Cultural Appropriation and fandom vs authors & critics

[deborah]

I've just been catching up on a month of old ChildLit messages, and current context is making me notice something unpleasant. When there's an accusation of cultural appropriation in LJ fandom, fans immediately fall on the side of saying "How dare those of you with white privilege tell PoC their claims of having been harmed are false?" Whereas on ChildLit, accusations of cultural appropriation lead to a massive pileup on -- well, pretty much always on Debbie Reese. I don't always agree with Debbie, but the constant claims over there that her understanding of Native appropriation is wrong leave a vile taste in my mouth. Especially when contributors hit multiple bingo squares:

• You're telling us what we can't write!
• You're telling us what we can't read!
• It's just fiction.
• No, it's different when it's a non-Native [in this case Jewish] story that's mistold; that's BAD.
• Isn't it racist to say you need Native clearance to tell this story?
• But the author had anti-racist intentions!
• You say that the characters are portrayed unrealistically as members of their culture, which means you want a sterotypical portrayal, which is racist.

steepholm, diceytillerman, fjm, other ChildLitters, am I wrong? I know I'm a month out of date with my reading, but it really seems sketchy, how that conversation usually goes. And it happens again and again. Is fandom really that much more capable of seeing its own white privilege than ChildLit (which I know is not monolithically white any more than fandom is)?

Comments

[zvi-likes-tv.livejournal.com]

Not to burst your bubble or anything, but part of the reason the reaction is different here is because the fan cultures involved (and make no mistake, there are at at least two different fan cultures here, that of media fandom and traditional science fiction fandom [with a lot of people crossing over with comics fandom, and some other people working with general anti-racist issues]) is that this sort of discussion has been recurrent and part of the discussion has been dissection of why Bingo discussions are illegitimate.

I also find it curious (and I have no experience with the child-lit ml outside of the context of Kaplan's book, so I may have a totally inacurate picture) that there is a single person who serves point on the issue in childlit. In the fandoms, there are groups of people who speak to these (as well as related issues of feminism, queerness, genderqueerness, Judaism, and, increasingly, ablism and American cultural supremacy.) I think that helps us with burn out, but it also means there are (a) a wider variety of viewpoints on these issues and (b) it helps it to be less a question of a single person's personality. I mean, from the way you describe it, if Debbie's writing and way of explaining things doesn't work, you won't be learning about these things on child-lit. And I have to wonder if Debbie even tries to address these issues with non-Native cultures. (This is not me saying that she should be responsible for doing so, but if she's not, and she's the only person starting discussions about cultural appropriation, then most of the problematic stuff is sailing by the list unchallenged (unless there is way more child-lit published about Natives than I think there is, which is entirely possible.)

[deborah]

Ugh, you are right. Sure, it seems like most of the participants on the media fandom side are seeing the white privilege issues in this particular go-round, but in a lot of ways that is hard-won education showing, through multiple rounds of race dustup, through Kristallnacht RPG and characters of color turned into cats, with one community slowly learning through trial and effort and the seemingly endless hard work of FoC and allies.

I think you got a fairly accurate perspective of what's going on on the mailing list from this one particular dustup, as well. Debbie does have supporters over there, both in this individual argument and in general, but for the most part, she is the only person who brings up those issues with regards to race on that list, and pretty much always about Native issues. A lot of problematic stuff does sail by the list unchallenged. It's a very well-meaning group about diversity, in that particular white privilege way in which Elizabeth Bear's original post was well-meaning: how best to serve children by giving them books about their own experience, which is very frequently not the experience of the person posting. It's incredibly well-meaning. And, you know, problematic. (And, I admit, the position that I come from myself, the media fandom has done wonders in helping me start to break out of.)

(Not that the list is monolithically white, by any means. Julius Lester, Roxanne Hsu Feldman, and Debbie herself are among the prominent members of color on the list. But for whatever reasons, children's literature scholarship and children's librarianship are fairly white fields in many English-speaking countries.)