It is a truth universally acknowledged that when three or more black women are engaged in conversation for more than fifteen minutes, they will start to exchange hair-care tips.

Honestly, it’s uncanny. And in the spirit of that, here’s some of my ABW tips for Going into Battle with Your Natural Hair. (For the record: I love my hair, I do. But I admit that dealing with it can feel a tad antagonistic).

Nothing against texturizers, relaxers, hot combs and all other manner of hair-taming devices, but I ditched those years ago after I got sick and tired of watching my hair break off. If you do use a texturizer, may I suggest the Creme of Nature mild relaxer. Do it very carefully, as it’s a lye-based relaxer and will burn your scalp, but it’s actually paradoxically much easier on your hair than a no-lye relaxer. Don’t leave it in too long, seriously! But I used it for years and it was the only thing that worked on my shorter hair.

First, a description of my hair-type, to clarify whether or not any of this will be useful to you. My hair is long– about touching the end of my tail bone if I stretch it out. It used to be nappier when it was shorter and I was younger. For the last several years it’s been significantly easier to get through– I suspect that’s because once it got past a certain length, it started to grow differently. Still, it can get pretty nappy.

So, going into battle.

My chosen arena: The shower. I put in gobs of conditioner, wait a bit, and then comb it out with the conditioner still in, under running water.

My weapon of choice: A fro-pick, of course. And, equally important, a heavy boar-bristle brush, like this one.

My armor of choice: A good, heavy, moisturizing conditioner, like Herbal Essences. Shampoo only in small amounts about once a week.

The terms of surrender (uh, sorry, this metaphor is getting a little belabored): At the moment, I’m using great globs of beeswax, purchased from my local black hair care emporium. I have previously employed Mane ‘n Tail Leave-In Conditioner, which doesn’t work too well as an in-shower conditioner, but is a great, heavy moisturizer that prevents untamed fly-away afro-puffs and those giant knots you cry over in the shower.

Frequency of battle: About every other day, though sometimes I’ll use a do-rag/put my hair in a bun for a third day if I don’t want to deal with it.

Other tactical considerations: I use big hair clips to keep my hair up after I wash, comb and moisturize it. I have discovered that the longer I let my hair take to dry, the more manageable it stays. Sometimes I want the giant afro look, and then I’ll let it dry right out of the shower. But otherwise, I let it dry over the course of a day. That night, I put it in two braids, where it dries completely. And then the next day I have hair that looks nice, isn’t too tangled, and doesn’t break when I comb it in the shower the next morning.

Other products I have tried:

Frizz-ease– Didn’t work at all. Leaves my hair way too stiff and brittle. I want to prevent the ends from splitting, people!

Deva Curl “No-poo” cleanser– Expensive, but this is great! I couldn’t believe how easily I got the pick through my hair after using this stuff. Wow!

Deva Curl “Set Up and Above”– Not so great. I need waay more moisturizer in my hair creams. Left my hair feeling brittle and sticky. See: Frizz-ease.

Hair mayonnaise– Gross. I know some people swear by this stuff, but it smells funny and doesn’t actually seem to weigh my hair down enough.

Other products I want to try:

Anything by Miss Jessie’s. Anyone used this stuff? It’s expensive, but that Curly Meringue looks like hair-cream heaven.

Good luck! And if you have any tips for me, I want to hear ‘em.

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These links are going up in the Required Reading (or, at the very least, a link to this) because I feel like both posts illuminate the core of how I feel about discourse around contentious issues such as racism and sexism and the pitfalls of said discourse.

First, from the Carl Brandon Society’s Open Letter to the SF Community:

…the Carl Brandon Society wishes to define some basic principles of discourse which were put into question as a result of this exchange. We hope community members will consider and respect these principles in future debates and disagreements.

These principles are as follows:

1) The use of racial slurs in public discourse is utterly unacceptable, whether as an insult, a provocation, or an attempt at humor. This includes both explicit use of slurs and referencing them via acronyms.

2) Any declaration of a marginalized identity in public is not a fit subject for mockery, contempt, or attack. Stating what, and who, you are is not “card playing.” It is a statement of pride. It is also a statement of fact that often must be made because it has bearing on discussions of race, gender, and social justice.

3) Expressing contempt for ongoing racial and gender discourse is unacceptable. Although particular discussions may become heated or unpleasant, discourse on racism and sexism is an essential part of antiracism and feminist activism and must be respected as such. There is no hard line between discourse and action in activism; contempt of the one too often leads to contempt of the whole.

The Carl Brandon Society assumes in this letter that everyone reading it shares the common goal of racial and gender equity, and general social justice, in all our communities. We hope for a quick end to arguments over whether or not unacceptable forms of debate should be allowable. These arguments obstruct the process of seeking justice for all.

(BTW, if you want to co-sign this, click the link.)

Second, from Jim Hines, who responds to those who say they’re being “censored” by the above, among other things:

• People disagreeing with you is not censorship.
• People stating that they don’t like your cover art and think its racist, sexist, or whatever, is not censorship.
• People banning you from their blogs is not censorship.
• For the writers out there, an editor rejecting your story for his/her publication is not censorship.
• People saying they don’t like something you said is not censorship.
• People telling you racial slurs are unacceptable is not censorship.
• People criticizing, mocking, or insulting you for choosing to use racial slurs is not censorship.

Yes. This.

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Over at The Economist blog, it is written:

It seems self-evident to suggest that if schools that have eliminated physical education and recess reinstituted them, there would be fewer obese adolescents in America.

Evidence suggests adding phys ed isn’t the cure for fatkiditis the Economist imagines. Quoting Gina Kolata¹ in the New York Times:

In the 1990’s, the National Institutes of Health sponsored two large, rigorous studies asking whether weight gain in children could be prevented by doing everything that obesity fighters say should be done in schools — greatly expand physical education, make cafeteria meals more nutritious and less fattening, teach students about proper nutrition and the need to exercise, and involve the parents. One study, an eight-year, $20 million project sponsored by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, followed 1,704 third graders in 41 elementary schools in the Southwest, where students were mostly Native Americans, a group that is at high risk for obesity. The schools were randomly divided into two groups, one subject to intensive intervention, the other left alone. Researchers determined, beginning at grade five, if the children in the intervention schools were thinner than those in the schools that served as a control group.

They were not. The students could, however, recite chapter and verse on the importance of activity and proper nutrition. They also ate less fat, going from 34 percent to 27 percent fat in their total diet. Alas, said the study’s principal investigator, Benjamin Caballero, director of the Center for Human Nutrition at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, “it was not enough to change body weight.”

What I’d really like to know — but this article doesn’t say — is if the kids were healthier, as measured by blood pressure, cholesterol levels, ability to walk on a treadmill and so on. There’s an unfortunate attitude that an intervention that doesn’t lead to thinness is necessarily a failure, which leads us to ignore many important indicators of health.²

So why does “it seem self-evident” that we can make thinner kids by adding gym and stirring, when the evidence says otherwise? Well, part of the reason is that “self-evident,” in this case, means that the blogger is reciting conventional wisdom. And conventional wisdom is selective:

The paper appeared in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in 2003 to no acclaim, Dr. Caballero said. No press release, no media coverage, no invitations to speak about the results at scientific meetings. On the journal’s Web page, a search of articles that refer to the study comes up empty. It has not been cited anywhere.

1. If my last name was “Kolata,” I don’t think I’d name my child anything that rhymes with “Pina.” Just saying. (back)
2. Somewhat related, from the same Times article: “Nearly 49,000 women were randomly assigned to follow a low fat diet or their regular diet for eight years while researchers kept track of their rates of breast cancer, colon cancer and heart disease. Not only did the diets have no effect on these diseases, they also had no effect on the women’s weights.” (back)

Paul Campos is interviewed over at Megan McArdle’s blog. There’s a lot there worth reading, but I’ll highlight this bit in particular, since the study he’s discussing has been much in the news:

Consider the methodology of this study. It tried to calculate changes in health costs if everybody with a BMI over 30 had a BMI under 25. But leaving aside the preposterous assumption that all increased health risks associated with a level of body mass are caused by that level of body mass, the idea that somehow we could make fat people into thin people is bizarre.

A study like this isn’t talking about turning 180 pound women into 165 pound women, which at least in theory might actually be possible. It’s talking about turning 200 pound women into 130 pound women, on statistical average. The success rate for such attempts is about .1% Even stomach amputation does not turn fat people into thin people.

So even if it were true that we knew it would be beneficial to turn fat people into thin people (which we don’t) it’s not something we have any idea how to do. The statements in the study indicating that there are known methods for doing this are simply lies of the most egregious sort.

Now lets talk about excess health care costs. if you look at the study, nearly half of the excess health care costs associated with being fat are from higher rates of drug prescription. But why are fat people being prescribed more drugs than thin ones? Largely, because they have the “disease” of being fat, which is then treated directly and indirectly by prescription drugs!

For instance, statins. Statins are a multi-billion dollar business, but there’s very little statistical evidence that they benefit the vast majority of people to whom they’re prescribed. Basically the only people who have lower CVD [cardiovascular disease] mortality after taking statins are middle-aged men with a history of CVD.

But the heavier than average are prescribed statins at higher rates simply because they’re heavier than average, even though there’s no evidence this is beneficial for them. And of course this doesn’t touch on the costs of all the treatments for “obesity” itself, which are uniformly ineffective. [...]

I mean, there’s no better established empirical proposition in medical science that we don’t know how to make people thinner. But apparently this proposition is too disturbing to consider, even though it’s about as well established as that cigarettes cause lung cancer. So all these proposals about improving public health by making people thinner are completely crazy. They are as non-sensical as anything being proposed by public officials in our culture right now, which is saying something.

It’s conceivable that through some massive policy interventions you might be able to reduce the population’s average BMI from 27 to 25 or something like that. But what would be the point? There aren’t any health differences to speak of for people between BMIs of about 20 and 35, so undertaking the public health equivalent of the Apollo program to reduce the populace’s average BMI by a unit or two (and again I will emphasize that we don’t actually know if we could do even that) is an incredible waste of public health resources.

Also well worth your reading time is Megan’s followup post, in which she refutes the usual objections people posted in her comments. (Thanks, Sebastian!)

As is often the case during major online blowups of one kind or another, I have lately found myself having to explain more often than I would care to the difference between “You said something racist” and “You are a racist.” Granted, a lot of people, including anti-racist activists, make a step from the first statement to the next with no problem. But it isn’t always the case that someone who says racist or sexist or other oppressive/prejudiced things is themselves a prejudiced, racist, or sexist person. They can be, certainly. And if you give certain people enough time and space to talk, they’ll prove themselves so.

But not always.

I want to try and unpack this in a way that will benefit future discourse because I think this is a very important point. I’m not the only person to point this out, of course. But it helps me to be a better debater in the future if I make posts and put my thoughts in order.

The truth is, everyone can make prejudiced, offensive or oppressive statements. Many people have prejudiced thoughts. And I mean people as in humans as in everyone, not just those whose groups have historical power.

In the case of those who do not belong to the dominant group, those statements can be hurtful, but often do not have the same impact. This is due to power imbalance.¹ When someone in the dominant group says something prejudiced or offensive, many people will (perhaps correctly) assume that they said such a thing because they really think and believe it. And if a person really believes that prejudiced thing, they must be prejudiced themselves. This is not illogical.

However, humans often are.

Bias, prejudice, wrong thinking can be the product of conscious thought or unconscious/unexamined thought. It seems to me that a large percentage of people who bust out with really ignorant statements often do so because they have not ever, ever truly thought them through to their logical conclusions. If they did, or if someone challenged them to, their thinking could change.

Most activists realized this about people long ago. And thus many attempt to make a distinction between “You said something X-ist” and “You are a X-ist.”

Doing this is hard. Especially when the words that come out of people’s mouths are so very, very hurtful or very, very ignorant. It also doesn’t help when the person is acting like a jerk, all prejudicial talk aside. That is usually when people make the leap from “you said” to “you are” — I include myself in this.

So, two thoughts. One for those who say things that get them in trouble, one for those who hear/read these things.

First, the guide to How Not To Be Insane When Accused of Racism is very, very useful and I suggest you read it. Also, I urge you to read or listen carefully when someone takes exception to something you said/wrote. Are they saying that you’re an X-ist? Or are they saying that what you said is X-ist? If they say the latter they’re trying to make the distinction I’ve been talking about here, and you will not help the conversation by assuming they’re accusing you of the former.

If you are being accused of X-ism, then it would behoove you to examine what about your statement made people say that about you. Do not attempt to destroy, suppress or otherwise derail the discussion of racism (it’s not helpful either to you or to other arguing against you). And remember that admitting that you were wrong to say that X-ist thing is not the same as admitting you are an X-ist yourself.

Second, for those who see or read offensive, X-ist, prejudicial, or stereotypical things, I suggest attempting to make a distinction between what folks say and what they are. It’s not an easy path to take, and it involves a lot of giving the benefit of the doubt, patience, and tolerance. But I think it does help to start by saying “you said something x-ist/offensive” instead of “you are an x-ist because you said that” unless this person has proven, through past or further statements and actions that they are indeed x-ist.

Then you can have at.

That’s my advice, take it or leave it as you will. I do admit that for the activist, this can be hard. Especially when you run up against the thousandth instance of a particular prejudicial or offensive mindset. I make no claim on being perfect or even halfway decent in this regard at all times. I’m just trying.

I’m hoping for better discourse, but I have little hope of getting it from certain quarters of the population.

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1. A black person calls a white person a cracker: that’s not cool. But it does not have the same impact, or have the same level of wrongness, as a white person calling a black person a nigger. Still, doing both things is wrong, period.

From Antiwar.com:

“We don’t have a police state here in Palestine. We have two police states. One in Gaza and one in the West Bank,” says Rabie Latifah from the Palestinian human rights organization Al Haq.

“The abuse of Palestinian civilians by both Fatah and Hamas security forces has become systematic and is no longer the exception to the rule,” Latifah told IPS.

Mysterious bomb blasts, assassinations by masked gunmen, detainees denied access to their lawyers, torture and death in detention, the random arrest of critical journalists, and the banning of peaceful demonstrations are but a few of the human rights violations sweeping the Palestinian territories.

While armed men are being arrested, politically motivated arrest campaigns are also targeting citizens suspected of merely sympathizing with the opposition.

“We have endured over 40 years of occupation and human rights abuses by the Israelis, and now we are doing it to ourselves,” says Raji Sourani, director of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR).

Stories like this make me feel that even if a two-state solution leads to a genuinely independent Palestine being created, the civil rights outlook for ordinary Palestinians is not bright. (Via.)

Speaking of the CBS blog, I’d love it if people headed over to this entry about artists of color in the genre and added links to your favorites. If you’re an artist yourself, please also comment. Right now there are only two comments, which makes me a sad black woman!

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Literally:

(Via Jezebel)

Over the past month I’ve been putting together lists of speculative fiction short stories by writers of color for the Carl Brandon Society blog. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I’m also going to publish these lists here each month. Plus, I and others have been adding data to the Carl Brandon wiki, which you should all consider contributing to if you’re a fan of works by people of color.

I’ve collected data going all the way back to January of 2009, but here I’m only going to list June and July. You can see January/ February, March/April, and May at the links. (Plus there’s stuff published in anthologies and collections.) Also, you can see all the stories listed on the wiki.

If you’re reading this entry many months from now, you may want to skip right to the wiki, because I suspect that will soon supplant the blog posts as far as comprehensiveness goes. I don’t think I’ve yet found all of the short fiction by POC and I’m hoping that authors, editors and readers will help out by adding whatever information I’m currently missing.

On to the lists.

July

• Placa del Fuego by Tobias S. Buckell — Clarkesworld Magazine
• 20% Off Designer Genes by Lee Gimenez — Static Movement Magazine
• A Small Sacrifice by Lee Gimenez — Morpheus Tales Magazine
• Daniel 7 by Lee Gimenez — M-Brane Magazine
• The United States of Generica by Lee Gimenez
• Tough Love by Don Pizarro — Reflection’s Edge

June

• Another Beautiful Day by Lee Gimenez — Skive Magazine
• September 12 by Lee Gimenez — Aphelion Magazine
• Shard of Glass by Alaya Dawn Johnson — PodCastle
• Homecoming by E.C. Myers in A Thousand Faces

If you’re a writer of color and have a story coming out later this year (including August), please let me know by sending the following information to this GMail address: theangryblackwoman+pocfic

Title:
Author:
Market Name:
Pub Date:
URL of story (if online) or market website:
Reprint: Yes/No
Author Website:

If you had something published in 2008, head over to the wiki and add it!

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Ezra argues that we should grab half a loaf while we can:

There are many themes in the sad and frustrating history of health-care reform. But one of the central ones is that there were many points when Democrats could have accepted a compromise and did not. Richard Nixon, for instance, proposed a plan that could have passed Congress but that liberals thought comically inadequate. It was more comprehensive than anything we will get this year. George H.W. Bush also offered a pretty good proposal but got no support among Democrats.

Opportunities at health-care reform do not happen frequently. The average between major attempts is 19.5 years. That’s 19.5 years in which the uninsured stay uninsured and their ranks grow. Where a situation that is already bad gets a lot worse. This year, Barack Obama is popular, and there are 60 Democrats in the Senate and huge majorities in the House. There is no reason to believe that Democrats will be in a stronger position anytime soon. It is not like when a weakened Nixon, or a fading Bush, offered a compromise.

If reformers cannot pass a strong health-care reform bill now, there is no reason to believe they will be able to do it later. The question is whether the knowledge that the system will not let you solve this problem should prevent you from doing what you can to improve it. Put more sharply, the question should be whether this bill is better or worse than another 19.5 years of the deteriorating status quo.

Most of the liberals I talk to are deeply frustrated with how compromised the health care being discussed in Congress is. The House bill is far from the most lefty bill imaginable — but it’s probably a lot more left than whatever bill the Senate ends up passing, and therefore more left than whatever compromise bill between the House and Senate will eventually be hammered out in committee.

Given the history, I think it may make more sense to get something in place, and then work to improve it over the next 20 years. Single-payer, even if it’s a good idea for the U.S., isn’t something that has any shot of getting through Congress. Elections matter, and progressives and liberals — a much smaller group than “Democrats” — simply don’t have enough elected representatives to get our preferred policy passed, and might not even if our Democracy was better designed. (As it is, the way the Senate in particular is designed leads to extremely undemocratic results.)

Matt Tabbi sees the health care debate as proof of how bad our government is:

It won’t get done, because that’s not the way our government works. Our government doesn’t exist to protect voters from interests, it exists to protect interests from voters. The situation we have here is an angry and desperate population that at long last has voted in a majority that it believes should be able to pass a health care bill. It expects something to be done. The task of the lawmakers on the Hill, at least as they see things, is to create the appearance of having done something. And that’s what they’re doing. Personally, I think they’re doing a lousy job even of that. I lauded Roddick for playing out the string with heart, and giving a good show. But these Democrats aren’t even pretending to give a shit, not really. I mean, they’re not even willing to give up their vacations.

This whole business, it was a litmus test for whether or not we even have a functioning government. Here we had a political majority in congress and a popular president armed with oodles of political capital and backed by the overwhelming sentiment of perhaps 150 million Americans, and this government could not bring itself to offend ten thousand insurance men in order to pass a bill that addresses an urgent emergency. What’s left? Third-party politics?

Ezra (sorry to quote him so much, but he really is a good blogger on health care) agrees, but points out that if congress fails to address the long-care problems but does get 40 million currently uninsured Americans insured, that’s still an accomplishment.

Anyhow, please use this thread is for discussing health care, and in particular the health care legislation that seems like it might plausibly pass Congress this year.

Whether it’s serendipity or synchronicity, or both, now that there is discussion here on Alas about racism in the publishing industry, I have received the following email from the publisher of my first book of poems, CavanKerry Press.

Dear Friend of CavanKerry:

Decisions about manuscripts received during our Winter 2009 submission period are in the final stage and decisions will be completed soon.

Absent among our finalists are titles by authors of color. We’d like to include a more diverse population of writers — and perhaps you can help.

If you know any writers of color whose work is ready for publication, we’d appreciate your notifying them to submit asap.

Writers must reside in the United States and manuscripts must be in polished state — ready for publication. Writers may submit for one category: New Voices (not yet a published author), Notable Voices or LaurelBooks. Writers should go to www.cavankerrypress.org, for more information and read CKP’s guidelines carefully. We will accept submissions until August 31.

Thanks so much.

Joan

Joan Cusack Handler
CavanKerry Press Ltd.
A not -for-profit literary press serving art and community
6 Horizon Road #2901
Fort Lee, New Jersey 07024
201–670–9065
www.cavankerrypress.org.

CavanKerry has, or will soon, publish some fine writers of color, such as Joseph Legaspi, Ross Gay and January O’Neill. I know the press has published other writers of color, but these three I happen to know about personally. I also know the press is sincere in trying to diversify their list; I was part of a discussion about that subject at one of the annual “summits” the press holds for the people it publishes. CKP makes beautiful, beautiful books–just check out the cover of my book, The Silence Of Men, and they are well worth a try if you are, or someone you know is, a poet of color with a book of poems ready to publish. If you do submit a manuscript, by all means tell CKP that you heard about the opportunity from me.

By now, you’ve probably heard all about the dust-up surrounding Justine Larbalestier’s latest novel, Liar.

If you haven’t, you can start with Justine’s big post on the subject, and follow that up with this Publishers Weekly article, in which Bloomsbury has some very fascinating things to say.

The short version: Justine Larbalestier, a fairly well-known YA writer, wrote a novel featuring a bi-racial main character with short, kinky hair and fairly dark skin. These features and her bi-racial identity are crucial to her characterization and certain aspects of the book. This is particularly important because the character, Micah, is a pathological liar, which means that what the reader can discern as unequivocally true about her character becomes crucial to the reading experience.

Let me pause here to note that, unbelievable though it may seem, authors generally have very little input on the direction of the covers of their books. Often they have no input at all, and even when they do, publishers frequently strong-arm them into covers they are not happy with. Though it might seem strange for those who don’t have much experience in publishing, this is true of even relatively Big Name Authors, let alone one who is still building her career and reading base like Larbalestier. I just wanted to make this clear, because some people seem to think that authors have creative control or the final say over what appears on the covers of their books. Alas, this isn’t so (and, frankly– though certainly not in this case– one could make the argument that authors are perhaps not the best arbiters of what would work on their covers).

What happened is that Bloomsbury USA (her publisher) took this (truly excellent) book and designed a cover I suppose they felt would appeal the most to their base.

With a white girl. A white girl with long, straight, light-brown hair.

Here, take a look:

Now, pursuant to the discussion above (authors have not much/no say over their covers), plenty of photo realistic covers misrepresent characters in some way. Indeed, if you plow through the comments at Larbalestier’s blog or (if you dare) here at Boing Boing, you will see plenty of people happily Missing The Point and telling the sad tale of the time their red-haired protagonist was portrayed as auburn or something.

The publisher would like us to pretend that this is not a particularly egregious case of racist whitewashing (a problem endemic in publishing), but a matter of taste, perhaps even a bit of a literary game, a visual play on a admittedly secondary, but still valid interpretation of Larbalesteir’s text.

Don’t believe me? Let’s listen to Melanie Cecka, who worked on Liar, and defended the cover in Publishers Weekly:

“The entire premise of this book is about a compulsive liar,” said Melanie Cecka, publishing director of Bloomsbury Children’s Books USA and Walker Books for Young Readers, who worked on Liar. “Of all the things you’re going to choose to believe of her, you’re going to choose to believe she was telling the truth about race?”

Well, imagine that! Never mind that the author herself, and any reasonable interpretation of the text, would say otherwise. Never mind that Micah’s racial identity is crucial to the book. She’s a liar, so of course she would lie about her race. And of course the publisher only intended to make a clever play on this fact with the cover:

“Clearly, our striving for ambiguity with this cover, and for it to be interpreted as a ‘lie’ itself didn’t work for everyone. But again, if this jacket proves a catalyst for a bigger discussion about how the industry is dealing with its books on race, that’s a very large good to come of this current whirlwind.”

As someone noted in one of the comment threads (apologies– I can’t find the exact one at the moment), it’s a given that Cecka and Bloomsbury would have put a black girl on the cover of a book about a white pathological liar.

Wait, what’s that? You mean to tell me that there are criminally few YA books that prominently feature black faces? And those that are tend to be relegated to the “Urban” section of the bookstore? You mean that a YA novel with a black face on the cover has never had the full weight of a publishing house behind it (announced print run for Liar: 100,000 copies)?

I’d hope this would speak for itself, but if not, here’s the explicit version: Bloomsbury is in high ass-covering mode, and they are grasping at the only defense they have, despite the way it disrespects both the text and their audience, because they know on some level that what they did was wrong.

Not just wrong, but racist.

Frankly, I don’t think we should let them get away with it. Write about this on your blogs, your livejournals, your facebook updates and your tweets. If you like, contact Bloomsbury by phone or email and let them know that you find this behavior unacceptable.

And let me just say this, even if it were unequivocally true that Black Covers Don’t Sell (the thinking that pervades the industry), that would still make what Bloomsbury has done equally abhorrent. Money and marketing does not give you a free pass to be racist. “Practical” considerations don’t make it okay to pretend that a black character is white just to attract more readers. For the record, I doubt this is true, but you know what? I don’t fucking care. Morals for profits has never been an even trade.

I am very glad that this conversation is happening, but not in the way Cecka seems to think it is. I’m glad that we are finally getting a glimpse behind the curtain, an insight into the way racist thinking pervades the still almost-entirely-white publishing industry. I am also glad that we are seeing the vast disconnect between multi-cultural, engaged, and online YA readers and the apparently clueless people publishing books for them. It has been heartening to read the multiple posts by librarians and bookstore buyers who have expressed their desire for more black and non-white faces on book covers, because their readers are hungry for them. ***

In the spirit of that, here’s a great list of YA about POC, compiled by a YA reader of color as part of a guest post on Larbalestier’s blog. And if you know of other great YA that explicitly feature a person (or people!) of color on the cover, please link to it in the comments. Surely the best way to prove Bloomsbury wrong is to make sure that Black Books DO Sell.

*** It’s not really appropriate for this post, but I do want to get into the impression that some people seem to have that books about race are therefore about racism (scroll down a bit). I am baffled about the presence of most of those books on that list (Their Eyes Were Watching God?) Invisible Man is about racism. It’s also one of the finest books of the 20th century. The rest? They’re about the experiences of black people in regards to a whole host of issues, of which race is an integral part. Why do some feel it’s okay to dismiss books as being “about racism,” even if it were true? Is this just another example of the apparently pathological desire of some people to pretend/wish/pray that race doesn’t exist, such that any mention of race becomes, in their minds, automatically a depiction of racism? Does this say much, much more about them than the books they discuss? But yes, another post.

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I think this speaks for itself. Note: I have replaced the YouTube version with the version from NBC’s website.

We talk a lot about racism in America (particularly the violent sort of racism usually tied into supremacy groups) and it tends to be viewed as the only “real” problematic behavior by a lot of people. A smaller set of conversations also recognize aversive racism (stereotypes, even “positive” ones are not okay and often are completely invalid), and occasionally we even wade into this new ground of what I call “victim” racism. What’s that? That’s when people say racist things and then swear up and down they are not racist and are deeply offended at any implication that they are racist. This one often involves someone saying things like “Why is it okay to have the United Negro College Fund? That’s reverse racism” and seems to be rooted in a refusal to grasp even the slightest bit of historical context. Then again, it’s not like high school history classes are about putting events in context. For some reason in most places that doesn’t happen until college and by then the classes are mostly optional. But that’s a whole other conversation and while I might write that post, today’s offering for International Blog Against Racism Week pertains to the things that don’t get discussed outside of closed doors most of the time.

Namely what happens when you grow up in a culture saturated with racism and you are a POC. I’ve talked some about learning to love my appearance, but I don’t think I’ve ever talked about learning to love my culture. About learning to see being black as a gift and not a curse. There’s a community on LJ called Oreos which is devoted to black folks that don’t feel like they are like “those” black people. And of course there is no true yardstick of blackness, but then again that feeling of being separate isn’t about being black enough, it’s about not liking the parts of yourself that you’ve deemed as being too black. Quiet as it’s kept, I went through this whole phase where I was the black friend that said I didn’t mind white people saying nigger or who sat there silent and uncomfortable while the white people around me said things about black people and then offered (sometimes with a hint of shame) that they didn’t mean black people like me.

And of course my discomfort with myself meant that I had my share of conflicts with the “mean” black girls of such renown. Now that I am a mean black girl? I can totally see what they were trying to do when they teased me for always hanging out with white kids and my (terrifying) tendency to put up with the kind of ill shit that I’d slap someone for now. It wasn’t (just) about being mean, it was about knocking some sense into me. Because I drank from the Goblet of Internalized Racism and in between my moments of looking down on them for being ghetto (too loud, too rough, too dark, and whatever else I was so busy judging I couldn’t even consider the reality that we were growing up in the same damned neighborhood) I was setting myself up to play Happy Token Darkie. And no one likes to watch a black person coon…well except for bigots. I can’t even claim that I had no idea that I was cooning, because of course when I heard the “those black people” comments a part of me wanted to scream at them. But I didn’t. Not at first. Certainly not at Whitney Young (admittedly it wasn’t anywhere near as overt as at Downers Grove North) and it took me a while once I was surrounded by overt racism to start to find my blackness and my love for my skin and my culture. But in the pressure cooker that was life between 15 and 25 I finally found it and I’ve had to learn over the years since to nurture it and let it grow.

Of course this process hasn’t been easy or comfortable or even particularly straightforward. Because self-hating black folk have a lot of reasons to keep the hate. Start with the rewards they can reap from the establishment for jumping on the bandwagon (if I never see another black Republican sharing a stage with a guy who makes no secret of being proud of flying the Confederate flag it will be too soon) and add all the pathology that can form as a result of the reinforcement provided by the institutional racism that is part of our society and you get people that have their whole identity invested in telling other black people that they are doing it wrong. And this phenomenon isn’t limited to Bill Cosby’s rantings about pound cake, La Shawn Barber or whoever is playing Uncle Ruckus this week. They’ll expound on the subject of marriage in the black community (bonus points if they trot out that tired old gem about more black men in jail than in college), the evils of single motherhood (Welfare Queen anecdata is a given, but the real deal involves expecting them to have a crystal ball and foresee any possible changes in their circumstances), or explaining why black women aren’t attractive (something about being too independent, not feminine enough, or just flat out saying that only lighter skin tones are attractive to men of any color), because tearing each other down is a primary drive when you’ve internalized the message that you’re worth less simply because of the color of your skin. Hence we get fun things like colorism and growing up hearing about “acting white” and even the train wreck that is skin bleaching.

Now, the purpose of my posting this wasn’t to have a Race 101 conversation about terms and being nice to people who didn’t mean to say “those black people” or even to have the age old “Why are all the black kids sitting together?” discussion. No, it’s a Race 498 conversation about the insidious way racism worms it way into the fabric of a society. It’s a chance to point out that saying “My black friend X says that nigger doesn’t bother him…” doesn’t win you any cookies in a discussion about race because the people you’re talking to have already swum that stream and they know X has some shit to deal with, but that shit isn’t part of *this* conversation. See, I don’t care about your black friend (though I do want you to reevaluate how you define friend if there’s any sort of power imbalance in the relationship since generally people don’t want to torpedo their career by telling a colleague off mid-meeting) or if you’re crying hot bitter tears about someone calling you a racist. Because that’s your problem to work out, and I will never think being called a bigot (especially after you say something ignorant) is more painful than being called a nigger. I’ve been called both over the years (and I’m sure someone will say I’m projecting), but I can laugh off bigot pretty easily while nigger always draws me up short for a second or ten. So no, I don’t care about fixing race relations by using the “right tone” or about comforting the “victims” of the crime that is being called a bigot.

I care about what racism is doing to little girls with Afro puffs sitting at the mirror and wishing for straight hair. I care about little boys that can’t quite imagine their dreams coming true because of the color of their skin. In these discussions about race and representation? It’s not about the dominant culture finding us worthwhile. It’s about making sure that our children can find themselves worthwhile. It’s about being able to see our reality instead of the ugly lies that pass as the stereotype of the week. So yes, while it is a TV show, it isn’t *just* a TV show. They say money is the root of all evil, and I suppose that’s technically true. But racism is the toxin in the water flowing over those roots and unless and until we manage to purify the stream, evil has more than a toe hold in this world. It will make sure the Tree of Life continues to bear a bitter fruit that poisons us all. Combating it will require more than laws, pretty words, and the occasional step forward in the recognition of racism. It’s hard internal work that we all have to do, even if we’re not all doing the same kind of work.

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Years ago, my favorite part of the Drew Carey show was the opening credits, which featured Drew, who is fat, dancing.¹ (Apparently Carey liked dancing — dance scenes were crowbarred into the story of several episodes, e.g..)

So if there’s a show featuring fat people dancing, I’ll give it a try, even if it’s a goddamn fucking weight loss show.

The dance part of the show is entertaining enough. The dancers aren’t as good as the dancers on So You Think You Can’t Dance (most of whom are professional dancers), so the choreography can’t be as interesting or challenging. But it was fun and perky, and often a lot of fun to watch.

So what about the fat politics? Well, for the most part, they’re awful. Being fat is constantly spoken of as the opposite of being healthy; that dancing, moving and eating well could be a good thing even for people who don’t lose weight isn’t even on the radar here. And, of course, the contestants are graded (or eliminated) based not only on how they dance, but on how much weight they lose. There are lots of tearful confessions connecting life goals (teaching their kids well, getting a girlfriend or boyfriend, etc) to losing weight, and the inevitable close-ups of the fat people eating fries, donuts, and the like.

So does it “work”? Do they lose weight? Of course they do. These fat people, for the weeks they’re on the show, are essentially full-time weight losers, in the most unrealistic environment imaginable. They don’t have jobs; they don’t take care of kids. They have a nutritionist, a work-out room with a dedicated trainer, and when they’re not in the work-out room, they’re dancing.

Like most weight-loss plans, it’ll work… for a while. The dancers will lose seemingly incredible amounts of weight — I’m guessing the ones who make it to the end will be 50-100 pounds lighter than their starting weight. But it’s not sustainable. Because, for the vast majority of fat weight losers, nothing is sustainable. Weight-loss plans don’t work. ²

And because this show is teaching contestants to measure victory mostly by their waistlines — not by a sense of accomplishment, or joy in movement, or good health measured in any way but weight — I worry that this will actually be bad for the dancers, in the long run, if they gain weight back and it makes them feel they’ve failed.

But it’s not all bad. Inevitably, despite itself, the show includes fat bodies moving, fat bodies being sexy, fat bodies being competent. Fat bodies, in short, dancing. It’s impossible not to notice that some of the fattest dancers, like Mara, are also the most talented. Heather MacAllister once said:³

Any time there is a fat person onstage as anything besides the butt of a joke, it’s political. Add physical movement, then dance, then sexuality and you have a revolutionary act.

I wouldn’t call “Dance Your Ass Off” revolutionary, or even really fat-positive. But it has fat-positive elements despite itself.

1. Actually, the show had a bunch of opening credit sequences over time, but at least a few of them were dance numbers. (back)
2. The show includes a professional con man — I mean, weight-loss doctor — as part of the cast. I’d really like to see a complete accounting of all his patients from prior to 2004, and how his services have helped them in the years since. (back)
3. Yeah, this is the second time I’ve quoted this in a month. (back)

…about all this “birther” crap, in which fine upstanding folk who are legitimate natural-born citizens of this fine country (the US of A, because we’re all from it or want to be from it, of course) incessantly and illogically question the fact that our president is also legitimately natural-born…

…is that they’re not crazy. They’re just fucking racists.

I mean, it’s obvious with the Republicans. They’re just using this shit (and other shit) to blow smoke over their attempt to scuttle single-payer healthcare. But all these individual teabagging crackpots who jump up at rallies and rant about Obama being from Kenya? They’re not really crackpots. They’re just the same old garden-variety racists we’ve always had, using “he’s not a citizen” as a euphemism for “he’s not completely white OMFG he’s got 50% black cooties straight outta Africa and I bet the White House smells funny now somebody go get a roooope!!!”

See, although African Americans are generally better-off than other racial groups in this one respect — we don’t get the “But where are you really from?” schtick quite as often as Asians and Latinos/as — there’s still quite a bit of feeling out there that we aren’t really Americans. Yeah, even though we built the place. Even though most of the people saying this aren’t really (Native) Americans either, if that’s how they want to play it. It all just comes down to one very simple fact: that “American”, in the minds of these people, equals one thing — white.

So it really doesn’t matter how much proof gets shown to confirm that Obama is too, really, truly, an American. The birthers aren’t going to buy it. Because the only proof these people will accept is a 100% European American genetic makeup, or 99.44% with the incriminating .66 hidden acceptably far back in the family tree. That worked for McCain — don’t see the “birthers” going after him, do you? But since that ain’t gonna happen in Obama’s case, they’re never going to shut up.

We don’t need a new term for the birthers. They’re just the usual plain, boring old racists wearing new clothes and chanting new slogans, because they’ve figured out that slurs and hate speech just don’t have the same cachet these days. But underneath the new trappings, they’re the same old shit. So can we please stop paying so much attention to them and get back to healthcare?

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Quite recently, something rather nasty happened to K. Tempest Bradford. On this blog, you know her as the angry black woman.

For various reasons, Harlan Ellison believed Tempest to have said some nasty things about her, so he wrote a publicly available letter which she discusses here. It contained the following paragraph (the “she” refers to Tempest):

She is apparently a Woman of Color (which REALLY makes me want to bee-atch-slap her, being the guy who discovered and encouraged one of the finest writers and Women of Color who ever lived, my friend, the recently-deceased Octavia Estelle Butler). And she plays that card endlessly, which is supposed to exorcise anyone suggesting she is a badmouth ignoramus, or even a NWA. Ooooh, did I say that?

Harlan later apologized to Tempest for this behavior, writing that:

Apparently, I received inadequate information, some of which I interpreted incorrectly, some of which was simply wrong.

Tempest accepted this apology. You can read his apology and her acceptance here.

I have no interest in dredging up the fight that caused these things to happen, and for all emotional intents and purposes the fight has been had and apologized for, and the apology accepted, said and done. However, this fight did happen in public, and I’m glad to see that the Carl Brandon society has written an open letter about it, outlining some guidelines that they hope science fiction and fantasy writers who are interested in opposing racism and sexism will bear in mind in the future.

The full text of the Carl Brandon society letter is here. Here’s an excerpt:

1) The use of racial slurs in public discourse is utterly unacceptable, whether as an insult, a provocation, or an attempt at humor. This includes both explicit use of slurs and referencing them via acronyms.

2) Any declaration of a marginalized identity in public is not a fit subject for mockery, contempt, or attack. Stating what, and who, you are is not “card playing.” It is a statement of pride. It is also a statement of fact that often must be made because it has bearing on discussions of race, gender, and social justice.

3) Expressing contempt for ongoing racial and gender discourse is unacceptable. Although particular discussions may become heated or unpleasant, discourse on racism and sexism is an essential part of antiracism and feminist activism and must be respected as such. There is no hard line between discourse and action in activism; contempt of the one too often leads to contempt of the whole.

I think these principles are abstractable to many contexts. Thanks to the Carl Brandon society for an intelligent response.

Hello, ABW readers!

I’m Alaya, as the Angry Black Woman already said, and though I read plenty of blogs, I don’t blog myself. I hope to make the most of this opportunity!

Here’s some of what particularly interests me:

• Literature, in pretty much all genres (I write fantasy and science fiction, mostly, but I will read almost anything). I have this wacky idea that perhaps one of the things I will do is re-read, or read for the first time, a lot of those classics of African American literature that most of us encountered in high school or college: Their Eyes Were Watching God, Beloved, Invisible Man, The Color Purple, Go Tell It on the Mountain, Native Son. If you have other suggestions, let me know in the comments.

• Television, but only certain shows. I don’t watch very much, but when I do, the obsession flower has its full bloom. Past favorites include Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly, Veronica Mars and X-Files. My current obsession is Supernatural (and I will argue with all comers about how good it is). Being a socially conscious person pretty much guarantees that I find some aspects of all these shows problematic (and I’ll probably post about why), but each of them has enough stuff that I love to make me overlook the questionable decisions.

• Japan. I majored in East Asian Languages and Cultures back in college and I still love and am interested in most things Japanese. I also lived there for four months. I started my love with Sailor Moon (also a great show! Don’t pay any attention to the dub!) and still watch anime occasionally. Favorites include Cowboy Bebop, Samurai Champloo (the best hip-hop/Samurai mashup ever made) and Kareshi Kanojo no Jijyo (His and Her Circumstances).

• Music. I grew up on blues and R&B from the fifties and sixties. When I was in high school, my parents had to talk me out of singing “Meet Me With Your Black Drawers On” for the school-wide talent contest. I have also had long arguments with my mother about how Poison Ivy isn’t actually about, uh, poison ivy. I have lately come to love rock and some modern alternative, but in general, I always have something playing in the background. My favorite musician of all time is Stevie Wonder.

• And, obviously, writing. But you can find all that stuff on my personal web page.

So, pleased to meet you. Here’s hoping this blogging experiment works out.

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