And to continue in the grand tradition of authors showing their asses this year...

[unusualmusic_lj_archive]

Robin McKinley:

I’m an American. And yes, I’m proud of the fact that Americans in aggregate have just conspicuously demonstrated that Bush was not our ideal leader. That we don’t want more of the same. That how we look and behave not only at home but in the world matters to us. And . . . that America can produce a chap like Obama. Can you imagine him as . . . British prime minister? And okay, he’s officially African-American‡‡‡ but he still looks like a white guy with a tan to me.§


...


And while I’m now perfectly willing to go with our first heavily tanned half-Caucasian president, I would still like to live to see our first woman president. She could be Hindu or first-generation from Japanese parents perhaps.

Exactly what, exactly, would she consider an African-American? On the other hand, I don't think I want to know.

Comments

[kadath.livejournal.com]

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

But I love The Blue Sword so much.

SO MUCH.

...DAMMIT.

[unusualmusic.livejournal.com]

So do I. and "Beauty" . I am very disappointed, quite frankly.

[miaryann.livejournal.com]

Oh, ew. I am so grossed out with this "Obama's really not all that black" shit.

[unusualmusic.livejournal.com]

I am SICK and mothafucking TIRED of this tiredass BS. He identifies himself as a Black American. Dear everyone else, especially those who set up the conditions for this identity business to be such a castrastrophe??? STFU and accept his self-id. SERIOUSLY!

[unusualmusic.livejournal.com]

I am SICK and mothafucking TIRED of this tiredass BS. He identifies himself as a Black American. Dear everyone else, especially those who set up the conditions for this identity business to be such a castrastrophe??? STFU and accept his self-id. SERIOUSLY!

[starfishncoffee.livejournal.com]

These people just REFUSE to accept that the president could be Black. They just can't. So therefore he's not, no matter what he identifies as or how he is situated in society.
It's like they just wield the one-drop-rule in any direction that benefits their own psychological comfort.

[sparkymonster.livejournal.com]

WOW THAT WAS EPIC

Also, seriously why would someone insist they know Obama's racial identity better than he does? Have they missed that multiracial people have been IDed as black for a long time, regardless of teh lightness of their skin? And not just slave owners raping slaves, and keeping their children as property, but recently in cases like Strom Thurmond raping a 15 year old black servant and fathering an illegitmate child. And and and. URGH.

[unusualmusic.livejournal.com]

That Storm Thurmond thing leaves me with a pit in my stomach whenever I think of it, seriously. And of course they have missed the history and ramifications of stuff like this. Being selectively blind has been raised to an artform where these ppl are concerned.

[saltypepper.livejournal.com]

A "white guy with a tan" that too many folks would cross the street/not get in an elevator/be ready to dial 911 if they saw him.

[stilllove.livejournal.com]

Exactly what, exactly, would she consider an African-American?

Obama if he were not president and she met him in an elevator! It's gonna be fun isn't it? I guess racist people have to find a way to resolve the fact that the President is a race that they loathe.

[netmouse.livejournal.com]

I must be completely misreading this. Everyone is reading it differently from me. I got the impression she was complaining because she would have wanted our first black president to be darker and more visibly "African-American". How does that translate into loathing?

[http://users.livejournal.com/_yggdrasil/]

I thought the name sounded familiar ... then I realized oh shit, she wrote that retelling of Beauty and the Beast that I loved in high school. Whooooooa, small world.

Anyway. My chiropractor said the same thing the other day. I told him I was pretty sure nobody ever stopped whatever racist crap they were about to pull to ask Obama whether or not he was full-on black or halfsies. My chiropractor said he never thought of it like that before (really?). Sadly, I think both chiropractor and McKinley are voicing what a lot of clueless white folks are thinking.

[oh-annalouise.livejournal.com]

oh...her.

Have you ever read "Gibbon's Decline and Fall"? Don't. Really. Don't.

Some plot points include:
*Native woman who is actually a lizard alien
* Muslims extremists stalking shopping malls and blowing up the Seven Sisters
*a young black girl whose name might as well be Orange Jello who is so ignorant and debased that she can't be help responsible for killing her baby because she doesn't know what a baby is.


Have you read "The Gate to Woman's Country"? Don't read that one either. Plot = Men are biologically prone to violence so we will make them live in prison camps that are kind of like the 300.

[unusualmusic.livejournal.com]

*stares in utter shock*

oh. dear.

That DOES explain some things...

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

OH ROBIN MCKINLEY NO.

[saltypepper.livejournal.com]

*ded*

[claws-n-stripes.livejournal.com]

Comments disabled. And all I was gonna say was, "You, madam, are a jackass." I'm guessing the sentiment already got passed on by everyone she angered by being a racist.

[mtdrake.livejournal.com]

yeah...I saw that too.

[troubleinchina.livejournal.com]

Oh, for fuck's sake.

*sigh*

[jonquil.livejournal.com]

Oh CRAP.

[marveen.livejournal.com]

Depends on what you demand of your reading. Ms. Tepper has a gift for casually tossing off nasty images that stick in your mind--or my mind, anyway, combined with what I'd call a true gift of language.

Some of her works I wouldn't spend money on. Singer from the sea is one of them.

[unusualmusic.livejournal.com]

Depends on what you demand of your reading

Based on this weeks events? One very overriding concern would be the portrayal of POC. Respectful, authentic, well-researched portrayal. Or leave us entirely alone, please. Cause I can take reading well-written books that don't mention us at all, (hell I've been reading those all my fucking life until quite recently, cause that was all they had at my library,) and now I have the cash on hand and access to in order to find stuff that DOES concentrate on and include us. But I cannot and will not tolerate BS. I draw the line much stronger and closer now. Benefit of the doubt has gone completely overboard.

[peterlake.livejournal.com]

AEK.FVCGCGMCGFJHTUHIJU/LO;FGHTDDASFGEQW4TR7I96#MH,HM&!MHC,HJ,JGHF,HJ!!

(shortens to-read list once again.)

[unusualmusic.livejournal.com]

(shortens to-read list once again.)

Lol! Join the club. We have been doing that all week like you wouldn't believe.

In defense of Sheri Tepper

[geekturnedvamp.livejournal.com]

I have now started worrying that maybe I am one of THOSE feminists... Not the crazy racist kind who thinks of Obama as "not really black", because WTF, but one of the ones who has no problem with the gender politics of a book where "Men are biologically prone to violence so we will make them live in prison camps that are kind of like the 300". (In fairness to Gate To Women's Country, not all the men are forced to live in these camps--they are given a choice about it, but they are also manipulated from birth by the women into a construction of masculinity which leads to them choosing the camps; the few men who choose to stay and live with the women are looked down on by the other men, and of course the reader later finds out that things are not entirely what they seem.) Whatever, I still love that book and Tepper's take on trying to breed the violence out of the human race through a combination of eugenics and social engineering, although I must admit I always thought of it as an escapist fantasy rather than a totally serious feminist philosophical statement, and that was part of the reading pleasure for me.

Re: In defense of Sheri Tepper

[unusualmusic.livejournal.com]

but one of the ones who has no problem with the gender politics of a book where "Men are biologically prone to violence so we will make them live in prison camps that are kind of like the 300"

I suppose it depends on your relationship with the power structure in society. If your entire race, men and women, have a history of oppression (and are still oppressed) I believe that you might be less likely to consign your men to oblivion in frustration with their gender politics, whereas some white feminists may not have the investment in standing with white men, since said white men are the ultimate power in this society?
(Reply) (Thread)

[vass]

Coincidentally, I'm reading Joanna Russ's How To Suppress Women's Writing right now.

"He did it, but he's not really Black."

[unusualmusic.livejournal.com]

how ironic!

[kyuuketsukirui.livejournal.com]

Ew. I just...ew. D:

[ladyjax.livejournal.com]

wow, and she turned off the comments feature.

man, i really don't want to toss her books but i just might.

[sparkymonster.livejournal.com]

You have the option of going to her forum, registering and getting through moderation. All for the opportunity to be called mean. WOO!!

Shockingly, no one in the forum critiqued her on the "heavily tanned" president thing.

[bossymarmalade.livejournal.com]

SO! If a Hindu woman like me became president, would McKinley then start saying, "And okay, she's officially Hindu, but she still just looks like my Scripture Yoga instructor with black hair!"

[unusualmusic.livejournal.com]

LOL!!! And depending on the skin colour, don't forget the shade of tan!

[badgerbag.livejournal.com]

LOL total fail!

Maybe we could grow our next president in a VAT! and pick her genes exactly to specs....

[faithhopetricks.livejournal.com]

NOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooo //clutches copies of Beauty and Sunshine

[unusualmusic.livejournal.com]

my sympathies.

[nnaloh.livejournal.com]

Hang on; Gibbon's Decline and Fall and The Gate to Women's Country are by Sheri Tepper, not Robin McKinley. Or did I miss something in this thread?

But yikes, Robin. Really wish you'd thought that comment through before posting it on the Web.

[unusualmusic.livejournal.com]

Hang on; Gibbon's Decline and Fall and The Gate to Women's Country are by Sheri Tepper, not Robin McKinley. Or did I miss something in this thread?

Yeah, it was cleared that up in further commentary.

[upstart-crow.livejournal.com]

AFJALFJALHGALFJALJFA!

A white guy ... with a tan ...

AFJLAJALJFALA!!!!!

Zuko in my icon is saying it much better than I.

[surevesta.livejournal.com]

But... but... she wrote my favorite book (from middle school) The Blue Sword!!!!

I guess I'll have to pretend she didn't write it... cause I reread that every few years.

[ajollypyruvate]

Nooooo! I... I loved The Blue Sword and The Hero and The Crown! LOVED!
(And now I realise I haven't read either in something like 20 years and never did get around to reading The Door In The Hedge and never will because, buh-bye, treasured books of yore! there is no excuse for that behaviour.)