IBARW 2!

[oyceter]

Guess what? It's almost time for Intl. Blog Against Racism Week again!

Yes, I am making this a yearly thing.

Since it started around mid-July last year, I want to keep it around the same time. But since my birthday is in late July, and I am entirely selfish and really don't want to be dealing with potential race-related stupidity around my birthday, I am making the first full week of August officially the week of IBARW.

So that's August 6 to August 12!

This year, I want to a) read through all of last year's entries and pick my favs, b) blog more about POC reactions to racism (internalized, denial, acknowledgment, anger, etc.) without having it turn into "But POC are racist too OMG WOE!", c) actually do something about the "international" part, and d) continue to post about it the rest of the year too.

What Can I Do?

Well! I'm glad you asked! (or, uh, didn't, but whatever, I'll pretend that people did.)

1. First, I'd love volunteers to be Icon-Makers of the Revolution!
   
   I made some icons last year, which are still up for grabs, and I will make more this year. But I am singularly uncreative and am running out of icon ideas, and my icon skills are passable but really not the best. Also, for people who want customized personal icons or whatnot, it'd be nice to have more icon-makers to go to.



2. Second, I need a Record-Keeper of the Revolution!
   
   You'll be compiling all IBARW posts during the week, like rilina did last year in the handy link compilation. I think mostly people comment with a link to theirs, so you don't have to search all over the internet to find things. The link compilation will include all posts for IBARW, including sporktastic ones, though I encourage people to create their own recommended posts lists too!
   
   
   • Alternately... since IBARW generated over 200 posts last year, I think it'd also be cool if there were a Programmer of the Revolution who wrote up a link-compiling program that would have people input the link, title, poster, time posted, and summary of their posts and spit out a handy-dandy list. I think I do have webspace for something like this, although I'd need to re-investigate, as I have completely forgotten what I can do with it.



3. Thirdly, post!! If you're a white person and don't want to take attention away from POC bloggers, I respect that a lot. But if you still want to contribute without taking attention away, you can also post links to posts POC have made as well, or drive traffic, or search for IBARW links that people may have missed.

And while I'm asking for things, I so want an Anti-Racism 101 blog a la Finally, a Feminism 101 Blog. I would very much contribute and possibly even be able to create the blog, but I don't think I have the time to post to it often. Maybe I will think about just compiling links and whatnot for the FAQs section or something. Hrm...

Thoughts? Questions? Bueller?

Comments

[littlebutfierce]

Oh, exciting!!! Last year was splendid, & I look forward to this year too.

Sadly, I have no icon talent. I could do the Record-Keeper thing, but it would be even more fabulous if you had a Programmer of the Revolution show up instead. :)

[oyceter]

Yay! jinian suggested a wiki, which I think is brilliant!

[jinian.livejournal.com]

On record-keeping, how about a wiki? I'd be happy to host.

[oyceter]

Oh! That's brilliant! It'd be awesome if you could host, thank you!

[rydra_wong]

I have no thoughts or questions at this time; I merely wish to shriek with glee.

[oyceter]

Yaaaay!

[minnow1212.livejournal.com]

Whee!

[oyceter]

^___^

[rilina.livejournal.com]

Re recording keeping: I second the suggestion of a wiki, or recommend using something like delicious.

[oyceter]

Yeah.. I'm leaning toward wiki right now, though with delicious, it'll be easier to subscribe. Hrm. Will contemplate and discuss with Jinian, who has volunteered herself.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

I think I do have webspace for something like this, although I'd need to re-investigate, as I have completely forgotten what I can do with it.

You can do a database/webpage thing - you've got MySQL and PHP enabled.

If you want to do a wiki, you can install MediaWiki (the Wikipedia software) with a one-click install. If you do that I HIGHLY recommend, seeing how ... enthusiastic this sort of discussion can be, either appointing several mods/admins to keep an eye on it during that week and the few weeks after to block trolls and spambots and revert pages when they get trolled or spammed if you keep membership open, or locking down account creation to admins only to keep a handle on the trolls and bots. Option 1 is more work but better PR-wise because you're not excluding anyone, Option 2 is less work but opens you to accusations of not letting people have their say, whatever say it is.

But it all depends on what you envision for the wiki. I'd suggest installing it now and getting familiar with editing it. :)

[oyceter]

Hee, I thought so, but I couldn't remember!

I suspect the wiki would probably be for admins only, since there will be so much stuff going on that it'll be hard to police everything. Will get in touch with Jinian and see what she thinks too.

[oyceter]

Oooh, thanks for the links!

And hey, no worries.

[ladyjax.livejournal.com]

I'll help in anyway I can. Would you like to use my Black Feminist/Lesbian reading primer? I can add to it too.

[oyceter]

Thank you, you are awesome! I may grab you later for the link list modding or promoting on various comms or something.

Also, I would love to use your reading primer!

[wychwood]

For the compilation type thing, you might benefit from using del.icio.us and del.icio.us glue. I believe it's what metafandom uses these days, and seems to work pretty well for link-compiling; I bet they'd be able to show you how to use it. And having all the posts up and linked on del.icio.us as well as within LJ seems like a good idea to me - it's public, widely-used, and a lot easier to search through than LJ.

On a different note, I'm not signing up as an official Icon Maker of the Revolution for potential RL reasons, but I'll hopefully be able to make some icons in time.

[oyceter]

Doh, replied to the wrong comment!

[shewhohashope.livejournal.com]

I'm international! I have Somali and British citizenship. The former is worth shit for passports or the right to vote or anything else that comes with citizenship, but I feel like it counts.

I'll have to think about what I can say...

[oyceter]

That would be excellent! I remember some people in the UK posting that their town/city/whatnot had no racism, which made me seriously doubt them, but I didn't have enough info. to make a very good defense.

I would love to read whatever you decided to write on.

[vee-fic.livejournal.com]

I'm in! Apartment-hunting has provided some scary discussion-fodder.

[oyceter]

Whoo!

Hey, are you still up for writing that faq? I'm sure I can help come up with lots of stupid questions ;).

[chomiji]

I could do some icons. Last year, IIRC, someone was suggesting the motto "Spork Out Against Racism," which is pretty silly but also pretty effective because it makes people stop and think a moment while they laugh. Any interest in that again? (I've already started playing around with ideas with some spork pix.) Also am making one to use myself featuring book cover art by Leo and Diane Dillon, award-winning artist/illustrators who happen to be a biracial couple and who have done a lot of SF&F cover work (example: the U.S. paperback covers for Garth Nix' "Abhorsen" trilogy). And I'd be glad to turn others' ideas into icons if they don't feel comfy about doing it themselves.

[oyceter]

That would be great! I'll check with Yoon about the spork motto; I think it was her custom icon last year.

Will definitely ping you later when things really get started.

[hysteriachan.livejournal.com]

Oh, very cool. ^_^ I'll look forward to it!

[oyceter]

Yay!

[silveraspen]

I am so glad that this is happening again. I will think about what I can do to help, raise awareness, etc.

[oyceter]

Thank you!!

[zvi-likes-tv.livejournal.com]

I missed IBARW mostly, last time around, and I couldn't figure out, in the aftermath, if there was a deliberate tone of conciliation, or if that was just the tone a lot of people took.

I probably don't have another big huge post about race and fandom in me this year, and certainly not this soon after the last one, but I might make icons. Most of the ones I can think of are sort of 'slap in the face' ones like the one I'm using, though, and if IBARW isn't about slaps in the face, then I might go ahead and make the icons, but not directly associate them with IBARW, so as not to muddy your waters.

[oyceter]

I think I ended up taking a more deliberate tone of conciliation last year because I'm not as comfortable with confrontation, but this year, I would like to write more about things that are largely directed to POC instead of white people. But that's me.

I think it would also be good to have "slap in the face" icons as well, because I think people need to get used to the idea that this is an angry-making (and often brain-exploding) subject, and that people are angry for a really good reason. And I think it would be good to have a variety of reactions, not just conciliatory.

Thanks for asking! I hadn't really thought about that before, and I think you're right about the tone of IBARW last year.

[annaalamode.livejournal.com]

I'm happy to be record keeper. Or back-up record keeper. Or just hang out on the sidelines and cheer.

[oyceter]

That would be awesome, thank you! I was thinking of having people take shifts of sorts so one person wasn't stuck compiling or going through tons of links.

[shati.livejournal.com]

I am leery of taking on commitments right now, but consider this a non-commitment-y indication of interest in making icons for IBARW. *g* And am totally willing to take requests/do customized icons.

[oyceter]

Non-commit-y is good too! And thank you!

[gyutto.livejournal.com]

I completely missed this last year and had to read most of the posts after the fact, so I'm glad to see it come back. That being said--I'm not so sure if I agree with #3. As a PoC, I think we should encourage anyone (of any race) who has recognized their own racism and taken steps to acknowledge and act against it to speak on that. This is, of cours in addition to broadening their perspective by reading and reflecting on other posts by PoCs. Anyway, I'm looking forward to posting and participating this time around :).

[oyceter]

That being said--I'm not so sure if I agree with #3. As a PoC, I think we should encourage anyone (of any race) who has recognized their own racism and taken steps to acknowledge and act against it to speak on that. This is, of cours in addition to broadening their perspective by reading and reflecting on other posts by PoCs.

*nods* Yeah, very. My suggestions in 3 are my Not So Sekrit way of trying to get those people to post too, heh heh. Because yeah, I really do appreciate it when more people speak out, because it makes everyone that much less afraid to.

On the other hand, I had several friends who didn't feel like they should take voices away from POC last year, especially when there were a lot of posts with people going "Oh! I had a black friend in elementary! I know all about racism!" without even trying to go further. So I see where they're coming from, and I respect their decision, even though personally, I would make everyone post if I could ;).

And I didn't write down the corollary to 3, which is that I didn't want POC who are tired of the entire thing to feel pressured to post, especially since, y'know, we deal with it every freaking day and god knows that people need rest and to not have to deal.

So... I dunno. I think that was my very long winded way of saying that I agree with you, but I also don't want to disrespect choices that other people have made as well, if that makes any sense?

Add'l thought about recordkeeping

[zvi-likes-tv.livejournal.com]

If you can find a volunteer, it would probably be a good idea to get someone to round up posts about racism that have occurred in the interim between the two IBARW. Or posts that pre-date the IBARW.

If you find someone, I'll give them the links I've got. Oh, you may also want to hookup w/ witchwillow/willow_dot_com's ofcolor.

Re: Add'l thought about recordkeeping

[oyceter]

Yes! I've been madly collecting links in my delicious acct. and was planning to link to rydra_wong's giant compilation of most race-in-fandom posts, as well as linking to carnivals like Erase Racism. But yeah, having someone actually do it systematically and stick it on whatever link collection method we've got going would be excellent!

(plus, it would make compiling a potential Anti-Racism 101 site that much easier)

[seajules]

::is geared up and ready::

::she hopes::

[oyceter]

Yay!

[anenko.livejournal.com]

I hope you don't mind me dropping by here with a question, but I respect your opinions on race and racism, and recent discussions [1 (http://community.livejournal.com/lifeonmartha/268192.html), 2 (http://community.livejournal.com/lifeonmartha/259659.html), 3 (http://thete1.livejournal.com/628790.html)] have left me wondering about this.

I know absolutely nothing about the behind-the-scenes aspect of movies and tv, but what do you think actors of colour/minority actors do with roles and scenes they find offensive? Do they remain silent because they fear losing work? Do their opinions simply get ignored? Or do you think the end product actually *has* been improved after input from actors dealing with iffy material?

Some of the stuff we end up seeing is so glaringly *offensive* that surely someone on the creative end must have noticed, and said something. When fandom talks about race (or sexism or any other sort of prejudice), we usually talk vaguely about "the writers" or "[the show's creator]," but there are so many other people around them, and involved in the creation of a movie or tv show that surely *someone* must notice when the subtext is getting ugly.

Hmm. I'm sorry if I haven't phrased myself very coherently, but if you are willing to share your opinions, I would appreciate them very much.

I am not <lj user=oyceter> and don't play her on tv, but

[zvi-likes-tv.livejournal.com]

I think it's a mistake to assume that actors of color are always aware of the messages being received by the audience, especially if the treatment of a single character isn't blatantly racially negative, but it's the shows global treatment of CoCs that is at issue. A lot of actors look at a TV show or movie very much from the viewpoint of their single character, and they may know little or nothing about the larger show, or the created world in which their show is set.

I think the best example of actor monofocus is what happened to Andromeda when Kevin Sorbo started exercising more creative control: in short, the stories completely re-centered around his character and the interesting and complex story continuity and ensuing moral questions were axed a lot.

There's also the X Files episodes written by David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson. DD's episodes were pretty coherent episodes, but they were only of the humorous quirky type, not the scary horror/thriller type. GA's episode didn't make sense, in terms of the larger universe or her character's progression in the series. It involved Scully getting re-involved in a personal relationship from college after a point where she had relinquished all personal relationships outside the FBI and her family, and it didn't have much in the way of an X factor.

Also, actors do sometimes influence storylines for racial reasons, but the way they influence those storylines may or may not strike other people as constructive. Eriq Lasalle (black man), who was on ER, got the producers to break his character up with the white woman he'd been dating, because he was sick of black characters so often ending up with white ones. That's his perspective because he's working on an ensemble drama — for me, who was watching a lot of buddy shows are smaller cast sf dramas, I found it really frustrating that the only time we'd see incidental, minor character CoCs, it would just so happen to be when a main cast CoC needed a date to the big dance or to be seduced by alien priestesses or what have you.

I do know that some minority actors just don't work as much as their talent would dictate. Angela Bassett (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000291/) should have a longer IMDB entry, for instance. So should Regina King (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0005093/).

So, I suspect the answer is yes, to all of the things you asked, depending on the ability of the actor to express what is offensive and the actor's estimate of their influence on the whole of the production and the producer's estimate of the actor's influence.

[blaquerose.livejournal.com]

I wanna write this year! Last year I was just kinda looking around but this year I wanna be a part of it!

[oyceter]

That would be awesome! Join the fun! ;)

[lady-ganesh.livejournal.com]

I can make icons. (linked over here from friendfriends)

[oyceter]

That would be great! I think witchqueen has got some text/slogan suggestions, though of course you're free to make whatever you like ^_^.

[stickykeys633.livejournal.com]

Thank you dear, it sounds like a fabulous project. What I would suggest is really promoting it outside of eljay. Journalfen, perhaps creating a dedicated community or blogger or wordpress, myspace etc. I found out about this from a friend of a friend of a friend and it was tough getting to this post.

[oyceter]

Oh, um, yes, that would be a good idea, wouldn't it? ;)

Ah, the inherent problems of trying to get a campaign-thing going when you're too embarrassed to let other people know about it!

[technosage.livejournal.com]

I'm a Jewish white person. I often feel ambivalent about how to participate in conversations about race, since "Jewish" isn't a race and I am white. OTOH, obviously, there's prejudice against Semitic peoples and Jews and Muslims all over the place.

Is it out of place for IBARW to post about the representation of Jews in the media and what to do when the stereotype fits your experience?

[oyceter]

Um. That is a tough question. I am not sure if I'm the right person to respond to that. Actually, I'm very certain I'm not the right person! ;)

But since you ask, I will try and answer, although this is all just me. I have seen several cases in which people (not you) have derailed conversations by turning to the oppression of various white people, including but not limited to Jews and the Irish. And I am not saying that oppression against these groups did not exist, or that they are somehow less important or more important than racism, because I think that oppression is horrible.

That said, you seem to be fairly clear about that part already, given that you've taken the time to think about it and ask, which I really, really appreciate. And I do think oppressions intersect and that looking at those intersections is extremely important, and of course I can see how a post on stereotypes in media would fit in with IBARW (though I'm not equating stereotypes of different people in media).

In conclusion: I don't know. I would love to see your post, and I am happy to have people contributing to IBARW. But I think it is up to you and your own comfort level about these things, because if nothing else, the past few days have shown that it's not always fun talking about race and racism (even though I like it when people do it!).

I hope that helps somewhat? I'm sorry I don't have a good answer.