On Pandagon, Amanda writes:
I’m sorry. Plain and simple. I didn’t pick the offensive imagery in my book, but I should have caught it sooner than now. I didn’t and there’s no excuse. It was my first book, I was excited and happy, but I needed to have a more critical eye. I would do anything to remove racist images from the first printing of the book if I could, and I am relieved and happy to say that they will be removed from future printings.
Since the book is currently in its second printing, Seal Press is already removing the offensive images. They write:
Please know that neither the cover, nor the interior images, were meant to make any serious statement. We were hoping for a campy, retro package to complement the author’s humor. That is all. We were not thinking.
As an organization, we need to look seriously at the effects of white privilege. We will be looking for anti-racist trainings offered here in the Bay Area. We want to incorporate race analysis into our work.
Although the apology from Seal Press is not 100% satisfying in it’s wording, I congratulate them for understanding (with prompting) that these images, combined with their extremely problematic response to women of color discussing their publishing diversity, indicate a problem with them not their critics. I wish them the best of luck in addressing it.
Seal Press, if I were you, I would go straight to the Angry Black Woman or Nojojojo, both of whom I can personally attest are excellent writers (and ABW an experienced editor), and ask if either would be willing to edit a collection of articles for you on any subject she desires, even if it’s the lack of diversity in the publishing industry with an article about Seal Press in it. I don’t know if either of them would have time or inclination to take you up on it — they’re legitimately pissed at you — but if they did, you would end up with a clearly excellent collection of articles. That would just be my first step.
Alternately, if someone could help you find BFP, and if she had time and inclination, I’m certain her writings could be compiled into an excellent text.
Oh, and drop everything and go read this post from Angry Black Woman on how to promote diversity in fiction markets. It’s not 100% salient to non-fiction publishing, but it’s close enough.
I am very pleased that the book will soon be available without this offensive imagery. I’ve only excerpted from these apologies; I suggest you read further yourself.
I imagine many people will be wondering why Amanda apologized about this issue, while staying silent on her own blog about appropriation. Only Amanda can answer that, though I suspect the answer has something to do with her feeling she did something wrong here and not in the other instance. To the extent that my desires are relevant (i.e. about 0%), I’d urge Amanda to address the appropriation issue on her blog. Even if she doesn’t feel she appropriated, she could easily mention the controversy, apologize for whatever portion of it she feels rests on her shoulders (and surely she can agree that appropriation is a systemic issue, and one she and many other white people have participated in without intention or conscious knowledge, if not in this instance specifically, then surely in others) and compile a set of links to salient works by women of color. Even if those links don’t feel like direct sources to her, they would certainly be excellent reading for her audience, and what is there to lose? More sets of eyes on excellent, progressive writing by women of color? Oh, please don’t throw me in that briar patch.
UPDATESeal Press has updated their apology with the following:
Please note that, upon reflection, we realize that the second to the last paragraph of this post doesn’t do a good job of conveying our intended meaning. We do not want to delete it, but we do want to make a note around our intent, since its purpose was to further articulate the “what were they thinking?” question. We apologize that this paragraph undermines our apology. We acknowledge that the images are racist and not okay under any circumstances. We are wholeheartedly sincere in our apology, and the actions we’ve laid out above will be acted upon immediately.
(Feminist, anti-racist comments only please.)
Feminism at its finest
i get it, that you’re trying to figure out a way to make something better out of this mess.
but frankly, do you really think someone like bfp could ever trust the same creative geniuses that didn’t notice some really obliviously racist crap? it’s the not seeing it that is the problem. not seeing the harm in those images means not being able to see the real power of a writer like her.
and wtf to seal, as well. an actual apology wouldn’t include the “i’m sorry your so dumb to misinterpret us” line such as: “This 1950s Marvel comic is not an accurate reflection of our beauty standards, our beliefs regarding one’s right to bear arms, nor our perspectives on race relations, foreign policy, or environmental policy.”
Environmental policy? Right to bear arms? Trivializing our complaints by this reducto ad aburdum is childish.
It’s still not retro cool. It’s just plain retrograde, and for you to call this an apology is an insult to all remorse everywhere.
oh but hay, they’re going to an anti-racist training, so it should all work out now.
“Sorry I ran you over with my car on my last drunken bender. I didn’t hear you the first 12,000 times you told me I might have a drinking problem, but I’m beginning to think you might have a point. Anyway, I’m going to rehab, you should know, so– What do you -mean- they might have to take away my driver’s license? But, I said I’m -sorry.-”
SC: Yeah, I’m afraid so. And considering that these are the same two people that committed the PR -genius- move with Black Amazon and Adele, I am thinking: sure, go to the anti-racist training? but uh, I’m thinking “shitcan,” myself, if Seal wants any credibility ever again. Whoever Seal actually is at this point, that is. If it’s really just them and some large conglomerate publishing company as upper management, I have a sinking feeling that the end result is just going to be them getting phased out altogether.
>>“This 1950s Marvel comic is not an accurate reflection of our beauty standards, our beliefs regarding one’s right to bear arms, nor our perspectives on race relations, foreign policy, or environmental policy.”>>
oh yeah, and I missed that little snide-dump, speaking of missing things one doesn’t feel like seeing. Cute. Very cute.
Firing’s too good for ’em.
You may well be right. I hope, though, that these two editors are genuinely open to learning, and if they learn, maybe they will be able to see the genius in the writing of BFP or someone like her.
I also have to confess, as a writer, I am perhaps stupidly pragmatic about these things. I would, for instance, *love* to print something in Playboy, even though I’m not fond of its raison d’etre. On a purely selfish writer level — more eyes, more money, score for me. On a writer-as-activist level, their subscribers are people I’d be exposing to my content who might otherwise never see my kinds of themes, and one can only hope to break through, in a small way, to just one person who might not otherwise be thinking about marginalized voices (which is usually something I write about). In the same way, whatever gets more readers to look at the work of women of color — even if it’s a tarnished press — has gotten more readers to look at the work of women of color, and possibly be changed by it. That’s the most important thing, to me.
Still, I do hope that this apology — though flawed — will lead Seal Press to better things. I hope that they are genuine in their desires to learn about anti-racism. I hope they realize their mistakes and change their policies.
I wrote this on the Seal Press blog, in response to a commenter who was trying to defend the Seal Press editors by saying they’d never had a racist thought:
Dito! ;-)
Seal Press, if I were you, I would go straight to the Angry Black Woman or Nojojojo, both of whom I can personally attest are excellent writers
Thanks for the compliment, but please don’t send those people anywhere near me. I’m a nice Southern girl, so I’d use my politest language when I told them to go fuck themselves, but it would still mean, “Go fuck yourselves.”
Besides, I’m too busy trying to show the SF world that PoC matter; I don’t have time to try and educate self-declared “feminists” who are about as feminist as my left nut.
Why are they just now sorry? There were remarks made about the racist art LAST YEAR, and I believe in February of this year.Amanda was very snotty and condescending in her remarks then. So why is she apologizing now?
Hearing women of color denounce feminism hurts me. Seeing why they do so hurts so much more.
Pingback: Apologies are one thing, suicide is just stupid
Hahahaha. The author of that trackback up there thinks asking ABW or nojojojo to write for Seal Press would be suicide (because “those people” will “never be pleased”).
Good to know that’s what working with woc is: suicide for a press.
Exactly. And people are embracing that apology and so many earlier issues are pretty much being ignored.
I think Mandolin’s idea for what Seal Press can do next is a good one, but would like to suggest the following amendment:…And remember that if ABW, nojojojo*, BFP, or other WOC whom you approach tell you to go screw yourself it is because you screwed up so badly that they want nothing to do with you. Not because they don’t want book deals (though they might not: I don’t know whether all or any of the above have the time or inclination for writing/editing a book of the sort Seal Press would be interested in), not because they don’t write, definitely not because they are irrationally “hypersensitive” WOC, but because you screwed up so badly that they can’t trust you. Accept that, move on, try to become an organization that they might be able to work with some day.
*I started writing this before reading the comments. I see nojojojo has already said that she doesn’t want to deal with them. I’m not surprised but do think that Seal Press would do well to look at popular WOC bloggers and see if any of them would consider working with them. Not as “penance” or “consciousness raising” but because there are a lot of excellent WOC bloggers out there who would write really good books if they could find a publisher. I’m guessing that one of the problems women, POC, and particularly WOC run into in publishing is publishers saying, “We’d love to publish works by WOC, but we don’t know of any good ones.” Well, look around, people: they’re not hard to find…
Well, I usually don’t weigh in on this kind of thing. But after linking though, I find – somewhat to my surprise, I confess – that that shit is bad. A white babe with a grossly exaggerated figure kicking the crap out of a savage black witch doctor? Come on now. Who were the people involved in that decision?
I’m trying to think what else they could do to prove that they’re not interested.
And the low numbers excuse is used a lot in other areas outside of publishing. It’s not surprising that it’s used there as well.
RonF, why would you be surprised? If a bunch of POC are upset about something, you don’t assume that there might be some validity to their complaints?
Or did you mean that it’s just worse than you thought it would be?
Often I find myself in disagreement with people (regardless of their membership in a given race, ethnicity, economic class, political philosophy or sex) who take offense at one thing or another. I normally discount or dismiss such complaints regardless of whether they are on the left or right or whoever they are. But not in this case. Put me down for “worse that I thought it would be.” That stuff’s bad, for multiple reasons. How the heck did anyone think THAT was a good idea?
I don’t know shit about Amanda Marcotte. Given the number and nature of threads her work has been involved in here she seems to be controversial, but in order to intelligently comment on her or her work I’d have to read her work, and it’s not a priority to me. But from what I know of the publishing world I can readily believe that she had little to no say or notice about those illustrations. Given the apparent nature of the publishing house as a feminist press I’d imagine that she put some trust in them which in turn appears to have been betrayed.
Hey RonF you appear to have missed the moderation rules, can you not post on this thread again.
The comments I saw last year concerned the cover with the gorilla, the one they changed even though it didn’t seem clearly racist before I learned about these other images.
Whoops – mea culpa.
RonF – a moderation request not to post in a thread is a request not to post in a thread. Not a moderation request not to post in a thread except to say one last thing that you want to say.