[racefail:colonialism] the "but I like her!" series of arguments

[cimorene]

isilya points out this statement made by Patricia Wrede about The 13th Child:

The *plan* is for it to be a "settling the frontier" book, only without Indians (because I really hate both the older Indians-as-savages viewpoint that was common in that sort of book, *and* the modern Indians-as-gentle-ecologists viewpoint that seems to be so popular lately, and this seems the best way of eliminating the problem, plus it'll let me play with all sorts of cool megafauna). I'm not looking for wildly divergent history, because if it goes too far afield I won't get the right feel.

I'm assuming that you get the several things that are wrong with this statement; I'm not dissecting them here.

I talked to my mom yesterday, and while she made pretty much all the same defenses that LMB trotted out in her 1st comment (ie nothing about jumping to conclusions vs. evidence and definitely nothing about "talk is cheap", arguing on the net, or charity; definitely not "that's not wildly divergent"), she did grasp that the absence of natives was a less-than-ideal condition, although she wasn't willing to see the connection to institutionalised racism. My mom is a second-wave white feminist from the same generation as Wrede and Bujold, and in fact, has lots in common with them besides just them being two of her favorite writers, I reflected afterward. Demographically, I shouldn't be surprised that their views would be similar - and I wasn't really all that shocked by the things my mom said in the conversation because I've known her and had political conversations with her all my life.

A few insights from this conversation:

1. If I'm not surprised that my own mother, whom I have a long history of reasons to respect as an anti-racist and advocate for social justice, holds these views, why should I be surprised that LMB would hold them, when I don't even know her personally?



2. I'm not going to cut off all contact with my mother, obviously, but I'm not going to let that by, just like I don't let it by when someone uses "gay" as an insult. I'm simply going to challenge any racism I see coming from her.



3. Why what my mother and LMB were doing in defending Wrede simply because they're prejudiced in her favor is bad: If it's more important to you to be able to pretend that (your friend, an artist whose work you love) could never be an asshole than to acknowlege that a creative work is racist and causing pain to people of color... then yes, that is bad. It's denying the voices and experiences of people of color, saying "Your pain and the facts and ethics of this situation are less important to me than the survival of my clearly counter-factual black-and-white worldview in which people whom I like can do no wrong, even unintentionally". It's siding with racism as an institution. It's saying "You can't win, because the rest of the majority are always going to side with the oppressors because those are their friends."

Comments

[poala]

The idea of an America without it's Native people breaks my heart. I work at an Indian casino and several of my best friends are members of the Pomo Indian tribe. I have had the honor of being invited to their ceremonial dances and have even been allowed to dance. Their culture is beautiful I would never read a book that deleted their history.