WorldCon: things I recommended or quoted on panels

[kate_nepveu]

Books:

• Hellspark, Janet Kagan: really good book involving legal issues; the main character impersonates a byworld judge, who adjudicates interplanetary cultural-clash problems, and is faced with an accusation of murder and a question of sentience. Booklog posts.
• "Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?": And Other Conversations About Race, Beverly Daniel Tatum: general-audience book about the formation of racial identity, highly accessible and readable and illuminating. Cannot recommend this strongly enough.
• Racism without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States, Eduard Bonilla-Silva: academic but still readable work about the rhetorical means used to sustain racial inequality (nb. I am only halfway through but am finding it really resonates with discussions I have seen).
• How the Irish Became White, Noel Ignatiev: what the title says (I haven't read it yet but it comes very highly recommended).
• Acacia, David Anthony Durham (ETA: now with 100% more Campbell Award winner goodness!): excellent and exciting secondary-world fantasy that is deliberately epic, multiracial, and concerned about empire and resources and related issues. My Tor.com review.

Other:

• Carl Brandon Society, including its wiki.
• Potted history of RaceFail by Ann Somerville.
• Clear introduction to the issues raised by RaceFail by Mary Ann Mohanraj guesting at Whatever: Part I, for Everyone; Part II, for Writers.
• Quote from vito_excalibur as part of an imaginary dialogue:

  So to recap, you're saying that I can make stupid racist mistakes in front of God and everybody, and still probably avoid the naked conga line of fail, as long as

  1) I don't respond to the people calling me out by insulting the shit out of them, and

  2) If I must talk about what people are saying about me, I link to what they're actually saying, and don't lie about it?

• yuki_onna, Let Me Tell You a Story:

  And when we see story after story that has no one like us in it, . . . this is what we hear:

  You do not have a right to live. There are no stories for you, to teach you how to survive, because the world would prefer you didn't. You don't get to be human, to understand your suffering or move beyond it. In the perfect future society, you do not exist. We who are colorblind, genderblind, sexualityblind would prefer not to see you even now.

• Joann Sfar, dedication/introduction to The Rabbi's Cat 2: Africa's Jerusalem:

  "For a long time I thought that there was no point in doing a graphic novel against racism. That stance seemed so totally redundant that there was no need to flog a dying horse. Times are changing, apparently. Chances are everything's already been said, but since no one is paying attention you have to start all over again."

• People's suggestions about Internet jerkitude.
• My delicious links on sundown towns.
• ETA: spiralsheep on intersectionality:

  Expecting x, y, or z oppressed group to automatically understand and be able to implement anti-oppression strategies for a, b, or c oppressed group is merely another form of requiring disprivileged people to be twice as good at m or n while receiving only half as much reward for their work.

What else did I mention and forget to post here?

Comments

[od-mind.livejournal.com]

I'll note in passing that Hellspark is the book I most frequently recommed -- partly because I love it, and partly because nobody has ever heard of it, or of Janet Kagan.

I love the imaginary dialogue. I hope I have the courage to face the next inevitable moment of my own public stupid racist mistake with "I said what!? Wow, I'm a racist. That sucks."

[tonko.livejournal.com]

Hallo! ::waves:: I was at WorldCon and mildly stalked you over here (well, I googled you after you said you were on LJ during that Fans aren't Slans panel--and here you are!), and I have to say, I had no idea you were ill (like, during the re-reading panel), I would never have guessed! You are 1000 times more stoic than me. Glad it has passed, though.

Erm so--neat recs. I actually ordered Acacia pretty much right after attending a panel Mr Durham was on and am looking forward to it.

2 titles that might interest you

[cheshyre]

Two recent reads I wanted to tell you about after the race panel:

1. Race: a history beyond black and white by Marc Aronson. Geared towards a middle-school audience; great bibliography listing further reading at all levels. An excerpt from the introduction which summarizes the intended focus:

   What exactly is race? In this book I borrow a clear definition given to me by Margot Minardi, a thoughtful and generous scholar who is studying the development of ideas about race in the 1700s. "Race" is a way of explaining human difference and organizing people into categories. It rests on four assumptions -- what I call "pillars":

   1) Physical differences matter. The color of our skin, the curl of our hair, the size of our nose or lips -- these are important. How we look is not just a personal matter; it identifies us as part of a larger group.
   2) These differences in our bodies cannot change. They are given to us at birth and remain fixed.
   3) That is because they are inherited. Our personal features are actually the characteristics of our group, which are passed down from one generation to the next.
   4) Each group has a distinct level of brain power and moral refinement, thus they are naturally and unchangeably ranked. Groups can be rated from more primitive to more advanced, more animal to more thoughtful, more savage to more civilized.

   This whole book is devoted to tracing out how, in the Western world, these four ideas grew, developed, were linked together and came to be regarded as true. We have forgotten that we did not always have these beliefs, and that our ideas have changed over time. In fact, today "race" has become such a standard way of viewing people, we don't even have to think about it.
   We "know" that people are the same, under the skin. Yet we "know" that the best athletes are black. We "know" that, in America, the real, deep, terrible racial division is between black and white. And yet Japanese Americans were put into internment camps during World War II for being neither black nor white. Jews were forced to remain in Europe, to be gassed and fed into ovens, because of their "race." Race is an uncomfortable reality, and yet the most brilliant scientists, doctors, and professors cannot agree on whether there are any races at all.
     <snip>
   I believe race is our modern way of handling emotions that go back to the very beginning of human evolution. That is one reason why race is so hard for us to deal with. In one way, race seems as current as science; in another it taps our oldest fears. ... There is no safe way to write about race.
   I say "race," but I mean racism or racial prejudice. Even though the idea of race is a recent invention, fear and hatred of those who strike us as different is extremely ancient. That bears repetition: "Racial prejudice" and "hatred of difference" are not the same. For the great majority of human history we have taken slaves, slaughtered enemies, looked down on those who are different, without believing our victims were of different "races." Instead, we despised others as savages or barbarians; as weaklings or strangers; as pagans, Muslims, or Jews, Protestants or Catholics. I think that our deep feelings about race are the latest version of a mind-set that begins in infants and probably took shape at the very beginning of human evolution.

2. The Price of whiteness : Jews, race, and American identity by Eric Goldstein. Again, quoting the intro:

   I have chosen not to frame this book as a study of how Jews became white, but as one that explores how Jews negotiated their place in a complex racial world where Jewishness, whiteness, and blackness have all made significant claims on them.

Just FYI