&SF for Truesdale's presence irrelevant, although the general issues for sf/f described by N.K. Jemisin, among others, are still pressing.
I'm wondering if it makes sense to request that genre editors in general shift to identity-masked submissions, at least for slush
I'm afraid to post this, honestly. I'm afraid people I respect will think I'm being rigid and inhumane for suggesting a boycott; I'm afraid people I respect will think I'm inethical and uncaring--that friends will think I'm not giving enough weight to their oppressions--for not feeling able to support a boycott for all cases of bigotry.
I don't think it's an easy call, or a simple call. I'm not planning to shun people who disagree with me on this, or argue against them or their work. But I am asking them, publicly and plainly, to reconsider what they're doing and whether their actions are contributing to the kind of community and literature they want sf/f to be.
Friday, April 11, 2008
Feminism and Appropriation
If you haven’t been following Delux Vivens' posts on the discussions as they've broken, She Who Has Hope has a roundup of the BrownFemiPower/Amanda Marcotte imbroglio* . Marcotte recently published a story on the institutionalization of sexual abuse of women immigrants in the U.S., without referencing or crediting the work women of color had been doing on these issues for years, particularly BrownFemiPower, a blogger Marcotte has acknowledged she reads regularly. There’s been a lot of blogosphere discussion, not all of which I’ve followed: I found ProblemChylde’s post linking Marcotte’s article to previous BFP posts especially instructive, and High on Rebellion’s Intellectual Theft Is Still Theft, discussing the ongoing problem of white feminists appropriating the work of women of color, painfully resonant with the discussion Pam Noles initiated over last Wiscon’s "But the Master Has A Black & Decker Cordless Power Drill" panel (on which I appeared).
Delux Vivens has also linked this to the ongoing Seal Press/BlackAmazon imbroglio, in itself just a single example of the divide between women of color and white women at the Women’s Action Media conference, which is in itself part of the long history of the contemporary feminist movement’s failure to acknowledge, include, or respect the work of women of color. The responses from all too many white feminists have been ... awkward.
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Brilliant Post on The Angry Black Woman Blog
Nojojojo, who writes science fiction and fantasy under the byline N. K. Jemisin, is guest blogging at the Angry Black Woman blog. (Readers may be interested to know that Nora has a story in the all female-authored issue of Helix that I wrote about a few days ago.)
Nora writes about the recent supreme court blows against desegregation. She looks at segregation through a lens rarely discussed.
Nora adds that she's not "seriously advocating an end to integration. Too many people, black and allies, have shed too much blood to get this far. And there’s lots of evidence to show that Tatum’s model of education does work — I wouldn’t be here if it didn’t. It just takes time, money, and persistence."
Still, like most things, the effects of racialization and segregation are more complicated than they appear at first glance. Nora refers extensively to Beverly Tatum's Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? as she examines how the formation of race identity interacts with segregated, and unsegregated, environments. Tatum starts with the notion that "all Americans go through predictable patterns of awareness and internalization about race." Nora draws on Tatum's structural support, and moves to talking about her own experiences in education.
When I was reading this, I tried to understand what Nora was saying by analogizing through the imperfect tool of my experience. I'm a non-practicing Jew who is ethnically Ashkenazic on my mother's side. Culturally, I'm distant from any religious practice of Judaism -- my grandfather was raised as an orthodox Jew, but became an atheist as a young man.
Still, I found that many of my friends when I was growing up were Jewish-derived, like me. Most of them were atheists, or Jews who practiced a reform variant of the religion. We (especially me) were isolated from the history of what it meant to be Jewish, and were left with certain tatters that we'd picked up from our parents, or from media stereotypes. What we created out of those experiences were remarkably similar. We saw ourselves as intelligent, academically oriented, interested in high art and culture, well-read, unathletic, calm and rational.
As Jewish children, we were able to create these good stereotypes for ourselves because it's what we saw of ourselves reflected back at us. Jews were brainy, but not brawny. We didn't get much of the penny-pinching thing, but most of us were from upper-middle class backgrounds.
In college, I found a mirror of this, except that the stakes now included some level of support for Israel (at least in my social group). I went to two colleges with large Jewish populations. In one, I found a group of Jewish friends who later ended up forming a pro-Israel group (I left the college before the group was formally begun, but later learned that it became quite extremist). In the other, I sought out a pre-existing group and went to work for the Jewish newspaper (which I eventually left due to its extremist position).
These cultures were something of a respite for me, particularly as a child, because I didn't cope well with mainstream expectations of what children were supposed to be. I preferred books to running around, and was more interested in theater than pop music (which I've never gotten into) or the kinds of television my peers were watching. I was permanently lost on the concept of fashion, and tended to be yelled at for using large vocabulary words which were presumed to be curse words. Also, I was fat, and this study rings very true to me.
I wonder what kind of culture fat children would make for themselves. Would they segregate by gender? How would they reflect back the negative stereotypes of the media? Would they become consciously gross? Would they eat the way that the media suggests they do? Would the heterosexual boys act like Chris Farley while the gay boys and most of the girls traded tips on how to get away with bulimia or extreme diet plans?
And how would that culture evolve in college? I have no idea.
OK, that's just where I go when I play with these concepts of grouping. To return to Nora's brilliant essay:
Which is a tragedy, particularly since the model replacing it (integration) hasn't been allowed to flourish long enough for its benefits to really take hold. The supreme court decision is a particular insult to Nora's generation, who had to sacrifice the positive tools that were already in place in hope of something better. They and their parents gave up something important, but the primarily white folks who sit on the supreme court decided the rest of us white folk were sick of doing our part.
I urge you to read the whole of Nora's essay. And add The Angry Black Woman to your daily reading too, if you haven't. Their entries are always thought-provoking -- and often funny or beautiful, too.
Nora writes about the recent supreme court blows against desegregation. She looks at segregation through a lens rarely discussed.
The bulk of my reaction is this: fuck it. Just let all the schools in the US re-segregate. Black students did better academically before integration anyway. It’s a lot easier to achieve when you’re not bombarded with negative cultural messages and social isolation if you do well. When I was in elementary school, I knew a few black and Latina kids who tested into the gifted program around the same time that I did. Most turned it down. I couldn’t understand why — until the day I walked into my first gifted class and realized I was one of only two people of color there. (There weren’t even any Asians; this was Alabama, remember. Though I hear a good-sized Asian population has developed down there in the twenty years since.) The next year I was the only one; the other kid dropped out. I stayed and did fine — academically, at least. Socially… well, there were consequences. My decision to stay in the gifted program branded me a sellout, because I didn’t do what the other kids had done. I was accused of “trying to be white” and worse. I had no black friends until late middle school. Some of the white kids were friendly, but it was a superficial kind of thing — there were certain things we just couldn’t talk about, and there was some inherent objectification that came with being “the black friend”. I got a lot of “Can I touch your hair?” and “Wow, I didn’t realize black people like to read!” Even for the handful who might’ve become true friends, their parents weren’t all that happy when they brought me home (to be fair, neither was my mother, when I brought white friends home). So while I did well in middle and high school, I often wonder how much better I could’ve done if I hadn’t been a treated like a freakish aberration.
Nora adds that she's not "seriously advocating an end to integration. Too many people, black and allies, have shed too much blood to get this far. And there’s lots of evidence to show that Tatum’s model of education does work — I wouldn’t be here if it didn’t. It just takes time, money, and persistence."
Still, like most things, the effects of racialization and segregation are more complicated than they appear at first glance. Nora refers extensively to Beverly Tatum's Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? as she examines how the formation of race identity interacts with segregated, and unsegregated, environments. Tatum starts with the notion that "all Americans go through predictable patterns of awareness and internalization about race." Nora draws on Tatum's structural support, and moves to talking about her own experiences in education.
[At the end of the predictable pattern of awareness and internalization abotu race, is people] “becoming black”, “becoming white”... the pattern of development is relatively similar in whites vs peole of color — for example, both start out in a state of racial unawareness. For white people this is a general sense of racelessness — not so much being willfully “colorblind” as simply not noticing people of color as anything other than background noise. For black people (and Tatum does spend some time on Hispanics, Natives, recent immigrants, and Asians, but her expertise is clearly with African-American non-recent-immigrants), the initial state is called pre-encounter — they’re aware of race because it’s impossible to not notice if you’re black in this society, but they haven’t yet experienced any of the consequences of being black...
The breakdown of the “racially unaware” state for both whites and PoC is usually some kind of triggering event — a sudden, undeniable confrontation with the inequities of race. For PoC, this is usually their first encounter with racism. By the time black kids get to high school, they’re usually in another phase of identity development — immersion, in which they feel compelled to band together with others of their culture in order to survive an environment newly understood to be hostile. This small group then begins developing a collective sense of identity about what it means to be black. This group sense serves as a kind of protective shield until the individual is ready to develop his/her own personal definition of blackness. After that the group definition can safely be shed.
Tatum confronts the unspoken assumption of the “Why are all the black kids sitting together” question, which is “…and what can we do about this problem?” She explains that it isn’t a problem; that after being slapped in the face with the trauma of racism, kids of color need support to recover from that trauma, and the best people to help them do that is other kids who are going through the same thing. This way, they can reject the wrongness of racism and develop needed defenses against it, such as a stronger understanding of their own culture and its benefits. Because most white kids haven’t yet progressed beyond the raceless stage at this point — they typically don’t until closer to college — they’re no help even if they mean well, because their natural reaction is to dismiss or downgrade the traumatic experience (”Are you sure it was because you were black?” or “But I’ve eaten there all the time, and they’ve always been nice to me…” and so on). So the black kids seek solace from each other.
But here’s the thing. Immersion is, in its own way, incredibly superficial. Kids in immersion have no real clue how to be black; they’ve been whacked with a societal interpretation of blackness as “bad”, but they’re not yet sure how to counter that interpretation. So they cobble together their own definition of blackness, drawing on what they know and what society tells them about themselves. If they’ve been exposed to positive knowledge about their culture, they embrace positive manifestations as the norm. But when they’re bombarded with stereotypes and negativity about their culture, they end up embracing that as their standard. This is what I fell afoul of as a child — the kids around me had absorbed the racist notion that black people weren’t smart, were lazy, didn’t “talk proper”, etc. Because I rejected this, I was deemed insufficiently black.
I saw a different example of immersion when I went to college. Tulane was a predominantly white school, but it had a large (for a white school) black population, mostly because New Orleans was majority black and the school accepted a lot of bright local kids. Apparently that population reached a kind of critical mass, because the instant all of us stepped on the yard it was like some kind of racial Singularity — we were somehow all drawn together into a weird gestalt consciousness. There was a series of benches in front of the student center, and this one corner bench suddenly became “the black bench”. Everyone knew it and gathered there between classes. In the cafeteria — yeah, it happened in college too — one black person couldn’t just sit by herself. It was as if her solitude triggered some kind of disturbance in the Force; suddenly a dozen other black people would just appear and come sit with her. One time I was walking through the experimental psych building, humming “Summertime” by Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince, and I heard the same humming from the labs on either side of me, and two other black students poked their heads out and said something like, “Whoa, I was just thinking of that song.” And they became my study partners.
When I was reading this, I tried to understand what Nora was saying by analogizing through the imperfect tool of my experience. I'm a non-practicing Jew who is ethnically Ashkenazic on my mother's side. Culturally, I'm distant from any religious practice of Judaism -- my grandfather was raised as an orthodox Jew, but became an atheist as a young man.
Still, I found that many of my friends when I was growing up were Jewish-derived, like me. Most of them were atheists, or Jews who practiced a reform variant of the religion. We (especially me) were isolated from the history of what it meant to be Jewish, and were left with certain tatters that we'd picked up from our parents, or from media stereotypes. What we created out of those experiences were remarkably similar. We saw ourselves as intelligent, academically oriented, interested in high art and culture, well-read, unathletic, calm and rational.
As Jewish children, we were able to create these good stereotypes for ourselves because it's what we saw of ourselves reflected back at us. Jews were brainy, but not brawny. We didn't get much of the penny-pinching thing, but most of us were from upper-middle class backgrounds.
In college, I found a mirror of this, except that the stakes now included some level of support for Israel (at least in my social group). I went to two colleges with large Jewish populations. In one, I found a group of Jewish friends who later ended up forming a pro-Israel group (I left the college before the group was formally begun, but later learned that it became quite extremist). In the other, I sought out a pre-existing group and went to work for the Jewish newspaper (which I eventually left due to its extremist position).
These cultures were something of a respite for me, particularly as a child, because I didn't cope well with mainstream expectations of what children were supposed to be. I preferred books to running around, and was more interested in theater than pop music (which I've never gotten into) or the kinds of television my peers were watching. I was permanently lost on the concept of fashion, and tended to be yelled at for using large vocabulary words which were presumed to be curse words. Also, I was fat, and this study rings very true to me.
I wonder what kind of culture fat children would make for themselves. Would they segregate by gender? How would they reflect back the negative stereotypes of the media? Would they become consciously gross? Would they eat the way that the media suggests they do? Would the heterosexual boys act like Chris Farley while the gay boys and most of the girls traded tips on how to get away with bulimia or extreme diet plans?
And how would that culture evolve in college? I have no idea.
OK, that's just where I go when I play with these concepts of grouping. To return to Nora's brilliant essay:
Tatum makes the point that what I experienced at Tulane is common in HBCUs like Spelman, and in other environments in which a sufficiently large population of black students come together and are encouraged to positively express their blackness. This kind of thing used to be common, in fact, before integration. Once upon a time, academic achievement was as much a cultural ethic in the black community as it still is in the Jewish and some Asian communities. (Note that this hasn’t faded in more recent African immigrant communities, either.) It’s the sense of community that’s key. Many Asian communities seem to achieve this through the reinforcement of the extended family; many Jewish communities do the same, plus stuff like Hebrew school. But when integration ended, black communities fragmented; we stopped living in black neighborhoods, stopped patronizing black businesses. Black families, already fragile, fragmented as well, for a whole other set of reasons that’s a different rant for a different day. But perhaps the greatest loss was black schools, because that meant a whole generation of black children — my generation, and the ones just before and just after — grew up with no clear sense of who they were or what they were capable of.
Which is a tragedy, particularly since the model replacing it (integration) hasn't been allowed to flourish long enough for its benefits to really take hold. The supreme court decision is a particular insult to Nora's generation, who had to sacrifice the positive tools that were already in place in hope of something better. They and their parents gave up something important, but the primarily white folks who sit on the supreme court decided the rest of us white folk were sick of doing our part.
I urge you to read the whole of Nora's essay. And add The Angry Black Woman to your daily reading too, if you haven't. Their entries are always thought-provoking -- and often funny or beautiful, too.
Friday, May 25, 2007
Detention at Hutto: Video, Stories, Action
I had read about this before, but to my shame, I didn't follow links or watch videos. I was distracted by other things. I don't know what they were. But I didn't follow up on this when I first heard, and I should have.
Other feminists weren't as tunnel-visioned. They, and various kinds of civil rights activists, were on it. And they did get linked.
But in case any of you all were satisfied, as I was, to absorb few scraps and statistics as you skimmed through your blog reading, and then gloss past the rest of the story -- here are a few pieces of the story that have moved, and enraged me.
The ACLU describes conditions at Hutto:
The ACLU has taken action through lawsuits:
*
The children that the ACLU profiles are Lithuanian, Venezualan, Honduran, Nicaraguan, Romanian, and Guatamalan. They range in age from 3 to 17.
A child called Fredy has suffered representative problems with food, and health. He "has received inadequate medical care while in detention. On one occasion, he saw the nurse because of a cough and fever. The nurse barely looked at him and gave him cough syrup. Fredy is still suffering from this cough. Orbelina has asked for more syrup, but she was told that there is no more. For the last several weeks, Fredy has been light-headed and always looks like he is about to faint. Fredy has been taken to the nurse and told that nothing is wrong and that there is no medicine for his light-headedness. When Orbelina begged, she was told that they were saving the medicine for other children because it was not Fredy's "turn" for medicine."
He and his mother have even had their religious freedoms restricted. They "may not confess privately with a priest because a guard must always be present. Guards always force attendees to leave immediately after services end."
Three-year-old Marusia has been given inedible, adult food that causes her to throw up and have stomach pains. She "cannot understand her detention and is desperate to leave Hutto. Sometimes, she picks up a bag and says goodbye to her friends as though she were leaving, and cries hysterically when her parents tell her she cannot. At other times, Marusia repetitively sings "Ya me voy!" ("I'm leaving!"), or picks up telephones that she passes and asks, "Lawyer? Lawyer? Are we going?" although there is no one on the line. When taken outside for recreation, Marusia has attempted to climb the fence to escape from Hutto."
The children are afraid, anxious, angry, and depressed. Eleven-year-old Fredy has "has literally begun to bang his head and hands against the wall in frustration." Eight-year-old Yarely's "trauma has caused her to regress psychologically; she now communicates frequently in baby talk, talks about her fear of ghosts, and constantly wants to hold on to her mother for protection."
Two of the plaintiffs' personal statements are available online, in PDF form. At the bottom of this page, you can see drawings made by the children. You can listen to a podcast about what has happened, and is happening.
"I am scared of the guards," says Egle Baubonyte (in the plaintiff's statements). "I also remembered that the guard can have any criminal record as long as there are no deaths." She adds, "I am terrified of being separated from my mother... we need each other to stay sane," and, "They treat us like we are nothing."
"Sunny has only been outside a handful of times since we arrived at Hutto," says Saule Bunikyte, speaking of her nine-year-old daughter. Saule speaks of threats that guards have made to mothers, saying they will take away their children. She speaks of unreasonable restrictions placed on the children -- such as the children only being given one minute in the shower. "Sunny freaked out, she was crying," says Saule, "she felt bad because no kid can take a shower in 1 minute. She hates this place and she does not understand."
*
Some of the links I mention at the beginning of this post are months old. Some progress has been made in that time. At ACLU.tv, the ACLU reports that it ten of the children it originally represented have been released. Seven more children are detained. And while the ACLU's acheivements are laudable, let's not overlook the pivotal sentence in their description of Hutto: "Although some of these conditions have improved slightly, they are still far from adequate."
In many ways, America's racist policies seem to be escalating. Bush is lobbying to increase troop numbers in Iraq to more than 200,000*, while congress has caved into continuing to fund the war, and Bush has grabbed for even more executive power in the case of national emergency. As America scrambles to kill brown people abroad, it -- or at least its racists and conservatives -- has also been galvanized around the terror of brown people out-breeding the population from within.
America is hysterically xenophobic. Brown people are other. Hunt them down in Iraq; purge them from the states. Define immigrant as meaning "brown" and "other," and white immigrants from Eastern Europe are included as a bonus. The terrorists are blowing us up, so lock them in inescapable cells. The immigrants are outbreeding us, so lock up their families and their children. Imprison the threat of fertility.
*
From the Unapologetic Mexican, contact information:
T. Don Hutto Residential Center
1001 Welch St.
P.O. Box 1063
Taylor, Texas
76574
Phone: 512-218-2400
FAX: 512-218-2450
--
Straightforward links to blogs linked into the post:
Woman of Color Blog
The Unapologetic Mexican
Vortex(t)
Texas Civil Rights Review
Glenda in the Land of Oz
Truly Outrageous (hosting the 31st carnival of feminists)
This is an incomplete list of blogs that have spoken on the subject. If anyone has any other links they'd like to add, I would be happy to add them to this list as soon as I have an opportunity (my internet access will be spotty this weekend).
I'm also happy to update the possibilities for action if people have recommendations for concrete steps, other than contacting Hutto, the ACLU, or one's representatives.
*merci, Ginmar
Other feminists weren't as tunnel-visioned. They, and various kinds of civil rights activists, were on it. And they did get linked.
But in case any of you all were satisfied, as I was, to absorb few scraps and statistics as you skimmed through your blog reading, and then gloss past the rest of the story -- here are a few pieces of the story that have moved, and enraged me.
The ACLU describes conditions at Hutto:
While Hutto authorities maintain that "residents" are treated humanely, they are, in many ways, treated like prisoners. At the time of the ACLU's initial court filings, child detainees had to wear prison garb. They received one hour of recreation per day and opportunities to spend this hour outdoors were very rare. Children were detained in small cells for about 11 or 12 hours each day, and were prohibited from keeping food and toys in these cells, which lack any privacy. Although some of these conditions have improved slightly, they are still far from adequate.
In addition, access to adequate medical, dental, and mental health treatment is severely limited and, as a result, many children suffer from chronic ailments that worsen as they are left undiagnosed and untreated. Children are not afforded meaningful educational opportunities. Guards frequently discipline the children by threatening to separate them from their families.
The ACLU has taken action through lawsuits:
The ACLU recently filed lawsuits against federal officials charging that conditions at the Hutto facility violate provisions of the 1997 court settlement Flores v. Meese which mandated that children in federal immigration custody should be:
- released promptly to family members when possible
- kept in the least restrictive setting possible
- guaranteed basic educational, health and social benefits
The ACLU lawsuits seek release of the children together with their families from the Texas facility under appropriate and humane supervision. According to Lisa Graybill, Legal Director of the ACLU of Texas, “The choice is not between enforcement of immigration laws and humane treatment of immigrant families. There are various alternatives under which both can exist.”
*
The children that the ACLU profiles are Lithuanian, Venezualan, Honduran, Nicaraguan, Romanian, and Guatamalan. They range in age from 3 to 17.
A child called Fredy has suffered representative problems with food, and health. He "has received inadequate medical care while in detention. On one occasion, he saw the nurse because of a cough and fever. The nurse barely looked at him and gave him cough syrup. Fredy is still suffering from this cough. Orbelina has asked for more syrup, but she was told that there is no more. For the last several weeks, Fredy has been light-headed and always looks like he is about to faint. Fredy has been taken to the nurse and told that nothing is wrong and that there is no medicine for his light-headedness. When Orbelina begged, she was told that they were saving the medicine for other children because it was not Fredy's "turn" for medicine."
He and his mother have even had their religious freedoms restricted. They "may not confess privately with a priest because a guard must always be present. Guards always force attendees to leave immediately after services end."
Three-year-old Marusia has been given inedible, adult food that causes her to throw up and have stomach pains. She "cannot understand her detention and is desperate to leave Hutto. Sometimes, she picks up a bag and says goodbye to her friends as though she were leaving, and cries hysterically when her parents tell her she cannot. At other times, Marusia repetitively sings "Ya me voy!" ("I'm leaving!"), or picks up telephones that she passes and asks, "Lawyer? Lawyer? Are we going?" although there is no one on the line. When taken outside for recreation, Marusia has attempted to climb the fence to escape from Hutto."
The children are afraid, anxious, angry, and depressed. Eleven-year-old Fredy has "has literally begun to bang his head and hands against the wall in frustration." Eight-year-old Yarely's "trauma has caused her to regress psychologically; she now communicates frequently in baby talk, talks about her fear of ghosts, and constantly wants to hold on to her mother for protection."
Two of the plaintiffs' personal statements are available online, in PDF form. At the bottom of this page, you can see drawings made by the children. You can listen to a podcast about what has happened, and is happening.
"I am scared of the guards," says Egle Baubonyte (in the plaintiff's statements). "I also remembered that the guard can have any criminal record as long as there are no deaths." She adds, "I am terrified of being separated from my mother... we need each other to stay sane," and, "They treat us like we are nothing."
"Sunny has only been outside a handful of times since we arrived at Hutto," says Saule Bunikyte, speaking of her nine-year-old daughter. Saule speaks of threats that guards have made to mothers, saying they will take away their children. She speaks of unreasonable restrictions placed on the children -- such as the children only being given one minute in the shower. "Sunny freaked out, she was crying," says Saule, "she felt bad because no kid can take a shower in 1 minute. She hates this place and she does not understand."
*
Some of the links I mention at the beginning of this post are months old. Some progress has been made in that time. At ACLU.tv, the ACLU reports that it ten of the children it originally represented have been released. Seven more children are detained. And while the ACLU's acheivements are laudable, let's not overlook the pivotal sentence in their description of Hutto: "Although some of these conditions have improved slightly, they are still far from adequate."
In many ways, America's racist policies seem to be escalating. Bush is lobbying to increase troop numbers in Iraq to more than 200,000*, while congress has caved into continuing to fund the war, and Bush has grabbed for even more executive power in the case of national emergency. As America scrambles to kill brown people abroad, it -- or at least its racists and conservatives -- has also been galvanized around the terror of brown people out-breeding the population from within.
America is hysterically xenophobic. Brown people are other. Hunt them down in Iraq; purge them from the states. Define immigrant as meaning "brown" and "other," and white immigrants from Eastern Europe are included as a bonus. The terrorists are blowing us up, so lock them in inescapable cells. The immigrants are outbreeding us, so lock up their families and their children. Imprison the threat of fertility.
*
From the Unapologetic Mexican, contact information:
T. Don Hutto Residential Center
1001 Welch St.
P.O. Box 1063
Taylor, Texas
76574
Phone: 512-218-2400
FAX: 512-218-2450
--
Straightforward links to blogs linked into the post:
Woman of Color Blog
The Unapologetic Mexican
Vortex(t)
Texas Civil Rights Review
Glenda in the Land of Oz
Truly Outrageous (hosting the 31st carnival of feminists)
This is an incomplete list of blogs that have spoken on the subject. If anyone has any other links they'd like to add, I would be happy to add them to this list as soon as I have an opportunity (my internet access will be spotty this weekend).
I'm also happy to update the possibilities for action if people have recommendations for concrete steps, other than contacting Hutto, the ACLU, or one's representatives.
*merci, Ginmar
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