The Seduction and Toxicity of Victimhood

"I wonder if there are too many things more seductive and poisonous than grasping at victim status."

This comment was made "off the record" (read: this person knew this was a volatile conversation and wanted to tread lightly, but still wanted to have the conversation with me) as a part of my post-racial church discussion. The word victim come directly from the Latin victima, meaning "person" or "animal killed as a sacrifice", or "any sacrifice". There’s a difference between being the victim of abuse and having a victim mentality, a balance of what is true victimization and what is excuse making for poor choices and poor behavior. Choices and actions are somehow absolved because they aren’t actually your fault, but the fault of some outside … other. As if you had nothing to do with your situation, but rather you were the victim of (insert boogeyman of choice).

I also understand that it’s a dangerous road when a person or a minority group starts buying into certain beliefs about themselves. Yes, it is hard to blame the victim, but it’s just as unempowering to BE (and more importantly, remain) the victim. Your life becomes about finding new abusers, as if it’s some club to be a part of. When people so believe they are a victim that they then use that status to avoid confrontation or dealing with their own problems and mistakes. So we must leverage excuse making versus personal responsibility. But I didn’t want to go off half-cocked on the subject, so I turned to one of the voices of wisdom in my life, Carole McDonnell, to get her take:

There can be a need for certain victims to seem guiltless. To be guiltless absolves us of taking responsibility for our own actions. There's pity for victims and many victims rise above the pity and learn to take charge of their lives again, but some are so wounded they A) can't deal with their own imperfection B) can't deal with being seen as imperfect C) confuse the pity and acceptance they receive as love, D) make the pity status permanent.

The victim status is seductive because while we're in the painful situation we fall into self-pity. We use it to hammer or silence other folks who have not experienced the pain we've had. Why rid one's self of an illness if one becomes utterly identified with it? What is one without the illness? "It's not my fault; it's my genes, etc." And why fight fair when one can say to someone, "I've got depression, why are you talking to me like this?"

On the other hand, we live in a very individualistic society and people often tell the victim to "get over it." That's because we're tired of hearing of their pain and our inability to change their situation. Or because we can't sympathize anymore. Or because we're cold. Or we fall into comparison mode and say, "If I were in your position, I wouldn't be behaving like such a victim as you are." Or we have weird ideas about how a noble victim should behave. So I don't believe we should tell folks to "get over it."

As a Christian we're supposed to bear each other's burdens and to take care of folks who are victimized. We aren't supposed to be weary with their pain. Yet at the same time, we are to cover their heads with the helmet of the hope of salvation. The devil works through despair, bad memories, etc. We're supposed to think of whatever things are just (not what is unjust) and we are to live in hope and the belief that Christ working in us will enable us to overcome the world as He did. I guess there are good ways of reacting to being victimized but I suspect God wants us to see ourselves as victors. We have triumphed or we will triumph. The meditations of our hearts and the words of our mouths cannot and should not be of moments when God seemed to fail us, or when injustice seemed to have triumph. We can say, "Such and such happened to me, but it will not happen again. I have become stronger because of it. I am becoming stronger because of it. If I look to God He is able to make me triumph over this through being able to comfort those who have been wounded as I have been.

Co-signed.

O Harry: Because Sometimes Your Friends are Ignorant

It’s always a tricky bit of navigation when your friends say or do something ignorant. I remember a couple of occasions in church, I was attending a mostly white church at the time, and one of the members patted me on head. On another occasion, the pastor compared me to “a faithful dog” from the pulpit. For better or worse, I chalked those things up to well-meaning, but ignorant gestures. Perhaps she didn’t get the memo that the whole rub the head of a black guy has some pretty racist origins or maybe he didn’t get that comparing black folks to animals might not play well considering a history or dehumanization. I often got the “you’re the whitest black guy I know” (which I often heard as “you’re the only black guy I know and I only associate with you because you sound and seem to act a lot like me so you don’t scare me”) because I don’t “sound” black.

Which is why it didn’t exactly shock me that Senator Harry Reid had described Obama—as reported in the new political gossip book, "Game Change" by John Heileman and Mark Halperin—as a "light-skinned" African-American "with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one." There was a steady chorus of people who bought into the idea that "the first black president" is actually not black.* The comments were being made on both sides of the political aisle and from across the spectrum of race. The “am I black enough for you” debate even raged in the black community (Reverend Jesse Jackson says what?).**

Race is the third rail in politics, in the church, and, well, most of our lives. If there is to be any hope of reconciliation, there has to be a sharing and hearing of stories and some of the conversations are going to be tough (and, as a friend of mine points out, you can’t have a conversation about anything by starting it with "Your voice doesn't count.") Now, I know some Republicans want to make hay of this incident, calling folks on the seeming-hypocrisy of Senator Trent Lott having to step down over his comments versus the gymnastics folks do to defend someone they like. And they’d have a point, except that conversations about race shouldn’t happen in a vacuum, but rather have a context. (Though, seriously, Senator Lott, how do you think trying to spin someone’s segregationist past is a good idea or that it wouldn’t get you into trouble? But again, if you have built up a lot of good will, you can step into such firestorms to make the point you thought you were making because friends can have those kind of tough conversations. If you don’t have that kind of good will built up…]

Every few years we have these sort of dust ups, so we were about due. Not too long ago we had Don Imus referring to the women of the Rutgers basketball team as "some nappy-headed hos." After so many offenses, he rather struck me as an equal opportunity offender, but it led to the conversation about how there are some words and phrases “off limits” to certain folks in certain contexts and the situation resolved by the offended parties speaking up and reprimands given.

We also had Kelly Tilghman, play-by-play announcer for The Golf Channel's PGA Tour broadcasts, while bantering with Nick Faldo about young players who might challenge Woods suggesting that they "lynch him in a back alley." In short, it’s stupid and you can’t say it. However, I don’t think she should have been suspended. I think her apology should have stood on its own, she should have been simply reprimanded, and the conversations had about why what she said was a poor choice of words. We can’t police every bad sentence, because that would stifle conversations that still need to be had.

"I've apologized to the president, I've apologized to everyone that within the sound of my voice that I could have used a better choice of words," Reid has said. Apologies happen for a reason. Sometimes folks simply don’t get that what they did was hurtful or demeaning and their apologies should stand and be accepted on their face value (even if the incidents themselves aren’t forgotten because we know that forgiveness takes time). Just like folks ought to be judged by their deeds and track record.

Just because folks are your friends doesn’t mean that they aren’t capable of saying and doing ignorant things. Just like I’m sure there will be another RaceFail conversation in the genre fiction world as we muddle through what it means to live with one another, deal with the history of hurts with of one another, be different from one another, and respect one another.


*Now, I can’t wait to see the gymnastics folks do if President Bill Clinton’s alleged comment about President Obama—“ a few years ago, this guy would have been getting us coffee."—prove to be accurate. After all, President Clinton was widely held as our “first black president.”

** Better to discuss this than the reality of what it means to be black in America, dealing with what W.E.B. DuBois called the “double consciousness” of black folks. How many of us may “act” or “speak” one way when we are in professional settings and then another when we’re at home or in a “safe” place.

[That and sometimes our “friends” are just too ignorant for words: "I'm blacker than Barack Obama. I shined shoes. I grew up in a five-room apartment. My father had a little laundromat in a black community not far from where we lived," ousted Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich said to Esquire Magazine. "I saw it all growing up."] With a h/t to the blackfolks LJ:

Post-Racial Church: The Myth and the Hope Part II: So what can we do?

[click here for Part I]

David Mills directs us to Larry Auster’s comments regarding “The only hope for the betterment of the black race (and the white race)”:

“The solution cannot be in the ‘horizontal’ dimension, that is, in the relationship between blacks and non-blacks, because blacks will always be behind on the level of earthly functioning, leading to unjust racial resentment on the part of blacks and undeserved racial guilt on the part of whites.

“The solution can only be found in the ‘vertical’ dimension,” he continues, “... in the relationship between each black person and God through Jesus Christ, who will put each person’s self in true order and true freedom and remove the focus on the ‘horizontal’ differences and inequalities.

“Each black person will then live and perform and fulfill himself as a human being according to his own aspirations and abilities, without comparing himself to whites.”

Um, yeah, so the solution is for us to pray for us to forgive white folks and leave our resentment behind. I do believe we need to keep having conversations across the racial divide, and I’m as “We Are the World” as the next brother, but this would be considered a conversation fail. Note, while there is some truth in the statement, the onus was in what black people need to do. We can get sidetracked and bogged down by so many conversations that dance around the true issues at hand, and still manage to enflame all the old passions and lingering resentments. Conversation does not mean confess your guilt to a Negro. Don’t confuse institutions of black survival (the black family, black church, and black schools) with institutional or reverse racism.

Sociologically speaking, I’ve learned that we can have the language of sorry, but we don’t have the practice of sorry. My two boys, Reese and Malcolm, have been known to on occasion fight. We, the parental figures and ruling authority in their lives, have been known to make them apologize to one another. Without fail, the initial apology is done through gritted teeth and is essentially worthless. But it is a start. If I’ve learned nothing over the last few months, I’ve at least learned that “sorry”, or rather, repentance, needs to be lived out. And racism needs to be repented of.

Institutionally speaking, the church doesn’t need to program diversity, it needs to be diverse. One of the myths about the Great Commission is that Crossing cultures is a step beyond the general mandate. This myth is that only select missionaries are called to cross cultures in order to make disciples. The rest of us should only focus on people like us, in our culture. The problem with this myth is that the actual Great Commission commands otherwise. Incredibly, Jesus gave a commandment to his mostly Jewish audience to go to a mostly Gentile people and make disciples! Jesus commanded his Jewish followers to go to all people groups (all ethnos, the Greek word for “nations”). In other words, the Great Commission itself is a mandate to cross cultures!

So we start with the individuals. Church folks concerned about multi-cultural church or the state of race relations, looking at your FaceBook friends list is a natural moment to examine the demographics of your life. If the diversity is my sister and I, you may need to color up your lives. I’m not saying take out ads looking for black friends, I’m saying take some steps to break out of the comfortable routine of your life.

At the same time, diversity isn’t the goal. Diversity isn't the mission. We're to be missional, advance God's kingdom here on earth. Strive to carve out a foretaste of what heaven's supposed to be. In my experience, most times conversations about race in the context of church devolve into spiritual circle jerk. Churches may talk about wanting diversity, even making token statements about wanting to see it reflected from the top down, yet their leadership remains a white, sausage fest. We hear plenty of talk and have attended many conventions, now we need more.

Too many people's idea of being post-black (post-racial group of choice) means leaving their heritage behind. As we move forward, no one should have to leave their culture for the the sake of coming together. I mentioned in my previous post about how my formative years were spent in another (the dominant) culture. It is part of a journey I’ve spoken about before. As a result, I was a perpetual other: never a part of the dominant culture and often looked at askance by my own. In order to navigate my circumstance, and keep some measure of cultural sanity, I developed a third culture mentality.

Church should be a third culture experience. Countercultural. Church needs to serve everyone: hungry is hungry, widowed is widowed, orphaned is orphaned, the least of these are the least of these. Pain knows no color. Diversity can be a measurement of how well we’re doing our job. Not something expressly sought after, but a by-product of how well you are serving your community. Your whole community.

Are we really living out our core values, the things we say we're about or do we once again have to learn to be patient and give the church another chance to get things right (and forgive it its slowness)?

Church is a bigger place than one building or one community. I’ve come to realize that one particular body might not meet all of our needs and may fail us on occasion. And we’re quick to measure our experience with the church by a particular body. But it is all of the Christians who make up the church. Our mission is to be about loving, learning, worshiping, and serving together and one another. But we can’t be that until we’re willing to enter the discomfort. In any culture, despite pain and discomfort that may come. We have to risk our safety and taking on pain. We need truth tellers, bridge builders, and risk takers. We need to be the church.

Post-Racial Church: The Myth and the Hope Part I: Coming to You

It would be cool for someone to do a documentary called "Being Black In Evangelicalism" the sub-title would be "The Only Black Person In The Room" (or vice-versa). Evangelicals, as members of the dominant culture, have no idea what it's like for a black person (esp. a black female) to be the only black dude in a room full of whites. It's hard to describe unless you've been in that position but it's always a bit uncomfortable no matter how nice and welcoming people are. I've been at evangelical stuff where the room had a few hundred whites and I'm the only black guy. And no one ever really seems to notice.

In light of the Jim Crow still being alive poolside incident, I’ve been thinking about race and wondering if things are any better in the church. With some of the talk about the new post-racial era that we're entering, the question has come up about whether the church can become post-racial. That's the hope, but I’ve been coming to terms with church being as fallen as the people who make it up.

Too many about race inside and outside of the church begin (and end) with “I don’t see race” as if that’s a triumph of societal acceptance. While I understand what the sentiment attempts to get at, what my ears often hear and how my heart reacts is “No, you see people (culturally) like you.” The bulk of our interchange of life, most of our interactions, is largely within the same race of people. So of course there’s no need to talk about race. You don’t see race if you’re fully emerged in one story. And we’ve lived with our comfortable situations for so long we’ve become inured to it and don’t want to change things. We’re content with life as it is and don’t want to do or say anything which may make waves in our lives.

Color blindness is not a virtue, it’s a disservice. Color effects how I experience the world. Color effects how I’m perceived by the world. So your “color blindness” negates my identity. I look back on my history whenever I have attended a majority white church. Most times, me and my family were the entire black experience for a lot of folks. And we made it easy for “them” to get to know us because we go to “them”. Here’s what I mean: we grew up in mostly the white/dominant culture. It’s where we went to school, it’s where we went to church, it’s where we go to work. Minorities in the dominant culture have swum in those waters all of our lives, so it’s easy for us to be “safe” because we’re used to adapting to that culture.

I can always tell when friendships with me reach a new level of depth. Those friends come to me. They go where we go, do what we do, be it Black Expo, step shows, or Kwanzaa festivals. They take an interest in us and our culture, wanting to get to know us and understand us better. Without wanting to co-opt it. Without condescension of “wanting to relate” or “have a black experience.” Without the denigration of calling it “weird”. (I’m reminded of when a group of “friends” asked me to take them to a rough area of the city. They were thrill seeking and wanted a ghetto tour guide. I took them to Carmel, a suburb north of me. I told them that me driving through there at night was all the thrill I needed.)

So no, white church, you don’t know me. You haven’t taken the time to get to know me. You’ve invited me in with your “Negroes Wanted” signs and hoped that I wasn’t too different from you so that I wouldn’t make you uncomfortable. So that you wouldn’t have to come face-to-face with the everyday consequences of a history of humiliation suffered by a black male, the powerlessness–without even the power to keep our own names, being exploited, the dreams shattered, the justice denied, and of being dehumanized.

So the anger builds. I’ve absorbed the humiliations as part of the cost of the “privilege” of being with whites. And the hatred builds. The hatred of myself. The hate I’ve been taught, the hate I’ve learned, the hate I’ve internalized. We all have walls and race and culture is simply another wall we have to navigate. So I guess we’re wondering what can we do?

[continued tomorrow …]

Jim Crow Days

More than 60 campers from Northeast Philadelphia were turned away from a private swim club and left to wonder if their race was the reason ... The explanation they got was either dishearteningly honest or poorly worded. "There was concern that a lot of kids would change the complexion … and the atmosphere of the club," John Duesler, President of The Valley Swim Club said in a statement.

The other day, my boys were asked if they were part Mexican. So I reviewed the mathematics of our family for them again: “Black (dad) + White (mom) = you Ritz crackers”. Trying to explain the idiocy of race, much less the sheer madness of race relations is exhausting. It was pure joy trying to explain segregation to my boys at last year’s themed Christmas party:

Me: Yes, we used to make black people do things in one place and white people do the same things somewhere else. This is what happens when grown ups rule the world.

Reese: But we're mixed. What about us?

Me: Well, because of how you look, you would have had to make a choice. You guys could pass for white and that's what some people chose to do rather than admit they were half black.

Malcolm: Daddy, I'd have chosen to be white. It sounds easier.

Today we went to the pool. The boys love to frolic in the water while I read slush stories for my anthology poolside. I can’t help but wonder what if we were stopped at the gate. They were allowed in but I had to watch from the outside the gate. How do I explain that to them? How do I live with the shame (even knowing that it wasn’t my fault and I certainly didn’t do anything wrong)? What lessons does it pass on to them about me, them, or society? And what do we all do with that pain, that injustice, that rage?

It’s 2010. We have a black president. Yet the more things change, the more they stay the same. Our capacity to divide. Our capacity to hate. We still so capable of fearing and hating all but our own kind; we’re still so capable of internalizing all manner of hate and scorn; and we haven’t quite gotten past passing down lessons of ignorance to our children. We split along a tribal mentality … forgetting that we’re one tribe. The more things change, the more things stay the same …

Yet…

I look into the face of my boys. I still see me in them, despite our color difference. I know that we have as a family. I see the hope represented by me and my wife. I look at the beautiful diversity of my friends and family and I know that things have changed. The battles may change, and the war isn’t over, but the cause is just. We continue to have these cross cultural conversations. We continue to build bridges between and toward one another. We continue to decry injustice when we see it. And continue to change things.

RaceFail '09 - Feedback II

I've received a couple of really interesting responses to my RaceFail '09 - Why Horror Ignores the Elephant blog. I thought I'd share a couple. Today is from a comment left on my blog a while back which I wanted to give further exposure to. As always, I look forward to your comments:

Hello, Mr. Broaddus,

I have been keeping a somewhat distant eye on Racefail '09 and found your blog and the relevant bingo cards via a simple google search. I am not a writer of any professional leaning, nor am I immediately aiming to be.

What I am is a woman of the Indian/Caribbean diaspora who spent some time teaching in Japan. While I was there I was immediately adopted into a tea ceremony club when the teacher decided I was just the right size for her to practice tying kimono with. She gave me lessons and my first yukata and I gave her saris in return. I wear my yukata on occasion and my teacher wept tears of joy when I gave her the first sari, so there's no doubt about appreciation on her part. I can eat with chopsticks, knife and fork or just my fingers and view the respective table manners as useful skills under my belt.

There are things on that Bingo card that I might say myself and racefail has raised uncomfortable issues for me. Is it only cultural appropriation if it involves caucasians? If there's a history of exploitation between groups? How much effort must go into understanding another group before people can agree it is actual cultural exchange and understanding rather than appropriation? Where is the line drawn, who draws it and why? Should I have said something to that African American girl I saw on the bus during college, wearing a bindi upside down?

My own heritage is a mishmash and a jumble, thrown together on an island and forced through a sieve of colonialism. For better or worse, borrowing and lending, adopting and sharing, adapting and evolving has been my cultural experience. Everything I am says there must be some avenue to explore this varied earth, that an upside-down bindi is a chance to educate rather than rail, but the sentiments arising from Racefail seem to acknowledge no possibility at all. Along with that is the sneaking suspicion that my post-colonial education brainwashed me better than I thought.

I hardly expect that you'd have all the answers but I am interested in any thoughts you might have on the matter. Thank you for your time.

RaceFail '09 - Feedback I

I've received a couple of really interesting responses to my RaceFail '09 - Why Horror Ignores the Elephant blog. I thought I'd share a couple. Today is from the mailbag. As always, I look forward to your comments:

My name's Hunter Eden, and I'm a young writer just new at this whole "forging the English language into something meaningful" thing. You and I corresponded very briefly a year or two ago on this same issue of race and horror, but I think I dropped the ball in responding to you, for which I humbly apologize. Point is, I had no idea that there was some kind of speculative fiction-based dust-up over race (or perhaps lack thereof).

Facts up front: I'm a white male of mixed Jewish/German-Norwegian (Hebrew Viking) descent. I don't actually write about that many white characters, though. I finished a novel (currently with an agent but no publisher) describing the war between two ancient Mexican gods in a world where Europe didn't conquer the Americas and Aztec gangsters smuggle contraband alcohol into Incan Cuzco. The only white character is the reanimated corpse of Charles Darwin, who probably isn't (within the context of the story) actually human. My first story appeared in City Slab and was written from the perspective of a Mexican cabbie in a very Cancun-like city. I've got a story due out in Weird Tales about samurai fighting dinosaurs.

I'm not trying to brag or show off when I say all this, just that I wrote these characters because I wanted to. I hate when writers pull the Last Samurai card and go to the trouble of researching a whole different culture, but then don't have the courage to actually go ahead and write someone from that culture as the main character (The Last Samurai particularly pissed me off in this regard because Tom Cruise becomes a better samurai than the Japanese characters).

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm conscious of race (who in today's world isn't?), but I think the key (and I'm really not trying to land on any bingo squares here) is to remember that in the end we're all human. That's not to whitewash, but just to say that whether I'm writing a character who's Mexican or American or even a Jewish Aztec mob boss, we're all motivated by the same needs. I think a lot of speculative fiction pussyfoots around race. I especially hate the way that fantasy, even fantasy written by American authors, always seems to go back to the same Anglo/Norse/Celtic pseudo-culture. Reading Imaro by Charles Saunders was great not because it made me feel like a Racially-Enlightened Young American but because it was something new. I loved the fact that somebody had taken a part of the world as vibrant and culturally complex as Africa and given it a fantasy treatment. (The fact that Imaro is a hardcore Maasai bad-ass who fights demons and necromancers was just icing on the cake).

I think a lot of speculative fiction's difficulty with confronting race is based on two factors in writers and readers very much contrary to the spirit of the genres--cowardice and laziness. I guess these points have been made before, but they bear repeating. I think a lot of white authors and readers are scared to step out and confront the Elephant because they don't want to be labeled as racist themselves. But then, there's also the tendency to fall back on the same garbage we've grown used to. If there's a fantasy culture, it'll be based off somewhere in northern Europe because Tolkien did that. If there's a non-white culture, it'll probably be based off Japan or China or some fusion of the two. Maybe, if we're really working, we'll get some kind of distillation of the Arab world filtered through a heavily fantasized verneer with genies and carpets and sultans with veiled concubines. But Zanzibaris or Aztecs or Australian Aborigines? Not a chance. If Aztecs appear, they exist to either be heinous blood-sacrificers or a conquered and oppressed people (don't get me started on Apocalypto). It angers me profoundly as a writer, and I'm not in the least bit Hispanic in my descent. It's an affront to the imagination, and frankly, an extreme marginalization of a powerful and advanced culture.

Extreme words, I realize (and don't get me started on Ancient Astronauts, either). I guess the reason I feel strongly about this is because it's just more evidence of total lack of imagination in what is supposed to be the most imaginative set of genres we have. I guess my thoughts on writing the Other is that this doesn't need to be some sort of birdwatching exercise. I've got friends from a wide spectrum of religious and racial backgrounds and I don't stay friends with any of them so I can write minority X better.

Sorry to carpet-bomb you with this, but I'm glad somebody is confronting the whole issue and doing it without kidgloves. Personally, I'd love to see more speculative fiction written by people who aren't white and JewCatholiProtestant. Thanks for confronting the elephant (or shoggoth?) in the room.

Sincerely,
Hunter C. Eden

RaceFail '09 - Why Horror Ignores the Elephant

A few years ago, I was speaking to a fellow black horror writer and she told me that she didn’t write characters of color in her work. She didn’t think it was important, even as a black writer, for her to write black characters (and descriptions of characters with dark hair and brown eyes was enough). It was more important for her to write for her chosen audience, who she perceived as white and she didn’t want to in anyway alienate them.

This is how badly issues of race have infected and confused some people.

Yes, there is a current brouhaha brewing in speculative fiction that has since been dubbed RaceFail ’09. It started when Elizabeth Bear wrote a piece on writing the other which was then openly disagreed with. The hilarity ensued (catalogued here). I, too, wrote a piece on writing the other (in a response to something Jay Lake had written, mind you, both pieces came out a few YEARS ago) and have stayed out of this round of self-examination except to offer up a play along cultural appropriation bingo card to go along with the “fantasy/science fiction no racism edition” bingo card. And yet, as Chesya Burke laments, such a discussion has largely not reared its head in the horror community. I don’t expect it to, frankly. Not to be too pointed about a race discussion in horror, but the genre largely amounts to white folks writing about white folks for the consumption of white folks. In other words, horror circumvents the issue of “writing the other” by … not.

With a few exceptions, race isn’t discussed much in the horror genre. Most folks are afraid to discuss it or admit there is a problem. With good cause: the last horror brand RaceFail discussion involved the release of Brandon Massey’s anthology series, Dark Dreams. The bulk of the discussion revolved around the series being the equivalent of reverse discrimination (because, you know, there are no all white, even more specifically, all white male, horror anthology series) or writer affirmative action (because obviously writers like Tananarive Due, L.A. Banks, Wrath James White, Eric Jerome Dickey, Zane, or, I humbly submit, myself, can’t be published elsewhere).

In some ways, I can see why RaceFail has gone on within the science fiction and fantasy genre/communities. By the nature of those genres, they explore (and are allowed to explore) big ideas. Horror too often prides itself on being the “lowest common denominator” genre, not built for rigorous idea exploration. “I’m doing an analysis of man’s inhumanity to man” usually amounts to puerile masturbatory fantasies of rape and torture justified by someone getting their comeuppance in the end.

Let’s be honest, there are two kinds of writers/readers. The first don’t want to be challenged. They essentially want Stephen King redux, rearranging the deck chairs on a familiar cruise. They cling to their comfort zone of base elements, slaves to the tropes, as they await the playing out of the ensuing hilarity. Rarely is there an examination of the human condition, existence, or the exploration of a big idea. For every Gary Braunbeck there are hundreds of … pick your blood splattered cover.

The other kind looks for a new experience. They want to go to a new place and think about things they haven’t before. Yet, when I hear horror writers talking about their craft in term of such artistic terms, there is a chorus decrying such lofty literary ideas or critical analysis. How many times have even best of the mid-list writers complained about their publisher neutering their work for the sake of reaching their market? Their lowest common denominator audience.

Right now, the genre can barely handle a discussion on women in the genre. That discussion breaks one of two ways: who are the women who write in the genre (so the discussion becomes a listing of women writers) or it centers around “can women be scary writers?” (and yes, that discussion is as ignorant as it sounds). And that's before we talk in general about sexism in the genre or its conventions.

I was reading Kelli Dunlap’s post on diversity in the genre. Normally, when someone tells me “they don’t see race” it sets off a red flag of suspicion with me because that typically means “as long as all the people of color act and think like me, we have no race problem.” But I’m in her peer group, I look around our close circle of writer friends and I see the guests for Mo*Con, and I, too, see the diversity. I’m tempted not to engage in a discussion about women in the genre because I’m surrounded by fierce women whose talent I’d question at my own peril. But then I have to wonder if this is a chicken or egg dilemma: was there diversity in the genre to begin with or did we, The Others adrift in the sea of The Majority, simply reach out to each other?

So could horror handle a conversation involving cultural appropriation, the concept of white privilege, or even the idea of racism in the genre (much less among its writers)? The fact of the matter is that I could probably name the prominent writers of color in the horror genre, know most if not all of them, and I don’t often hear them discussed in the various horror communities. What I hear is how race doesn’t matter, all readers care about is a good yarn. Though I suspect that’s true as long as that yarn doesn’t stretch them too far. And that’s the ultimate RaceFail.


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Worf’s Journey of Blackness Part II

Worf’s allegorical journey of blackness sets the stage for most of the Star Trek: The Next Generation storylines which focus on him.

Immersion-Emersion

“I have studied and know everything about my heritage.” –Worf
In this stage, individuals immerse themselves in all aspects of their culture. Diving into Klingoness, especially liberated from his Star Fleet ideals, didn’t necessarily make him committed to his Klingon identity. Worf had an intellectual understanding of his people, though his was a perspective of the outsider even among his own.

Still, he embraced all things Klingon, going out with only Klingon women (K’Ehleryr) and studying his culture, history, rituals, religion; poetry and songs, all the things he was stripped of. Yes, he was indeed stripped of his religion, his culture, and his identity. Though benign and unintentional, his Star Fleet enculturation left him with only his zealousness to his duties as his avenue to prove himself. However, there was still a loss of self, culturally who he is.

An interesting consequence of this is that both Commander Riker and Captain Pikard choose to explore his culture, often alongside him, in order to understand and know him better.

Such over-compensating Klingon-ness still didn’t stop his internal insecurity. He lived in silent fear of judgment from the more Klingon than thou crowd, either positively living for judgments such as him acting “as a true Klingon” (“Mind’s Eye”) or in such negative pronouncements, such as having his name not being mentioned on his home world. “It is as though you never existed. Terrible burden for a warrior to bear. To be nothing. To be without honor. Without the chance for glory.” (“The Drumhead”).

Internalization

It’s only at this stage that his Klingonness starts to be defined, starts to become a part of him. It's the psychological change wherein he learns to balance his personal cultural identity against his greater cultural identity. It’s a two-pronged battle that he faces: his Starfleet training vs. Klingon nature as well as being a Klingon among Klingons.

“Is there nothing in your heart but duty?” Kern (“Redemption Part II”)

Worf has always had a Sidney Poitier type quality to him. Because he was all dignity and honor, he was the perfect Klingon representative, Klingon, but not SO Klingon as to be overly-intimidating to mainstream Star Fleet. He was the uber-Klingon required to break through: smart, handsome, and knows how to navigate the “mainstream”. From Starfleet’s perspective, his token acceptance—after all, he was the ONLY Klingon serving in all of Star Fleet—gave him a singular distinction (Look at us! We got our one. WE *ARE* DIVERSE!!!)

Integrating human ways into his Klingon code prove bumpy at best, as he let a Romulan die rather than donate some of his blood (“The Enemy”) and balancing his Klingon vs. Federation responsibilities (“Ethics”). It was always interest to see if he’d behave in a more Klingon fashion among Klingons, and turn around and act more human among his fellow Federation members.

“I know, but it is not MY way.” –Worf

The responsibilities of being Klingon weigh heavily upon him. Though he realizes he has a child from K’Ehleyr (“Reunion”) and he feels comfortable enough to choose Captain Pikard to be his Cha'DIch, his “second” during his trial, it still left his rival, Baytor, to remark that “he’s still unsure of himself” (“Sins of the Father”). By the episode “Redemption” he seemed to have learned an appreciation for what it’s like to be a Klingon. And it’s cost. Being Klingon meant he had to transcend his own individuality in the name of communal survival. He accepts discommendation for the idea of his people to prove his Klingon heart. Yet, once again he finds himself isolated from his people. Except this time, he was isolated by sacrificing for his people by his choice. And by his commitment.

Internalization-Commitment

At this stage, the idea of one’s cultural identity involves commitment to a plan of action, and individuals begin to live in accordance with the new self-image that they have developed for themselves. Worf’s Klingon-ness takes on the dimension of praxis, theory accompanied by social action, but it sprang from a place of reclaiming his internal pride. Being Klingon meant being true to who he is. All of him. Which meant Worf is able to guide Alexander through his own journey of self-discovery (“New Ground”), impressing that his sense of honor is what made him Klingon. His self-defined Klingon-ness allows him to be who he is no matter his context.

“We have forgotten ourselves. I do not know why. Our stories are not told. Our songs are not sund.” –Tok

By "Birthright II", he abandoned the paradigm of what was culturally acceptable as a Klingon value by not abandoning his father to dishonor. Thus finds himself at a camp of Klingon survivors, with a whole new generation of Klingons in search of their own Klingon identity. Not bound by any preconceived traditions, these emergent Klingons were drawn to Worf. He walked around the camp—big pimpin’, a Malcolm X to the young people, restoring their pride—and taught them their stories. The stories define them.

As successful as Worf was with the lost tribe of Klingons, the events of Birthright left Worf feeling empty. There was one part of his cultural heritage which he hadn’t explored. Again, due to benign neglect more than anything intentional, he had lost his religion, his God. So in “Rightful Heir”, Picard responds to Worf’s crisis of faith by suggesting he again immerse himself in Klingon beliefs to see if they hold any truths for him, and allows him to make a pilgrimage to the Temple of Boreth, core of Klingon beliefs concerning Kahless and Sto-Vo-Kor.

A secure sense of his Klingonness allowed Worf to pursue (Deanna) and marry (Jadzia Dax,
on Deep Space Nine) outside of his race. It allowed him to make peace with his brother (“Homeward”) and it allowed him to figure out which values and traditions to pass along to Alexander. It’s a difficult task to foster an interest in one’s heritage in young children. In “First Born,” Worf wanted to take the time to involve his son in cultural rituals, to not just prevent him from being assimilated, but also allow Alexander to have the room to find his own destiny. To not be trapped by his people’s or even his father’s idea of who he should be.

Worf’s major battle was one of fighting against the passive integration which had undergirded much of his life in Star Fleet. He was given room to explore his culture, difficult as that journey and the conversations involved with it might have been. There were times when he had stern words and had to make difficult decisions. He carries the burden of his culture, but the thing is, he grew to a place to begin to relate to others within his culture and without. And his journey of self-discovery and cultural exploration never truly ends.


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Worf’s Journey of Blackness Part I

The Tragic Mulatto

Admittedly, it’s difficult to have discussions about race (made doubly so if you’re prone to use words like nigrescence or ontological blackness). People have defense mechanisms, walls, and quick triggers on the issue that often make constructive dialogue exasperating. However, as metaphor, such discussions are relatively safe when viewed through the prism of science fiction or fantasy (unless the topic of cultural appropriation comes up, then hold onto your Sorting Cap).

I am firmly on record as saying that Star Trek: DS9 is the best of the Star Trek iterations (this is a deal-breaker point with me and I will judge your intelligence and your family’s honor based on whether or not you agree with me). And yes I once described Captain Sisko as Black Jesus. Appearing in more Star Trek episodes than any other character is Lt. Commander Worf, first on The Next Generation, then on Deep Space Nine. As you watch the episodes which centered around him, especially in The Next Generation, you can see that his journey towards what we’ll call ontological Klingon-ness mirrors that of any search for racial/cultural identity.

Worf quite doesn’t fit the category of magical Negro, but a case could be made for him being the “tragic Mulatto”. Trapped between cultures, often kept in his place if not outright neutered by Star Fleet, half the time he comes across as a mascot for the Federation (“look how progressive we are. We let one in!”).

Let’s see how well he follows the journey of Klingescence:

Pre-Encounter

“As I watched Worf, it was like looking at a man I had never known.” –Captain Pikard “(“Heart of Glory”)

Born Worf, Son of Mogh, his parents were killed by the Romulan attack on the Khitomer outpost before the age of inclusion (when he is formally accepted by his people). Adopted by a human couple, he was raised as one of them, learning their ways, and eventually joined the Starfleet Academy. Thus he was hardly among any of his own kind, he didn’t understand them. To fit in, he was asked to change the one thing about him he couldn’t change: his Klingon nature. Too Klingon for humans, too human for Klingons, he was often shunned by both sides.

Worf was a Klingon in name only, perfectly assimilated into the Federation. Colorless, or rather, raceless (race being a matter of accident of birth), it “didn’t matter” to the Federation (except that they could count him as a Klingon statistic). Even Captain Pikard once remarked that “I think it is best to remain ignorant of certain elements of the Klingon psyche.” (“Where Silence has Lease”). Worf existed in essentially a state of non-being.

“Worf is feeling culturally and socially isolated.” –Wesley (“Icarus Factor”)

Typically in this stage of their journey, individuals downplay the importance of race in their lives and focus more on their membership in other groups. Cut off from going to school with his people, cut off from working with his people, all Worf was left with desperate attempts to bond where he could. He made Jeremy Astor his brother through the R'uustai ceremony (“The Bonding”).

In the episode “The Emissary”, he re-kindles a relationship with K’Ehleyr, the mixed heritage (half-Klingon/half-human) woman who also was trapped between cultures. Unlike Worf who initially appeared adrift culturally, she had long sunk into a spiral of self-hate. During an encounter with her “kindred spirit”, the half human/half Betazoid Deanna Troi, the two have diametrically opposed views of themselves. While they each experience the richness and diversity of two worlds, Deanna saw herself as getting the best of each, while K’Ehleyr saw herself as receiving the worst of each. Her Klingon side terrified her and she didn’t like it at all. Part of her self-hate gets passed along to their son, Alexander Rozhenko.

The problem is the negation of cultural identity: his Klingoness is part of who he is. To reject, dismiss, ignore it is to do the same to part of him … even if he is doing it to himself.

Encounter

“Listen to the voice of your blood. You are not of these people.”

The second stage in this journey of Klingoness is when an individual encounters an experience that causes them to challenge their current feelings about themselves and their interpretation of the condition of themselves and their people against/within the mainstream of society. The Encounter experience is one that is so foreign to individuals' previous worldview regarding their cultural identity that it forces them to rethink their attitudes about their culture. The danger inherent danger is that few things can potentially shatter a person like having their worldview collapse.

Probably the most important episode for Lt. Worf came during the nearly unwatchable first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation. In “Heart of Glory,” he encounters some injured Klingons on a freighter in the Neutral Zone on a mission to seek glorious battles. One of the survivors, Korris, asks Worf to explain his reason for joining Starfleet. Worf explains how after the Romulans attacked the Khitomer outpost, he was left for dead in the rubble. A Starfleet officer found him and took him to Gault to raise him as a son. With his trimmed hair and civilized look, especially when seen alongside “native” Klingons, all of them realize Worf hasn't spent much time among his own kind. Worf doesn’t know his culture, his rituals, and doesn’t know what it means to be a true Klingon. The words “have they tamed you?” haunt him. Though this won’t be the first time he hears from the “More Klingon than Thou” crowd, they would prod him onto a path of self-exploration.

Their words fire his soul. Now he has a taste of his own people, a place he’s meant to belong. And thus he goes on a pursuit of “ontological Klingon-ness”.

[to be continued]

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President Oreo?

“People think they dis my person by stating I’m darkly packed/I know this so I point at Q-Tip and he states ‘black is black’.” –De La Soul, Me, Myself, and I

I was surfing the Internet when I ran across a LiveJournal community for “oreos”. Made up of black folks insecure in their “blackness.” Their stories start to sound alike after a while. Some variation on “I grew up in the suburbs and ‘lost my way’”: My whole life I grew up in "white" settings–school, church, neighborhood. So I don’t sound or act black. What’s ironic is that white and Asian people who act black or ghetto give me just as much grief. (OR) I never seemed to fit in with anyone. In high school, I read a lot and listened to whatever music interested me. I had friends, but I wasn’t hung up on color. The black kids teased me a lot.

So here’s what’s been bugging me: this rising/steady chorus of people who insist that "the first black president" is actually not black. This is exactly one of the reasons I spend so much time thinking about various ideas like ontological blackness. We inherited this screwed up idea we call race, we suffered through things like the “one drop rule”—that one drop of black blood in you was enough to declare you black—and played by those rules (btw, try explaining those rules to a six year old). You can’t just up and change them simply because you suddenly want to define someone’s blackness down so that you can suddenly stake a claim.

Obama has said, "I identify as African-American — that's how I'm treated and that's how I'm viewed. I'm proud of it." That’s the end of the discussion. Period. Just like Tiger Woods can call himself a “Cablinasian" and be as “We are the World” a Negro as he wants to be. We all have to balance how we choose to define ourselves vs. how society defines and treats us.

Maybe I’ve been spending too much time on the Racial Slur Database, but I’ve never liked the idea of calling oneself or anyone else an “oreo”, to denote that one is black on the outside and white on the inside. It’s one of those epithets like “sell out” or “house Negro” or “Oreo” whenever someone breaks with our accepted group think, be it via philosophy, idea, or political agenda. And like “nigger”, I don’t believe anything is reclaimed by using it yourself to describe yourself.

People always find themselves having to define blackness (I know I’m about sick of being asked “what exactly is “being black”?”), but it’s another symptom of how the idea of race has us twisted up. What does “being white on the inside” amount to? “You talk like us. You look like us. You act like us.”

Like being called bougie, it’s an attempt to pigeonhole a group, people who don’t fit perfectly into some predetermined cultural box, and not allow for (even the biracial among us to) split cultures and interests. As if no one is allowed to like things not seen as “black”. It points to a level of assimilation, having grown up in the dominant culture. It points to how large our class problem is, often trumping our race problem as we assume that only one group can have middle class values or any kind of middle class culture … as opposed to redefining the boundaries of that culture.

Ok, Obama is half white. The next racial draft should be interesting, white people: just how many picks are you willing to give up to get him?


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Bougie* Down Productions

“No one ever means bougie as a compliment. It’s never ‘Oh, you’re so bougie!’ It’s ALWAYS a negative trait.”

I guess this starts with a confession: I’m a black nerd. A Dungeons & Dragons playing, Magic: the Gathering crushing, comic book loving, occasional Dream Theater listening nerd. I’ve been thinking about some of the “iterations” of blackness (no worries, this isn’t another round of my Ontological Blackness series). I know how so many folks, within and without of the black community, like to define blackness by some sort of standard of ghetto crackery. But class plays as much a role in defining a culture as anything else, and there is the burgeoning folks whose blackness strays to something more middle class. And for our troubles, we enjoy a different epithet: Bougie.

We’re the folks who get compliments like “You speak so well” or “You’re a credit to the race.” We enjoy that tension of being accused of forgetting where we’ve come from vs. remembering where I’ve come from … but wanting to get the hell out. Look, my soft bougie behind wasn’t built for the streets. Me trying to “be real” would only end up with me being real dead, real quickly.

It’s rare that I’ve actually been labeled bougie. Mostly I’ve escaped that because 1) I’m England born, with Jamaican roots and therefore excused due to cultural differences; and 2) I’m given room because I’m just so much the weird one to family and friends and just about any community I’m dropped into.

Bougie, as an epithet, strikes me as a reaction to the idea of betraying community, a term to keep us in line as we’re policed by other bougies projecting their black insecurities. The Blacker than thou crowd demonstrating their superiority by shaming us back in line. It’s bad enough when I don’t live up to people’s idea of true blackness from inside the culture, but then it can also come from those outside (which strikes me as “you’re not black like the hip hop guys I see on MTv”) which then borders on the ridiculous.

This all points to a class fall out issue as I maintain that we have more a class problem than race problem in country. A middle class white guy has more in common with a middle class black guy than a trailer park living white guy. And don’t get me wrong, I’m barely clinging to middle class as it is. But the “policing” does serve a positive role: it’s a reminder to not separate. It’s a call for all of us to remember that we share the same fate as we are bound by community.

It all comes down to what “being real” actually means. Being real doesn’t mean clinging to some sort of ghetto aesthetic and value system. Allow me to say that me doing down would make me a minstrel, not being real because that’s not close to who I am or what I’m about. And as I look at many hip hop videos, I see enough minstrels to last us for years. No, it boils down to be personal authenticity. Putting on airs, if that’s my attitude, I can take my bougie ass to the back of the bus.


*Bougie as in the short form of Bourgeoisie, taken to mean that someone has a bourgeois personality. By rights, bougie should be “bourgie” - but I can’t stand the r, and if we are going to bastardize the term I would rather bastardize it phonetically. A variation on bougie is siddity.


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Obama, The Rooney Rule, and the End of Racism

So Mike Singletary has been named as the coach of the San Francisco 49ers. Jim Caldwell has fulfilled the chain of succession from Tony Dungy with the Indianapolis Colts. Perhaps in President-Elect Barack Obama, we’ve embraced the Rooney Rule on a national level and have turned the page on racism. Haven’t we?



The Rooney Rule, established in 2003, requires National Football League teams to interview minority candidates for a head coaching opportunity. The rule is named for Dan Rooney, the owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers and the chairman of the league's diversity committee, and is often cited as an example of affirmative action.

Coach Tony Dungy joined Chicago Bear’s coach, Lovie Smith, in making Super Bowl history by being the first black coaches to lead their teams to the Super Bowl. One more barrier broken, another cultural advancement achieved - and another step toward this not being an issue. Forcing owners to interview minority candidates smacks of affirmative action to some. In fact, I’ve heard some quarters ask if the Rooney rule meant that the 49ers or the Colts had to interview a white candidate.

Ending ways/legacy of racism (and dare I mention, white privilege) puts race front and center of the discussion. If I’m a team owner, I’m going to resent being told who I have to hire … but I’m also probably not going to change if I’m not “forced” to do so. If there’s a Mike Shanahan or a Bill Cowher available, any interview I do when they are part of the mix is strictly a matter of me going through the motions and everyone will know it. So will that do any good? Well, at the very least, any minority candidate interviewed now hits other teams’ radar and they get practice interviewing.

It’s a little too soon to declare racism dead based on the fact that a couple black coaches got to the head coach position without much of an interview process. You can’t even argue that the Rooney Rule is no longer necessary. At best, we can see recent developments as another hopeful step.

Now if we can only get the NCAA to realize we have a racism problem …


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Seriously, You Can’t Say That

Kelly Tilghman, play-by-play announcer for The Golf Channel's PGA Tour broadcasts, while bantering with Nick Faldo about young players who might challenge Woods she suggested that they "lynch him in a back alley." I can almost hear her echoing her fictional counterpart, Ron Burgundy, when he said “I immediately regret this decision.”

Of course she came out with the requisite apology (two days later). Tiger’s representatives declared it a non-issue, but she was suspended for two weeks by the Golf Channel. This wasn’t the same as the Don Imus spewing-viciousness-for-its-own-sake situation. Nor was this Tiger’s first brush with folks misspeaking around him (Hello, Fuzzy Zoeller and your fried chicken and collard greens comment).

Yet my gut reaction was to essentially give her a pass for her slip of the tongue, after all, who among us hasn’t ever said something stupid that we (immediately) regret? The greater issue to consider in evaluating the situation is to recognize that such comments happen within a certain context.

First off, Tiger and Kelly are friends. Jokes you make within family that sound horrendous when someone outside the family hears them, much less, repeats them. We can speak one way with our “boys”, one way with our family, and another way in public/on the record. Still, we have to always be mindful: some language and images need a “handle with care” label attached to them.

Because, secondly, there is a greater problem of context: such comments will always be heard within the cultural-historical context of America, with its convoluted past involving slavery, civil rights, and race relations in general. The image of lynching harkens back to an unfortunate, to say the least, time in American history. Lynching is simply not an image to be taken lightly, but rather is akin to making a rape analogy and I doubt she would joke about that. Such a comment would be heard differently to different ears.

In short, it’s stupid and you can’t say it. However, I don’t think she should have been suspended. I think her apology should have stood on its own, she be reprimanded, and allow the conversations to be had about why what she said was a poor choice of words. We can’t police every bad sentence, because that would stifle conversations that still need to be had. We have a First Amendment right to make a fool out of ourselves, but more importantly, if we truly are to turn the page on this chapter in our history, we need to allow these conversations to happen and in so doing, we need to have thicker skins.


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Follow the North Star Part III

Mud sucked at our shoes, the ground would surely devour our bare feet, rocks and twigs like endless rows of teeth. Shivering in the night’s chilly embrace, we hoped that our minds would be too focused on the journey at hand as we fled from a past that haunts our nation to this day.

No matter how good our imaginations, it is difficult to transport our 2007 mindsets to the life of 1836 eyes. Yet every fall and spring, Conner Prairie offers a special program called Follow the North Star, where the participants become slaves and escape along the Underground Railroad. Though I once compared the journey of discipleship to the journey of the Underground Railroad (part I and part II), getting a dose of the reality adds a new dimension to it.

From the first moments, you get the barest idea of what it was to undergo a process of dehumanization. Separated into bucks and breeders , we were trained to avert eyes as we couldn’t ever look a white person in the face. We were taught to never question, conditioned to never challenge, trained to be submissive, confused, always wrong. After only 15 minutes, no one, no matter their true color, looked up again. Now imagine that process ingrained over generations, that attitude of inferiority for some and superiority for others.

Behind us, we heard many footfalls closing in on us as we ran in the constant fear of never knowing who to trust. We never knew which attitude we would encounter. Maybe it was gentle ladies whose religious beliefs outweighed their desires for self-preservation. Maybe it would be an embittered southerner thrown out of work because of the influx of slaves taking away his job. Maybe it would be a Quaker family fighting to abolish slavery. Maybe it would be a “cattle rustler”, seeking to capture runaway slaves for profit. Maybe it would be free black folk, willing to take folks in and point them in the right direction. And you hoped that your fear wouldn’t outweigh your desire for freedom.

How effective the experience is depends on the group you’re with and how well you can entrench yourself in the role. With our 2007 gloves, hats, and shoes, it’s hard to fully put ourselves in the same situation. To imagine the system of conditioning to obedience, how families were torn apart. It can be intense, but it was only a taste of what the reality must have been like.


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Horror Premises: White People are You Kidding Me?

So the other day, Chesya and I got in an argument (How many blogs need to begin "So me and Chesya got in an argument"?). As is common among writers, we spend a lot of time reading each other’s manuscripts before they’re sent them out (I’ve mentioned a couple of my own first readers). Well, this friend of ours had a novel whose premise we had issue with. A single guy inherits a house from someone, though he has no idea who. He enters the 100+ year old house and, after looking around, a door materializes in front of him. He then goes through it.

He goes through it.

Our issue was a matter of believability. Who would actually go through that door? It’s the same sort of question we have to ask ourselves as writers: what would characters believably do in a given situation. But let me tell you, I just ain’t that curious (I know what you’re asking, if we’re in agreement, how was there an argument? Well, that’s just me and Chesya). She began an informal survey of her friends and family. A disturbing pattern began to emerge.
Her white friends would go through the door and her black friends/family would not.

I found that hard to believe. So I decided to do my own part in researching this racial divide. To my shock and horror, I found similar results. My family, well, we’re selling the house and pocketing the money. I asked my white co-worker ("Of course you go through it"). I called some white friends of mine. To a person, they were going through the door. Flabbergasted (and it’s not often a brotha gets flabbergasted), I turned to my white people voices of reason. First, my message board moderator, Lauren David:

Lauren: I’m torn.
Me: I’m one of your best friends, right?
Lauren: Right.
Me: My sister is one of your dearest friends, right?
Lauren: Right.
Me: Has NONE of this rubbed off on you?
Lauren: I said I’m torn.

Second, I then ask my wife of seven plus years. Seven plus years of living with black folk. She comes back with "you at least have to open it." (For the record, she spent the rest of the evening trying to justify it. "If you’re trying to sell the place, you don’t want the door just popping up." "It’s okay, honey, cling to your whiteness. It’s your cultural imperative.")

White people, are you kidding me?

The other day I was out with some volunteers from Outreach, Inc. looking to help some homeless teenagers. At one point, they start running. So I ran, passed them, then asked what they were running for. They said the hill we were walking down got muddy so they tried to get through it quickly. They asked why I ran. I said "black reflex": folks start running, I run and ask questions later. You can believe we didn’t do a Wrong Turn 2 and decide to split up (much less the only black guy in the party deciding to go investigate any strange sounds all by himself).
I even got to wondering how soon would some horror movies end if it had an all black cast:

-What’s that dude in the hockey mask doing? Am I the only person simply not that curious? How many black folks do you see at a hockey game? Credits start rolling.

-The Haunting of Hill House? I ain’t gonna lie: noisy houses, doors that don’t shut right, plumbing don’t work, and the super can’t be found? Someone tweaks and then freaks out? That’s just a day in the life. Credits start rolling.

-I just buried my cat in this hidden graveyard and it came back to life. For sale sign goes up and the credits start rolling.

White people are you kidding me?

How did you ever end up colonizing the world? Will someone explain this to me? I guess it pays to know your audience. Consider this the flip side to the writing the other dilemma.

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On Magical Negroes

These days, as Rush Limbaugh swims in controversy over his “Barack, the Magic Negro” parody, it occurs to me that I use the phrase “magical Negro” in some of my reviews, and some folks might not know what I mean by this, thus possibly taking offense at my use of it. (Of course, I wouldn’t have to use the phrase so often if I would quit seeing so many examples of it).

Simply put, a magical Negro is a story-telling device, a stock character used to impart wisdom on another character. Sometimes such characters are referred to mystical negroes, though Spike Lee used the phrase “super duper magical Negro.” If you detect an undercurrent of hostility or resentment, it’s because typically the magical Negro is a person of color who arrives in time to impart critical knowledge, sometimes spiritual information, or general sagacity in order for the white protagonist to succeed in their endeavor. They are depicted in non-threatening terms, being janitors, prisoners, or homeless. They are a plot point, a Deus ex machina, and a late addition to Tom Bogle’s seminal work on the depiction of blacks in cinema, “Toms, Coons, Mammies, Bucks, and Mulattos.”

(Basically, it’s the antithesis of the “white savior” model we’ve also come to see: lone white character goes among minorities/natives and saves them. See: City of Joy, The Last Samurai, Dances with Wolves, and any of a number of white teacher in the inner city movies).

Stephen King is often guilty of employing the magical Negro in many of his works: Dick Hallorann in The Shining (1977), Mother Abagail in The Stand (1978), and John Coffey in The Green Mile (1996). For the character to be the magical Negro, they have to have several telling characteristics (from the King article):

1. He or she is a person of color, typically black, often Native American, in a story about predominantly white characters.
2. He or she seems to have nothing better to do than help the white protagonist, who is often a stranger to the Magical Negro at first.
3. He or she disappears, dies, or sacrifices something of great value after or while helping the white protagonist.
4. He or she is uneducated, mentally handicapped, at a low position in life, or all of the above.
5. He or she is wise, patient, and spiritually in touch. Closer to the earth, one might say. He or she often literally has magical powers.

From Uncle Remus (James Baskett) in the film Song of the South (1946) to The Ode to the Magical Negro, aka The Legend of Bagger Vance (2000), the magical Negro has a long history. Do I consider the image racist? Part of me does, yet a bigger part of me sees them as Christ figures. The Suffering Servant calling people to their full potential, there is a redemptive element to their imparting of special knowledge and even the sacrificial death is typical of the Christ figure in a story. Stephen King being the master of the model, with John Coffey (J.C. – get it?), from The Green Mile, being tried and convicted unfairly, having the miraculous gift of healing, and dying for the sake of others. Maybe I’m just getting older and don’t have the energy for cosmetic battles when there are still real ones left to fight.

And there has been some progress: at least now black folks are beginning to live through the end of horror movies (well, mostly, or else the sites Dead Bro Walking and the Unfair Racial Cliché Alert would have no raison d’etre).

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Story, Memory, and Reconciliation

INDIANAPOLIS, Ind., USA -- Maurice Broaddus, father of two biracial
children, reflects on the stories that comprise his children's mixed
heritage and how such stories could lead toward reconciliation
between the races, in today's issue of The Storyteller and the
Listener Online.

You can read the full graphics version of the essay here.

(A text-only version is available here.)


While I’m plugging things, J.C. Hay has a story, Brothers, up on Pseudopod. By a convergence of coincidence, it is read by another friend of ours, Richard Dansky. Go listen to a great story read greatly.


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42

I’m not a baseball fan. I didn’t grow up watching the game, my dad was never a lover of the sport, nor did I ever really play it. In other words, baseball wasn’t part of the fabric of my childhood. Yet, even I have to take note of one of the most important cultural, social, and political moments in our nation’s history. Sixty years ago today (April 15, 1947) Jackie Robinson crossed the color barrier to become the first black player in the Major Leagues.

Ironically, not much of it was made in the mainstream press, though the black press covered this event as if it were the Second Coming. Think about the impact of this: when Jackie Robinson crossed the color barrier, Malcolm Little was in prison at the time, listening to the games, inspired by what black people could achieve.

"A life is not important, except in the impact it has on other lives." –Jackie Robinson

Being the first must’ve have been difficult. Not instantly accepted by his teammates or the fans of his team; challenging the paradigm that the color line was not to be crossed, a paradigm that many folks grew up believing, accepting, and living by. The racial epithets from other coaches, the death threats, opposing players refusing to take the same field as him - all alone, the only black man in the game, handling that kind of pressure, is a testament to how tough he was. His was an exercise of self-control.

Being a trailblazer is unimaginably difficult. I don’t know what it must have been like to live with the fear of failure (not just of playing in the big leagues, but to let down the hopes and dreams of an entire people) or the fear of success (to be a symbol of democracy and equality). The crap he had to go through and take … yes, he was angry. If anyone had a right to be angry, he certainly had that right. It took a restraint few of us have to not lash out, but instead channel it and use it as fuel. How he played the game, as a rookie, is a testament to the type of player he was.

Suffering so that others could come after him.

We take a lot of things for granted today, black and white folk alike. Black folks forget just how hard it was. We often take for granted the strides and struggle done for us by our grandparents. Grand parents - those are stories that can still be told. White folks, well, sixty years wasn’t that long ago. When I hear things like "why do we need a “Black Miss America” a “Black Expo” or a Black whatever?", again, sixty years ago we needed a Black press. We did for ourselves when it wasn’t being done in the “mainstream”.

There are times when sports are a mirror to our society, showing us who we are as well as who we could be. Today, when the story of Jackie Robinson has him almost faded into myth like some African-American god of integration, only 9% of baseball players are black, but 44% are minority. That’s a lasting victory and legacy. (Jonathan Eig has a book out on Jackie Robinson called Opening Day that I can’t wait to read.)

As a part of the remembrances that are going on today, some players don’t feel worthy to wear #42. I respect that position. It’s hard to see greatness and measure yourself against it; to examine yourself and how you are living up to that legacy. However, you can’t have too many people involved in celebrating this day or this man.

(A special shout out to the memory of the Indianapolis Clowns and the other Negro League teams.)

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Keeping It Real?

Dear Arbiters of Blackness,

The Blacker than Thou lobby is designed not only to shape and define a people, but also to demand a certain kind of conformity from them - forcing its members to swear allegiance to their side. With that, my new Intake column is up where I question the idea of what it means to “Keep it Real”.

Love,

Maurice (go to my website to direct your hate mail)

P.S.

I was interviewed for a new blog by my friend Lisa Baker that will reflect on various environmental issues, concerns, and events from a spiritual perspective. I was asked about my actual day job, as an environmental toxicologist for Commonwealth Biomonitoring. If you’re so inclined, you can read it here.


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Black Self-Image

A teenage girl stirred up quite a bit of controversy with her documentary re-creating Dr. Clark’s doll test that was used to make the case against segregation (in Brown vs. the Board of Education). The results of her experiment every are every bit as tragic today as it was in the 60s. Something in our culture still propagates this destructive (self-)image.

There was a reason for Amiri Baraka having to start a “Black is beautiful” movement and a reason why Ossie Davis said in his eulogy of Malcolm X, “Malcolm was our manhood, our living, black manhood! This was his meaning to his people.” It was about the reclamation of dignity. As the documentary makes painfully obvious, it is important to continue to have conversations and ask questions.

We continue to have debates about racism (what it is and how it affects people differently), reparations, affirmative action and so on. Too many times it is seen as black people wallowing in self-pity, a mentality of victimhood (although some folks also feel threatened by the rhetoric of escaping this victimhood). There is an assumed hubris of knowing the “answers” to the “Negro problem” because, as I will inevitably hear it, black people are too ignorant to work out our own solution.

It’s usually at this point in the conversation that white friends of mine feel unduly put upon. “They didn’t own slaves” and so on. They sometimes get defensive around discussions about white privilege. Why? Because the tricky part about conversations is that we aren’t always hearing the same thing. White privilege is not “all white people are evil.” It is not that all white people are out to get black people. It is not all white people are racist or “benefit” from racism. It is, however, the acknowledgment of the reality that there is a legacy of racism.

I don’t care if you agree with it or not. What I am saying is that there is a point of view, a mindset, a perspective that I’m coming from. Our story is the paradigm from which we operate. You might not “get it”, maybe because your story seems so removed from mine. You could see if you could contribute to the solution. You could see what you can do to challenge your thinking. You could see where you can find and recognize injustice and fight it where you are.

Or you could listen.

Let me try this another way. There is also male privilege in our culture. It doesn’t mean all men are evil or that they hate women. It does, however, point to the (historical) fact that the mentality that went into the founding of our society, that created the infrastructure of the culture we live in, was patriarchal. There is a legacy of patriarchal though that we have to deal with, systemic issues as well as heart issues - neither of which are easily rooted out. From closing the inequality of pay gap between the sexes to sexist attitudes in the work place as “old boy clubs/networks” are dismantled.

It’s the (sometimes perceived) attitude built into the system that causes so many to give up before they begin. It’s why I care so much about images and depictions of black people in news, movies, television, etc. It’s why I keep harping on the power of words. It’s why my mother so impressed upon us why we shouldn’t buy into being told what we can and can’t do. Look at the recent rise of black quarterback. It’s not like black people suddenly learned how to throw the football. The mentality was that black men weren’t smart enough to be a quarterback. So they were steered towards being a wide receiver or a running back. You don’t become “firsts” by buying into old stereotypes and accepting old barriers.

Progress has been made, but some battles still need to be fought. Hearts changed and lingering hatreds rooted out. This year’s Super Bowl marks the first time a black coach (much less two) has coached their team to the championship game. Lovie Smith, when asked about the significance of possibly being the first said that “Progress will really be made when something like this is not news.” The sad fact that he had to then concede was that “we’re not there yet.”

But we’re trying. One conversation at a time.


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Writing the Other Redux

Not too long ago, Jay Lake had a blog entitle Writing the Other that I stumbled across too late into the discussion to add anything valuable. So I decided to blog my response.

One of the first things we are taught as writers is to write what you know. Some writers wouldn’t dare write outside their race/ethnicity and probably shouldn’t. Unfortunately, I’ve read too many horror novels where “white author a” has inserted some black characters into a scene and I was left yelling at the novel “have you ever met a black person?” Which is what the conversation, in my mind, boils down to: creating well rounded characters. Stereotypes are not well rounded characters, they are writing short-hand. Characters who haven’t been fleshed out or researched isn’t good writing. If you are doing your job as a writer, you should be able to get into the heads of any character. If we weren’t capable of doing that, then we’d be left with stories featuring single raced, single sexed individuals, because you could only write your own race and sex. Plus, getting in each other’s skins, walking a mile in “the other’s” shoes, is how we get to know one another.

So race, class, sex, none of these are areas forbidden to us as writers in the characters we create. We just have to be aware that different races, classes, and sexes bring their individual perspectives to the characters. Which shouldn’t be a problem ... for good writers.

Stereotypes are the domain of the hacks.

However, why end a blog here when I have all sorts of tangents to go down.

Some of this if fueled by white guilt. I’ve maintained that as we continue into this age of postcolonialism, we still have to deal with the lingering attitudes of both the colonizers as well as the colonized. Under colonialism, cultures were wiped out, the memories of our histories wiped out (and I say “our” realizing that this was something far from unique to the black story). However, I don’t see writing “the other” as some sort of maintaining of a paternal hegemony nor any kind of cultural appropriation.

Think about the general plot of most of the horror stories we read: middle class/blue collar white family suddenly finding an outside force interrupting their lives. If we want to move from telling the same stories over and over again, either writers have to write “the other” or “the other” is going to have to start writing more. I’m good either way, just do your job well. Then again, I see myself as a bit of a folklorist. So no culture is off limits to me as long as I do my research well and write the best stories possible. Of course, for me, “you people” are “the other” and I write you all the time (and no one has asked “have you ever met a white person?” Yet. Now I’m sure I’ll be deluged with those e-mails).

Granted, writing the other has led to some interesting reversals in my writing. Since I am a black writer and I write black characters a lot of the time, I’ve been playing with the idea of assuming the posture of the majority (this is more intellectual exercise than anything else). In the stories I read, white characters don’t announce their whiteness or make note that they were talking to other black characters. Yet, when “an other” enters the scene, race is automatically ascribed. (I know there is a Harlan Ellison quote about this, but I can’t recall it right now). I’d notice a tendency to “announce” the race of my characters in my own stories, something that never came up when my fellow black horror writers were discussing writing black writers. So, assuming the posture of the majority, maybe I should only announce the race of a character when a white person enters the scene.

For that matter, I’m trying to figure out a way to flip the idea of the magical Negro. However, that may not work as well since a white person redeeming the colored masses is practically its own genre. Though, maybe I could establish a recurring “magical redneck” trope. (Relax, I’ll dedicate a whole blog to the idea of the “magical Negro” at a later date.)

A last rabbit trail and I’m done. One of the advantages to being one of “the other” is that a lot of times, my perspective is that of outsider. I don’t worry about it because I see being an outsider as a universal: everyone has felt like an outsider at one point or another. However, I have noticed that when I write stories with exclusively black characters I often get this feedback: I felt like I was being preached at. I think this feeling, besides my tendency to get preachy, comes from the idea of how race is perceived. This comes down to the idea of race in terms of identity politics. White people, for example, don’t think in terms of race. It’s the luxury of the majority, the luxury of privilege, to not have to worry about how race plays into the equation of life. In a black worldview, most things are defined by race. So black characters talking about racism to one another, though germaine to the story, might come across as preachy to a white reader. Yes, these are horrible over-generalizations, but I think you get what I’m saying.

And I’ll allow for the possibility that I may be wrong.


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