05.26.09

Mammothfail 2009

Posted in Crafts, Ethics and morality, Writing tagged Add new tag, mammothfail09, racefail09 at 12:18 am by kyrias

For those who want to wade through the entire puddle of fail, here’s the link.

To start off with, I’m really appalled regarding Patricia C Wrede’s attitude towards The Thirteenth Child.

To quote:

The *plan* is for it to be a “settling the frontier” book, only without Indians (because I really hate both the older Indians-as-savages viewpoint that was common in that sort of book, *and* the modern Indians-as-gentle-ecologists viewpoint that seems to be so popular lately, and this seems the best way of eliminating the problem, plus it’ll let me play with all sorts of cool megafauna). I’m not looking for wildly divergent history, because if it goes too far afield I won’t get the right feel.

Um. Whut?  

First of all, I’m appalled that you’re dismissing the portrayal of an entire race of people as a problem. After all, you’re a writer, isn’t portrayal what you do? Secondly, I’m disappointed in you that you’re so casually restricting viewpoints of Native Americans to these two stereotypes — I think you’re a better writer than this and you’re both being dismissive, insulting, and lazy. Lastly, how can you think that an America without Native Americans isn’t wildly divergent? I rather think that’s also insulting.

God, I hope I’m taking that quote entirely out of context, but I honestly don’t know how I can put it in context.

Then, yet another writer I truly admire really lets me down here. 

Lois McMaster Bujold actually starts out rather reasonably, in my opinion, by stating that:

The book actually began with a contemplation of the what-if question, “What would happen if the megafauna survived into historic times…?” The theory presently being argued in archeology is that the pre-Columbian settlers wiped out said megafauna, and that’s the one Pat chose to follow up; so if one wants mammoths and short-faced bears and terror birds, the Bering land bridge human immigration needed not to have taken place, 13,000 years back. From that, the rest followed, q.s. to the limits of a necessarily slim volume.

Alright. So we’re talking an either Native Americans or megafauna scene here, ok. I can buy that. I do wish that she had admitted that the premise could have been interpreted badly, but I’m not horribly upset by her treatment.

Then she starts venturing downhill by not directly addressing the question but asking for the function of fiction:

Which begs a larger question: what is the function of fiction? Social engineering? Propaganda, sermon? Or something else? Windows? Mirrors?

People who come down on the social-engineering side do tend to value a book by how well it serves some agenda outside of itself. I see that as a slippery slope, myself.

What, by the way, is a “moral writer”, in your lexicon? Just for my orientation. That almost slipped past as an undefined term, there.

The problem with her question is that the point is the premise bothers people because it literally erases people who have historically faced genocide.  The function of fiction as mirror or window or entertainment isn’t the point. And her question of the definition of moral writer is phrased rather patronizingly, I thought.

It only gets worse:

You know, I thought you were making a few interesting points, till you came to this:

“I’ve come to the conclusion that based on the shadow cast by white supremacist colonization and the ongoing genocide of the original inhabitants of the Americas, I can’t– in good conscience– read the Thirteenth Child. It’s not so much recoiling from a shadow cast by a distortion in my head but disgust with a trope that holds that even when they’re strangers in a strange land, all white people need in order to prosper is whiteness.”

My mother — born in 1912 — used to have a phrase for this: “My mind is made up. Don’t confuse me with the facts.”

A stance of moral superiority really cannot be floated over an abyss of ignorance. (Though I admit, people routinely try.) It’s especially not a sound footing for this book which, within the limits of its scope, actually does some very interesting things with subverting assumed Avyrupan dominances.

I will stop recommending you read it, however. The book deserves better than to be pored over by an inquisitor only seeking evidence for a conviction already decided upon.

See, I expected more from Bujold than that. The fact that Skywardprodigal made good points isn’t obscured by her inability to read the book. Also, I thought her tone was definitely patronizing in this post and it seemed that she wasn’t so much interested in discussing the subject, again, as being confrontational. Very disappointing. Not that I think that the others are being brilliant paragons of humanity, but I really did expect more from Bujold.

And the dissenters haven’t even gotten really inflammatory yet.

Then there’s Avalon’s Willow of the Elizabeth Bear kerfuffle fame. I will come out on a limb and freely admit that I cannot agree with this person. She’s abrasive and insulting, not to mention often patronizing. I can see her point, but her presentation turns me off like nothing else:

Don’t you know the Coaltion of White Female SF Authors passed out a memo that states they categorically cannot be thought to hold racist thoughts cause they decided so?

Then Elizabeth Bear told them how all they had to do to interact with PoC was lie to them and belittle them cause it would raise book sales and they all agreed that willful blindness was the new hotness.

What are you doing bringing *HISTORY* and *LOGIC* and *CONTEXT* into conversation? How dare you introduce Post-Colonial Ideology. White people don’t know what that is, it involves brown people. How dare we assume they’d pay attention.

Also? This is Tor’s site. TOR, Skyward. T. O. R - THE ORIGINAL RACISTS. You seriously should know better.

Meanwhile, yet another fantasy novel that glosses over the ugly realities of colonialist narrative by disappearing the native brutally conquered tribes in order to have white people skipping merrily towards Manifest Destiny?

Colour me unsurprised.

You and I, however, know that if it weren’t for grave robbing thus discovering signs of another civilization, stealing of the corn set aside by the natives for their next season’s harvest, and lying in wait for someone to return to claim it; the colonists would have starved to death.

But yeah, who needs Tisquantum. They have Mammoths! And hey, at least no one in this book’s universe will ever bust out with the typical. “But my great great grandmother was a Cherokee Princess!”

I’m going to ignore that shot at Elizabeth Bear and how Avalon’s Willow thinks Bear thinks the coalition of white female SF authors should treat POCs. That remark that implied history and context and logic has no place in this conversation because it involves whites? The one about calling TOR the original racists? I can’t hold with calling an entire company the “original racists”. Feel free to call one person or two people or three or even twenty names — but an entire boatful of people?

Then there’s Kynn who thinks that the theory which says that the Native Americans contributed to the extinction of megafauna is insulting. When challenged, she says:

Whether or not you think it SHOULD be insulting, it definitely IS insulting. (I’m not an American Indian, but I can see the insulting components of this type of worldbuilding.)

Personally I think that humans have caused animal extinction many, many times, and I really can’t see how it’s insulting. You can say it is a faulty theory, but to insist it’s racist?

Bujold steps back with some more fail:

OK, I’ve gone away and thought about this for a few days. Let’s try again. (Also resolved: do not make blog posts after midnight, or after consuming a sleeping pill that isn’t working.)

I have no argument with the larger issues of cultural/racial erasures and historical crimes in the real world; these are real and harrowing (and universal, the more you know about everywhere. _Carthago delenda est_ and all that. But 20,000 wrongs don’t make a right, merely a trend.) Ditto on-going local oppressions; despite the fact that Native Americans are over two million strong, voting citizens, fellow exiles in the 21st century, and many are educated, articulate, and perfectly able to speak for themselves (most of the major tribes have websites now, a thought both hopeful and boggling) poverty and discrimination do still fall disproportionately upon many others. Back to this in a moment.

I still have a profound problem with any argument that leaps from hearsay to condemnation without any intervening stop at “evidence”. It doesn’t matter *what* the subject is, the *form* is wrong, even if the conclusion after examining the evidence bears out the initial belief. And it’s just as wrong in a court of public discourse as it would be in a court of law. Worse, someone making this leap throws every other assertion they may make into doubt — were they all arrived at as casually and cheaply? Don’t do this, people, and don’t let others get away with it, either — because someday, your own life or happiness may depend upon just such due process.

But I also believe that a person who holds admirable opinions, yet does nothing, is scarcely distinguishable from a person who holds execrable opinions, and does nothing. Virtual virtue doesn’t count. Talk is cheap (especially on the Internet.) As Stephen Leacock swears he heard two Scottish Calvinists arguing on a train, on whether damnation is achieved through good works or grace alone, I’m on the good works side, myself.

The past is beyond anyone’s reach, and history is fractal — one sperm over, and we would all have been our siblings, and our own self-centered universes would never have sprung into being at all — so what can an ordinary person do right-here-right-now about any given hurt in the world? The two standard answers are money and time — well, and blood, but I don’t direct where that goes. And “start anywhere” is usually pretty good advice, when one is spoiled for choice.

So I asked my friend who knows about such things, and she supplied these, her favorites — more could perhaps be added:

“Oglala Lakota College — www.olc.edu (They always need contributions to help students pay their loans, without which they can’t graduate.)
Lakota Funds (making mini loans for economic development and training people to run their own businesses) http://www.lakotafunds.org/
Soaring Eagle — not Lakota, but Cheyenne is a neighboring tribe; this is a residential home for elderly Cheyenne started by their long-term priest, Father Emmett Hoffmann, to help elderly folks who needed care (and keep them from being sent off to Denver, away from family and anyone who spoke their language): www.soaringeagle.org/
Also, Running Strong for American Indian Youth — not limited to Lakota, but does do neat things there — organic gardens, etc.”

Didn’t take me long to choose, as I’m always for education — which reminds me that I need to contribute to the engineering scholarship fund in my Dad’s name back at OSU — but to make it extra easy –

https://www.thedatabank.com/dpg/6/donate.asp?formid=DonateOLC

It’s as much of a snap as Amazon.com, I found.

And you may at least congratulate yourselves for tipping me over from “I really ought to do that one of these days,” to “There! Done!”

Full disclosure: It was I who invited Pat over, a few years back, to watch a fascinating BBC documentary DVD titled “Walking with Prehistoric Beasts”, which started the cascade of interests that resulted in the book you aren’t reading. So, while the first rule for avoiding Internet insanity is still “do not feed the energy monster”, I really cannot tiptoe away from this. Even though it would be *infinitely* smarter to do so.

Um, Bujold, grats. You just non-apologized, if I’m reading that sentence about posting after midnight with a sleeping pill that isn’t working properly. You also still didn’t address everyone else who has been trying to convince you that “Yes, there kinda is a problem with this premise.” You also, I’m hoping unintentionally, told people to just shut up and actually do something about the issue, like throwing money at it, in a very patronizing way. I really do like you as a writer, but I feel like you’re slamming your foot in your mouth at supersonic speed. Especially with your addition of boggling when referencing Native American tribe websites. May I ask what exactly is boggling about that? I also note that you never respond to comments that ask you that question either.

At post 121, she still doesn’t address the issue. That’s ok. Whatevs. I give up at this point at your trainwreck of a post.

Lastly, how everyone jumped all over Hapax’s comments regarding how she regards books is illuminating. I love how “white privilege” is slung around casually, constantly.

The way I interpreted what she’s been trying to say this entire time is that she feels there is something to be gained from every book — therefore she’s against censorship, even when it’s as innocuous as people saying “I cannot in good conscience read this book”. Although, once you really get down to it, isn’t someone saying that they couldn’t in good conscience do something sometimes pretty compelling reason to follow suit and not do it?

I simply love how she’s lambasted:

Newsflash, minorities, you need to read poisonous literature for your edification. Because if you don’t buy it, well, the poor white writers and readers will just keel over and die without your pained support, right after pillorying you for refusing to give their racist and othering work ‘a chance’. Because none of this is about your feelings. It is about changing the world! By buying and consuming the work of, again, racist white writers.

I’m honestly not quite sure how “almost everything has worth in my eyes” is translated to “you must zomg buy all books by all authors, especially the poisonous ones and read them!”

Then there’s Kynn:

Also, hapax, your privilege is really dripping all over the place in ways that may prove too caustic for many people to want to engage you, especially if they are people of color who have been subject to oppressions you have not had to face. You are very glib and white and privileged, and I wince (as a white person) at many of the things you are saying.

I don’t think it’s an accident that only white people (such as Bruce, who has been excellent on this thread) are willing to engage you. You seemingly just don’t realize how repellent your words are.

Really, I think the worst one can accuse Hapax of is derailing the subject. I don’t think she’s saying that criticism of books isn’t allowed or that there’s some sort of golden rule for how one chooses to decide what they read. I think she makes that pretty clear by saying that she doesn’t hold anyone else to the priorities she holds herself to. I don’t know what lenses these other people are viewing her words through, at all.

Lastly, I note that Patricia Wrede has still managed not to come and even try to explain, despite a couple hundred comments. That is full of more fail.

What a massive load of fail, all of it. In the end, I’ve lost faith in two authors I used to love and I’m again reminded of how ugly people can be when confronted with a viewpoint they do not share.

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