An essay by Nicole Chung on The Toast:
What Goes Through Your Mind: On Nice Parties and Casual Racism
And a chaser: 21 Racial Microagressions you hear on a Daily Basis on Buzzfeed.
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Tag: race
It starts so early…
You can’t do that! Stories have to be about White people. An essay by Darren Chetty in the UK, about the moment he realized what he was up against.
I don’t even know what to call this post
Here’s an article in Poets & Writers on MFAs addressing diversity issues. And here’s a Tumblr Race & the MFA, which looks to have lots of resources.
Then there’s the recent WTF at an MFA program, which is illustrative. I don’t find the original text, but here’s one student’s response to a talk by an MFA faculty member: On Kindness, On Intention, and On Anger in Children’s Writers
- Response on WNDB’s tumblr, written by Swati Avasthi
- Debbie Reese’s comments on the above.
And then there’s this: AWP is Us (original post has been replaced with an apology.)
- PW article
- More from Kate Gale
- An open letter to Kate Gale from Karrie Higgins
- Another response on Adroit Journal.
- Debbie Reese has thoughts on the matter too.
- AWP Strikes Out
I leave these here for you to ponder.
A matter of craft
Linda Sue Park has a succinct post about race and the craft of writing.
Yes, it’s a matter of craft. Not specifying race will mean the character defaults to White for most readers. (Remember the unmarked state from Writing the Other?) This is a matter of craft like everything we do to create the reader’s experience of our stories.
More:
New Potterverse movie seems to be totally whitecast.
More on Asian American Kidlit
Why do authors write what they write?
- Race & Representation in Asian American Kid Lit Author Zetta Elliott (she’s African American) surveys five Asian American authors exploring why there’s a fairly high percentage of Asian American writers who write about white characters.
- “Asian Pride” in Kid Lit Further exploration.
So this is kind of why I write for young people
(After McKinney and hearing too many people say “Not everything is about race” as if somehow that would make it okay…)
Let’s say it’s not about race. If you take race completely out of the picture I think the evidence is clear–that particular officer brandishing a gun at nearly-naked teens is not fit for his duty; he has now resigned and that’s a good outcome.
Soooo even though I do think the event had something to do with racism, if I were wrong about that part my feeling would be essentially the same. If Dajerria Becton were some blonde white girl pushed to the ground in her bikini, I would still be horrified.
The job of the police officer is difficult, and not everyone is suited for the duty of protecting and serving. Sadly, this man in the video–he’s not behaving as one of those who match strength and compassion with calmness and integrity; for I have known such men and such women. Or if he ever was like them, he lost his way.
I can empathize with this person who is totally losing his shit in public, and wish privacy for his family and healing for whatever’s gone sideways in his heart.
But my sympathies are ultimately with the young, because even if they behave in unacceptable ways (which I don’t think these kids were, but even if I’m wrong) they are new in the world still. And because they shoulder the burden of our hopes–that the world will remain a living world, that our stories will still be told after we are gone–they deserve our kindness and not our fear. Our love and not our violence. Shelter and not rage.
They deserve better.
