You are powerful, and you have a very clear voice. Thank you for using it.
Attempting to discuss--or speak out against--racism, as a white woman, puts me in a great deal of sympathy with feminist men. I feel that I am often percieved in terms of White Liberal Guilt, or--that experience I talked about a while back, of trying to sit down at the segregated table and being made unwelcome. As if I am seen as trying to borrow somebody else's issue. Or as if I were looking for an excuse to be self-congratulatory. (As if it weren't possible to oppose racial prejudice simply because it is *wrong,* but only through some concealed White People Agenda. [possible because there are so many *^%$&^%&^ concealed White People Agendas])
You have never made me feel as if my help wasn't wanted.
But the other thing I said to you, that your post way back about the Asian characters in the Jenny books mattering to you mattered to me, that it changed my perception and made me understand that something I had done for no particular reason--ie, having a multiracial cast, because that's what the neighborhoods and subcultures I grew up in looked like--that also stands. And it's influenced what I've written since, because I now write everything thinking "what will this characterization say to a hypothetical 16 year old who sympathizes with this character?"
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Tue, Jul. 18th, 2006 10:33 am (UTC)Attempting to discuss--or speak out against--racism, as a white woman, puts me in a great deal of sympathy with feminist men. I feel that I am often percieved in terms of White Liberal Guilt, or--that experience I talked about a while back, of trying to sit down at the segregated table and being made unwelcome. As if I am seen as trying to borrow somebody else's issue. Or as if I were looking for an excuse to be self-congratulatory. (As if it weren't possible to oppose racial prejudice simply because it is *wrong,* but only through some concealed White People Agenda. [possible because there are so many *^%$&^%&^ concealed White People Agendas])
You have never made me feel as if my help wasn't wanted.
But the other thing I said to you, that your post way back about the Asian characters in the Jenny books mattering to you mattered to me, that it changed my perception and made me understand that something I had done for no particular reason--ie, having a multiracial cast, because that's what the neighborhoods and subcultures I grew up in looked like--that also stands. And it's influenced what I've written since, because I now write everything thinking "what will this characterization say to a hypothetical 16 year old who sympathizes with this character?"
And thank you for that.
And thank you for not being scared off.