{"id":84,"date":"2006-01-10T09:11:34","date_gmt":"2006-01-10T15:11:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.douglasblaine.com\/index.php\/2006\/01\/10\/meaning-not-color\/"},"modified":"2010-09-07T19:42:26","modified_gmt":"2010-09-08T01:42:26","slug":"meaning-not-color","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.douglasblaine.com\/index.php\/20060110\/meaning-not-color\/","title":{"rendered":"Meaning, not Color"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tobias Buckell<\/a> on this from Pam Noles<\/a>…<\/p>\n

But I remember Dad saying, how come you never see anybody like that in the stories you like? And I remember answering, maybe they didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have black people back then. He said there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s always been black people. I said but black people can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be wizards and space people and they can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t fight evil, so they can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be in the story. When he didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t say anything back I turned around. He was in full recline mode in his chair and he was very still, looking at me. He didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t say anything else.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

…and then me (not that anyone will find this):<\/p>\n

So I nearly nothing in the way of a frame of reference for my thoughts of opinions on this.  I have grown up nearly as middle-class white American as anybody that’s white and American could–as far as I know.  My three basic exposures to actual (not TV or music) African-Americans are thus:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. My mother describes an incident from my unrecallable childhood in which I saw my first black person: “What’s wrong with him?” I ask. “Nothing, he’s just a different color than you,” Mom says. “OK”.\n

    Later, Mom finds me running around with a friend in the trees behind their house. I guess it looked somewhat oragized into a predator-prey type activity so she asks, “What are you doing?”, “Oh, we’re playing ‘nigger’.” I don’t know if she had a reply at this point or if she was just incredulous and decided to let it slide and not take the time to have a teachable moment of some sort.<\/p>\n

    Finally, a few days later I run up to my mother as ask, “Where can I get a ‘nigger’ friend?” When she tells the story this is basically the crux and she stops there. Implicit in my mind and hers is the innocent lack of concern for color but the ignorance of language.<\/li>\n

  2. For a brief time in the third grade of the Catholic school I went to in Kansas (from what I hear not the same as Catholic school back east) there was a girl named Rochelle Ramsey that I was good friends with the left as mysteriously as she arrived. Maybe her family couldn’t afford the tuition–mine couldn’t 3 years later–maybe ‘the powers that be’ encourage the only family of color that school had ever seen to find a better place to integrate. All I knew was that my friend was gone.<\/li>\n

    <\/p>\n

  3. Then a gap of decades until you find this author riding around in a low slung small-sized pickup with hip-hop playing so loud that the speakers in the bed are making the side mirror shiver–objects in mirror may be less blurry than they appear. Dan was from San Antonio, a former defensive lineman for a university around here. I think he took it on himself to reaquaint this white-boy with as much reality mixed with stereotype as possble. Other than a lost friend who’s humour was the only thing bigger than his waist that I have from that was that “niggas love orange soda”–I just don’t recall which brand.<\/li>\n

    <\/ol>\n

    So one thing come out of all that: where in all my experience am I supposed to reliably concoct a speculative fiction story that involves people of other (real) races?<\/p>\n

    Oh sure, you hear folks bather about doing research for a book, but I seriously doubt that they intend for one to ‘go live among the black people and learn their ways’. If I chose to write a story containing a more multicultural cast I would be at best able to call someone black at the onset, maybe a remark about brown eyes or crinkly hair and then I would be done. Every word out of his (sexist post later) mouth would be either as white as I don’t know how not to be or ridiculously contrived. I don’t (can’t) do this for the same reason I don’t write legal thrillers or romance or business books: I know nothing about the true subject.<\/p>\n

    I submit this is one of the underlying motives of authors for creating new races. We can invent elves and dwarves and the like and say they like fried chicken and watermelon without coming off as totally inept asses.<\/p>\n

    Though none of this matters a whit to me when I am writing or more likely when I am reading. I read the first Earthsea book for the first time about a year ago. It was nice and short, but other than a guy on a boat and some fog it didn’t really stand out as earthshatteringly evocative–not something I would read again. Also, I didn’t really notice he was not white. I suppose it’s mentioned in the first chapter or so, but that means nothing to me. I don’t recall his eye color, height, or sexual preference either.<\/p>\n

    When I read a book, nearly all that matters is the dialogue and action.  What one character says to another; what one character does with another. You know why? Because after all the description of a character is laid down at the first meeting all that the author gives me is what he says<\/strong> and what he does<\/strong>. Now I will grant that culture and language are indelible, but once I have read (or heard) the line “I ain’t saying she’s no goldigger, but she ain’t messin’ with no broke nigger” it gets put in my brain as meaning not color.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Tobias Buckell on this from Pam Noles… But I remember Dad saying, how come you never see anybody like that in the stories you like? And I remember answering, maybe they didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have black people back then. He said there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s always been black people. I said but black people can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be wizards and space people … <\/p>\n

    Continue reading “Meaning, not Color”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5],"tags":[43],"class_list":["post-84","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-writing-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pb6Km-1m","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.douglasblaine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.douglasblaine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.douglasblaine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.douglasblaine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.douglasblaine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.douglasblaine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":119,"href":"https:\/\/www.douglasblaine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84\/revisions\/119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.douglasblaine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.douglasblaine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.douglasblaine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}