On Racism.

Posted as a comment to this article on white privilege.

I enjoyed your paper, and what struck me is that with a gentle twist, it could have been about a lot of other topics. The situations you discussed certainly were prime examples of ignorance and fear, which are two important ingredients of racism, but it seems to me that the authors in question could have been in any other group and come up against similar challenges.

I guess what I'm saying is that even if the person getting victimized by ignorance and fear belongs to a racial/ethnic minority, I'm not sure that it's actually racism unless their race or ethnicity is the deciding factor.

What if the picture on the cover of Liar had instead been of a man? Would the publisher's excuse be any more acceptable? Having not read the book, I can only imagine that the character could also be lying about her gender. Would it have been worse if it had been a white man? Black? Latino?

With regards to DeShawn Days, the removal of "crack vials" sounds like a white-washing of a minority's childhood experience, but would a children's book detailing a parent's alcoholism or violent abuse of a spouse be published without any of the less-friendly imagery being edited out? I assume the same reasons--teachers and children's librarians wouldn't buy it--would be cited.

And Ahmed's struggle with the title is poignant, but it seems to me that the industry is rife with stories like this; mistakes from the people who run the presses which, fearing the cost of correction, they refuse to change. I remember a scene in Taxi Driver where Albert Brooks is at a campaign office complaining to a vendor that the buttons they sent said, "WE are the people" instead of "We ARE the people". I'm not saying that it does not matter, but neither the mistake nor the follow-up were necessarily racism even though they can clearly be deconstructed as such.

I don't think we've moved beyond race here in America or anywhere else, any more than we've moved beyond sexism, classism or any number of isms. But I do think that in some cases, the root causes of behaviors that seem racist (or *-ist) are of more importance than the perceived -isms.

The publishers are afraid that people won't like it if kids see a book of dark poetry including drug imagery. Maybe there's room for a publisher who is not afraid. If that latter publisher makes a financial killing, then the more staid publisher will follow.

I assume that authors have contracts with regards to publication before those proofs come out. From what I hear, JK Rowling has had complete creative control since day one of the Harry Potter franchise. If an author doesn't like what a publisher is doing, they should be able to take their work and walk.

I don't have a solution for everything, but I think it may not be constructive to assume that, when there's a conflict between two people of different races--even when cultural differences exacerbate the conflict--that the core problem is racism and racism alone.