1. I want to express my (very late) solidarity with Blackamazon, Adele and all the other women of colour who were ignored and dismissed by Seal Press. I want to express my support for the girlcott of Seal press. While there’s not a lot I can do personally, since I would neither buy books from Seal Press (can’t afford them) or write for Seal press anyway. But the whole point of solidarity is answering the question ‘which side are you on?’ I think women of colour activists are more important than a feminist publishing house. I know that my liberation is impossible while women of colour are enslaved, and that means that I have to make it clear that I stand with them against racism from feminist institutions.
2. I want to express my (equally late) solidarity with brownfemipower who will be missed. It is disgusting the way her names and intentions have been dragged and lied about across the blogsphere by people attempting to defend Amanda. Brownfemipower is amazing.
[There used to be bits of my opinion on appropriation in here, but I moved them to this thread. If you want good discussion on appropriation go there, or Holly , Daisy and Sylvia/M.
3. Finally, and less belatedly on my part, Amanda’s book itself. These images are racist.1 They come from Amanda Marcotte’s book “It’s a jungle out there” that was published by Seal Press. I don’t just want to say ‘these pictures are racist and racism is bad’, but to talk about the harm that these sorts of images cause, because the racist ideas that they maintain are very specific. They are presenting indigenous people as a dangerous other. They are presented as things that must be conquered so that white people can live freely on their land. The idea represented in these images are one of the many ways colonialism is maintained and justified.
I live in a country where land has been stolen from indigenous people in the last five years. Amanda Marcotte lives, and Seal Press operates, in a country where the history of stealing land from indigenous people stretches back five centuries. We all live in a world where the distribution of wealth was established, and justified, by colonialism. The white woman, and man, in those pictures were stealing land and resources – everything Africa had that they could use (a century earlier, of course, they would have also been stealing people).
I’ve been writing this post for a week. Writing other posts about these issues for several weeks and not finishing them. I’m posting it now, rather than trying to make it better, because silent solidarity isn’t much good to anyone.
There have been a number of racist dynamics developing in various comment threads. Amanda, and her defenders, only talking to white people and ignoring people of colour. Re-centring the issue on Amanda by focusing on a very small section of comments and demanding that they be addressed first. These behaviours will not be welcome in this comment thread.
I am not interested in the pontifications of outsiders on this. So specifically Robert, RonF and Sailorman are not welcome, nor are anyone of their ilk.
- note for Hugo Schwyzer the problem is not that they could be interpreted as racist. It is that they are racist [↩]
On Feministe, Sylvia suggested:
I thought that was a great way of dealing with the situation.
Holy shit!
I can’t imagine who the hell thought those illustrations were at all acceptable. What is wrong with those people?
Fantastically racist. What a complete mess.
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Thank you for saying this. It needs to be said. Too often our historical context gets elided, trivialized or ignored altogether. I think there is room for irony and humor, but it has to be used carefully and balanced carefully with other images that more positive. It’s one thing for a feminist humorist to use the Sheena stereotype, because it is silly yet appealing in some senses as a strong female character. But the “jungle” context should not be so easily reduced to a people-less territory – or worse, as a land to be taken away from “savages” who stand in the way of “progress.” [Glegh! It’s stomach-churning just to write that, even within ironizing quotes employed.] The production team behind this book design really did not think this through, and insodoing reflect an unconscious bias born of the colonialist memes in the dominant culture. I guess I could expect that from Regnery, but you demand more from a progressive publisher.
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Nice post, Maia. Will you cross-post it to THM and / or Capitalism Bad? I don’t know that the word has gotten out about this in NZ (yet), and it’s something I think we need to be talking about.
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Amanda, and her defenders, only talking to white people and ignoring people of colour.
Again?
Re-centring the issue on Amanda by focusing on a very small section of comments and demanding that they be addressed first.
Again, again?
Hmm. Blackamazon has limited her blog to “invitation only”, rendering it more akin to a closed listserv than a blog. I can understand the desire to not have to weed out the hostile and the concern trolls – that can be a huge chore, and sometimes psychologically wearing, and always energy-sucking and discussion-destroying. I can also understand it if it is a move to have a readers’ circle for drafts of an upcoming book. Also, if matters are being discussed that pose real risk to the listserv-equivalent members. The ability to communicate with the world-at-large is lost.
How do bloggers and readers feel about no-comment-allowed blogs available for linking? It isn’t ideal (and doesn’t work for some of the possible concerns above), but it might be the only thing practicable for public communication if the owner doesn’t want to police the blog and boot offenders.
There seems to be no ideal solution in the real world, as long as readers refuse to grow up.
It’s a crying shame that people can’t think before they push the submit button – is this hostile? is this cruel? am I being both obtuse and repetitive? have I considered that there’s a living, feeling human being on the other end of this blog?
We ought not to be driving people out of blogging – BfP and Blackamazon had much to contribute and will be missed by many.
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