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Elementary 4.08.
Jan. 15th, 2016 08:23 amWhich has an excellent Marcus Bell subplot and a case of the week that disgruntles me a bit.
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Jan. 15th, 2016
In the near thirty years I've been drifting into and out of various fandoms, or remained, I learned a lot regarding race and ethnic minorities: I became conscious of the way they were represented, or NOT represented, in books, tv shows, movies, about my own subconscious assumptions when a character's etnicity isn't spelled out, about how certain narrative patterns in pop culture keep coming back. How important representation (as something other than the sidekick or corpse at the start of the tale) is. And I'm grateful for what I've learned, just as I am sure there's a lot I'm still missing, being a white privileged person.
However, I've never felt comfortable using the "person of colo(ur)r" or "character of colo(u)r" tag for any of my fanfiction featuring characters of color, and I don't think I'll ever do it. My reason is a personal one, and doesn't apply to anyone else. I'm sure most people tagging their stories this way do so because readers who want to read about characters of color in a prominent position in the story (as opposed to showing up only briefly) can find them easier this way.
But the thing is: if I were to tag my stories this way, I'd feel like something of a hypocrite trying to earn social justice brownie points, since I didn't write a single one of them based on the thought "characters of color should get better representation" or any variation thereof. I wrote them because I was interested and/or moved by these particular characters and wanted to explore them more. Sometimes, that obviously meant dealing with how someone of their skin color has to live like in their particular era and place (James Hemmings). But often their ethnicity is irrelevant to the story in question. (Jake Sisko in my DS9 story Abraham's Son, Julian Bashir in the DS9 stories featuring him, Gwen in any of my Merlin stories featuring her, etc.).
Not completely unconnected: moreover, the definition of who is and who isn't a character of color seems to be to be often very USian. I remember reading an interview with Antonio Banderas in which he mentioned that the first time he ever visited the US, he was asked about his race in his visa paperwork, checked the box saying "white" and was lectured that he wasn't white, he was Hispanic (or Latino, I forgot which one they told him). This, as a member of "the original conquistador nation", as he put it, amused him and led him to the conclusion that Americans are v.v. weird about their race definitions. I also remember BNF Jennifer Oksana in a post about white washing bring up the example of Martin Sheen, real name Ramon Estevez, having to play President Jed Bartlett as a product of white New Hampshire, and why couldn't have Sorkin & Co. make Jed a Latino as per ethnicity of actor etc.; I don't remember whether someone pointed out to her that between Martin Sheen's father being Spanish and his mother being Irish, he most certainly is not Latino and definitely would be considered as white in Spain and Ireland both. (Doesn't mean that The West Wing couldn't have included more Latino characters, of course, but well, this particular example was a bad one.) The subconscious assumption that Spanish Name = Person of Color just strikes me as very North American. And that's another reason for me to avoid this tag.
The other days
However, I've never felt comfortable using the "person of colo(ur)r" or "character of colo(u)r" tag for any of my fanfiction featuring characters of color, and I don't think I'll ever do it. My reason is a personal one, and doesn't apply to anyone else. I'm sure most people tagging their stories this way do so because readers who want to read about characters of color in a prominent position in the story (as opposed to showing up only briefly) can find them easier this way.
But the thing is: if I were to tag my stories this way, I'd feel like something of a hypocrite trying to earn social justice brownie points, since I didn't write a single one of them based on the thought "characters of color should get better representation" or any variation thereof. I wrote them because I was interested and/or moved by these particular characters and wanted to explore them more. Sometimes, that obviously meant dealing with how someone of their skin color has to live like in their particular era and place (James Hemmings). But often their ethnicity is irrelevant to the story in question. (Jake Sisko in my DS9 story Abraham's Son, Julian Bashir in the DS9 stories featuring him, Gwen in any of my Merlin stories featuring her, etc.).
Not completely unconnected: moreover, the definition of who is and who isn't a character of color seems to be to be often very USian. I remember reading an interview with Antonio Banderas in which he mentioned that the first time he ever visited the US, he was asked about his race in his visa paperwork, checked the box saying "white" and was lectured that he wasn't white, he was Hispanic (or Latino, I forgot which one they told him). This, as a member of "the original conquistador nation", as he put it, amused him and led him to the conclusion that Americans are v.v. weird about their race definitions. I also remember BNF Jennifer Oksana in a post about white washing bring up the example of Martin Sheen, real name Ramon Estevez, having to play President Jed Bartlett as a product of white New Hampshire, and why couldn't have Sorkin & Co. make Jed a Latino as per ethnicity of actor etc.; I don't remember whether someone pointed out to her that between Martin Sheen's father being Spanish and his mother being Irish, he most certainly is not Latino and definitely would be considered as white in Spain and Ireland both. (Doesn't mean that The West Wing couldn't have included more Latino characters, of course, but well, this particular example was a bad one.) The subconscious assumption that Spanish Name = Person of Color just strikes me as very North American. And that's another reason for me to avoid this tag.
The other days
