We are not the world

[susanreads]

In this context, "we" means people of pallor^*, a.k.a. white folks.
^*When I first saw that phrase - 3 days ago? - people were already unsure who invented it. Kudos, whoever.

So, what I previously called "the latest iteration of RaceFail" now has a name: MammothFail; archival duties have been taken over by linkspam. In the category "People Who Should Know Better say foolish things", a participant implied that people of colour/non-white people weren't involved in SF&F fandom until they were enlightened by the internet. delux_vivens posted in the LJ comm deadbrowalking to invite fans of colour to check in and tell their stories; 27 pages of comments and counting!



There's also an LJ community for chromatic fans and their allies to showcase their artwork, fiction etc.: Fen of Color United. (You can tell there are old-time fans involved because they're using the faannish plural!) Today, May 18th, is the day of protest, or exhibition opening day, or whatever, so go and have a look.

Comments

[gwendraith]

I'd love to leave a meaningful comment but I don't really understand your post, sorry. I'm really not dense, honest I'm not :-)

[susanreads]

Well, it's a bit elliptical (as is anything I post tagged "connections", also). If you follow the "MammothFail" link, that'll explain the story so far. (But you probably won't understand the comments.) The "linkspam" contains more links than the mind can comfortably conceive, but they're not divided up into the useful, the ones where you have to already know what people are talking about, and the better-avoided, so I picked out popelizbet's post as a good place to start (and possibly stop, if you don't have a week to spare).

Sequel to previous reply

[susanreads]

Wow, I just noticed how quickly you commented after I posted! It took me longer than that to put the post together ... after deciding what to link to.

I've got another link for you, which might be a better place to start: a themed summary of RaceFail ‘09, which is partly directed at people derailing the discussion (e.g. increasing the noise-to-signal ratio by posting to say "this is all a waste of time"), but makes a good intro for beginners, I hope.

That's vol. 1 of RaceFail09 (MammothFail being vol. 2, unless I've missed something). Before that I wasn't really paying attention, but was tangentially aware via the People of Colour in SF Carnival of the previous series, which (IIRC) started in '06. But chromatic (i.e. non-white or whatever is your locally-acceptable term) fans were around a long time before that, which is the point of the deadbrowalking post.

Re: Sequel to previous reply

[gwendraith]

Thanks for that. It was an interesting read over a cup of coffee and made things a little clearer.