One thing about RaceFail 2009...

[elfs]

I can't wait for GenderFail 2012. Nobody will take GenehackedFurriesFail 2020 seriously.

SubstrateFail 2040 ought to be really fun. "How dare you imply that meat can think some things that metal can't!"

ToposphereFail 2100 will be pointless by comparison.

Comments

[zvi-likes-tv.livejournal.com]

Yes, I've often found that the fastest way to end a wideranging conversation on the Internet in which I'm no longer interested is to make a pithy comment depicting myself as a jerkwad.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

I was never interested in the heat of the conversation, and I've seen precious little light. I don't have anything interesting or useful to add outside of writing more stories and allowing other people to make their decisions about my work. Short pith was about all the emotion I could work up.

[zvi-likes-tv.livejournal.com]

If you haven't anything interesting or useful to add, why did you add anything at all? As an attempt at humor, you fell short (http://pats-quinade.livejournal.com/154022.html) and, as I said, came off as a jerk.

Also, out of curiousity, have you actually been following the conversation, in order to determine what substantive discussion is being had, or have you been skimming whatever's come across your RSS reader or friendslist? The discussion has been both wideranging and protracted; I suspect it is quite possible to read twenty or thirty entries about the issue full of only stuff and nonsense, and equally possible to read the same number of not only excellent ideas and proposals for action, but non-repeating ideas and proposals for action.

[mundens.livejournal.com]

I thought it was pretty funny, it points out the ridiculousness (and the lack of lasting cultural relevance) of it all quite nicely, IMO.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

Mostly, I've been watching my friends' reaction to it all. Given how many people on my flist have commented on the issue, why shouldn't I plant my flag and say, "I'm just not interested?"

You may have noticed I don't mind coming across as a jerk. Nor do I mind coming across as a self-hating white cock-sucking pig sex heterosexualist liberal and a conflicted sexist "dangerously conservative" misogynistic anti-poly safer-sex bigot. And everything in between. After seeing the post you linked to, I apologize for being predictable and boring.

I have no doubt that we will see other conversations like this about sex, economic status, and eventually even cognitive diversity. We've seen them before. (Scratch "eventually" on that last one; the discussion about neurotypicality vs. neurodiversity is already going on; the parallels between that conversation and this one are many.) To me, this whole issue is a repeat of the 1970s with different actors, many more bullhorns, and a slight broadening (both elevating and depressing) of the conversation and the examples one can bring to the discussion.

I write far-future science fiction. The skin color of my characters will continue to be determined by a die-roll because it usually matters less to them than their choice of fingernail polish. If I ever write a story where melanin production and culture are conflated, I'll try to treat the topic with as much sensitivity and respect as I can.

[codeamazon.livejournal.com]

Your reply is qualitatively different from Elf's post how?

[zvi-likes-tv.livejournal.com]

Well, I would sum up Elf's post as "Bored now." and my reply as "Your dismissive behavior is both jerkish and ineffective at silencing."

My goal is not for Elf to not speak, but for him to think differently than he appears to.

[codeamazon.livejournal.com]

I won't presume to speak for Elf's goals in posting.

I will say that your post came off as "I'm going to tell you what an asshole you are despite being a guest in your virtual home."

If your goal is to get people to think different, confrontation and smacks rarely work. Perhaps it's an age thing -- while I don't actually know how old you are, you come across as relatively young. Perhaps you're not, but it's the most generous interpretation of the tone of this and several prior posts you've made here that I have, so I will extend it.

I'd make an ironically snarky comment about how us older denizens of the web just aren't understood, but I suspect the irony might be lost. ;-)

I'll say, more frankly, that as a bisexual woman I was discriminated against far more by the lesbian community after my wife divorced me and I began dating a man than I ever was by the straight community while married to my wife. This may seem at best obliquely relevant, but my point is that it's very hard indeed to know what another person's experience of oppression has been, and all too often easy for people with 'obvious' minority status to take others to task while making assumptions about them. It behooves us to remember this when dealing with people of ALL colours and genders and socio-economic levels. As kermit says, it's not easy being green.

I suspect that after some decades as an adult in several minority communities (and a damned visible one at that) Elf is entitled to say "I find this conversation unproductive and predictable." It's his journal, and he's writing for people who choose to be here. He didn't go out to smack someone, he posted his own thoughts on his own blog. At least two of us were amused, and I was once just as earnest as you seem to be.

I got over it when I realized how much discrimination exists within the minority communities I have occupied -- Jewish, queer, poly, bdsm. We're ALL flawed. We ALL form premature opinions of others based on their perceived category of being. It's what sets humans aside -- that we categorize well. That is not to say we shouldn't work to expand our views, or to help others expand theirs, but calling someone a jerkwad is not productive. Ever. Humour is, sometimes. Though of course it can miss, and is almost always effective only with some sub-set of the potential audience.

Ergo Elfs post -- a rant about something that's affecting his friends and that he finds historically absurd, made to his own personal journal -- is more appropriate than your reply -- an ad hominem attack. If your goal was sincerely to get him to think, your approach was likely suboptimal. (Again, not speaking for Elf.)

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

My goal is not for Elf to not speak, but for him to think differently than he appears to.

Ah ... uncomplaining submission to mind control.

Hey, I know where you can find some stories about that ...

www.mcstories.com

Of course, you don't have the MasterPC program, now do you? ;-)

[wendor.livejournal.com]

If you want people to think differently that they appear to currently then you may want to examine your methods.

You current approaches (which here seem to consist primarily of insults, but in other places involve reasoned argument) don't seem to be getting the results you would like. Perhaps instead of insulting your audience for being too stupid to see what you're saying you might think about how you can present your arguments differently.

[athelstan.livejournal.com]

So you're saying I should wait for my furry mods until 2025? I'll be 49 and just get my Methuselah hacks at the same time.

I'm not sure what this racefail is all about.

OH. MY. GOD.

[pandakahn.livejournal.com]

Since I limit the number of blogs I read I was totally unaware of any of this.

So, this is something serious? OK, got it.

So, people disagree about a topic and it led to what I will refer to for lack of a better meta concept in my own mind as a "flame war"? OK, got it.

What I missed, and I do apologize for what can only be understood to be complete laziness on my part, is the outcome of this event. Anything coales out of the discussion or did it just degenerate into name calling?

Not being snarky here, honest. I read a lot of the materiel that I could find and found a lot of valid points that I found to be enlightening (and yes, a lot of crap and petulant whining). Was there a final cognitive gestalt that emerged or did it just dissolve into, uhm... nothing?


MPK

Re: OH. MY. GOD.

[zillah975]

I don't think there's going to be a "cognitive gestalt", but that doesn't mean it's dissolving into nothing, either. There are a great many conversations going on, a lot of really good dialog happening, and some very positive things coming out of those conversations. But it isn't the kind of conversation that's going to be over until we really have defeated racism.

If you'd like to delve into it some, there are some pretty good summaries here:

A timeline

Because "tl;dr" shouldn't be an excuse

Endangering somebody is okay when you do it under your real name

Re: OH. MY. GOD.

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

We won't have finally defeated racism until the last affirmative action mandate is repealed.

Though we may get pretty darn close to defeating racism, and we have in this country today.

[shadowfey.livejournal.com]

With your permission, Elf, I'd like to point the beast at this thread as while I doubt what he has to say will in any way penetrate where it'd be most desirable, I do think he may have interesting and even enlightening comments to make.

(I realize that asking your permission at this point might seem a bit like knocking on what's left of the barn door's frame after the herd's already torn through in a frenzy from someone yelling 'FIRE!', but in light of some of the vitriol and the fact that I'm feeling particularly old now, I feel I ought to ask.)

[moondancerdrake.livejournal.com]

It must be so nice for you to have the level of white privilege to be able to turn your back on conversation about how people of color are being misrepresented and their culture stolen to “colorize” fiction because it simply doesn’t interest you. Many of us don’t have that luxury, issues of race are part of our every day lives. You can choose to wallow joyfully in you public mudpit of privilege, or you can clean yourself up, get educated, and add something meaningful to the future we leave to the generations after us. The choice is yours.

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

It must be so nice for you to have the level of white privilege to be able to turn your back on conversation about how people of color are being misrepresented and their culture stolen to “colorize” fiction because it simply doesn’t interest you.

ROFLMAO!!!

So, wait -- if Elf was black, he couldnt' turn his back on the conversation because he wouldn't have the "privilege" of doing so? What would happen if he turned his back on it anyway? Would the Privilege Police come and throw him in Privilege Prison for "usurpation of white privilege?"

And what the heck do you mean by "culture stolen?" A "culture" is composed of ideas, and these ideas are neither copyrighted, patented or trademarked. Elf can use any ideas he wants from any culture he wants in his fiction, and you can't do doodly-squat about it.

Of course, you have the exact same "privilege."

It's called "freedom of speech." You should read about it someday.

[butterfly.livejournal.com]

So, wait -- if Elf was black, he couldnt' turn his back on the conversation because he wouldn't have the "privilege" of doing so? What would happen if he turned his back on it anyway? Would the Privilege Police come and throw him in Privilege Prison for "usurpation of white privilege?"

The racial slurs would make it harder for him to turn his back. Watching people hold their purses tighter or check their wallets or cross the other side of the street when they see him coming would all make it harder for him to ignore the current effects of racism.

White privilege is about not experiencing those things, among others. That's the privilege being discussed, the privilege of not caring because it doesn't affect your life for the worse. That the privilege that elfs appears to be flaunting in his original post. That he can be flippant about it because it doesn't hurt him in his day-to-day life.

[wendor.livejournal.com]

Or we can choose to disagree with you as to whether or not the things you list are indeed actually happening, and if so to what degree. If we choose to believe that they are happening, then we can choose whether or not to believe that they are malicious symptoms of a larger problem, and then whether or not to believe that something must be done about them. Than, even if we have decided that something needs to be done about them, we can still choose differently that you on how they should be addressed. For instance, we can choose not to simply rehash the same arguments that have been so ineffective over the last couple decades.

You see, we have far more options that the two you list.

You seem to have fallen into the same trap as zvi. You seem to have the passions and ideals of a young activist. They believe with all of their hearts that they know what the problem is and what should be done about it and that their opinion is the ONLY right answer. Anyone who doesn't agree with them 100% and see the obviousness of the answer is therefore 100% wrong. If they've made the same argument one thousand times over and their audience hasn't immediately agreed with them, they never question either their message or their delivery, they simply attack and deride those that do not agree with them, "...for it obviously their fault that they are too blind to see the truth".

If Elf, or I, or anyone else, figuratively "turn our backs" on a child of our when they announce that they are going to jump so high that they reach the moon it does not mean that we don't recognize or even share their desire to go to the moon. It simply means that we already understand that jumping is not going to accomplish their goal and that in their young enthusiasm, the child isn't going to accept a reasoned explanation of why jumping won't work. They have to be allowed to try and fail. Then, once their energy has been spent we do our best to help them understand that just because that approach failed they don't have to give up on their goal, they just need a different strategy.

Hopefully you see where this is going. Those that choose not to enter the current discussion may not be indicating that they don't care about the desires, dreams, or goals of those involved in the discussion. It may simply be that they have seen the same discussion, with the same arguments and ideas, take place many times before and have seen the lack of effective results each time. They may understand that those involved in the debate are so full of idealistic fervor that any reasoned explanation of why the debate will prove ineffective in the end will be both futile and poorly received. They may, in short, simply be waiting for those involved in the debate to spend their energy and then hoping that at least a few of them will then understand that they don't need to give up on the goal, they just need a different strategy than what has failed so many times in the past.

[brownbetty]

While zvi says she doesn't want you not to talk, only to think, I think if your contribution to the realization that many people are experiencing pain is to speak up to register your indifference, maybe your contribution was unnecessary and, in fact, rude.

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

I think that publicly laughing in the face of people who claim that you should automatically agree with them because they are "experiencing pain" is not only necessary, but a public service. If more people did that, there would be a lot less whining and a lot more self-improvement going on in the world.

[wendor.livejournal.com]

Apparently you not only missed the point of Elf's post, you missed his rather concise explanation of it later on.

I believe that he stated that he was not expressing his indifference to "the realization that many people are experiencing pain", he expressed his indifference to them choosing to address their problem through a set of arguments and ideas that have already proven to be ineffective rather than trying something new.

I know that I, for one, applaud the man who wants to fly and builds a glider rather than the one thousandth man who just runs off a cliff really, really fast. If along the way I express indifference or even derision towards the line of people waiting to jump off the cliff it doesn't mean that I don't share their desire to fly, it just means that I think they should learn something about what does and what doesn't work from the corpses at the bottom of the cliff.

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

I'm not Elf's "sock puppet." I disagree with him on all sorts of things, but he's dead right on this one.

Here's a hint: he's a Democrat. I'm not.

[sparkymonster.livejournal.com]

"Sock puppets" with well established journals who have been discussing race and SFF for a good 6 years. I see.