{"id":7042,"date":"2009-03-13T00:58:56","date_gmt":"2009-03-13T08:18:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=7042"},"modified":"2009-03-13T00:58:56","modified_gmt":"2009-03-13T08:18:44","slug":"mary-anne-mohanraj-on-racism-101","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=7042","title":{"rendered":"Mary Anne Mohanraj on Racism 101"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mary Anne Mohanraj<\/a>, guest posting at Scalzi.com, writes a very clear and well-organized “racism 101” post<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Nalo Hopkinson<\/a>, a wonderful SF\/F writer whose work I recommend to you, put this pithily in my blog comments when she said, \u201c\u2026many in the science fiction community \u2014 like many in all kinds of other communities \u2014 lack an understanding of racism as a system. It\u2019s pretty tough to live in a system and be unaffected by it. That\u2019s like floating in a pool of shit and claiming that you don\u2019t smell. So whenever you have the urge to silence people by shouting, \u201cI\u2019m not racist!\u201d it\u2019s probably a good idea to take a long, hard think and ask yourself how in the world is that possible? Really, it isn\u2019t. Not until a whole lot more about the world changes.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a starting assumption for me \u2014 the world is racist, the culture I grew up in is racist, I\u2019ve internalized and carry around a hell of a lot of racist baggage, and on some deep level, many of my basic assumptions are racist. So are yours. That sucks. But I also don\u2019t feel particularly guilty about it, and neither should you. It\u2019s something you\u2019ve inherited, living in this world. The onus now on you isn\u2019t to wallow in guilt \u2014 it\u2019s to be aware of these deep-buried attitudes, and consciously try to avoid letting them dictate your choices in life.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Her entire post is well worth reading — one of the better “racism 101” posts I’ve read. It’s addressed to people in the science fiction\/fantasy community (both fans and writers), but I think anyone interested in how discussions of race function could enjoy reading this post. I also liked her post on why writing characters with identities<\/a> (racial, ethnic, gender, sexual, etc) is not only good politics, but necessary for good writing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mary Anne Mohanraj, guest posting at Scalzi.com, writes a very clear and well-organized “racism 101” post: Nalo Hopkinson, a wonderful SF\/F writer whose work I recommend to you, put this pithily in my blog comments when she said, \u201c\u2026many in … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[93],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7042","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-race-racism-and-related-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7042","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7042"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7042\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7042"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7042"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}