This is the same Racefail!

[eumelia]

Signal Boosting the Latest Racefail, Yeah, there's more.

It took me a while, as ever, to start reading on this because SPN is not my fandom. For various reasons, top of them being that I don't watch the show, don't read the fics and find the fact that I know things that happen in that fandom without trying too, nay, by actively avoiding it, troubling.

Regardless, this is a continuation of Racefail, it never stopped, may have petered down, may have converged and reconverged else where, but it never stopped, because these discussions CANNOT stop.

Fiction isn't a reflection of real life, but we write our prejudices into them and our biases are a part of the way we encounter the world, how we perceive things.

Friends if we do not take into account that our prejudices and biases have actual affect on the world, that they inform us of our privileges and that yeah, we white people can be totally and utterly blind to the fact that we are do not see what someone with brown skin sitting next to me on the bus can see.

Creating a story in which tragedy is a back drop to romance is fine, in fact it's a classic. Reproducing racist white-saviour narratives and disregarding the fact that the tragedy does not actually exist in order for characters to get together is boggling.

Or not, ya know, after all, this is the same Racefail.

P.S. I'm not immune. This isn't a judgement call on other people as much as it is on me, 'cause you know, I'm privileged and I continue on my merry way while this discussion sluices off my back because, ostensibly, it's not about me. It so so is about me and all those other white people who think that dealing with this is hard and annoying and time consuming and just repetitive. Yeah it is hard and annoying and repetitive, because it doesn't fucking go away - I can say, I don't want to deal and say "Baruch Ha'Shem" (God Bless) that I was born White and Jewish in this place that I live, but you know what? That's a cop out. That's being lazy, that's not acknowledging the history of that privilege and yeah, you can fail... but knowing that can and will is a pretty good start.

Comments

[miss_haitch]

Thank you for posting this. <3

[eumelia]

What's an extra Shnekel (two Shekels, Israeli currency, get it? ;-)

Thanks for the <3, <3.

[ironed_orchid]

Yep, that's the fail I spent my morning reading about.

I really liked this post by emphemere about speaking out.

[eumelia]

Yeah, that was the post that made me go "I'll say something, even though it's been said before"!

[silveradept]

Even though it's probably a head-desk inducing experience to hear this, could you explain this a bit more in detail and in small words for me? I think I'm getting some part of it based on the commentary, but I don't think I'm grasping the full extent of how much this is a failure. It's probably white and male privilege both getting in the way of being able to see it more clearly.

[eumelia]

A story was written, it has since been taken down, in the Supernatural RPS fandom, in which the backdrop for the two main characters for hooking up was the Haiti earthquake - it's an AU in which the two characters (white men) play doctors.

It was written with great insensitivity to the disaster, the ramifications of the earthquake and with more racist tropes that you could shake a stick at - the Haitian nurse is basically a Magical Negro, when they leave Haiti they name their black cat after the nurse... just as an example. You can read some excerpts here.

It's... pretty bad.

[silveradept]

Got it. Some of those quotes, without their context, almost seem like they would pass muster. Maybe I was expecting a more blatant fail everywhere.

[eumelia]

That's some pretty blatant fail. Those quotes can be used as an example of how NOT to write the Other. Just... no.