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piranhai feel moved to convert my anger into something semi-useful. as in, work on my own skanky race issues, which mostly consist of good ole liberal colour-"blindness". i wasn't raised that way; i did it myself, partially in reaction to my birth family's racist attitudes against roma and turks. i am 1/16th roma, but i don't look it, though it's obvious compared to how the rest of my family looks, that the genes expressed themselves differently in me. i'm never read as anything but "white" anywhere else, so i've never experienced any racism directed at me from outside of my family, and definitely never any of the institutionalized kind.
the self-trained colour-"blindness" didn't mean that i don't see human skin colour, but i've always treated it just like horse or cat colours -- yeah, i see it, and i use it in descriptions, and i might find some colour particularly pretty, but it's irrelevant to how i treat the being in question. and online i've never sought to find out about people's race, just like i don't care about their gender and age.
which is whitey-white privilege, of course. i know that now. i can choose to ignore race and even pat myself on the back for that. it doesn't follow me home like it does every PoC over here. *gah*, i was a clueless git. i want to improve. though i also know i don't have many spoons. so, baby steps.
#1: if any acquaintance of mine who is a person of colour, feels i've acted in a oblivious racist way towards them, please tell me. i promise to listen and not act defensively in return. i also promise not to ask you to teach me better; you're not required to assist me in passing racism 101. though if there is something in specific you would like me to do, please tell me that as well.
#2: a result of my selective vision has been that i am not usually aware of the ethnic background of authors, unless they write about their experiences as a person of a specific background, or for some reason i've picked up that they're of that background (it sort of comes with the territory when talking about manga that pretty much all the authors are japanese; when the ethnicity changes, the genre changes to manhua, manwha, or OEL). it's not that i imagine everyone to be white; i just don't imagine them to be anything. but i realize that this denies a part of who people are. so i want to become more conscious of it, and i want to make an effort to read books in particular by people of colour.
i've already found![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
50books_poc, and will add to my reading list after going through it. i'm not committing to actually reading 50 books from that list in a year because i do so badly with obligations for my free time, and because my book reading is never meant to be a chore of any sort, and what jumps in my lap to be read NOW is impossible to predict. i do commit to buy the books from that list, and to allow as many of them as possible to yell "SHINY! pick ME!" when i am in prowl mood. and manga doesn't count, because i already have oodles of it around to be read. i am also not allowed to make the entire list japanese, even aside from manga.
the list needs to be constructed to contain not much reading that requires extremely heavy lifting, but lots of SFF and mysteries, mostly novels (not short stories; novellas ok, but nothing under 10,000 words).
maybe some of you can help me with the list of authors. i know of:
barnes, steven
butler, octavia
chambers, christopher
chiang, ted
cisneros, sandra (tnx prairierabbit)
clough, brenda
corpi, lucha
delany, samuel
deloach, nora
due, tananarive
durham, david anthony
erdrich, louise
esquivel, laura (tnx prairierabbit)
garcia-aguilera, carolina
ghosh, amitav (tnx allbery)
gomez, jewelle
goto, hiromi
haywood, gar anthony
hopkinson, nalo
hurston, zora neale (tnx amagranz & firecat)
ishiguro, kazuo (tnx allbery)
johnson, alaya dawn (tnx sinboy)
lai, larissa
lopinto, lidia llamas & charles (tnx prairierabbit)
lowachee, karin
mickelbury, penny
mohanraj, mary anne
morrison, toni
mosley, walter
murakami, haruki
neely, barbara
nogha, misha
okorafor, nnedi
polk, chelsea
reed, ishmael
rowland, laura joh
rushdie, salman (tnx selki)
sanders, william
saunders, charles r.
tan, cecelia
thomas, sheree
wesley, valerie wilson
woods, paula
wu, william f.
the self-trained colour-"blindness" didn't mean that i don't see human skin colour, but i've always treated it just like horse or cat colours -- yeah, i see it, and i use it in descriptions, and i might find some colour particularly pretty, but it's irrelevant to how i treat the being in question. and online i've never sought to find out about people's race, just like i don't care about their gender and age.
which is whitey-white privilege, of course. i know that now. i can choose to ignore race and even pat myself on the back for that. it doesn't follow me home like it does every PoC over here. *gah*, i was a clueless git. i want to improve. though i also know i don't have many spoons. so, baby steps.
#1: if any acquaintance of mine who is a person of colour, feels i've acted in a oblivious racist way towards them, please tell me. i promise to listen and not act defensively in return. i also promise not to ask you to teach me better; you're not required to assist me in passing racism 101. though if there is something in specific you would like me to do, please tell me that as well.
#2: a result of my selective vision has been that i am not usually aware of the ethnic background of authors, unless they write about their experiences as a person of a specific background, or for some reason i've picked up that they're of that background (it sort of comes with the territory when talking about manga that pretty much all the authors are japanese; when the ethnicity changes, the genre changes to manhua, manwha, or OEL). it's not that i imagine everyone to be white; i just don't imagine them to be anything. but i realize that this denies a part of who people are. so i want to become more conscious of it, and i want to make an effort to read books in particular by people of colour.
i've already found
50books_poc, and will add to my reading list after going through it. i'm not committing to actually reading 50 books from that list in a year because i do so badly with obligations for my free time, and because my book reading is never meant to be a chore of any sort, and what jumps in my lap to be read NOW is impossible to predict. i do commit to buy the books from that list, and to allow as many of them as possible to yell "SHINY! pick ME!" when i am in prowl mood. and manga doesn't count, because i already have oodles of it around to be read. i am also not allowed to make the entire list japanese, even aside from manga.the list needs to be constructed to contain not much reading that requires extremely heavy lifting, but lots of SFF and mysteries, mostly novels (not short stories; novellas ok, but nothing under 10,000 words).
maybe some of you can help me with the list of authors. i know of:
barnes, steven
butler, octavia
chambers, christopher
chiang, ted
cisneros, sandra (tnx prairierabbit)
clough, brenda
corpi, lucha
delany, samuel
deloach, nora
due, tananarive
durham, david anthony
erdrich, louise
esquivel, laura (tnx prairierabbit)
garcia-aguilera, carolina
ghosh, amitav (tnx allbery)
gomez, jewelle
goto, hiromi
haywood, gar anthony
hopkinson, nalo
hurston, zora neale (tnx amagranz & firecat)
ishiguro, kazuo (tnx allbery)
johnson, alaya dawn (tnx sinboy)
lai, larissa
lopinto, lidia llamas & charles (tnx prairierabbit)
lowachee, karin
mickelbury, penny
mohanraj, mary anne
morrison, toni
mosley, walter
murakami, haruki
neely, barbara
nogha, misha
okorafor, nnedi
polk, chelsea
reed, ishmael
rowland, laura joh
rushdie, salman (tnx selki)
sanders, william
saunders, charles r.
tan, cecelia
thomas, sheree
wesley, valerie wilson
woods, paula
wu, william f.