arhyalon

NOTE:  Before reading this post, please read this one. I have changed my position and apologized.

Okay…race, when the word applies to human beings, is not about winning—and that is the point of this entry.

For World Con, I was put on a diversity panel. I probably should have bowed out. I am against the idea of diversity as a political movement. I didn’t bow out, and I didn’t get to say a great deal, because there were six of us. But I did get to say that my kids go to schools that could be the poster schools for diversity. There are no two kids of the same color sitting next to each other. Because of this, my kids don’t notice race.

The moderator of the panel objected to this. She objected to not noticing race. Race, she said, is important. It makes us who we are. We should notice it.

She said this to me—the person who didn’t notice that one of her friends was Black or that another was Korean (I just thought of him as ‘really cute’) until it was pointed out (unfortunately, in both cases it was pointed out when they told a story about someone being prejudice against them.)

Well, I responded to the moderator as follows: I might notice a person’s hair color, but I don’t care about it. Yet, in the days of the Saxons and Normans the rulers were prejudice against blond-haired folk. They would have thought of that as paramount. We don’t think of hair color as defining who we are any more. (Well, unless you are me…but more on that later.) In the future, when we are concerned about other issues, we won’t particularly notice skin color either.

Afterward, I explained that I live near DC. A friend from college grew up here. She went to a mainly Black school and married a secret serviceman. It was not until they went to Williamsburg on a sight seeing trip that they realized that she was white, and he was Black. They had never thought about it.  They never went back down south, but up here…no one cares.

And, it is true. We have a number of Black and White couples on our road. We used to have a Korean and White couple as well. No one has ever mentioned a word about this. This doesn’t mean that no one ever slights them, but no one at the pool, in the mom’s groups, etc., has ever so much as mentioned the subject in front of me…even in private.

So far as I can tell, no one cares.

If race is so important, such a part of who we are that we need to track it…do I need to track Irish vs. Italian? They hated each other a few generations past, but my best friends growing up were all Irish/Italians. I’m not sure I could tell the difference.

Or how about Japanese and Korean? Those two groups hate each other….with really unabashed hatred. Not like here, where we think we aren’t supposed to hate other people. But most Westerners could not tell the difference between a Korean and a Japanese person on pain of death. Sometimes, they can’t tell either! My sister-in-law passed for Korean when she lived there, so long as she did not open her mouth. The moment she did, and they heard her Japanese accent, their attitude toward her would change dramatically.

I tried to ask the question: What does a writer do if they have no experience with diversity? What if they can’t write it well. What about the paradox of “damned if they don’t throw in members of other races/sexes and damned if they can’t do it well?” But this was either snickered at or ignored.

The idea, so far as I can tell—and this has bugged me for years—is “everyone has to write diversely and be good at it.”  Discovering that you are not good at it and sticking to what you can do is not acceptable.

Our lovely moderator (she was very sweet) declared that she would not read a book with no female characters in it.

I found this surprising in a fantasy/science fiction reader. Did this mean she would not read Left Hand of Darkness (a male and a group of neuters) which is lauded by feminists everywhere? Would she read a book about a tree or an alien with three sexes? Or did she just object to historical military or sea pieces being written with any accuracy?

One of the qualities that I and my sf/fantasy reading friends have always lauded in ourselves is our ability to associate with any many character and temporarily forget ourselves. When I am reading I am not male/female, White/Black, human/non-human. I am in the story. If the story is good, then it’s worth reading. To artificially require the story to have some superficial quality in order to enjoy it? What experiences you are going to miss!

Why am I against diversity as a political movement? I think it hurts more than it helps. I remember when diversity suddenly became popular. St. Johns, which never has very many non-white students, decided to have a dinner for the “students of color” or something.  But up until that point, people had not been particularly aware of their color…interesting origins, such as being from other countries were noted, but they were not necessarily related to skin color.

So what happened? Kids who happened to be darker-skinned were brought together for a special meal, having to leave their friends for a night to artificially associate with a group of people with whom they had only a superficial similarity. And the kids who were not invited felt a bit sad. For the first time, color and race was brought to everyone’s attention as an issue, when it had not existed before.

So the meal had the exact oppose effect from its intended goal.

I talked about the needs of the story, rather than of a political agenda. Our moderator snickered. She then explained that unless you actually believe in the muses, the ideas come from you, and you are in control.

I found this comment extraordinary until she followed it up later in the panal with “I’m not a writer.”

Ah!

Any writer worth their salt knows better than to mess with the Muses, Man!

They are fickle, and if you don’t listen to them, they don’t always give you a second chance.

What happens, you ask, if you don’t listen to them? Easy. Your stuff stinks. Oh, maybe you can muddle through without them, but your story is never nearly as good as it would have been if you had listened.

I should know...I've got hundreds of pages of stuff I had to throw out because I had not listened properly as to which characters should be present in the story. One I listened, the story finally worked.

And sometimes it's scary. Last story I started, part of a project with friends, the main character, a twelve year old girl named Eve March, announced in her first person letter, that she was a light-skinned Black girl. Totally took me by surprise. My first thought was “I can’t write about a Black girl today, I don’t know enough.” But I dismissed that thought immediately as unworthy…because if the Muses—who were so kind as to give me the entire six page introductory letter in one brief sitting all at once—wanted the girl to be Black…then by golly, I now knew better than to argue with them.

So, I’ll do my best. If I listen closely enough, the character will work. If I don’t, she won’t. Sure, it will take thought and research…but I’ve wasted far too many years of my life having to throw out the stuff I wrote when I did not heed the Muses to argue.

Are all writers a slave of the Muses? No. Some don’t even hear them. Some can write well on their own. I’m not that lucky.

Now, I don’t really believe in Muses…but I do believe in Divine inspiration and that stories are “meant” to be a certain way. I pray before I write, and I try to write what comes to me, in the hope that some Higher purpose might be carried out, regardless of whether I am aware of it or not.

But that is neither here nor there.

The point is: the moderator had a book called “Why Do All the Black Children Sit Together In the Cafeteria?” or something close to that. Here, in Centreville, VA, they don’t. In fact, it was the “each kid sitting next to each other is a different color” part of the schools that impressed me. And it certainly was not the case in St. John’s, or the kids who got together for the special dinner I mentioned above would have already known each other.

My son’s favorite friends from school are a boy the color of pitch whose family is from Africa, a Korean boy, and a Spanish boy whose family hardly speaks English. He doesn’t care. Just recently, after meeting the mother of the Korean boy, hearing her accent, and discovering that she came from another country, he announced to me one day in his normal blunt way, “I didn’t know Joseph was from Korea. He looks just like everyone else.”

So, should we notice race? Sure, about as often as we notice other issues, such as where we are from. We all know a few people to whom where they are from is a definite part of their identity. They associate themselves with Texas or New York or something. (Hey, stop looking at me that way! Just because New  York rules…) But for most people, where you are from only comes up once in a while, during a pleasant discussion over tea, or if it become topical in conversation.

Race should be the same way. A thing you notice once it a while, like commenting on someone’s hair or making a comment about your home state. It contributes to your personality and experience, but it need not contribute any more than any other factor that is outside of your control.

Because what I noticed on the panel, from the stories told by those who had been treated badly according to their race, was that they had chosen as their identity not where they lived, but what other people hated them for.

People hate people for a great deal more things than color of skin...and it is up to each of us whether or not we are going to let other people's opinions define us. Let's take an example: a few decades back, there was a brother and sister who were teased mercilessly by their classmates. What were they teased about? It does not matter. The boy took it to heart. He associated himself with the message.  He became mentally ill and still, to this day, blames the children who teased him for his illness.The girl refused to define herself by the opinions of others, with prayer and determination, she put the whole thing behind her.

The boy was my brother. The girl was me. So, I know first hand both the ravages of human cruelty and the fact that we don't need to let it define us...whether it be race, hair color, family background, or any other thing.

When you emphasize any quality of human beings other than those over which they have control, there will never be any winners.

Because, really, we are, all of us, brothers and sisters, members of the Holy Family, created in the Image and Likeness of the Creator.

Anything that interferes with our remembering that should get out of the way.