(no subject)

[such_heights]

Here we go again! Patricia C. Wrede's alt-history YA novel, where getting rid of those pesky indigenous North American peoples lets her do cool shit like write about mammoths. And white people. In any case, it's easier just to scrap them than to try and write them like people. Holy wow. See the comments in that first link for a reasonably heartening proportion of cluebat-wielding smart people to idiocy. Discussion being collated by naraht here.

delux_vivens at deadbrowalking is putting out a call:

Let's make it really clear, people. If you identify as a POC/nonwhite person and you read or watch scifi or fantasy, give yourself a name check in this thread. I am particularly wanting shoutouts from people who do not live in the US and who have still managed to read genre fiction.

I'm tired of people trying to render us invisible unless they have been given a memo about our existences.

Comments

[trivalent.livejournal.com]

Anything to do with race (but not racism, given I excluded that) - the label given is always white/Caucasian. Caucasian is not a true ethnic term, given its lost most if any it had when it got tagged along with white, to only mean that. And almost all pale-skinned people I know in the states don't really know clearly - if their family is not recently immigrated - where they are from. They lost their ethnic identity and cultural history. America isn't an old country. Where were their ancestors five hundred years ago? So many don't know. And I dislike that just calling people a meaningless term has led to so many people losing that.

On forms with race/ethnicity on it, at least in the States, most of the ones I've seen give true ethnic/cultural terms for all other colors (Latina, African-American, Asian, etc) but only "white" for pale people, as if that's all we are - a color, not more. It only encourages the stuff going on that you dislike.

And especially for those who have managed to keep a true cultural identity, those with pale skin really don't belong under the same umbrella (French v. German arguments between ethnic teachers of those type at my high school, arguments I've witnessed between ethnic Ukranians and Russians, etc). And even without thinking of it as countries people are from, slavs are very different from scots, etc.

I know that those who fall under the broad term "white" are united in regards to privilege and what not, but being lumped under it all the time ignores and encourages the erasure of so much culture.

[such_heights]

I think that white/Caucasian in its current sense (and Caucasian particularly is a really fraught term), is almost always going to mean 'of European descent' -- and even if 'white' specifically doesn't denote that, that is the history that's taught about Australia, North America, other places with significant white populations. That doesn't go into much detail, but neither does Asian or African. I'd say they're all roughly equivalent. I agree that white people are by no means a homogeneous group, the chequered history of Europe alone being proof enough, but I think all ethnic and racial identifications suffer from the same problems -- when you've been somewhere long enough, you don't know that much about where you came from. I don't think there's much danger of anyone not being aware that the white people of the US were originally European migrants.

[trivalent.livejournal.com]

The Asian people I know (regardless how many generations in the States) know if they are Chinese or Korean or Japanese or what combination thereof. The latina's I know have a culture they identify with and know where they are from. I am not quite as confident about all/most of the African-Americans I know, but still they have more of a culture. "European immigrants" is incredibly vague to me. It doesn't give a culture, a sense of history. And every single white person in the States I know who KNOWS exactly where they are from do not identify as white - they identify as Dutch, German, French, Irish, Ukranian, et cetera. The only people I know who identify as white are those who do not know where they are from. The past of Europe shows how being from one country or the other is a huge difference. And I just dislike how 'whites' more than any other group I know just get sloshed together as if there were no difference, as if all white Americans are just some average blend of all the European states.

The idea about being somewhere so long making you forget can happen, but somehow - for example - Jews are very good at keeping track of who they are, even when they are not religious. I have been told before, by people of all color, that I do not have an ethnicity, a culture (beyond American), etc because I am white. And I dislike that and disagree.