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unusualmusic_lj_archiveFrom:http://theangryblackwoman.wordpress.com/2007/04/21/no-more-lily-white-futures-and-monochrome-myths/
Posted on April 21, 2007 by nojojojo
Note: This post was written by my guest blogger, N. K. Jemison. While I would love to take credit for its awesomeness, I cannot.
OK, been working up to this one for awhile now. Bear with me; it’s going to be long.
I should preface the following rant by saying that I’m fully aware it may hurt my career as a writer. I don’t want it to. But it probably will.
So. One of the most frequent questions that I get, when I tell friends and family that I’m a writer, is, “Oh? What kind of stuff do you write?” When I say speculative fiction — by which I mean science fiction, fantasy, and horror, since there are multiple definitions of that term — the next question that follows invariably comes only from my chromatic acquaintances. Usually it’s accompanied by a blank or confused look, and sometimes an outright grimace of distaste, and the words are then spoken in a tone of slight disbelief: “Why do you write that?”
There’s some history here that I should explain for the laypeople.
Speculative fiction (SF) has been, historically, one of the most racist genres in American literature. Oh, it hasn’t had as many Stepinfetchits or Uncle Toms as the mainstream, but there are few more powerful ways to wrong a people than to wipe it out of existence, and this is precisely what countless SF novels have done. If the crew of the Space Navy Vessel Whozimawhatsit is all white; if a vast medieval epic spanning several continents contains no chromatic folk; if the scientific accomplishments of ancient nonwhite empires are dismissed as alien leftovers; if China is the only continent toasted by an invading space warship; all of this is a kind of literary genocide. (Yes, genocide.) And it’s something that SF has not only done well for years, but continues to do; shit like this gets published all. the. time.
And even when SF makes an attempt to be inclusive, the results are usually ham-handed and painful to witness. Star Trek, for example. The show is set several hundred years in the future. White men are in the severe minority now on this planet, destined to become far more so if current demographic trends continue. Yet the Enterprise has a crew overwhelmingly dominated by white men. Another example is the current longest-running SF show on TV, Stargate SG-1, which has pretty much relegated people of color to the role of superstitious space-primitives (carrying space-spears, no less). There’s a whole planet of ‘em, or two or three. But there still aren’t many in the show’s version of the American military.
http://theangryblackwoman.wordpress.com/2007/04/21/no-more-lily-white-futures-and-monochrome-myths/
Posted on April 21, 2007 by nojojojo
Note: This post was written by my guest blogger, N. K. Jemison. While I would love to take credit for its awesomeness, I cannot.
OK, been working up to this one for awhile now. Bear with me; it’s going to be long.
I should preface the following rant by saying that I’m fully aware it may hurt my career as a writer. I don’t want it to. But it probably will.
So. One of the most frequent questions that I get, when I tell friends and family that I’m a writer, is, “Oh? What kind of stuff do you write?” When I say speculative fiction — by which I mean science fiction, fantasy, and horror, since there are multiple definitions of that term — the next question that follows invariably comes only from my chromatic acquaintances. Usually it’s accompanied by a blank or confused look, and sometimes an outright grimace of distaste, and the words are then spoken in a tone of slight disbelief: “Why do you write that?”
There’s some history here that I should explain for the laypeople.
Speculative fiction (SF) has been, historically, one of the most racist genres in American literature. Oh, it hasn’t had as many Stepinfetchits or Uncle Toms as the mainstream, but there are few more powerful ways to wrong a people than to wipe it out of existence, and this is precisely what countless SF novels have done. If the crew of the Space Navy Vessel Whozimawhatsit is all white; if a vast medieval epic spanning several continents contains no chromatic folk; if the scientific accomplishments of ancient nonwhite empires are dismissed as alien leftovers; if China is the only continent toasted by an invading space warship; all of this is a kind of literary genocide. (Yes, genocide.) And it’s something that SF has not only done well for years, but continues to do; shit like this gets published all. the. time.
And even when SF makes an attempt to be inclusive, the results are usually ham-handed and painful to witness. Star Trek, for example. The show is set several hundred years in the future. White men are in the severe minority now on this planet, destined to become far more so if current demographic trends continue. Yet the Enterprise has a crew overwhelmingly dominated by white men. Another example is the current longest-running SF show on TV, Stargate SG-1, which has pretty much relegated people of color to the role of superstitious space-primitives (carrying space-spears, no less). There’s a whole planet of ‘em, or two or three. But there still aren’t many in the show’s version of the American military.
http://theangryblackwoman.wordpress.com/2007/04/21/no-more-lily-white-futures-and-monochrome-myths/
