mentioning when authors of color come up in a conversation not about race

[deborah]

So here's a thing I wonder: there's a lot of talk going on right now about finding more books by authors of color. In children's and young adult science fiction and fantasy (my primary field), authors of color and protagonists of color are few and far between. So I wonder when I make a lengthy post (as I did earlier this afternoon) that happens to discuss several science fiction books by authors of color if I should be pointing that out, just because it raises the chance that bring these books to the attention of someone who might be interested.

The fact that the authors in question are PoC is not (exactly) relevant to the topic of the post, which is about science fiction genre conventions in general. On the other hand, the topic of authors of color is interesting to people right now (and I wish were interesting all the time). I know many of people would be interested in knowing that some of the authors mentioned in the post are science fiction authors who are also people of color. But it seems weird to call that out when that's not what the post is about, you know? I didn't even tag the post "race" because it's not about race. I don't know what I should be doing in circumstances like this.

Fundamentally I think I can say the Attorney General was right about at least about me: I am part of a nation of cowards. It's odd how much many of us Good White Liberals™ were brought up to believe that mentioning someone's race is somewhere between tacky and racist.
"You see that guy over there? The tall one? No, slightly to the left of the other tall one?"
"You mean the Indian guy?"
"..."

(Now there is another post I've been thinking of making about some of those same books, and this other post is about race. In the tiny set of science fiction by black authors marketed to young adults, there do seem to be a lot of books with very mythic spiritual overtones. I'm thinking of Walter Moseley's 47, Virginia Hamilton's Justice and Her Brothers trilogy, and Nnedi Okorafor's books. It's a tiny sample set, so I don't know if I can reasonably extrapolate from that. They are also authors with very different backgrounds and personal histories. But I'm intrigued by it, because it's a touch of mysticism that I don't feel like I usually see in other science fiction, either for adults or younger readers, including science fiction by black authors. Does anyone know more about this than I do? I'd love to learn more.)

Comments

[sanguinity]

If it was my own post, I might put an addendum on the end saying that authors X, Y, and Z above are all authors of color, and that I'm saying so because of Z (service to my readers, or because I think it's worth pointing out POC authors, or whatev). I think referencing race in-text (as opposed to an addendum) would reinforce the squirrely aspects of the way race is typically mentioned and not-mentioned in articles where race isn't relevant. ("How irrelevantly exotic! An Asian author in YA SF!" plus a side heaping of white-as-unmarked-category.)

Not saying an addendum is a good solution, but it is a second topic, and thus supports being a second part to the post. That is, if you can tolerate cobbled-on bits -- your posts are more formal than mine tend to be.

[bunnyjadwiga.livejournal.com]

I agree with sanguinity, that adding that information as an addendum, or parenthetically ("Given the current discussion of authors and characters of color in this genre, I note that authors x, y, and z are persons of color") is a good way of handling it, but then I'm not a person of color and don't know if that would seem inappropriately singling them out.

[deborah]

That's a good idea. Given the conversations which are going on in blogspace, an addendum wouldn't be irrelevant, and as you say, would be a second topic.

As for cobbled on bits -- I usually go through each of my posts after I write it and pull out half of the parentheticals and footnotes, leaving only FAR TOO MANY behind.

(Ironically? Appropriately? Inappropriately? My dictation software heard "conversations" as "commerce Asians".)

[sanguinity]

Your dictation software amuses me. :-)

This post is a giant tease. So who are the authors of color in the previous essay? Walter Mosely and Nnedi Okorafor -- anyone else? I spent a while googling, then got sick of trying to distinguish between white-as-unmarked and people-being-politely-colorblind.

[bunnyjadwiga.livejournal.com]

The question of when to refer to someone's skin tone is one I struggle with. It seems to me that if we could get in the habit of thinking of people's physical descriptions as including a range of skin tones, so that I can describe myself as 'olive-skinned' (the old-fashioned term for my complexion) or some other term that indicates that I have dark-ish caucasian skin, then it's not singling someone out to refer to their skin tone,.

[deborah]

I guess there's two questions going on here. When do you refer to somebody's skin tone, but when I'll so do you refer to somebody's race, as a cultural construct which can be extremely important.