This post was originally a Twitter thread. After this week’s events, I decided it needed to be a blog post, too.
Let’s start with this video by TikToker ebonie_qt/Cindy Noir:
Watch the whole thing before you continue (it’s a minute long and closed captioned).
Watched? Okay let’s go.
Like Cindy Noir, I am also NOT a strong Black woman.
Do you know about the concept of “Black Famous”? One of my favorite TikTokers, @Straw_Hat_Goofy, did an awesome video series on Black actors that are very well-known within the Black community even if they aren’t so much in the mainstream. They’re known to us through TV shows and movies made for Black folks. Sometimes an actor who is Black Famous becomes mainstream famous, but us Black folk will always hold them dear cuz we knew and loved them back when.
There are tons of Black Famous actors that white folks have no idea about or maybe saw them in a thing once. White folks don’t necessarily see these actors as famous, and probably wouldn’t name them as being important. However, put that actor in something? Black folks will watch.
I’m sure every marginalized community has some version of this. It’s not limited to actors. It goes for music, dance, poetry, and (most importantly to this post), fiction. There are Black authors Black readers know and love that white folks have little to no clue about.
Continue reading “Big Names, Anthology Covers, and Being “Black Famous””
It’s now been a bit more than two months since Joe Biden and Kamala Harris took office and almost that much time since I stopped feeling a daily sense of dread about everything. I’m sure others have been experiencing the same. Now that we’ve had some time to breathe and come down a little from the stress, it’s time to re-energize for the long fight ahead. Y’all do know that we can’t kick back and relax for the next four years and expect all the many things wrong with this country to be magically fixed, right?
You probably answered: “Of course I don’t think that! It’ll be hard work to undo the damage done.”
Yes, that’s right. And YOU have to do some of it. More of it than you probably know.
As important as it is that we have people we like or can at least deal with in the White House and Congress, those people cannot do everything and the things they can do they might have to be leaned on to do. That’s where the rest of us come in.
Every single person who cares about progressive ideals and values needs to be pushing for or contributing to change and betterment all the time. What that looks like will be different for different people and that’s fine. No matter what, you need to be doing it.
That all sounds vague, so here are my more concrete suggestions.
Yes, one. Why one? Because this work can tire you out. Because every person cannot do every thing. Because if a ton of people choose at least one then we have a ton of people putting their energy into positive change, which will proliferate.
Pick a cause that you’ve very passionate about and know at least a little about the activists, organizations, and movements involved in it. That will help with the next step.
You want to make sure that the organizations or movements attached to the cause are legit. So do some Googling on them and the coverage they get, especially from blogs, newsletters, social media accounts, etc. that are sympathetic to the cause.
A key element to this is not just knowing the problem, but also knowing the solutions to it. What solutions are these groups or individuals suggesting and/or trying to implement? Do they align with what you know and understand? These questions should be part of research, too.
If you only have the time and energy to set up recurring donations or something along those lines and you have the budget to do so, that is okay! Money helps and is often key to getting an issue in front of people who can make change happen.
If you have time or energy for more, look to see if there are already calls to actions or a list of what volunteers/supporters can do. Maybe it’s helping to plan meetings or rallies, or organizing text/phone banking or letter writing, or making lots of social media posts, or something else entirely. If you don’t find a list of helpful actions, contact the orgs or movement leaders or whoever to ask for one.
One action you need to have on your list (unless there’s a specific reason not to) is contacting your elected officials about this cause. Sending letters and other communications to elected officials is one of the best ways to get them to pay attention to the wants and needs of their constituents.
I know some people really don’t like communicating face-to-face (such as at town hall meetings) or over the phone (just in case you don’t get the voicemail). There are other things you can do. I love the tool ResistBot because it makes it very easy to send a letter/message to your elected officials right from your phone in the form of texts. All you have to do is provide your zip code and the bot knows who all your electeds are and will make it easy to connect with them.
It’s easy to get fired up and want to help and then have stuff slip from your mind or get shoved back in priority because of stuff going on in you life. That’s why it’s good to assess how much energy you can put into this cause and what is most helpful when you have to pull back. Even if you do, try to keep up with the latest news and developments through newsletters or social media and other communications from the orgs or activists. There may be times when they need more help (a bill is coming up for a vote, a measure is on the ballot) and that coincides with a time you have more energy or space.
What cause are you going to pick? I’d be interested to know in the comments! And if you already know which orgs, groups, etc. you plan to work with or donate to, please drop those links in there as well.
On social media (mostly on Twitter, I believe) there are several ongoing conversations about the problems with the initial programming lineup for the 2020 World Fantasy Convention. One of the first people to bring up the vast number of serious issues publicly1 was Miyuki Jane Pinckard. She wrote a long thread on October 4 as she spotted issues, then compiled an open letter which she posted on Google Docs.
As she and others began raising the alarm on panel titles and descriptions, the official Twitter account for the con started posting tone-deaf responses that made it seem as though the con Chair didn’t really grok what might be wrong but also extending an invitation for people, especially marginalized people, to help WFC fix the problematic panels. And if you knew absolutely nothing else about this situation, that might seem reasonable and like some honest mistakes were made.
I’m here to tell you that this is not the case. That, in truth, WFC Chair Ginny Smith was warned that this exact scenario would happen unless she took specific steps to avoid it. This advice, which was based on the experience of many years, was ignored. And so the situation the WFC 2020 convention committee finds itself in right now is not the result of honest mistakes, but willful ignorance and likely some ingrained bigotry.
I’m going to lay out what I know–not just about this World Fantasy debacle, but some of the history behind it. I want people who are, in good faith, trying to fix WFC’s programming and think that they can somehow pull this con out of the tar pit to know that this situation cannot be fixed ad hoc, cannot just be addressed at the level of this one concom, and cannot be solved by continuing to attend.
Continue reading “World Fantasy, the Convention That Keeps On Failing”
Recently, I finished 2+ weeks of amazing conference experiences. It started with the XOXO Festival in Portland, OR, which I attended for the first time this year. And then a few days later I sailed off for my fourth stint on the Writing Excuses Workshop and Retreat Cruise. Having these back to back gave me more insights into a thing I’ve been thinking a lot about lately: the value of communities; how we need both large ones and micro communities; how the two types serve different but necessary purposes; and how to foster the best parts of both. Recent events also have me thinking about where communities and friend groups fall down, why that happens, and who tends to feel the impact of it the most.
On the second Conference day at XOXO YouTube star and insightful film critic Lindsay Ellis delivered her talk on how she dealt with being attacked by an online mob of Nazis over a year-old, snarky tweet. The incident is summarized well over on Wired1, or you can watch her full talk online:
The bottom line is that hundreds or thousands of neo-Nazis and GamerGaters and similar ilk coordinated an attack on her designed to make her lose her job and fear for her safety. She did not lose her job, but the emotional impact was huge.
And the worst part was that most of her friends did not speak up for her on Twitter and other public online spaces because they knew the attackers would go after anyone who interacted with Lindsay in a positive way. There was one big exception: Hank Green. He tweeted: “This is a Lindsay Ellis appreciation post” which then brought hundreds of positive messages into her mentions. Hank also responded to some of the big names who shared the disingenuous, attacking tweets and posts about her in an attempt to make them understand the real situation. It didn’t always work, but he did that thing.
Lindsay stated that this was the first time in her life as a professional online personage that someone who was higher than her in the power structure–be it in a workplace sense or a social power sense–had stood up for her in this way.
That shocked me. Because I know Lindsay knows many, many of the high profile geeks and online celebs that run in those circles. Many of them are cis-het white dudes; i.e. people with privilege and some measure of protection from these kind of attackers. But Hank Green is, apparently, the only one who stepped up.
Continue reading “Squad Goals – Or: We Need Better Communities”
World Fantasy Convention is fucking up again, color me surprised.
The most recent entry in the history of WFC fucking up starts with author Silvia Moreno-Garcia sending a message to the World Fantasy Board (an entity that oversees the con but doesn’t run the specific cons each year) about the lack of diversity in the guest of honor lineup for 2019’s convention, especially after having a decent lineup this year. The response they gave? Well…
You can click to enlarge. Here’s the text pulled from the screenshot:
Thank you for your letter.
You probably know that the Board of the World Fantasy Convention oversees the annual convention, solicits bids, and awards the convention to individual convention committees. While we provide guidelines in many areas including guest selection, decisions that pertain to individual conversions are made by the con-running committee, not the Board.
That said, as a Board we not only encourage diversity we insist on it wherever possible. Convention committees select Special Guests and specially Guests of Honor in order to recognize and my tribute to their body of work within the genre over a significant period of time, usually consisting of decades in the field. Currently we find ourselves in the position of having a limited number of non-white/male authors, artists, agents, and editors to call on to balance the slates. However much we all wish it were different, and however glad we are to see things changing, the fact remains that only recently have a significant number of diverse writers, artists, agents, and editors entered the field.
Thirty years ago we were having the same conversations, but in that case it was about trying to get name women involved. Things have progressed and that’s no longer an issue. When it comes to diversity, we’re pleased with the progress we’ve seen—the 2018 convention may well have been the most diverse World Fantasy yet—but progress can’t always happen overnight. Ten years from now convention organizers will have a much easier task of it than we do right now.
We are also dependent on potential GoHs and Special Guests having space in their diaries – not to mention an interest in participating. A number of people of diverse backgrounds have recently turned down invitations, for a variety of reasons.
We also understand that in the case of LA, they have not yet completed their Special Guest lineup. Indeed, it is quite common for the World Fantasy Convention to announce their headlining guests over the space of a few months.
The same goes for panel participants. Of course you are absolutely right that LA is a vastly diverse city – but if people don’t join the convention, they’re not going to be on panels. WFC panelists are selected from among the attending members to that year’s convention. The more we can encourage writers, artists, agents, and editors of different race, creed, and color to attend, the wider the pool we will have to draw on and the more diverse and rich the field will become.
There is so much wrong here, and if you look at the replies to Silvia’s tweet you’ll find people listing off all of them. There’s one aspect to this that I want to address outside of a tweet thread1, and that is the idea that there aren’t enough non-white, non-male writers, editors, agents, or artists who have been around for long enough to merit a guest of honor nod, but maybe in a decade there will be! This argument, on top of being repugnant, wrong-headed, and gross, is not particularly novel. It’s a variation on a theme I’ve heard quite often over the *counts in my head* two decades I’ve been part of the SFF community. That theme goes:
Black people and/or other People of Color haven’t been part of this community/writing/publishing for very long. It’s a recent thing, them showing up to conventions and getting their writing out there! Why, I hardly ever saw any until like, last year.
I have heard this claim from white people in this genre at least four times that I remember, the first time being around 15 years ago. Think about that. 15 years ago brown people in SFF were brand new. And now today, in 2018, we’re still brand new.
Guess what! When I first started going to cons, Black people and other folks of color were there. And decades before I started going to cons, they were there. Before I was born, they were there. If all these non-white folk meandering around seem like a new development to you, that means you haven’t been paying attention or maybe, just maybe, you haven’t been reading widely enough.
I once suggested a cure for that. And then the Internet told me I was a racist.
Another aspect to this is something N. K. Jemisin brought up in response to Silvia’s tweet:
I am one of the people who turned down a Special Guest invite (for 2020). This is why: a) because as one of this select group that WFC finds desirable, I am BUSY. Cons eat guests alive and I don’t have time or energy for them anymore. That’s the thing abt being a writer from a marginalized group: we have to work harder than privileged folks to thrive. By the end of 2018 I will have published 9 books in 8 years. Lately 4 separate projects in gaming, comics, review, and editing. This is what it takes for us.
And that WFC statement notes that marginalized writers only started getting published in “significant” numbers recently. Whose goddamn fault is that?
So to demand the same standards of marginalized writers — who, I repeat, have had to work amid institutional bigotry and higher expectations — is not fairness. It’s just adding to the burden. Which leads to the other reason I said no to the WFC invite: b) Because they keep pulling shit like this. They keep telling us they want to do better, but they show no understanding whatsoever of what inclusivity really requires — and no willingness to make anything more than reactive, reluctant changes.
This is so on point on so many levels.
First, that when marginalized writers do rise up enough that cons and other entities take notice, they get inundated with requests. This can be a good problem to have as a writer in general, and obviously anyone should be falling all over themselves to have Nora at their event – she’s awesome. But she is not the only fantasy writer from a marginalized background that exists.
And though the person who wrote that email to Silvia tries to act like everyone they asked was busy, I’m gonna bet $100 that they didn’t ask all that many people. They probably asked a handful, at best. The same handful that gets the majority of attention from white folks. The same handful who are very busy with these kinds of requests, with writing, with other projects, as Nora said. Meanwhile, there are folks – both up and coming and those who’ve been around for decades – who are ignored, never asked, or dismissed.
Second, Nora phrases this as a question: “…marginalized writers only started getting published in ‘significant’ numbers recently. Whose goddamn fault is that?” It’s clear (to me) that he answer is: entities such as the World Fantasy Convention and Board.
WFC is not the most welcoming of conventions. At times, it’s outright hostile to people and groups deemed not worthy of sullying the convention halls. This pervasive attitude affects everything from who gets reading slots, who gets to be on panels, who gets to decide what the panels are, and who is “allowed” to come once the convention is technically full2. That’s not even getting into who gets to decide which works get awards – the World Fantasy Award is juried and also voted on by the membership and the winners are determined by some mix of the two. How many marginalized people are on that jury each year? And, of those who are asked, how many are in that handful of people always asked and therefore overcommitted?
WFC is an over-expensive convention by design (to keep it exclusive and discourage fans), which impacts marginalized authors far more than their privileged counterparts. Same goes for newer writers.
Awards and convention attendance don’t determine a writer’s career, of course. However, opportunity, exposure, accolades all feed into success. World Fantasy is a gathering of what we now call Influencers – industry professionals or folks who want to be professionals in the field. Those who can get there have more opportunity to meet and get to know these influencers, which can lead to more opportunity and exposure and etc. It’s not the only con, it’s not the most important one, it’s not a make or break situation. Still, it’s certainly part of the problem, and the World Fantasy Board has done little to nothing to change this. As that email shows they’re waiting for another decade to go by before they address this problem.
As I said before, I’ve been in the SFF community for about 20 years now. And this January it’ll be 10 years since RaceFail. Anyone who is involved in this community, especially as a conrunner, who thinks that there aren’t many writers, artists, editors, or agents of color with a long history in this genre is disgustingly out of touch with the books and short stories that have been published, the discussions that have been ongoing for over a decade, and the guest of honor lists of conventions worth attending. That’s not acceptable.
And as World Fantasy has spent the last decade or so giving us all lessons in What Not To Do when putting on a convention (accessibility issues, racist programming, non-existent harassment policies, terrible hotels, the list goes on), my only question is this:
When are we all going to stop giving the Board or each city’s concom the benefit of the doubt? When are you, attendees of WFC, going to stop giving them money? Stop benefiting them with your influence? How many fuck ups is enough? How many broken promises of “we’ll do better next year?” will you forgive?
Before WisCon I was having a conversation with a person who used to come to the con but does not, anymore. I asked why and they said, “WisCon isn’t fun, anymore,” and I thought about that for a while.
This person is not the only person to have expressed such a sentiment to me before that moment. I’ve heard from others over the years, usually people who have stopped coming since MoonFail1 but a few are people who stopped coming in the last couple of years during the major shakeup that started with FrenkelFail and that the con is still emerging from.
I’ve listened to these people and, in some cases, internalized these complaints and thought about whether or not there is something that needs to be done.
That’s what happened right before the con got started. I internalized that person’s issues.
And then the POC Dinner happened.
Okay, I say happened like Woop, it appeared! No. I organized it this year, as I have done in many previous years, and several wonderful and amazing volunteers helped me out at con.
The room was packed. I think we had 80 people all told. It was loud. There was so much joyous conversation and laughter. It was a room full of People of Color and Native folk having a good time and I loved it.
Loved it even though I stress myself out a bit every year trying to pull it together. Because each year since it went from being an informal lunch to a coordinated dinner in 2009, more and more and more POC have come to the con. We’ve had to switch locations and food plans and even how we collect the money many times to accommodate all the people who come. I can’t really complain about that.
Because there is this beautiful space, this wonderful moment, right before the con gets underway where we can all be together and see each other and know that the people in the room have our backs at the con.
Every year someone or two someones or half a dozen someones comes up to me to say:
Almost as long as we’ve been having a POC Dinner, we’ve had the POC Safer Space at the con. It’s a place where POC and Native people can go to just be around each other and have discussions about our own stuff. A place where we acknowledge that we come from many different backgrounds, even as we all huddle under this one umbrella, and that it’s important to be able to talk and have community and decompress away from the white gaze. That doesn’t mean we’re all only ever going to be in that room—we came to WisCon, after all, and want to participate in all of it. It does mean that there are still people at the con giving us reason to want to talk amongst ourselves.
Every year I hear from people:
When I first started coming to WisCon in 2003 there were a handful of non-white people in attendance. I don’t think I counted that year. I did the next year. Still a handful. Other folks remember when it was a literal handful—five people out of 800-1000.
This is still the case at a lot of other SF cons right now. Small, midsized, local, regional, large, allegedly global…
People who go to them can often count the POC because they stand out. They recognize (or think they recognize) those people the next time and the time after because they are so few. That was WisCon. Until we changed it.
I think it started in earnest around 2009 after that horrendous winter of RaceFail and a bunch of white folks showing their asses on the Internet. Some of those white folks were WisCon regulars. And some of us were determined they weren’t going to chase us away.
The first time I came to WisCon I knew I wanted to come every year, again and again, for the rest of my life. Yes, there were few brown people. I was used to that. Yes, there were incidents around me and my brown-ness. I was used to that. It was much less terrible than WorldCon. And the wonderful experiences far, far outweighed the unpleasant ones. The panels were amazing, the speeches were amazing, the people I met were amazing.
I wasn’t gonna give that up over Faily McFailerson and her cronies.
I wasn’t the only one to feel that way.
More people of color started to come because they wanted to meet this one person, because they had a friend going, because high profile brown folks told other brown folks to come and see how a con could be.
They came and saw that WisCon wasn’t a perfect con but that it had potential. That there were some panels about POC-specific issues. That there was a group of us who tried to make it our business to be welcoming. And when those moments of the con going south happened, some of us made it our business to fight to make change to that WisCon could be a better space for everyone. Everyone.
I say again: Everyone.
Unless.
Unless you’re a person who makes a space worse for certain people. People you know you can step on because they’re stepped on everywhere. People who are marginalized even in spaces that are supposed to be a refuge for marginalized people. But you know, like I know, that there are hierarchies, and intersections, and even in a feminist space some feminists are “less important” than others. Or, at least, that’s how things were for some for a long while. Until we changed it. And that right there is what’s making some people mad. And the people mad about that? Are not going to see WisCon as a better space for them.
Oh well.
Because here’s the thing: 99% of the people I have seen or heard complaining about how WisCon isn’t comfortable for them and WisCon isn’t fun are white people. Not 100%. But 99%. It’s a bunch.
You know what else I’ve noticed about the people making these complaints? A lot of them are cisgender, a lot of them are men, a lot of them are people with privilege along multiple axes. Funny that.
And while it makes me sad at any time for folks to feel excluded, or like a space has been taken away from them, I have to say:
Where were you when this was other people feeling this way?
Where were you when people who are marginalized in nearly every other fandom space and came to WisCon thinking it would be different said they felt uncomfortable, unwelcome, threatened, unsafe?
I don’t remember seeing some of your faces when the fight for the Safer Space happened2. I don’t remember you chiming in when a guy on the concom3 was abusing members of the concom (those who weren’t his friends…) and then people at the convention. I don’t recall you having any kind of problem when volunteers were leaving left and right because they were treated horribly by the “Old Guard” runners of the con4. I don’t remember you standing up to the woman the co-chairs had to ban last year5 because she verbally abused everyone from hotel staff to volunteers at the reg desk every single year6.
I don’t even remember some of you ever saying “Hey, I’ll do some work to make WisCon run smoothly for all attendees.7”
Meanwhile, the people who I and others have worked hard to make feel welcome and relatively safe and empowered to report incidents of microagression or just plain old aggression have said:
As N K Jemisin said in her speech at WisCon 38: “If you won’t ride or die for anyone else, how can you expect them to ride or die for you?8”
I ride or die for the people who have felt uncomfortable and pushed out and marginalized historically in this community, and at this con. I ride or die for the people who have come to me, sometimes with tears in their eyes, to tell me they’ve never felt more welcome and wanted and embraced by a con before this one9.
I am not unwilling to ride or die for all y’all. I’ll say it again: I want WisCon to be a better space for everyone. I want you to surf this wave of change with us. But only if you’re willing to make the con better for both you and yours as well as me and mine, she and hers, they and theirs, Jackie an’ ’em, and all the other folks who want it to be great for all of us together.
If you’re uncomfortable now, but weren’t before, then think about that. Really think about it. Consider if you were making people uncomfortable before, even without thought or intention. Consider that you’re feeling left out because, in the course of our claiming a space for ourselves, we made clear to you just how much you or people like you contributed to our pain, our lack of fun, our lack of safety. Ponder the puzzle of how a con dedicated to feminism, populated by many amazing people, somehow ended up being a place where people who weren’t the right color, the right class, the right age, the right level of ability, the right gender presentation felt like they didn’t fully belong. And delve deep into the mystery of how fixing that problem is the thing that’s made you run away10.
There are so many conversations going on right now sparked by Mark Oshiro’s report1 detailing what happened to him at last year’s ConQuesT convention that it’s hard to just focus in on one aspect to talk about2. There is one thing I want to jump in and speak about right away, which is what should be expected of con staff and ConComs. I decided to write this post after reading Rachael Caine’s post on the situation, in which she says:
But you know what? It’s not necessarily the fault of the volunteers throwing conventions. Audiences and panelists must hold each other accountable if fandom is going to continue as it began. ConComs are not gods. They can’t vet moderators, they can’t interview panelists about every panel topic to see if they’re qualified. They are organizers of a show for which they don’t get paid, and while they do shoulder the burden for responding to bad behavior, WE are responsible for responding immediately to the bad behavior in the first place.
I agree with the overall point of Rachel’s post: that fans and panel participants and pros all need to look out for each other. Many of us already do that because we long ago figured out the importance. It’s the bolded bits that I take issue with. ConComs are not gods, but they sure as hell can vet moderators and can put systems in place to up the chances that panelists are qualified to be on the panels they’re assigned to. I speak from experience as a programming volunteer myself.
I work on the programming committee for WisCon and am most familiar with our system and workflow. I also know a bit about how ReaderCon does things. Both of these cons are relatively small, just as ConQuesT is, both have a volunteer staff, and both have very involved programming.
WisCon programming is a highly collaborative process. We solicit panel ideas from WisCongoers and allow the members to vote on which panels they want to see based on the list of all qualified panels submitted3. You can read an overview of the process on the WisCon blog, if you want more details. After we figure out which panels will happen, we have to decide who gets to be on them. Again, this is a collaborative process. Folks volunteer to be on, to moderate, and the Program team uses a combination of database wizardry and hand selection to get all the panels staffed.
In past years, there have been big mistakes made in this department, such as having a panel about [insert marginalized identity] with only one person of that identity on it (or none), or panels with problematic descriptions, or panels with moderators that just made everything terrible and harmful and triggering. One of my goals in joining the Program staff was to help this not happen–and I don’t think it’s presumptuous to say that all of us on staff have that as a major goal. To that end, we’ve asked for, and received, changes to the programming database that help us identify which volunteers would be best for a panel or, hopefully, which people should not be on certain panels. Some of it is still a function of knowing the folks at WisCon since we’re all long-time attendees as well.
Though our system is very useful, it is not perfect. It’s still evolving, too. We still make mistakes. We try hard not to make the same ones, to be aware of problems that could crop up and nip them in the bud–such as by making sure we mark panels to hand staff so the database’s random assignments don’t put a cis person on a panel about trans people talking about trans issues, for example. We strive to be proactive because we want our attendees and guests to have as great a time as possible.
This is a lot of work, yes. This is necessary work. It’s work that fan cons should do–yes, even if the staff is all volunteers. Because this is important.
Just look at what happened at last year’s GenCon Writer’s Symposium. A dude who is well known for being a problem, especially about women’s issues, was allowed to moderate a panel on women in comics even after The Mary Sue pointed out that the original panel was made up of All Men. ALL MEN. Even after that bit was addressed–hurriedly–Bill Willingham was still allowed to moderate. Marc Tassin, the Writer’s Symposium Track Director, should have known better. Willingham’s viewpoint and attitude are not a secret. And yet.
I expect GenCon to do better, and that con is far, far bigger than ConQuesT. Kansas City fans have pointed out that it is the very essence of a local con. Most folks running it and putting people on panels know each other well and know the panelists. Robin Wayne Bailey4 is a local and, from what I can gather, a regular at that con. Selina Rosen, who pulled down her pants, is apparently a serial pants taker off-er at that very con. Yes, this is a small local con. That means it’s probably even easier for programming volunteers to know that they’ve staffed a panel about diversity and erasure with one person of color and a bunch of problematic white folks who are prone to undressing at the slightest provocation.
It is certainly not possible to predict the behavior of every person, to know the specific background and identity details of every guest and panelist. And there is always room for error. I really need us to not pretend that there aren’t ways to be better, that we shouldn’t demand better while also saying “I will be an advocate and activist about this, too.”
ConComs and programming staff have to be proactive. They have to know what the potential problems are, where the common pitfalls lie, and pay attention to what has happened at other cons so they can avoid making the very same exact mistakes. Nothing that happened at ConQuesT regarding those panels Mark talked about hasn’t happened elsewhere many times5. All of it was avoidable.
Large con or small, the ConComs and program volunteers absolutely must be proactive and address these issues. When they do, it helps to empower the kind of personal response Rachel talks about. And I’ll reiterate: I agree that this is important, too. We, all of us, con staff and guest and attendee, have to look out for each other, speak up, create the kind of spaces we want at our fun community gatherings.
This past week author Daniel José Older laid down some hard truth about the illustrations for the children’s book A Fine Dessert1. In the video below he points out that slavery is an “open wound” that America as a whole has been lying about to itself “forever” and that illustrations showing black children as slaves smiling, happy to work hard making fancy food for massa are a problem. Please watch the whole thing, because Daniel really lays it out and what he says is important.
He followed up his panel appearance with a piece in The Guardian that highlights the severe lack of children’s books with African-American people in them.
In 2014, only 5% of the 3,500 children’s books published were about black characters; Christopher Myers has called it “the apartheid of children’s literature”.
This doesn’t even take into account other groups of POC. I suspect that there are very few Latin@, Asian, and Native American characters in kid’s books as well, and that’s just naming three groups.
The article points out that the publishing industry still suffers from the Highlander problem: There Can Be Only One. This has to be addressed, no doubt. At the same time, we should also address the other side of the equation: Authors.
On the panel, Daniel acknowledged that “a book is a creation of a village, just like people are,” and he’s so very right. That means no single entity within the village–editors, publishers, authors, marketers, reviewers, readers–is solely responsible for fixing these systemic problems. However, each entity within the village should do whatever is in their power to effect change2.
We need more authors from diverse backgrounds writing books with characters like them, and we need more of them to get published. We also need more authors from all backgrounds writing books with characters that aren’t like them, characters that come from minority, marginalized, or oppressed groups, characters that aren’t often found in children’s literature. We need those characters drawn in ways that reflect the vast divversity even within said groups. We need authors and illustrators to create books that reflect the truth of people from these groups, even if that truth is uncomfortable. We also need authors to create books that reflect how the world should be and could be for kids from these groups. Because it’s just as important to look forward and to speculate with hope as it is to look back with clear eyes and reveal hard truths about the way things were and how that impacts the way things are.
We need all of these things. Right now.
Now we get to the part where some authors say: I agree with you, but just look at what happened to Sophie Blackall (the illustrator) or even Emily Jenkins, the author. They tried and they got it wrong and they got attacked!
Yes well, that’s art3.
Less flippant answer: It’s always worth it to try, to fail, to try again and be better, to learn from your missteps, to grow and keep trying.
Others will rightly point out that this growth that comes out of failure has an impact on people beyond the author, and that is true. It’s imperative to then do your best to learn from others’ mistakes and to put in the work so you can avoid the obvious pitfalls.
How?
This is the part where what I say sounds like a pitch, but it’s honestly not.
Here’s how: You learn how to write the Other sensitively and convincingly. It can be done. You start by reading the book Writing the Other: A Practical Approach by Nisi Shawl and Cynthia Ward. Or, you start by taking Nisi and Cynthia’s workshop in person or online. Or, you start by taking a another workshop or class about writing and the Other online or at a university or at a convention or conference.
And yes, Nisi and I are teaching a class on this topic next month. (You can register here if it fits in your schedule, and you can get announcements of new classes here if not.) And we’ll keep teaching it whenever we can throughout next year and hopefully beyond. Because this issue is important to us, as it’s also important to Cynthia Ward and Daniel José Older and many, many, many other authors and editors and teachers.
Look for these opportunities. Read the book, read articles and blog posts and talk to people and listen. Because we need more authors, especially authors who already have relationships and contracts with publishers, to say: children’s books should be for all children, not just some. Also to say: children’s books that include Black and Latin@ and Japanese and Native American and Nigerian and other characters from different ethnic and cultural backgrounds are for all children, no matter their background, because we are all people and all of us deserve to be reflected in books and all of us deserve to be seen by the Other (relative to yourself) as people worth knowing and understanding.
We need this now. Let’s get it done.
By whatever means necessary.
If you’re not a person who follows news about gaming or gamers, you might have missed a thing that happened. Tauriq Moosa, a media critic, left social media due to sustained harassment over something he wrote on the Internet. Yesterday, Moosa wrote something else that I want you to read. I’m quoting extensively. Still, read the whole thing.
Lots of folks are trying to show me support. I really appreciate it, but what I would appreciate it more if you took your energy in fighting battles with people who don’t care about me to raise the voices of minority folk. Maybe use this time to try get more people employed who aren’t straight white men.
Instead of the collective being one that shouts down marginalised folk, let the default collective be one that raises us up and doesn’t let us be drowned out by bizarrely angry and dismissive others. The status quo is broken and solidarity for marginalised voices should be a constant for progress, for looking and moving forward; solidarity shouldn’t only exist for when things dissolve. Things are already broken and supporting one another is how we continue.
As you might imagine, I know Moosa’s feel on this one. And I agree 100% that the status quo should be about raising up voices and not focusing on whatever asshole flavor of the month comes along to push us down. I’m not saying don’t argue with them and don’t challenge them–you can’t change their minds. I have proof. You might convince someone watching, though–I’m saying don’t let that be the whole of your work.
There are some defenders (not just of me, in general) that I can count on to ride out of the darkness and skewer obvious bigots on their lance. It’s not hard. And it makes everyone feel better. But then how much work do these defenders do when there’s no prejudice monster to slay? How much public work? How much energy do they expend on taunting the enemy vs touting marginalized artists?
The SFF community has quite a few popular people with giant platforms, and the majority of these people are generous with their platforms. Because the majority are great people! However, I wish that those big platform people would take a minute to look through their last 40 promotion/signal-boosting posts, their last 40 shares on Facebook, their last 100 tweets, and count up how many times marginalized voices get the boost vs people from the dominant culture.
You might be surprised by what you find1.
Don’t cry about it, though. Seriously, I do not want to hear you crying about how you tried and you do sometimes and you didn’t mean to and and and. What I want from you is to commit yourself to doing better in the future.
Make conscious choices to promote more marginalized voices. Seek out more books, short stories, music, art and the artists and writers who create them. More guest posts, more cover reveals, more vlog embeds, more links, more GIFs. Write thoughtful responses and companion pieces to media criticism that focuses on the issues marginalized people face, and always link back prominently. Give credit to other people’s ideas loudly, in boldface, so that it’s harder for people to say only you and others like you are the expert voices on this stuff. Don’t feel like you know enough or know enough people to do more? Ask your friends, ask the Carl Brandon Society, ask Twitter. Go for balance, or go for imbalance in favor of folks not from the dominant culture. Keep a literal tally so you know for sure.
Take all that anger you feel when someone like Tauriq Moosa is hounded off of social media or when someone like me gets dozens of hate-filled tweets and turn it into a cavalcade of attention for artists and writers who need it (that includes the artists and writers under attack).
Side benefit: it really pisses off bigoted haters when the person they’re trying to tear down gets built up by people with more social and cultural juice than they have.
Main benefit: it gives marginalized voices a better chance at recognition, which could lead to more opportunities for them to get paid for what they do and thus do more of it.
