Race and ethnicity in fandom, and actually, real life as well

[raven]

This is a neat wrap-up of the miscegenation wank.

I... don't know what to say about this. Because yes, it is wanky, wanky in the extreme, and offensive as all hell that white people having sex with people who aren't white is being equated with bestiality. But more and more, lately, I wonder where I exist in fandom. I'm a woman, and there are lots of fannish women and lots of women in the canonical media - yes, we can have the perennial debate about the lack of strong women as role models, but they do exist: Buffy Summers, Kara Thrace, Sam Carter, Hermione Granger, Martha Jones.

I'm queer, too. I'm less and less certain of what that means in my case, but there are also many, many queer fannish people, and lots of those are queer women, and even in the canonical media, there are (some) queer characters: Willow Rosenberg, Jack Harkness, Oliver Welles.

And, of course, there are non-white people. Martha, again, and Mickey Smith, and Kingsley Shacklebolt, and Zoe Washburne, and this time there actually are lots. But... you know. I'm not black, or "of African descent". Technically I'm a "person of colour", but that's not terminology I've ever used to identify myself. I'm Asian. I'm Indian. In all my time in fandom, I've only ever met two other fannish Indian people, and one of them I knew for many years before I ever found out she was fannish. And where are Indian people in fannish media? There, er, aren't any. I always used to think it was because I was in the wrong fandoms, or moved in the wrong circles, but now I'm beginning to think no, there just aren't any. (Actually, no, I'm wrong: Parvati and Padma Patil, of course, are probably Indian, and Hindus. But they're hardly main characters, and what, just one example?)

And why is this? I honestly don't have any idea. It's not like there aren't many Indians in the world - one in six people is Indian, which is a statistic I use a lot, but is nevertheless still true - and it's not like there aren't Indians(/Pakistanis/Bangladeshis) in Britain and America. There are millions of them. So I kind of, you know, don't get it. And that's without even starting on the huge and enormous levels of ignorance about my ethnicity, race and culture that just persist.

(Briefly: yes, I'm Indian. No, that doesn't mean I have to be a Muslim. I'm a Hindu. A Hindu is a person. Hinduism is a religion. Hindi is a language. Yes, I speak it. No, not because I'm a Hindu. No, I don't worship cows. Or even elephant-headed gods. At least, not all the time. I don't and will not eat beef. And "Om" is pronounced "Ohhhhhhhhm". Like the O in "open". Thank you for listening.)

And maybe that ignorance persists because of the lack of portrayal in the media? It's just a thought. And the other thing I worry about, quite a lot nowadays, is that I can't find anyone else like me. There are Indian women who are not like me, like my various female cousins, who are all about the Bollywood movies and hang out with other Indians and speak their own polyglot. I never did that - I never really look at people's skin colour, and maybe I should, sometimes - and I've never found another Indian person who makes friends in the haphazard, shared-geeky-interest way that I do, and it's horrible to say, but I've never met another Indian woman who's at all politically aware, nor one who's a feminist, nor who's self-consciously trying to find her cultural identity. I don't know where women like that hang out; I thought, once, that if I tried the Oxford Indian and Hindu societies I might find them, but I went there and never did. I wish I knew where they hang out, because I blindly refuse to believe they don't exist.

Sigh. All right. So much babble for this brief point I was trying to make. I should go to bed - I have to take my driving theory test again in the morning, and it's been a long day of customers thinking I'm stupid. Apparently, by looking at me, people assume I don't know the difference between an author and an editor, and neither do I understand that a hardback Bible is, um... a Bible in hard covers. And they assume I'm an "assistant" (at the moment only two people are running the shop, and yes, my work-mate technically outranks me, but... urgh. People assume.) Whether this is because my work-mate is male, or because he's white, I don't know, and sometimes you get tired of giving people the benefit of the doubt and just want to call them on their despicable, ignorant shit.

Today is one of those days where I'm tired of ticking all the "minority" boxes. Yuck.

In other, happier news, I seem to have written another Slings & Arrows fic, quite unrelated to the ficathon. Er, yay? I wanted to edit it tonight, but I'm too tired and pissed off. Bedtime.

Comments

[emily-shore.livejournal.com]

I think I worked that out after I commented. But it does seem a bit odd as a name for a general-purpose comm.

[delux-vivens.livejournal.com]

So what would you suggest that I do to make it more inclusive?

[emily-shore.livejournal.com]

Well, first of all I should say that I'm not speaking as a person of color, so take my comments as you will.

I'm hesitant to say "change the name of the community" because that would be difficult and would also be erasing the history of the thing. But it's worth being aware of the fact that for new readers it signals a bias towards men, blacks, and America.

As loneraven says below, the userinfo uses some culturally specific language. I will let her speak on the "people of color" question because I'm not really qualified. One thing I was confused about myself, though, is the mention of "people of color in Hollywood." Is the comm really only about American shows or is it about Vancouver, Bollywood and the Ealing Studios as well?

[delux-vivens.livejournal.com]

But it's worth being aware of the fact that for new readers it signals a bias towards men, blacks, and America.

So... what you said here of course wouldnt indicate its own type of bias in interpretation.. right?

[emily-shore.livejournal.com]

No doubt it does indicate some sort of bias. That was how I read the name of the comm, anyway. I apologise if I have offended.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Further to narahttbbs below:

I will let her speak on the "people of color" question because I'm not really qualified.

My issue with this is that "people of color" is not a term that is ever used in Britain. I've never been referred to as such, and I can't think of any occasion when I've ever seen it in the media. I think the case in point is that I feel obliged to write "color" rather than "colour", and when you can't use a term and spell it correctly in your own chosen dialect, then there's an issue, isn't there?

And riffing off that point, the experience of being a British Indian, British non-white person, British "person of colour", whatever, is very different from the American experience. (Of course the experience differs within Britain and America, biut leaving that out for a moment.) So I worry, that even if the comm itself isn't like that - I noticed lots of interesting chat about Martha Jones - that the userinfo seems to be alienating just as an unhappy accident of the terminology.

[ardhra]

Here's a bit on the history of the term.

The thing that I find useful about it is that it expresses a non-essentialist race consciousness (light-skinned and mixed-race people are included -- the "colour" can be considered metaphorical as well as literal), and it was forged in the heat of anti-racist struggle for "racialised Others". Unlike a lot of terms which come from traditions of colonial/racist governance (e.g. "coloured") that historically are all about racist oppression.
But yeah, without the activist legacy of those social movements in your hometown, there's no reason why the term would seem in any way accessible as an identifier.

There's also a feminist tradition associated with "women of color" (and I'd urge you to check out Uma Narayan's work, that engages with it a bit). I'm kinda talking with some other US radical women of colour about opening up the political spaces to non-US women, and they're very open to discussing it.

P.S. I'm Australian and I just spell it with a "u". Never had any issues about that. :-)

[ardhra]

Oops! I forgot to link the article, but yeloson did it earlier. Sorry. I'm very sleep-deprived and scatterbrained. :-)

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

And more than that, the userinfo employs the cultural-specific language I was upset about above.

[delux-vivens.livejournal.com]

So what terminology would you suggest that the userinfo employ?

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

"Non-white" is one I use a lot, and gets used here as a neutral catch-all term, particularly on government documentation for some reason. Equally, though, I don't know how current it is across the pond. I actually wouldn't advocate only one term - surely a mixture is better? "People of colour", "non-white", the specific names, etc.

I appreciate, of course, that it's a knotty topic and you really can't please everyone. (This post is tagged "displaced persons" because that's the term I use for myself; I'm sure wiser people than me have also coined their own words just to escape the linguistic tangle.)

[forthwritten.livejournal.com]

Then again, 'non-white' means defining yourself by what you aren't rather than what you are, so I'm unhappy with that term even though it's one I use.

As another British Indian, I wouldn't use the term 'person of color' to describe myself either.

[yeloson.livejournal.com]

This article might be worth reading (http://news.ncmonline.com/news/view_article.html?article_id=400d498b3cbd662bf66ba789ae3de28b).

[forthwritten.livejournal.com]

Hm - I can understand perfectly well why American Asians and minority groups might call themselves people of color, and I think that it's important that the group is flexible enough to accommodate and recognise lots of different non-white experiences.

There have been very loose terms here - I believe 'British Asian' was used to create solidarity between those of Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi groups (Chinese immigration is another thing entirely) so I do understand how very loose names and categories can be helpful.
However, I was born and brought up in England; we simply don't use 'people of color' to describe us or in any of the debates and discussion about race. We can't even spell it in our dialect.
It's also a term that seems to exclude the most recent wave of immigration from within Europe (particularly Poland). Can someone who's actually paler than a lot of white British people really identity with that term?

[yeloson.livejournal.com]

There's also the interesting question of longer-term assimilation. For example, in America, Italians and Irish used to be discriminated against, now they're considered "White". Yet other folks who might have just as much history here have not achieved assimilation.

Historically, when you look at America's race relations, there was every reason to wipe out nationality and transform it into simple color logic- to unite the various peoples of the colonies in the face of the Indigenous peoples.

Naturally when the default assumption is White vs. Other, all of us who fall into "Other" have to really consider what that means in terms of structural discrimination- hence, "People of Color".

Where you probably see the most applicable cross over is in terms of colonialist attitudes in England, as well as media.

[forthwritten.livejournal.com]

Oh, exactly - being in Liverpool, I know a lot of people of Irish descent who'd be read as white, but who have suffered terrible discrimination in the past.

It makes perfect sense to structure Other=colored and Self=white (slaves and Native Americans being constructed as the Other group because they can't possibly be acknowledged as human) in the US, but I think it's more complicated in the UK because of Empire and its close connection to Europe in terms of immigration policies.
A lot of older people in India have grown up with the idea that England is a sort of absent parent and have this really romantic vision of it (my family have collectively decided to never let my great-uncle in England because actually experiencing it might break his heart), there are communities of Anglo-Indians who feel a close connection with England and Indian people are very visible in some areas like the NHS. Arguably, there is more media hostility directed at recent Eastern European immigrants than towards Indian Hindu, Sikh or Christian immigrants (leaving aside Indian Muslims for now as there's a different debate there).
I'm rambling on, but in short I don't think it's quite as straightforward as creating a dichotomy based on colour in the UK.

[delux-vivens.livejournal.com]

To me, the term nonwhite still makes whiteness (or in this case lack thereof) the center of the definition. Non-white also doesnt seem to include a lot of room for people who are part white, of which there are plenty in deadbrowalking.

[anotherusedpage.livejournal.com]

I use 'non-Caucasian' a lot, because it also covers other visible ethnic minority groups like travellers/gypsies, Slavs, Kurds and Jews.

The british government uses BEM - Black and Ethnic Minority

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Ah - I'm Caucasian. By the original definition, anyway. *g* I think that in common parlance it now means "white", but it's a technicality that always amuses me.

[emily-shore.livejournal.com]

Ah, Caucasian is an interesting one. There is also the question of whether the community is intended to include groups like Jews, who occupy a very ambivalent status halfway between minority and non-minority. I would assume not, somehow.

On the other hand, if Jews count as ethnic minorities, my writing suddenly seems so much more diverse! :)