Sigh...

Also, even though the letter is covered by copyright, the Doctrine of Fair Use still applies. If just a short excerpt of the letter is reproduced, for purposes of criticism, in a non-profit context, for example.

I suppose this is about William Sanders' rejection letter.

As the managing editor of Helix, I'm the designated Speaker to Blogs at the moment, since William is traveling -- by motorcycle, so he has no computer along and has no net access. He left me in charge during his absence; this brouhaha had just begun to develop when he left.

So far I'm afraid I've made a mess or two, but let's see if I can clean up a bit.

The law says that letters, whether personal or business, cannot legally be published without the author's permission, though they can be shown around. The law, however, is really pretty irrelevant in this case. Nobody's invoking it. We do think it was bad form to post the letter in full without any explanation of the context, i.e., the story it refers to and previous correspondence, but nothing more than bad form, and the author who received it has indeed apologized, and the apology was accepted. No one asked for the letter to be taken down, nor will such a request be forthcoming, since it would be completely pointless.

Several people do seem to have misinterpreted it; the references in the letter to "those people" are indeed specifically directed at terrorists, not Muslims in general, since the story in question is about terrorists. I'm fairly sure the story's author understood that; I certainly hope he did.

The only possible ethnic slur is the term "sheet heads." Once again, that was intended to refer to radical Islam, rather than Muslims in general, but I acknowledge it may be an unfortunate choice of words.

But then, it wasn't intended for publication.

Beyond that, not having read the story and not being William Sanders, I am not equipped to say much. There will be no official response from William to the furor until he returns home, if then. That may be in a week or so. I would hope most of this will have blown over by then.

Wow.

@3 Wow, that's some pretty pathetic apologism, right there.

I suppose if the editor had lived in Harlem for a couple of years and used a different racial epithet, you would be explaining that he was only refering to *criminal* negroes.

Lawrence, I recognize that you're in a difficult position here, but Sanders' claim that he was just talking about terrorists? I don't believe him. Nick Mamatas does a good job of demolishing those claims in the comment thread on Tobias Buckell's blog.

It's pathetic apologism because I'm not trying to apologize. I'm explaining why William Sanders isn't speaking for himself -- he has no net access, and won't for several days. I can't speak for him beyond a few things he mentioned before his departure.

Anyone who's coming in blind and wants to know about this brouhaha, Google "Sanders rejection letter."

Whereas I do believe him, Avram, because I've known him online for about ten years, and while William's a cantankerous old bastard, I have never seen any sign he's any sort of racist. I know his style, and his words in that rejection letter are very much in line with his comments about terrorists elsewhere. He's taken pride in publishing several authors of color in Helix, and has tried to make the SF field a little less whitebread.

He and Nick Mamatas have disliked each other for years; I would look at anything Nick said about him with a jaundiced eye.

Lawrence, you know I like you, but no one with any sense buys the idea that when Sanders raved about "the worm-brained mentality of those people" and claimed that "most of the SF magazines are very leery of publishing anything that might offend the sheet heads", he was making a careful distinction between "Muslims in general" and "terrorists." Because, you know, nobody thinks that even William Sanders is crazy enough to assert that "most of the SF magazines" are afraid to publish anything that would offend terrorists. Obviously he meant Muslims in general. He knows it, everyone with any sense knows it, and you know it, and I don't know why you're retailing defenses of this obvious nonsense.

Say what you will about Nick Mamatas; try to brush him aside because he and Sanders dislike each other--I'm not close to either of them, and I don't care about that. What I know is that Mamatas absolutely has the drop on Sanders' claims that he was only referring to "terrorists." As Mamatas points out, if this is true, what does it do to Sanders' claim of familiarity with the people under discussion? Sanders can't have it both ways; if his splenetic comments were meant to refer only to "terrorists," then he was claiming to have spent his time in the Middle East hanging out with terrorists. You can't brush off an observation of this caliber by noting that Mamatas and Sanders don't like each other.

Yes, yes, William Sanders is a brave truthteller and we're all PC police determined to silence him. Also, he's part Cherokee! This proves it!

Wow. When he says nobody in the "civilized world" can understand the wormy mentality of those people, even if he meant terrorists, he still says people in the uncivilized world are capable of understanding them.

You know what really ticks me off? When Americans say they don't understand terrorists. I just can't get over that. Like Americans (or any Homo sapiens) can't comprehend the basic deep desire to kill enemies even if you die yourself. Even the Dukes of Hazzard used IEDs. You can't tell me shooting dynamite arrows at local law enforcement isn't equivalent to terrorism. And that was on prime-time television! In the "civilized world"!

I don't blame him for trying to back and fill, though. And I really don't blame him for unplugging and hightailing it on his bike until the heat dissipates. That's pretty smart, actually -- keeps him from putting his foot further into his mouth, for one thing.

Actually, knowing William's style and the context, I find it easy to believe that "the worm-brained mentality of those people" refers only to terrorists. He claimed to be familiar with Islam from his time in Turkey, yes, and complimented the author on getting it right. He then shifted gears to discussing the story's central character, who is a terrorist.

The other quote is obviously another matter.

Whether William Sanders is a brave truthteller, I wouldn't know; mostly I know he's a grouchy old man who didn't intend this letter to be published, who therefore wrote it carelessly, and who isn't around to defend himself because he's gone to see his hospitalized wife, who is a couple of hundred miles from home because there's nowhere closer that can handle her case.

Oh, William understands the desire to kill enemies just fine. It's indiscriminately killing people he doesn't get.

Nor does saying no one in the civilized world can understand such a mindset imply that everyone in the uncivilized world can. "No A is B" does not imply "Not-A is B."

As for his departure, he'd been planning this trip for some time. There's no connection with the current furor; it's just unfortunate timing.

I'm not sure how it's releant to his bigotry that his wife is ill. Was there a reason you shared personal details about his life here on the internet other than to illicit sympathy? Because I can't imagine that he took the time to email you and tell you that was okay.

and while William's a cantankerous old bastard, I have never seen any sign he's any sort of racist.

"Who are you going to believe: me, or your own lying eyes?"

His wife's illness has nothing to do with the letter in question, no. It is why he's away, though, as he has said publicly in his newsgroup on SFF Net; I'm hardly revealing any personal secrets.

I'm not so much fishing for sympathy there as losing my temper. I like William, and I resent that he's going to have the knowledge niggling at him while he's gone that he's the subject of a great deal of nasty, ill-informed commentary, and that he's going to come home from an emotionally-draining trip to a mountain of accumulated hassle.

(BTW, it's "elicit," not "illicit.")

Word of advice: If you're losing your temper, go for a walk or something. It's the internet. It will stil be here when you get back, and if you're getting angry you're probably not sounding like you mean to when defending someone.

You've said your piece. People will accept it or not according to their way. You don't need to repeat it, and you're going to make yourself ill trying to keep up with it.

I like William

Then one would think you'd feel he ought to KNOW just how far out of line he was, so he can correct it and be better appreciated for his fine qualities. Which I believe you that he has.

I can think of a few reasons for someone who is not racist or bigoted to write something like that, but none of them are compatible with being fluent in English and literate enough to edit a magazine.

Not that you're going to listen to me, but 1) The man is BUSTED LIKE A CHEAP WATCH, and 2) You're making the fallout worse.

He's a cranky old curmudgeon
and his words are like a bludgeon
and he's cycled off in dudgeon
and that's... actually not at all good enough for me.

This has been all over my LJ-Friendslist this morning, and as I've been reading about it my jaw has been dropping further and further, so maybe I really could swallow a camel at this point.

It seems to me that there comes a point where one has a private communication that one would normally keep private but in this especial instance making public what it says is more important than that normal expectation. This is whistleblowing, and this is important, and it's an important precedent that this is OK.

I probably am making the fallout worse, and intellectually I know that. I've stayed quiet in most venues, and generally resisted the temptation to stuff my foot farther down my throat, but it's hard. I'm trying to only address specific details and reply to specific questions.

Alas, that often doesn't help, as then I get accused of dodging the bigger issues.

The timing on this sucks, it really does.

As for whether William's literate enough to edit a magazine, you could always go read the magazine in question -- it's free, after all, and up for a Hugo. I admit to being biased, but I think we've published some very fine work. You can also get a look at some of William's own commentary on the SF field by reading the editorials. (All the old issues are available in the archives.)

I think there's a checklist someplace on the internet that you must be following.

1. He can't be racist, I know him, and he's a great guy!

2. He can't be racist, because he does really good work, so even if he is, it doesn't count!

3. He can't be racist, and let me tell you how he's stressed out now because of how he's being called out for this! Because it's everyone else's job to ignore it, not his job to have not said something racist in the first place!

Take a break. You are following a well-worn path that others before you have, and it is making you sound very foolish.

There's one telling point no one has yet to mention. The term "sheet head" is clearly a reference to Arab headdress - aqul and guthra. First, not all Muslims wear such headdress (and it's certainly not common in Turkey). Second, not all Arabs who wear aqul and guthra are Muslim.

I am not following that checklist.

If you look back at my very first post here, you'll see that I most definitely did not say it's everyone else's job to ignore it. We know perfectly well that it's going to be discussed at absurd length and that any attempt to prevent that would only make matters worse.

I commented here in the first place to reiterate that we did not try to suppress the letter once it was posted. The staff of Helix is not among those trying to "use copyright law as a stick" or "suppress discussion of their actions," nor were we amazed to see the letter posted.

Dismayed, perhaps, but not amazed.

And with that said again, I'm going to bed. I expect there will be a zillion more comments waiting for me in the morning.

Well, yes. The comments might *just* be defensible on their own - at a stretch - a Plastic Man stretch - if it wasn't for, y'know, the racist epithet.

I think Nick nailed it.

But, just as a gedanken experiment, what if he didn't? What if Mr. Sanders is, as some claim, saying that "terrorists" are subhuman, and incapable of thought, and lacking in "human qualities."

Well, now where are we? A lot closer to understanding how American soldiers can be brainwashed into torturing prisoners and murdering civilians; and we're still confronting an attitude that would make any civilized human being blush with shame.

No, I think Nick is right. But even if he's wrong it doesn't gain a whole lot for Mr. Sanders.

As for whether William's literate enough to edit a magazine, you could always go read the magazine in question -- it's free, after all, and up for a Hugo.

That was my point. Kind of raises the bar for selling "he expressed himself badly" as an explanation, you know?

Lawrence, I know you have an LJ, and there's probably lots of comments there waiting for you.

But honestly, everyplace else that this is being discussed? Let it go. You aren't doing yourself or your friend any good. I know it sucks. I really do. But you've already admitted that in defending him you're digging a big hole. Stop. You can't do anything more at this point, and arguing about it here or elsewhere will not win friends and influence people. It will make you look foolish, like every other person who makes excuses for someone's racist behaviour.

You don't have a responsibility here. I know it feels like it, but you really don't. The only person who can do anything about what Mr Sanders wrote is Mr Sanders. And that will have to wait till he is able to do something, which obviously is not now, and may not be for some time due to his trip.

I hope you get lots of rest, and please consider what I've written.

Just to forestall some wasted effort:

When William is available to post again, if he chooses to respond, he will say that "racist" is an entirely inappropriate charge, since Islam is not an ethnicity but a religion. You will not win an argument on this point, either - William is nothing if not persistent. :) Furthermore, as a point of technicality, he's right. William is not in fact criticizing non-Muslims of Arab, Persian, Turkish, or any other ethnic background; he is criticizing adherents of Islam, which he regards as a particularly dangerous set of superstitions. If you want to argue that he's being bigoted toward a religion, carry on, but make sure you know what you're aiming at, as William is fierce in pouncing on misdirected attacks. (Some of the back-and-forths I've had with him on various subjects have really done me good in sharpening my rhetoric and reading, and continue to influence my style.)

Also, as others have noted, William isn't white. He's Cherokee. Knowing this will save some wasted effort on insults or arguments based on the whiteness of an anti-Muslim claim's maker.

I offer these in hopes of more useful and less pointless exchanges, if and when the opportunity arises.

Linkmeister@8: I googled 'Sanders rejection letter' and the first hit was...this page. So I came back! Whee, better than the carousel! :D

The second link on Google was William Preston's LJ, which is where it seems to have kicked off, but I'm momentarily distracted by unfond memories of spending an entire Christmas plowing through Middlemarch. Also, he removed the text of the letter, so I'm still not sure what it said, apart from snippets elsewhere.

*reads snippets*

Okay, so one of those snippets says: '...and I was pleased to see that you didn’t engage in the typical error of trying to make this evil bastard sympathetic, or give him human qualities.'

Hmmm. As someone currently writing about Nazis - who are, I must tell you, Very Very Bad - I disagree with him and quote Chekhov:

'You abuse me for objectivity, calling it indifference to good and evil, lack of ideas and ideals, and so on. You would have me, when I describe horse thieves, say: "Stealing horses is an evil." But that has been known for ages without my saying so. Let the jury judge them; it's my job simply to show what sort of people they are.'

When William is available to post again, if he chooses to respond, he will say that "racist" is an entirely inappropriate charge, since Islam is not an ethnicity but a religion.

Nope, won't wash. See my earlier comment. The term "sheet head" is a reference to Arabs, not Muslims.

Bruce @28 - if we lived in a world in which there was not a strong cultural association between Arabs and Islam, then maybe. But 'sheet-heads'? 'The civilized world?'

If I were to talk about Jews and describe them as 'manipulative,' 'deceitful,' and contrast them with 'settled peoples', and talk about, say, 'Yiddish jabber' nobody would believe my claim that I just held Judaism to be a particularly harmful set of superstitions, and I had nothing against non-religious Jews. There's clearly a racial element here. It doesn't mean the writer is a broad-spectrum racist, of course, but race, culture, and religion are very tightly tied together when it comes to the fashionable bigotry of our day.

JamesP, I'm not attempting to defend William's usage. (My own take is that there are times it just doesn't matter what's technically correct when popular usage is sufficiently other. William's response has in the past included the idea that he's not about to take a burden of collective guilt for other people's sloppiness.) I'm just pointing out foreseeable pitfalls.

The Cherokee do have a problem with racism. They were slave traders. A Cherokee chief, Stand Watie, was the last Confederate general to surrender. More recently, the Cherokee voted to exclude the descendants of their black slaves from the tribe (and the tribe's gambling wealth), even though many of those people were culturally Cherokee, living the life and speaking the language.

On the other hand, Sanders is just a racist.*

* In the modern sense that race equals ethnicity.

Ah, the "it's not racism if it's not about *race*" thing.

Problem is, THERE ARE NO HUMAN RACES. The fact itself that you establish a distinction between "racims" and "other stuff" sorta proves that you are a racist.

Because, well, how do you say that somebody is, say, an Arab? Is a half-British person whose mother is Egyptian Arab? Well, that's hard isn't it? There have been people in Egypt long before the tribes from the Arabian Peninsula swept there, and who is to say what part of her genes is "Arab"? And frankly, y'know, it's not as if people aren't mixed up plenty. Time it was when a geneticist did a DNA examination of the people residing in Italy and found that there were only two groups genetically diverse enough to be told apart - in Tuscany and in Sardenia.

There are no human races. The "race" idea in America mostly applies to descendant of African slaves; but Africa is such a genetically diverse mix that the only thing that distinguish these people is the color of their skin, a very superficial characteristic, and one, as we know, that is not "really" important because there are black people who can "pass" and they are certainly still considered black or mixed "race" at best.

There are no human races. Not only we are all, of course, capable of producing offsprings, we are all made up of far more diverse genes than people believe - including African genes in James Watson.

I have pale skin but very, very curly hair, which nobody in my family has. And I was born in one of those crucibles of the human race, the bit were Italy joins up with the East. My curly hair could come from stray genes from Carthaginians, from Romans, from Spaniards, from Lybian, yeah verily, even from Lebanese merchants who had some desert tribe blood in them, from Celts, from a visiting freaking Bushman for all I know.

And you Anglo-Saxons? Is the name a hint? Just because you (I don't mean any particuar you) are ginger-haired do you think no Roman general descendant from Nubian warriors contributes to your makeup?

As for "he's not white he's Cherokee", give me a break. What does that have anything to do with anything else? When I was in America I kept insisting that I wasn't white, I was Italian. And you know what, there was a time when being Irish or Italian was, if not as bad as being black, certainly pretty close to it. But right now? I am white, whether I like it or not.

Because race, my friend, is in the eye of the beholder. Race is the square hole bigoted people push you in, no matter how round you are.

And if you hate and despise people based on one fact you know about them, their faith or lack of it, their skin color, their class, their gender, their lack of gender, the way the choose to entertain themselves in the privacy of their own bedrooms or out there in the public square - then, my friend, you are the same sort of shit whatever you choose to call your bigotry and if you keep wasting your breath by tracing lines in the sand, then it's your own humanity that you are condemning.

Sorry, rant over.

BTW, I had met William Sanders long before this incident, and had formed a pretty strong opinion of him as definitely sexist and all-round unpleasant. My own reaction to this latest incident was "It's William Saunders we're talking about. Why is everybody acting all surprised?"

Somebody please remind me of what he said back in the days of Ellisongate?

What was this about again? Ah yes, Patrick's belief that ancient astronauts built the pyramids. I remember now.
Unfortunately, Xenu has sent an angry missive requesting that we remove all images of the secret decoder device from our interwebs. In his letter (which he has told me that I cannot repost because he's enacting Section 5 a.1.42 of the Interspace Binary Information Protection Act) her does however refer to the entire human race as barely evolved but hyper-caffeinated apes.
We are ignoring his slanderous comment because he is you know, good ol' Xenu.

"The fact itself that you establish a distinction between 'racims' and 'other stuff' sorta proves that you are a racist." Um. Really? But if "THERE ARE NO HUMAN RACES" how can somebody be "racist"? I mean, on the one hand you seem to be saying that "racism" =cannot= be a meaningful label because there ain't no such thing as "race"; you then use the term "racist" in a way that causes me to suspect that you believe it to be meaningful after all.

Me, I rather thought the point the writer was making (or trying to make, in any event) was about =terms=, not about substance. As in, "better to choose a more accurate/better/real term to talk about the matter at hand, because 'racism' doesn't apply." As in: pretty much the same point that you appear to me to be making here with a different set of supporting details.

But I'm feeling stupid about my ability to put words together this morning. So I hope you understand my discomfort with your opening paragraphs (but not the rest of your post, which seems accurate and unobjectionable to me). If not, this forum is full of smart people who are good with words--perhaps one of them will be able to ferret out what I'm trying to say and do a better job of saying it. (This here paragraph is not, what?, "sarcastic"? "Clever"? It's straight truth of how I feel/think at the moment, but, again, probably not stated well enough nor to be easily misunderstood.)

'He claimed to be familiar with Islam from his time in Turkey.'

Then he's a fool, on top of everything else.

Turkey's really a very atypical place, in all sorts of ways, and Turkish Islam isn't all that representative of anything except...well, Turkish Islam. (The bars in Istanbul do very well in Ramadan, for example...I doubt that's true in Riyadh)

Lawrence Watt-Evans -

So far I'm afraid I've made a mess or two, but let's see if I can clean up a bit.

I think you failed, you shoulda known better than to have made the attempt you're making. You're not doing any good for Helix here from my perspective. You're making more of a mess.

And it looks like there more mess from Sanders too - he's alleged to have baned people who complained about his words in a public forum from submitting to Helix.

(When I saw him in that thread defending those views, rather than apologizing for them, I knew I had to speak out, even though it meant (as he informed me privately afterward) that I’d never be pub’d in Helix again. ::shrug:: So be it.) - From Nora over at Tobias Buckell's blog

I wonder - is he keeping a private list of everyone who's taken a side against him on this issue? Is Nora lying? Or was he once again 'misinterpreted'?

LWE #13: Without wanting to fan the flames too much (I can agree with #12 that the subjects of vague references can shift even between consecutive sentences, though people's reading of that will vary), I'd like to say that no, "No A is B" does in fact rather strongly imply "(At least) some not-A is B", certainly in the fuzzy logic of natural language with its four maxims of relevance etc (I'm never able to find them on Wikipedia when I need them) and for most ordinary values of B; both generally and in this particular example and context. Otherwise there's no reason to connect the two at all and not to say just "there is no B".

And back to on-topic, PNH's (original) links: It is well known that Google is a service provider directory that links users to an online location. - actually, I had no idea!

Reading John W. Campbell's correspondence would be more entertaining if I hadn't spent a couple of decades reading half-baked rants on Usenet and in the blogosphere.

Just another little snapshot:

Sanders writes an unprofessional and racist* rejection letter to some guy.

Guy posts it.

Lots of people link to it and complain.

A few other people whine that copyright is being violated.

A few others also complain that posters such as Tempest Bradford and Toby Buckell are a "lynch mob". (Oh those black people and their lynch mobs! Will they ever learn?)

This becomes, through the agency of Sanders's running buddy, a moral referendum...on me? (One that I'm winning, but still.)

*And yes, despite not being a "race", clearly Islam has been nearly as racialized as Judaism. Plenty of people on the trains to nowhere a few decades ago were utterly indifferent to the religion of their ancestors and many practiced other religions.

@36 Words sometimes are substance. When you huff and puff so much to distinguish between "racism" and "other bigotry", trying to obfuscate the fact that "other bigotry" is not better, you are ALSO implying that you believe that race is indeed a concept that has any validity. That is what being a racist means: believing that races exist, that a hierarchy can be established between them, and that people can be assigned to one or the other on the basis of, well, how dark their skin is, mostly, historically.

People who say "no no I am not a racist I just can't stand Belgians, but hey, you are born black but nobody stops you from emigrating out of Belgium and giving up your citizenship so if you remain Belgian it's a choice" are trying to imply that racism is more hideous because it classifies people on the basis of things they can't help, while their particular kind of bigotry classified people on the basis of some other characteristic that they perceive as a personal choice.

But it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if homosexual are born that way or choose to be. It doesn't matter if people convert to Islam (btw, apparently the fastest-growing religion in the USA right now) or just have Muslim gene. It still comes down to spitting insults to a whole bunch of people who are not one uniform mass, are not robots, are not subhumans.

Incidentally - not even terrorists are subhuman. But of course, if I were to go on in this vein I would have to start talking about "no, Our People who did that stuff were not REAL terrorists, because they didn't kill civilians/only killed civilians by mistake / killed cvilians but couldn't really help it / did it for a right cause / only killed a few people / had to defend themselves / were real soldiers with a real uniform / the other guys were worse /in the end saved more people than they killed / were really kind to kittens and puppies / oh look a butterfly! / etc, etc, etc."

One point that I've only seen mentioned indirectly is that the message involved was not a personal communication; it was a business letter sent in the name of Helix, and therefore can be considered to represent the editorial position of the magazine. Even if Mr. Sanders sincerely believes that his words were in no way offensive to anyone other than a terrorist, was writing that letter, no matter how private it may have remained in the event, a professionally justifiable act? The only way I can think that it would be is if Sanders is absolute ruler of the magazine, and no one else at Helix has any input on its policies or public image. This may in fact be true, but it certainly doesn't make me feel any better about the qualities and professionalism of Helix.

And what Bill Higgins said.

"Oh, you have a Scottie dog! A friend of mine has a few Scottie dogs, so I know what they're like. *pause, cough, pause* Those dogs should all be shot and incinerated." Some words require clear antecedents. Anything else is poor communication.

I said it on the comment thread originally, and I may just keep repeating it. If what you say isn't what you mean, then you are not saying it right.

As a person of colour who is regularly taken for a Muslim and an Arab, though I am neither (having brown skin and a beard does the job), I assure you that I find the term 'sheet head' to be racist. To say that it applies to 'terrorists' and not to 'Muslims' is as obfuscatory and as stupid as saying that 'nigger' doesn't mean 'all black people', just the 'lazy and shiftless ones'.

To use such phrasing in a business communication is to put the full weight and authority of the organisation behind it, to implicate the organisation in the bigotry, the racism, the xenophobia, the religious hostility, and the stupidity of its agent. There's no way around that.

Anna @34, well-said.

As a token recovering anthropologist, let me agree that it is perfectly possible to have racism when there are, objectively speaking, no human "races." Because as Anna says, race is in the eye of the beholder. It's whatever criteria you use to establish an Us vs. Them mentality.

Yer average modern pale-skinned American might assume that a Pequot and a Mohawk were the same "race," but the Pequot and the Mohawk would beg to differ. Likewise, your white northern European might think everybody in all the nations of subSaharan Africa is the same "race," but again, if you were to ask a primary source, you'd get a very different answer. (Incidentally, some ridiculously high percentage of all human variation is present in the indigenous populations of Africa; the fact that most Africans have dark skin adapted to a massive UV exposure does not make them genetically any more alike than, say, those Mohawks and the English settlers in Massachusetts.)

"Race" does not exist as an objective quality. It is assigned from the outside, by the observer.

I could arbitrarily say that all blue-eyed people are one race and all brown-eyed people are another, that hazel-eyed people are the result of miscegenation and to be shunned, that gray-eyed people are assigned to the blue-eyed group, and that green-eyed people will be shot as witches, and it would make about as much sense as our cultural preconceptions about race.

In my opinion, it's much more productive to talk about culture, religion, and ethnicity, which is often what we really mean when we say "race," but to handle the conversation that way requires that we pause for a moment and think with nuance rather than reacting on a gut level.

But when we call somebody on racism, what we are reacting to is their othering (assigning of "race") to another group of human beings. "Racism" occurs when some person(s) wishes to be able to say "those people, not like us people" as a categorical statement and have it go unchallenged.

(Like William Sanders, I'm part Cherokee too. You sure wouldn't know it to look at me, and culturally, that influence is all gone from my family. If it ever had much of a foothold to begin with. Does that mean I can't be a racist? Does my understanding of the fact that race as we use the term does not objectively exist, and that it's a holdover from some rather obscene Victorian and pre-Victorian ideas about God's intentions for the human species mean that I can't be a racist? Well, alas. No. Because the English language mocks prescriptivists, and words mean what people use them to mean, and the fact that "corn" originated as a catchall term for grains does not make it any less plain what an Indianan means when he says "sweet corn.")

Jan Vaněk jr. @ #39

four maxims of relevance etc (I'm never able to find them on Wikipedia when I need them)

Oh my. How anyone can possibly think that the issue here is copyright or whether or not the author should have posted the letter is beyond me.
I can't imagine any person of good conscience, receiving a business communication of any kind containing such bigotry, not trying to expose the author for the bigot he or she is.
Honestly, there is no defense for this. The fact that the author removed the posting--and apologized for it--makes me sad. The fact that he then defended the letter makes me plain old angry.

Ugh, what a world.

Also--I think a couple of people (#30, #31 #34), maybe misread Bruce Baugh's post at #28. Or did I? It sounded like he was preparing people to confront Sanders by describing his favored rhetorical strategies (semantic pirouettes rather than honest discussion); I didn't take it to mean that he subscribed to the same ideas.
Did I miss something?

As a white guy with privilege in most situations, I try hard not to lecture anyone about race issues in the US. But I will say that, living outside and watching non-white on non-white bigotry has been an eye opener. Watching how progressives other cultures actually deal with condemning racism, and how hard it is for them to get anywhere in that argument has been eye opening.

White culture, in the US, Europe, and Australia has race problems. But we're pretty damn vocal about it. it's something I'm proud of - that we can be, and we're not shamed into silence because "one does not speak of such things" rules.

I'm glad that we're having this conversation today.

Anna:

To put it another way, a race like "black" or "Arab" exists just as much as, say, a literary genre like "science fiction" exists. In both cases, it's something assigned by a significant number of people, simply because it means something to them.

There isn't necessarily any objective rhyme or reason as to why one book is considered SF and another isn't, but I'd imagine anyone working in SF publishing had better have a good working model of the concept, so they can market effectively. (They may well choose to ignore or break down the boundaries of the genre, and that can often be a good thing. But they also need to know what the genre is considered to be. Of course, our gracious hosts have long personal experience in this field that I don't; so believe them over me if they say I'm all wet here.)

Similarly, "race" is essentially a social construct, one that varies by society. (As I've said before, I often think it most useful to think of "race" as "ethnicity with persistent, pervasive caste issues"; and different societies have different ideas of what their castes are.)

I think you'd find nearly everyone here in favor of breaking down ethnic caste hierarchies. But that doesn't mean they have to pretend they don't exist in society, much less be considered a racist if they decline to play that game.

"But what about other bigotry?" you might ask. Well, that's bad too, but the case in front of us happens to involve racism, among other things. Insisting that one cannot talk about a specific case at hand, but only in more general, abstract terms, can be a way of distracting from (and thereby diminishing) the immediate problem. Done deliberately or to an extreme (though I don't think you intended it this way yourself) it can end up functioning as apology for bigotry.

(You see this not infrequently in sexism threads: e.g. the argument that, because sexism exists to some extent against men as well as women, any women complaining about a specific sexist incident against her should stop her whining because other people get mistreated too. I'm pretty sure this is on Flamer Bingo cards somewhere; I see it often enough...)

Anna #42: As a nitpick, there is a fuzzy biological definition for race, in the sense that it's apparently pretty easy to classify most people as belonging mostly to one identifiable race based only on their genes. To the extent that race is taken to mean "continent from which most of your ancestors came," it's got a biological meaning. (It also has a cultural meaning, which is somewhat related to the biological meaning.) Here is a link to a paper describing this. (It's not real surprising though, as you can see by imagining drawing out a family tree for different people, and seeing how many people they had in common, say, 20 generations back.)

But as you pointed out in #42, this isn't too important. In terms of morality, there's not too much difference between "I hate you for having black skin" and "I hate you for being steeped in American black culture," say. (That's distinct from hating some aspects of American black culture, naturally.)

More generally, there are a whole bunch of ways to invoke the "us/them" circuitry in peoples' minds. That circuitry is dangerous to invoke, since it lets people justify almost limitless nastiness to "them" on behalf of "us," so it's important to minimize the use of that circuitry. Invoking it with respect to race and religion has such a bad history among people that we've broadly agreed to try to minimize it. (Unfortunately, there's still plenty of us/them circuitry invoked on racial grounds explicitly among black political leaders and thinkers. This strikes me as wrong and destructive, FWIW.)

KimR, #48: I think you read Bruce Baugh's #28 exactly right; he was cataloguing Sanders' various rhetorical strategies in arguments of this sort. I've been reading Bruce online for years and I wouldn't for a moment believe he was endorsing any of those strategies.

It's also worth noting that the flap over this isn't a case of hypervigilant people jumping down a guy's throat over one ill-considered remark. Sanders has years of history impressing people in the SF field with his temperament. I'm sure he has many virtues, and I've read at least a couple of very good short stories under his byline, but fairly or not, when his name comes up in conversation, his virtues often aren't what's being discussed.

Race is a social construct. It's one matter whether race qua social construct "exists" in any meaningful sense. But in the here-and-now race is meaningful and it has real power, even if we insist otherwise. Treating race as real does not necessarily make you a racist any more than treating gender as real makes you a sexist. It makes you a pragmatist.

To reduce racism, sexism, xenophobia, etc., down to a basic human "us vs. them" impulse sweeps aside a lot of important details, and misses the point.

But this is all getting away from the real topic, which is how hopelessly racist William Sanders is. Complaining about the letter being put online clearly didn't work. It is also not a good strategy to go running around the Internet saying "No he's not, racists kick puppies and William Sanders loves puppies!". He drops ethnic slurs in business correspondence. He thinks MUSLIMS = ARABS = TERRORISTS = EEEEBIL. He's a bloody racist.

My [cynical] bet is that his response will be "I'm sorry if you were offended", focusing on those oversensitive, touchy, wimpy people in the audience, and not on whatever mysterious force did the offending. AFAIK that's the usual procedure in these cases.

Ian Sales @ 22 and 30:
There's one telling point no one has yet to mention. The term "sheet head" is clearly a reference to Arab headdress - aqul and guthra.

I'm not sure what point you're trying to make, but claiming this term is "clearly" directed against a specific form of Arab headgear, and must therefore only be referring to Arabs, is highly dubious; from the quoted statements, I doubt Sanders was being that hairsplittingly precise and narrow about the target of his bigotry.

And as a matter of (unpleasant) fact, people use "sheet head" and the obvious parallel terms ("towel-", "rag-", etc.) to refer to headdress/turban-wearing Muslims in general, including Iranians and Afghans.

(This doesn't stop it also being a racist/ethnic slur, most often directed against Arabs and no doubt originating in that sense. But claiming that it is only used that one way isn't correct.)

#48 Re your comment about Bruce Baugh's post at #28. Your reading is the same as mine.

I think some people have not been reading carefully. But, except for feeling bad that he (Bruce Baugh) may feel under attack himself, I have enjoyed the posts responding to him.

Lawrence, I hope you don't know what I'm talking about, because the last couple of weeks at Boing Boing have been damned unedifying; but trust me, this situation could get a lot worse.

There's no use arguing about how to read the letter. The facts (whatever they are) aren't the point. Sanders wrote in pithy demotic English, and you're not going to convince anyone that they couldn't tell what he meant by it. Arguing copyright will just get you into endless fair use arguments, and then people will start digging up all those many instances where no one objected to writers quoting editorial letters. In your position, I'd put down the shovel and wait out the fuss. Time, short memories and the natural desire to be published will do more to repair this than words ever could.

By the way, the William Sanders I'm seeing quoted sounds just like the one I've encountered online; but if it really doesn't match your experience of him, you should encourage him to see a doctor.

Bruce Baugh (28):

"William is nothing if not persistent. :)"

I have seen him surprised on that score.

Anna (34), well said.

Nick Mamatas (41): Somebody referred to Toby Buckell and Tempest Bradford as a lynch mob? That makes my brain hurt.

Fragano (45), it's a pleasure to see you get out the howitzer.

Bear (46): My working theory is that Americans have a thing about blacks being a completely separate race because slavery is much easier to administer if you've got an automatic visual cue that tells you whether someone is slave or free. Blacks were visually distinctive; initially, there wasn't an established population of free blacks to confuse the issue; and they were easily purchased. I believe our European ancestors would just as readily have taken ethnic Chinese, if they'd been available for sale at one corner of the Triangle Trade; and that if they had, they'd have told themselves that there were profound and ineradicable differences between whites and orientals.

John Mark Ockerbloom (50): Book categories aren't that arbitrary. What they actually mean is that if you like one book that's labeled science fiction, you'll probably like other books that have that label. Granted, this breaks down at the edges; but it's what the center is about.

Tlonista (53): He's a racist; he doesn't have the sense to be decently hypocritical about it; and few people who hear the story are moved to protest that it's just not like him to do that. All kinds of bad judgement are present in this situation. Meanwhile, a flock of chickens appears on the horizon, homeward bound with roosting on their minds.

Wow.

Patrick posts links about how Google fellated the Scientologists, and all anyone wants to discuss is William Sanders's, uh, hyperactive use of the English language. (Grass is green, sky is blue.)

It's unfortunate this is happening because Helix is a fine online magazine and this will only hurt.

I think Sanders was a dunderhead for writing such a rejection letter. I don't know what he was thinking but clearly it wasn't very clearly.

It's very sad.

My first thought was: "Was William Sanders drunk when he wrote that letter?"

Sanders is an alcoholic. At the 1998 Nebulas, after losing a Nebula to another writer, he drowned his sorrows at the bottom of a bottle of Scotch. His subsequent behavior was such that several people seriously proposed that he should be banned from SFWA functions thereafter.

As I recall, after that debacle, Sanders admitted his problem with alcohol and, iirc, began attending AA.

Even if he's stayed dry since, there is the phenomenon of "dry drunk" behavior, where even if one is sober, the behavioral patterns of those alcoholic years continue to resurface.

That was my thought.

I wrote this awhile back in responce to someone using the term "towel-head" and then saying he hadn't meant it in a racist way. I thought about updating it (or starting anew) to make it applicable to "sheet-head", but I'm lazy. I think its relevant enough as it is, despite line 5...

On the Possible Meanings of Towel-Head

We might all be way off base
We could've missed his meaning
It might be a sunbather with a burnt face
And not at all demeaning

A sheetless child playing ghost
Would also fit his image
No need here for the whipping post
No reason for a scrimmage

And what about those newly showered?
Would they not fit his words?
No, it's less of a stretch to think he's soured
On the Turks, Arabs, and Kurds

(Oh, and for the record, I really thought Sanders should have won that Nebula in 1998.)

I was amused to see Sanders retaliating by banning people from his magazine. Of course he banned the person who posted the rejection letter; no surprise, and many would do the same. But he also banned a writer who'd published a couple stories in Helix for criticizing him in this kerfuffle, and that's just pathetic.

I hope that the publicity from this results in a noticeable drop in good submissions. I've never seen any evidence online that Sanders is capable of learning anything from anyone, and I'm sure any lessons he chose to learn from the decline of his magazine would have more to do with the perfidy of others than his own foolishness, but it would still be satisfying to observe.

Fragano, #45: Hear, hear! Bad enough that he said it at all, but that he said it on company letterhead, in his Official Voice as company representative? No excuses need apply.

JimR, #48: That was my reading as well -- Bruce was warning people about Sanders' common troll-tropes, and offering tips on how to avoid giving them purchase.

And a general question concerning the "copyright" red herring: would it have made any difference if, instead of quoting the text of the letter, Mamatas had simply scanned it and posted the image? Because honestly, if I had received something like that and wanted to hold it up to the court of public ridicule, that would be the way I'd go. It removes any possibility of accusations that I might have shaded the text or removed context, and gives people the opportunity to draw their own fully-informed conclusions.

As far as copyright goes... it's irrelevant. Even if the presumably injured person were to take the presumed injurer to court, the contents of the letter would become the de facto focus of the matter; and even if winning his case, the plaintiff would find out he had lost the most in the wider court of public opinion. Which, of course, may not mean a hell of a lot to someone whose habits of mind seem so...imprecise (anyone who thinks Turkey is a good template for an Arab country is...imprecise to say the least).

if "THERE ARE NO HUMAN RACES" how can somebody be "racist"?

If the earth is not flat, can there be flatearthers?

If you don't believe in Buddha, should you deny the existance of Buddhists?

I plan to vote for Obama--ought I to dispute the existance of Republicans?

Anna Feruglio Dal Dan, 34,
You wrote a great many things in that entry which are wonderful, and I agree with wholly, but I wanted to point to the literate excellence of this fragment:
if you keep wasting your breath by tracing lines in the sand, then it's your own humanity that you are condemning.
The phrase "wasting your breath" isn't just a mixed metaphor for speech, but evokes the idea of wasting the very breath of life bestowed by the Almighty in pursuit of a vain and futile goal.

Meanwhile, a whole bunch of other people wrote a great many other brilliant things, too many to list here, but not too many for me to bookmark for later reference! Talk about making Light!

#56: I deliberately avoided the recent BoingBoing flap. Alas, I didn't feel I could ignore something involving Helix.

And again, we aren't arguing copyright, and really wish people would stop implying we are. There are people who are arguing it, but they do not include William and are not acting on his behalf. That's what prompted me to post here.

#43: Helix is the creation of William Sanders, and the rest of the staff has very little input on policy. Certainly none of us read the story in question, or read the rejection letter before it was posted publicly.

#27: Actually, nobody's said a word about it on my own LJ. I hope that continues.

Rest assured, I'm not chasing this all over the net; I've responded a total of three places, and have no intention of returning to the other two. Making Light, though, has been on my regular daily reading list for years.

Albatross, #51:

When one defines a set of genetic markers or DNA sequences as belonging to a certain 'race', then finds a group of people who all have those markers, that is simply circular reasoning. I wish I had my copy of The Great Human Diasporas at hand, to better refer to Professor Luca Cavalli-Sforza's reasoning when he states that "there is no genetic basis for racial classification" (as stated in a review of his Genes, Peoples, and Languages here.

"Unfortunately, there's still plenty of us/them circuitry invoked on racial grounds explicitly among black political leaders and thinkers. This strikes me as wrong and destructive, FWIW."

People often characterize discussions of experiencing racism, especially expressing anger in those discussions, as such things as 'invoking us/them' circuitry. This is mostly done as a tactic, conscious or otherwise, to shut down those discussions or at least disregard them.

Mamatas had simply scanned it and posted the image?

The recipient of the letter was a fellow named Luke Jackson, who posted it for reasons unrelated to the "sheethead" commentary. (Which makes the whole thing even funnier.) All I did was make a couple jokes. It's very important to Sanders that as many incidents as possible be about me, so that he can discuss the size of my penis on his personal newsgroup though.

He clearly hungers for me.

additionally off topic, re:
re, 65,

I plan to vote for Obama--ought I to dispute the existence of Republicans?
I would have to say empirical evidence indicates that Republicans don't exist.

We've all been drummed out of the party that bears our name due to our cowardice (against the war), our lack of faith (against gov't intervention in religion), our lack of confidence in free markets (against corporate welfare), our desire to raise taxes (by, you know, opposing tax rebates in preference to deficit reduction), and our lack of patriotism (we thought the 4th amendment, habeas corpus, limits on cruel and unusual punishment, and trial by jury, were good ideas.)

All those other funny ideas those durn lib'r'ls have been spouting off about seem more plausible now - even unions!

And of course, while I was composing #67, others were posted I feel a need to respond to.

#59: William used to drink heavily, yes, but he never joined AA, and as he puts it, he wasn't an alcoholic, he was a drunk. He stopped drinking a year or two back, though, on doctor's orders, and to his own surprise didn't have any serious problem quitting.

#62: Helix has always been invitation-only. I doubt the present controversy is going to have much effect on the quality of submissions; I know what we have in inventory, and we're pretty much set for awhile.

Fred @36, check the OED. I think it's kind of charming that "race" is returning to its original meaning, a group of living things.

Wait, we're discussing the size of someone's penis?

*reads whole thread*

Oh. Not nearly so interesting. :-)

Actually I already read some of the other commentary and commented myself elsewhere, but I just couldn't pass up that joke. I did pass up saying (crudity ROT13'd; decode at your own risk) "Jryy, Avpx, ubj ovt VF lbhe cravf? Vs lbh'q whfg znxr n sbeguevtug fgngrzrag nobhg vg, naq pbasebag nal vffhrf gung zvtug nevfr, vg jbhyq ernyyl gnxr gur jvaq bhg bs uvf fnvyf!"—because that's a) too crude to say to someone I don't know well (Hi, Nick!), b) a gag* on the recent VB shitstorm on BB, and c) really wayyy off-topic here.

*No pun intended.**
**But I did leave it unfixed once I noticed it. Does that make me a bad person?

Helix has always been invitation-only. I doubt the present controversy is going to have much effect on the quality of submissions

I certainly hope that some of the people on Helix's invite list will now decline the invitation. I think it may have more effect than you think.

Ny #68:

Well, the paper in question is looking at self-reported racial categories vs things found in the genetic samples, so it's not automatic that they get the structure they get. For example, if you used categories based on the first letter of the peoples' last names, you'd almost certainly not find any useful correlations between what's in the genetic samples and the categories. By contrast, I believe that using Cavalli-Sforza's statistical techniques, it's inevitable that you'd get a tree structure sort of like he gets, no matter what you found genetically. (But the specific tree structure is determined by the data, and the fact that the specific structure he gets is broadly consistent with archeology and language data suggests that he's done something interesting.)

As an aside, if you look at the trees that come out of his work, you will indeed see some relationship between those trees and common racial categories. The relationship isn't all that great, because racial categories are broadly based on stuff that could be casually observed, and you often get stuff where two groups look rather similar (some Africans and Australian Aboriginees) but have very little in common genetically. But you'll notice that, for example, the broad category of American Indian really is separate from the broad category of Australian, African, European, and (to a lesser extent) Asian.

This tracks approximately with what you see in American racial categories, despite the fact that American racial categories are a weird mix of biological observation and political/social coalition building (whites vs blacks rather than rich vs poor, for example), and feature goofy stuff like the daughter of a medium-brown man and a pale white woman being socially black (unless she can pass).

Are you not linking the subject matter of your post because you're afraid of rather action, or because you assume we've all already heard?

Warning: something of a tangent, but I don't think I have anything to add to the thorough discussion of the content of Sanders' letter, and I think ML's conversation protocols will not take this as an attempt to derail the discussion of racism.

As Patrick points out, "rejection letters are business communications." Much of the criticism I'm seeing about posting Sanders' letter seems to be based on the assumption that it was _personal_ correspondence, which it's rude to post without permission.

Combined with my personal experience of SFF fandom, which often has an IMO admirable tendency to play down distinctions between pros and fans--

How likely is it that a category error is contributing to the reaction of Dozois and Williams, for instance, that the letter should not have been posted at all? Is there some problematic conflation or confusion here over business and social boundaries? Or is the more likely explanation--as a general matter, and not specifically about Williams and Dozois, who I don't know other than those posts--a variant of the stages of denial when racist behavior is pointed out?

But speaking of dicks, Sanders really sounds like a prime example. I'm sorry his wife is ill, really. But when someone says other SF magazines are leery of offending "the sheet heads" he eez be-eeng a beet of a sheethead heemself, eef you know what I mean.

Honestly, this sort of thing makes me sick. My emotional collapse after 9/11 (I became a robot, basically, which is my pattern rather than just lying in bed like some of my friends) had more to do with the fact that America turned, before my eyes, into a morass of racism, religious bigotry, and apology for truly grotesque abuses of civil liberties than it did with my colleagues who died or my own narrow* escape.

The America I love proved to be an ideal held by a dwindling number of dedicated patriots, while America-in-fact was going back to McCarthyism, the internment of Japanese-Americans, and NINA signs.**

Letters like this Sanders one, however he or his friends try to explain it away, contribute to America's slide (maybe 'power dive' would be more accurate) away from its idealistic pinnacle (which it really never reached except in the minds of the overtrusting). Yes, I'm saying that people like William Sanders (and unfortunately his name is legion, William "Legion" Sanders) are unAmerican, unpatriotic, and the shame of our great nation.

He disgusts me.

Heavens, now I'll never ever get published in Helix! I'm just crushed. Bet he hates faggots too though, so probably nothing lost.

*Philosophically narrow, not physically. Had I made one different decision I would have been on the 96th floor of One WTC when the plane hit; no one who was got out alive. As it was I was miles away.

**I mean attitudes no better than these, not the things themselves...though distinguishing our current era from the McCarthy era requires careful examination of the excuses used by the godsdamned fascists.

ebear #46: your white northern European might think everybody in all the nations of subSaharan Africa is the same "race," but again, if you were to ask a primary source, you'd get a very different answer.

And if you talk to those kind-of-white northern Europeans, they will gladly tell you that people in the next village over are Not Like Us: They drive badly, their beer is inferiour, their children are noisy and they speak strangely.

Just for the record, William Sanders does not hate faggots, or we wouldn't have included Rick Bowes' "City of Chimeras" in our first issue.

(There are probably other relevant stories, but that was the first that came to mind and most of the others I see at a quick glance involve dykes rather than faggots.)

Bigot is as bigot does*. If you don't want people to think you are a bigoted cracker, then you probably shouldn't act like one. Here's another hint: If you have these thoughts and believe them, but don't want the public finding out about them, what does that tell you??

This is hardly the first editor/publisher to display a social viewpoint that some might find disturbing. I actually think it's healthy for us to know up front what an editor/publisher's biases are, because the idea that they are "neutral" is just as full of crap as it is for journalists and authors.

The real potential for harm here is to anyone who has been previously published in Helix, because they didn't know about this racial bias up front. I can see a scenario happening where Helix stories are going to be over-analyzed for any hint of racially prejudiced bias and innocent authors** get caught up in a mess not of their making.

-----------
*After all, bigot is just a narrow-minded subset of stupid.

**I can't believe I just wrote that. I might as well go look for virgins in Vegas after this.

Mr. Watt-Evans:

You do not benefit, and may possibly harm, either your own reputation or Mr. Sanders', by continuing to engage on this.

What Mr. Sanders said was reprehensible and the best way to handle it would have been to apologize immediately and promise not to do it again. And then to shut up about it.

Continuing to engage here and elsewhere is giving you more opportunities to dig yourself into the ground, and is keeping the issue at the front of people's minds.

A number of talented writers have, as a result of this imbroglio, stated publicly their intention to strike Helix from their list of possible markets, and at least one will be asking the magazine to take her work down. The more you talk, the more people will talk, and the more readers and writers you will lose.

Stop talking. You're only making matters worse.

He's not a cracker; he's a hillbilly. He's from the Arkansas Ozarks, not Georgia.

Get your slurs right, please.

As far as anti-Muslim bias in Helix goes, that was already thrashed out some after we ran Janis Ian's "Mahmoud's Wives" in our first issue.

Lawrence 80: Imagine my relief.

80: Just for the record, William Sanders does not hate faggots, or we wouldn't have included Rick Bowes' "City of Chimeras" in our first issue.

Not really. I have no idea whether or not Sanders is a homophobe, but of course he is constantly going on about cocks and homosex in denigrating ways.

But your little blather ain't proof of anything; it could simply mean that he liked the story -- or needed to fill virtual pages, or that he wanted work from someone who wasn't just handing him an obviously moldly trunk story, or that he wanted some prominent bylines in the first ish -- more than he hates faggots.

Perhaps I'm splitting hairs here, but the question of whether the rejection letter could be posted online, legally, seems much less clear to me than to some.

I think we all agree that if I send you a paper letter, you can let your friends read it. You can read it out loud to them, too. I think you can read it out loud into a microphone in Yankee Stadium, if you want to. But you definitely can't charge people to hear it.

If I send you an electronic letter, can you still let your friends read it? Do those friends have to be in the same physical space as you are? Or can you show them the letter in the same medium in which you received it, i.e., electronically.

It seems to me that posting an electronic communication on a Live Journal isn't a whole lot different from passing a paper letter around a party. I don't see it as 'publishing'. I don't see it as a copyright violation.

I don't expect my business letters to be held in confidence unless they were written regarding matters held in confidence by the company. And then I'd have been damn careful about what I said.

Lawrence Watt-Evans @ #62 - Helix has always been invitation-only. I doubt the present controversy is going to have much effect on the quality of submissions; I know what we have in inventory, and we're pretty much set for awhile.

Sure. It's his magazine, like you said. But banning people who tick him off seems like it's going to limit his future contributors. He sort of invites it, it seems. And it's not going to do well by Helix if this goes on. This is all getting very public, and I'm not seeing Helix coming out of this looking at all well.

In fact, this is the first impression I've ever had of Helix. It's not good.

You're a great writer, and I love your work. But I'd never hire you as a PR adviser. The one person who claims she was banned from future submissions is actually doing a better job of keeping my opinion of Helix positive.

Another thing I noticed about the Sanders letter -- and it's a thing I've noticed in several right-wing SF fans over the years -- is that even though he reads (and maybe writes) science fiction, and no doubt considers himself to be better-than-average at understanding the world because of it, and perhaps even flatters himself as capable of being able to understand alien viewpoints because of it, he nonetheless writes off a big section of humanity as incomprehensible.

I wouldn't hire me as a PR adviser, either. I'm frequently annoyed when publishers ask me to help publicize my books; I know that's not where my talents lie.

Beth #86: It seems to me that posting an electronic communication on a Live Journal isn't a whole lot different from passing a paper letter around a party. I don't see it as 'publishing'. I don't see it as a copyright violation.

If it's not friends-locked, I don't see how it isn't publishing. It's a public display, which counts as copyright violation.

Lawrence Watt-Evans: Get your slurs right, please.

My deepest apologies, I have to admit I am relatively inexperienced in the proper use of racial epithets and must bow to your expertise in the matter.

I try not to cross swords with amateurs anymore, but I am feeling rather out of practice. Care to try two out of three? There's a slight chance you might yet score a point.

Mr. Watt-Evans

If Cofax's logically reasoned argument does not move you, I would personally implore you: stop digging. It is physically painful for me to watch.

Dear Making Light Denizens:

The words of Sanders and his defenders have been repulsive, but your reactions have been a tonic skillfully administered. Thank you.

peter,

And as a matter of (unpleasant) fact, people use "sheet head" and the obvious parallel terms ("towel-", "rag-", etc.) to refer to headdress/turban-wearing Muslims in general, including Iranians and Afghans.

indeed. & wasn't there a wave of assaults (& possibly worse) against sikhs(!) after 9.11? specifically because of that epithet, i would guess.

so yes, my assumption about anyone using that term is that they are thunderously ignorant, like most racists, as well as full of hate. there's no reason to believe otherwise in this case.

The unsettling impression I'm getting from all these threads is, "Oh, that William Sanders, what a racist jerk." But there's no impression of "William Sanders is dead to us, he will never work in the industry again."

Why is are people talking about this guy like he's going to be a concern in the future, too? Why is the impression, "Oh, well, I guess fandom has some real sh!ts in it"? There's no reason fandom should have racist sh!ts in it. We're not right-wing talk radio. Hell, come to talk about right-wing talk radio, even Imus got fired.

Seems to me that a more healthy response would be, "So long as Helix is associated with Sanders, it is dead to us. Any con that has him as a panelist, likewise. Any forum he shows his face at should meet him with nothing but the disgust he has earned."

Why does it always have to be decades of people wearing buttons like "I survived an elevator ride with Harlan Ellison" before we get around to cutting out the cancers that make us such an unfriendly place?

I wish people -- a few people -- would stop being rude to Lawrence. I think he's as wrong as the rest of you do, but he's being relentlessly polite -- and when I say "polite", I don't just mean abstaining from insult, I mean that he's doing his best to engage with the things people are saying honestly and straightforwardly -- in the face of a fair amount of condescension. It's also no one's business to tell him to shut up, under the circumstances.

Thanks, Madeline--that was the phrase I was looking for.

William Sanders is dead to me.

Why does it always have to be decades of people wearing buttons like "I survived an elevator ride with Harlan Ellison" before we get around to cutting out the cancers that make us such an unfriendly place?

Because people are complicated, and reducing people to one trait and ostracizing them doesn't always (to say the least) lead to healthy social organizations.

Peter Erwin @ 54

"And as a matter of (unpleasant) fact, people use "sheet head" and the obvious parallel terms ("towel-", "rag-", etc.) to refer to headdress/turban-wearing Muslims in general, including Iranians and Afghans."

To further your point, that pejorative is also applied to non-Arab non-Muslims such as Sikhs. I remember reports of attacks on innocent Sikhs who only made the mistake of appearing on an American street post-911.

Scraps @ 95: I wish people -- a few people -- would stop being rude to Lawrence...he's being relentlessly polite

Really? I found his reply to my post to be openly combative, and far from telling him to shut up, I offered him a venue in which to relieve his frustrations. Just how many McCain Helix Points did you earn for this post??

Lawrence Watt-Evans @ # 80

Just for the record, William Sanders does not hate faggots, or we wouldn't have included Rick Bowes' "City of Chimeras" in our first issue.

Oh bushwah. It's not proof of anything. I've not seen much of what he has to say on the subject, but just publishing a story with queer content by a gay man does not prove much about the editors attitudes on queer folks. Just that he was once willing to publish a story by Rick Bowes.

I've heard the "some of my best friends are queers" line from people I'd be willing to submit are pretty damn bigoted against us queers.

I'm guessing you're probably straight, or you'd have had that line used on you before by an anti-gay bigot. Well, you just used it's near cousin.

*sigh*

Please try and learn something from this mess.

Beth @86, I'm with Avram @2 on this: fair use applies. The letter illustrates many things that are necessary for the sake of discussion. Using it does not hurt anyone's ability to sell it later.

Yeah, people can and will argue that fair use is more complicated than that. It shouldn't be, so I'm still with Avram.

Avram at #90 -- You have a point, but I'm not so certain.

I go to a convention, and agree to be on the "readings from the slush pile" panel. I take dreadful cover letters and first chapters, and read them out loud to general hilarity.

There is no restriction on who can come in and listen.

Is that publishing?

(for the record, I always decline to participate in that, not because I think it's a copyright violation, but because I don't like ridiculing people in public, and you never know if the writer might be in the audience.)

My point is that it isn't as cut and dried as all that.

It's very clear when money changes hands. Not nearly so clear when the person making the letter public is the recipient of the letter.

Agreeing with #50 and others:

Race is a social construct indeed.

I have many times received the comment, "But you don't look Jewish" and equivalents. I'm afraid this always leaves me wondering what the speaker thinks a Jewish person looks like, and if she or she has ever met a black Jew, an Asian Jew, or any of the other varieties that exist.

To these people, "Jewish" is a race, regardless of level of observance, practice, or belief.

Similarly, people who see a male Orthodox Jew and say/think, "rabbi," are making assumptions based on social constructs. While many rabbis are Orthodox Jews, not all male Orthodox Jews (even the ones who dress "like that") are rabbis.

I'm not denying that some Jewish people promote this idea--that "Jewish" is a race--themselves; I disagree with them too.

Also, regarding towel-heads: when I was growing up, that was a pejorative aimed at Palestinians. Religion was not the primary determining factor; people who used that term did not think of Yasir Arafat as Muslim.

Lance Weber, you don't know me, but you could at least read my comments earlier in the thread before jumping to offensive conclusions about me.

I read his reply to you as a humorous poke, for what it's worth.

Teresa @56: > My working theory is that Americans have a thing about blacks being a completely separate race because slavery is much easier to administer if you've got an automatic visual cue that tells you whether someone is slave or free. If my family didn't come here until about 1906, does this theory still apply?

(Just saying that generalizing about "Americans" in this thread may not effectively make the point.)

will shetterly @101, beth meacham @86
I would argue that the letter is covered by both the news and criticism criteria of fair use.

Let me put it this way: would the NY Times be violating copyright if it published this letter as part of a news article discussing racial bias on the internet? I think their lawyers would argue that the letter was newsworthy.

Another thing to keep in mind - copyright has no bearing on confidentiality, and using copyright to try and maintain confidentiality would probably not get too far in a legal test.

I have had my own arguments with Lawrence about the Sanders issue, but Scraps is right. Showing up to present facts about a friend who is being extensively criticized is not in itself an ignoble thing, and Lawrence has been remarkably even-tempered about it.

The idea, ventured by Lance Weber in #99, that Scraps was trying to "earn Helix points" would be offensive if it weren't so hilarious. Dude. Take a pill.

Melissa @ 105: my family only got here in 1888, but I think for the purposes of Teresa's working theory, they arrived after the memes about race mapping to skin color were already well established, and, in the process of assimilating into existing American culture, adopted those memes at least to some extent. (Many Jewish civil rights advocates, existing side by side with those who made disparaging comments about "schvartzes.")

Scraps at 95:
It's also no one's business to tell him to shut up, under the circumstances.

Point taken: I am not the Jello Sheriff of the Internets. I am also not the blog-owner here, and if Mr. Watt-Evans wishes to continue digging that hole, I guess he's welcome to.

I just think it's supremely unwise and unhelpful to his apparent goals.

Patrick @ 107: I can't be the only one with the TMBG song "Your Racist Friend" stuck in my head right now.

I'd never heard of Helix until this kerfuffle. Not the best of ways to advertise, I suspect.

would the NY Times be violating copyright if it published this letter as part of a news article discussing racial bias on the internet?

The fellow didn't post it as news, though. He didn't post it to call attention to the bigotry. Others took it up as news -- which of course it is -- but I don't know if that can be used in his defense on the copyright issue.

The copyright issue is just a distraction anyway, especially since Sanders isn't arguing copyright (according to Lawrence).

rikibeth @108: I wouldn't disagree (my paternal grandparents' rabbi once preached against sending aid to Africa, at which point my parents, brother, and I stood up and left the sanctuary), but feel that such generalizations are out of place in this thread. "Many Americans" would not have rankled.

Scraps @104: Lance Weber, you don't know me, but you could at least read my comments earlier in the thread before jumping to offensive conclusions about me.

You've made a grand total of three (well four now) posts on ML, all today, all in this thread. Forgive me if I jumped to the conclusion that you're just doing a fly-by for this particular issue and we'll never see you here again - thus deserving a McCain Point snark. Feel free to remind me of this conversation some time down the road should you decide to become a regular here and I'll raise a celebratory toast to you and fully refund any accrued points. (Dang, I just can't seem to help myself today).

I'd also note that one of the reasons Lawrence Watt-Evans gets *zero* slack for his floundering is because a longtime member of this community should frakking know enough to listen when told he's gone off the deep end on an issue and take some time to back off and cool down.

Beth #102 -- Are convention slush-pile readings publishing? Well, they're arguably public performance, which is also a violation of copyright. If, some day, some offended slush-pile contributor with enough money to hire a lawyer to pursue a grudge (or who is a lawyer himself) decides to prosecute you, he might win.

Or he might not. I'm not a lawyer. But I know that "We've been doing this for years and nobody complained before" isn't a particularly strong legal defense.

Maybe something is amiss with the "View all by," or maybe Scraps has changed email addresses recently, but I could swear I've seen that handle here before.

"The copyright issue is just a distraction anyway"

Well, cough cough, in fact it was the central point of my post, which wasn't so much about Sanders as it was about the fact that the main reaction of a few of the field's elders was to deplore the violation of Sanders' copyright.

I found that kind of remarkable, not because it implies any sympathy on their part for Sanders' views about, ah, Belgians, but because it really does leave younger writers, and the aspiring, with a sense that the SF editorial world will defend its own no matter what. Which doesn't seem to me an altogether desirable impression to create.

ebear @46 - what an Indianan means when he says "sweet corn."... Wait. Is that a Hoosier-specific term? What do you all call sweet corn?

Xopher@78: I have never before seen a Jagermonster accent being used as a means of clearer communication. Bravo!

Lance #113 -- Scraps has made dozens, maybe hundreds, of comments on ML, going back at least to 2006. He's also a friend of Patrick's and Teresa's of decades' standing, and of mine for over a decade.

(However, I see that he's recently changed his email address, and only made three or four comments under the new one.)

#115
You're not the only one. It's been a while since we've heard from Scraps. (Welcome home. Or something resembling a welcome. Lot of new people here since the last time we heard from you. Have you checked out the cold beef salad?)

Lance: I'm sorry that the technical limitations of our "view all by" link have misled you. Scraps is one of our oldest friends, and has posted on Making Light hundreds of times.

The problem is that it keys everything to the user's email address, so if a user shifts to a new one, older messages don't get listed.

Really, I think a few people could stand to take a deep breath or two.

# 113 -Lance Weber - ...a longtime member of this community should frakking know enough to listen when told he's gone off the deep end on an issue and take some time to back off and cool down.

I think that's an overly generous estimate of most members of this community, myself included in come cases.

#95 & #104: Thank you. Though I acknowledge that my response to Xopher was not particularly polite.

But then, I didn't think his post was, either. I realize replying in kind is often unwise, but it's also hard to resist.

The assumption that if William is a bigot of any sort he's also a homophobe and a right-winger is unjustified and offensive -- much the same sort of stereotyping he's being accused of, in fact, though of a lesser degree.

Josh Jasper, you're probably right that the Rick Bowes story isn't evidence of anything much. However, as I said on LJ, for as long as I've known him William has been vigorously opposed to sexism, homophobia, and antisemitism.

As for the implication (only an implication, I concede) that he's a right-winger, this is a man who campaigned for John Kerry in 2004, and who wrote a satirical story that presented George W. Bush as the literal Antichrist.

He is not a cracker, nor a homophobe, nor a right-winger. Whatever his many flaws, those are not among them.

Lance Weber @ 113: "I'd also note that one of the reasons Lawrence Watt-Evans gets *zero* slack for his floundering is because a longtime member of this community should frakking know enough to listen when told he's gone off the deep end on an issue and take some time to back off and cool down."

This might be a good time to start thinking about how that expectation might apply to you.

Lance@113: Allow me to suggest, gently, that this would be a really good place to stop digging. The fact that you don't know Scraps doesn't mean he's not well-known around here.

This whole thread is making me extremely uncomfortable. No, I'm not defending racism: it's not defensible. But it's not obvious to me what good is being pursued by making William Sanders' letter the focus of so much energetic commentary. Helix (which I had never heard of prior to reading this thread) is a by-invitation only magazine. Presumably the people whom he invites to contribute to it either know Sanders, or know the magazine, and find something of value in either/both. Do folks here wish to destroy (as Madeline F. recommends) Helix as a market? Well, okay, if that's what you want, then please be crystal clear about it. Down with racist editors! Carthago delenda est! Because to me, without a clear purpose, this whole discussion looks like the Internet version of putting someone in the stocks and throwing rotten vegetables at his head.

Lance #113 -- Scraps has made dozens, maybe hundreds, of comments on ML, going back at least to 2006. He's also a friend of Patrick's and Teresa's of decades' standing, and of mine for over a decade.

Geez. Scraps, I'm a mis-informed dork and totally apologize for assuming you were new here. If you're coming to Worldcon I really will buy you that drink. We'll wash down some Rocky Mtn Oysters - I'm a native, I know where the good ones are :)

But there's no way I'm taking back the Helix Point crack. No Frakking Way. Come on dude, like Patrick said, it was pretty funny :)

Teresa Nielsen Hayden @ 56: "I believe our European ancestors would just as readily have taken ethnic Chinese, if they'd been available for sale at one corner of the Triangle Trade; and that if they had, they'd have told themselves that there were profound and ineradicable differences between whites and orientals."

Oh, they did that too, once large numbers of Chinese immigrants showed up and started taking low-wage jobs in large numbers.

Me@125: Sorry. When I wrote the comment, it wasn't piling-on yet.

Okay okay guys mea culpa already!

I only saw Avram's post before I posted mine. But I'd like to point out for the record that I am no mere hole-digger or deep-end jumper. No sireee, when I step in it, it's a complete crash and burn accompanied by loud explosions, flaming wreckage and rubber dogshit from Hong Kong.

I find it dismaying that a webzine now in its third year, which is nominated for the semiprozine Hugo, and which has published stories that made the Nebula final ballot, not to mention publishing Rhysling-winning poetry, seems to have received so little notice heretofore.

I really hope that people will judge the magazine on its content, rather than the perceived attitudes of its senior editor. Many fine authors have been published in Helix.

Well, Lizzy, if he'd (and /or LWE) had just said "Oh crap, I'm sorry, that was racist. Shit. What was I (or Sanders) thinking?" this would have vanished without a trace. It's the fact that anyone is defending it that helps create the dogpile.

I dunno, Lizzy; as far as the survival of Helix goes, I think Teresa nailed it in #56 when she observed that "time, short memories and the natural desire to be published will do more to repair this than words ever could."

I don't think it's an entirely bad thing that when one of our field's editors announces his belief that Belgians eat babies at the full moon, people pass the news around and marvel at it. More to the point, I don't think it's a preventable thing, which was the point of my post. Not "let's all beat up on William Sanders," but rather, "this is how the world works now."

(following on #128)

Thomas Nast, the famed political cartoonist, was one of the few champions of the "Mongolian race" at the time. The "Irish race," however, was not so lucky.

Many fine authors have been published in Helix.

And I'm sorry to say that many (or at least several) fine writers will in future have nothing to do with Helix.

They say all publicity is good publicity; I beg leave to doubt it.

perceived attitudes of its senior editor

I'm not judging Helix based on its senior editor; but I am judging its senior editor based on his expressed attitudes.

Lance, no big deal. (I accidentally changed my ML email address after accidentally hitting the Clear Personal Information button.)

Michael Roberts @117: In context, I took 'Indianan' to be an instance of synecdoche, and that 'sweet corn' means about the same in Indiana as it does in Saskatchewan -- i.e., not even slightly a generic catch-all term for grains.

In fact, my first comment to this thread was still under the old email address, so you won't have seen that one either, Lance, which is too bad, because it kind of ruins the Helix Points joke.

This discussion has been very interesting for me. As the recipient of the letter, I am concerned about the legal and ethical implications of my posting the letter. I am too much of a rookie to really know the propriety of my posting the letter, and there seems to be a complete split down the middle as to whether it was OK.. I can't have been the first person in the history of the internet to have done it? But as for the legal issues, I have posted what I think about it on my blog, and I welcome people to tell me if I am wrong or misinformed on the legal aspect.

Lawrence 123: I acknowledge that my response to Xopher was not particularly polite...I didn't think his post was, either.

You're right. It wasn't. It was inappropriate to assume that his expression of anti-Moslem prejudice means he's also a homophobe, and I apologize.

Lance @106, I like that. So long as we're stuck with copyright law, we need to interpret it as liberally as we possibly can.

Heresiarch @134, good one. Whenever people start pointing to WWII cartoons of the Japanese as examples of how racism works, I like to point at cartoons of Germans from the same time to note that's how cartooning and tribalism work. (Uh, totally comfortable with the idea that the modern definitions of tribalism and racism are the same, of course.)

Patrick @ 133... Belgians eat babies at the full moon

"Mais non!"

You don't need to worry about anything legally in this case; as far as William's concerned it was an impolite thing to do, but you apologized for it, he accepted your apology, and that's the end of it.

In the more general case it's a violation of copyright to publish private correspondence without the author's permission, but the definitions of "publish" and "private" get tricky. I don't know what the current case law about posting e-mail on LJ, if there is any, might say.

Ethically, it's my understanding that taking e-mail public is considered poor netiquette, but there may be extenuating circumstances.

Thank you, Xopher.

Luke Jackson's thanks for showing up. You make some extremely interesting comments on your blog about your own story and about William Sanders. I hope you do not mind my reproducing some of them here. (I don't see how you could object, actually...)

There is a truly despicable Muslim character in my story. Sorry, world. Maybe I was playing into prejudices. Sanders was talking about that character, so it wasn't an out-of-the-blue rant, it was targeted to the content of my story. In context, his comments were directed at MY character and those types of extremists. People are taking it out of context and interpreting it too broadly if they think that Sanders was referring to all Arabs or all Muslims. I'm sure that if my character was a Timothy McVeigh-like extremist, Sanders would have used different but equally scornful language. The extremism of MY character is what drew his ire, and so if there is any blame it's MY blame.

Sanders was doing me a favor when he looked at my story. Helix is closed to submissions except from professional SFWA guys, and I'm not a professional. I really appreciate the encouraging feedback he gave me on this story. Helix is a great market and I don't want to trounce it in the dirt when really I should bear the blame. I don't want Sanders to regret giving me the benefit of the doubt, but he probably does by now.

It was dick-ish of me to post an email on a livejournal without prior consent, and that's why I deleted it as soon as I figured out how to do so. I really had absolutely no idea that so many eyes would see it, but I guess that's part of living in the internet age. I posted it in a low-traffic area on someone's livejournal meant to be a one-on-one conversation with Mr. Preston and really don't know how it came to be seen by so many eyes so quickly.

I know from the context that Mr. Sanders did not intend the language to apply to all Arabs or Muslims, but just the specific types of individuals that appeared in MY story. I'm sure if everyone knew the full context of our exchange, which was missing from the post, they would understand what Mr. Sanders actually meant.

Thank you, Lawrence.

From the Law.com legal dictionary:

publication

n. 1) anything made public by print (as in a news- paper, magazine, pamphlet, letter, telegram, computer modem or program, poster, brochure or pamphlet), orally, or by broadcast (radio, television) . . .

3) in the law of defamation (libel and slander) publication of an untruth about another to at least one single person. Thus one letter can be the basis of a suit for libel, and telling one person is sufficient to show publication of slander.

So, yes, a public reading of a letter definitely constitutes "publication".

Didn't anybody ever tell Sanders not to write anything in business that you wouldn't want to see on the front page of the newspaper the next day? Did he not listen? Did he figure that because he's effectively the owner of one of a very small number of stores, he can do whatever he wants?

Very strange.

Doug@148: "Was it appropriate to publish this?" need not imply "Is there anything here I'm ashamed of and think shouldn't see the light of day?"

miriam @ 93 [and Ambar @ 98]:
indeed. & wasn't there a wave of assaults (& possibly worse) against sikhs(!) after 9.11? specifically because of that epithet, i would guess.

Yes; four days after Sept. 11, a Sikh gas station owner named Balbir Singh Sodhi was murdered in Arizona, apparently because his beard and turban made the attacker think he was Muslim/Arab. (The attacker also fired shots at a gas station where a Lebanese-American man worked, and at an Afghan family's house.)

TNH @ 56: I believe our European ancestors would just as readily have taken ethnic Chinese, if they'd been available for sale at one corner of the Triangle Trade; and that if they had, they'd have told themselves that there were profound and ineradicable differences between whites and orientals.

Actually, after the African slave trade was banned, much of the resulting labor shortage in Central/South America and the Caribbean was then filled by Chinese coolies.

The book Sons of the Yellow Emperor: a History of the Chinese Diaspora, has a heartbreaking quote which I can't find at the mo and will have to paraphrase; iirc it was left scrawled on the wall of a laborers' shack on a Caribbean sugar plantation: "I am dying here and can never return home; even my bones will be burned to charcoal and my family will never know where I have gone." (Bone charcoal was routinely used to purify raw sugar.)

Also, a few years into the Meiji Restoration in Japan, the mass liberation of prostitutes from slave status in 1872 was triggered by the case of the Maria Luz, a ship docked in Yokohama with 200+ coolies who'd been bought in Macao for transport to Peru.

I, personally (and somewhat professionally - like the delightful ebear, I am also falling back into anthropology) find it interesting, if not fascinating that the various sub-threads on this topic should dovetail so neatly.

This thread started, at least in part, as a discussion of "Bill Sanders is a nitwit" and quickly (as things happen here) mutated into a discussion on racism, the definition of race, and various fine points of the publishing industry.

It divided, as things always do among humans (and possibly other sapients - I'm waiting to meet other species and find out how universal it is) into various groups with fuzzy edges 'circling the wagons' to protect their ideas and mind-sets againt 'the other'.

And ain't that what "race" and "ethnicity" and "you're either with us or you're against us" is all about?

For a group that prides itself (sometimes aggressively so) about being open-minded, we're getting pretty insular about some things.

Yep - I'm several minorities, and have been bashed (in various ways) for those associations. But I have tried (and often failed, alas) to not let that get the better of me and make me a bitter, self-indulgent, nasty believer that only I and those who agree with me are really *people* (AKA: A Loyal Bushie).

I'll get down off of my soap box now and watch and see if any of you can read this without your biases/filters running overtime.

William Sanders does not go by "Bill." He doesn't mind "Will," but "Bill" really grates. (And he prefers "William," which is why I've been using it.)

I'm the same way about "Larry," and I suspect Patrick might similarly balk at "Pat."

It's a fair cop.

I'm the same way about 'Chris', which is why I spell my name the way I do on here.

Bruce@149: I've apparently been dealing with too many screaming children today to see the connection you're drawing. Would you kindly rephrase for my slightly addled wits?

(For my part, I was expressing my astonishment that anyone would write such a letter in any sort of business context, even an artistic one. Though this astonishment may just show I'm still learning that it takes all kinds, just like momma always said.)

see if any of you can read this without your biases/filters running overtime.

I make it a policy never to argue with posts that have an automatic refutation built in.

#97 Scraps: Because people are complicated, and reducing people to one trait and ostracizing them doesn't always (to say the least) lead to healthy social organizations.

What I'm saying is that ostracizing a few people because of their one trait "refuses to apologize for being a bigot" is a damn sight more healthy than ostracizing a great many people because of their one trait "brown", which is what we have otherwise.

The other thing I oughtta say is that this thread is great, Patrick. To come out with all your cred and social power and say, "It’s startling to see that for some senior people in the SF field, explaining that a letter-writer holds copyright in their missive takes priority over noting that a belief that ancient astronauts built the pyramids is crazy. And depraved. And stupid.", that's enormously valuable.

But doesn't seem to me that it is startling. Old hands don't speak up against outrage perpetrated by in-group guy because that's just the way he is/it has always been? That's why fandom is such a snow globe.

Is there a link somewhere to Dozois and Williams pointing out that racism like Sanders' is in fact BS?

I'd like to see actual consequences for people like Sanders who drive people away from SF with their bigotry, and the only way that happens is if there's a consensus among the powerful in SF that bigotry is BS. And hell, all of us who are less powerful can help with that kind of consensus-building.

It's goddamned annoying that this is still an open question.

What I'm saying is that ostracizing a few people because of their one trait "refuses to apologize for being a bigot" is a damn sight more healthy than ostracizing a great many people because of their one trait "brown", which is what we have otherwise.

That's a false equivalency. Failing to ostracize bigots does not mean we are ostracizing brown people. It is not "what we have otherwise."

Old hands don't speak up against outrage perpetrated by in-group guy because that's just the way he is/it has always been? That's why fandom is such a snow globe.

Except plenty of people are speaking up against it.

I'd like to see actual consequences for people like Sanders who drive people away from SF with their bigotry

As I said, I hope that writers shun Helix. I hope it is remembered that Sanders said what he did, and that it redounds to his continuing shame, in the (extremely likely) event that he doesn't apologize.

But I feel that ostracism is the irrevocable bomb of social groups. I think it should be reserved for individuals who engage in irredeemable patterns of destruction. I don't expect you to agree, obviously. But if you believe that anything short of ostracism amounts to implicit support of Sanders or lack of support for brown folks in the science fiction community, well, we won't have much further to talk about, and I'll endure the weight of your disapproval.

Xopher @155: How do you feel about Xopher being pronounced "Zopher"? I can't think of it any other way, and hadn't realized until your post just now that it was supposed to be half-acronym.

Me @160: "Acronym", of course, being not at all the word I was looking for there. Abbreviation is, while accurate, not it either on account of being too general. I'm not sure what is.

Brooks 160: "Zopher (rhymes with gopher)" is how my parents pronounced it (from when I first came up with it), and how everyone I know who ever says it says it. That's my personal preference. So you have it right!

I do accept "Ecks-a-fur" without complaint. "Chris" is right out.

Julie L #151: For 'much' read 'some' and for 'coolies' (which is a pejorative, and, in the Anglophone Caribbean a highly racist term directed by persons of African descent at persons of South Asian descent, I'd avoid it if I were you) read 'labourers'. Some Chinese labour was imported into the Caribbean after slavery. Far more was imported from South Asia and even from Southeast Asia. The Chinese constitute small minorities in Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, Surinam, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Martinique and Guadeloupe, and a few other places. Far larger numbers of Indian indentured workers arrived in Trinidad, what was then British Guiana, Surinam, and Martinique. Largish numbers of Javanese labourers were imported into Surinam.

heresiarch@128: Thank you for mentioning this. I was going to, if no one else had by the time I'd finished reading the thread.

Sadly, the situation improved for the Chinese living in the US at the expense of the Japanese living in the US. i.e., as we entered WWII, it became more popular to hate the Japanese instead. That isn't the way things should work.

Lawrence @13 - It took me a while to realize the intellectual bankruptcy of your defense:

Oh, William understands the desire to kill enemies just fine. It's indiscriminately killing people he doesn't get.

Ah. I see. So models of discriminate precision perpetrated here in the "civilized world", such as the Oklahoma City bombing or Iraqi Shock and Awe, clearly illustrate the difference between us and those sheetheads over there. Yeah.

Nor does saying no one in the civilized world can understand such a mindset imply that everyone in the uncivilized world can. "No A is B" does not imply "Not-A is B."

Well, this is just so incredibly disingenuous that I had to take a good long walk on the beach before deciding to respond.

When one selects a word, one implies a whole raft of things which are customarily excluded in the translation into prepositional calculus. You're correct, in terms of the narrowly defined logical usage of the word "implied", in saying that "no A is B" does not "imply" that "not-A is B".

But the word "imply" has a meaning in English which does indeed allow me to say that "the civilized world cannot comprehend B" implies that "the not-civilized world can comprehend B". If you deny that, then I'm forced to say that you're defending the indefensible with what are really pretty shoddy tactics, because I seriously doubt that you understand the usage of English words.

Xopher: And here all the time I thought it was Cross + opher = Crossover! (I kid, I kid...)

Fragano: thank you for the explanation. I know I'd learned some of the statistics before, but I just had a "click" moment: "Aha, THAT explains curried goat!"

Oh, William understands the desire to kill enemies just fine. It's indiscriminately killing people he doesn't get.

Ah. I see. So models of discriminate precision perpetrated here in the "civilized world", such as the Oklahoma City bombing or Iraqi Shock and Awe, clearly illustrate the difference between us and those sheetheads over there. Yeah.

Not to mention the fact that modern warfare is full of indiscriminate killing, of which the U.S. has done plenty. The civilian death toll in Iraq is one result.

*crosses over to Lance*

*slap slap*

*crosses over to the other side*

Chinese Slaves (de facto if not de jure) built the western railroads. San Francisco's old Chinatown (which burned) was well-known for its slave brothels.

Teresa's working theory @56 is, from my memory, considered to be the accepted theory for the origin of American racism, in many ways a far more virulent racism than in the Old World.

Rikibeth #167: For some reason I left Jamaica out, though there are East Indian communities in south central and western Jamaica descended from indentured labourers who arrived in the nineteenth century. It also explains 'ganja', which is a Hindi word. The plant itself arrived with the Indians, since the variant cultivated in Jamaica is indica, rather than sativa. It may even, according to one Jamaican scholar of Indian descent, explain dreadlocks, which were worn by Indian sadhus and may have been adopted by the Rastafarians in imitation of them. Certainly Leonard Howell, the founder of Rastafarianism, wrote one of the central texts of the religion, The Promised Key, under the pseudonym 'G.G. Maragh' an Indian name.

Xopher @ 162: "Zopher (rhymes with gopher)" is how my parents pronounced it (from when I first came up with it), and how everyone I know who ever says it says it. That's my personal preference.

I'd been hearing it in my mind as "Christopher," since that's how the only other Xopher I know pronounces it, so thanks for the heads-up!

Fragano @163:

An e-friend of mine who is a Trinidadian of Indian descent says that at home (she currently lives in Canada) she unselfconsciously describes her ethnicity as "coolie", while the other main ethnic group on the island are called "Negroes". She shocked people in Canada at first until she learned to alter her terminology.

#159 Scraps: That's a false equivalency. Failing to ostracize bigots does not mean we are ostracizing brown people. It is not "what we have otherwise."

You don't feel that fandom's continuing, if grudging, acceptance of bigots is a significant factor in our lack of demographic balance?

Tim 172: Feel free to call me Christopher in person, too. It IS my name, unlike Chris.

It would seem that attacking the bigotry is the first step; attacking the bigot would come later.

Hmmm.

Looking at that again, it's probably too simplistic to have any actual value.

Doctor Science #173: I, on the other hand, would be most hesitant to call someone a 'coolie', unless I knew them very well. Especially not in Jamaica.

In Surinam, one of the complaints of the Indian community was about being called 'coeli' (coolie) by Creoles.

Current usage in Trinidad, btw, is to use the terms 'Indian' and 'African' for the main ethnoracial groups. At least it was when I was last there, which was in 2006.

#159 Scraps: That's a false equivalency. Failing to ostracize bigots does not mean we are ostracizing brown people. It is not "what we have otherwise."

You don't feel that fandom's continuing, if grudging, acceptance of bigots is a significant factor in our lack of demographic balance?

Well, that's not what you said. You said:

What I'm saying is that ostracizing a few people because of their one trait "refuses to apologize for being a bigot" is a damn sight more healthy than ostracizing a great many people because of their one trait "brown", which is what we have otherwise.

A "grudging acceptance of bigots" is a far cry from ostracizing brown people. Ostracizing means conspiring to drive people away; it is not something that is done passively.

I don't feel that I am "accepting" Sanders, grudgingly or otherwise. I do not, personally, want anything to do with him, and I hope others in the community feel the same way on their own. But I am not going to try to drive him out.

But to answer the question you're now asking: my impression has been that fandom has historically been a more welcoming and less bigoted place than society as a whole, and so far as I know this is still true. We have our bigots and always have; but we have fewer of them, and they've never passed without objection, not even in the 1940s. So while I don't doubt that the presence of any bigots is bad for diversity, it doesn't seem to me that it can account for the community's historical demographic imbalance. So far as I know, we are driving away few people by being insufficiently welcoming of diversity or exceedingly tolerant of bigotry, relative, at least, to the rest of society.

In short, we have our problems, and share many of the casual and semi-conscious bigotries of the society that surrounds us, but I very much doubt that the crux of the problem is an inadequate enthusiasm for casting people out.

So glad to have "Zopher" approved as a proper pronunciation. Ever since I decoded it (and it took longer than I would have liked) I've been bouncing back and forth: "What does he really like? Which is correct??"

Fragano @163: For 'much' read 'some' and for 'coolies' (which is a pejorative, and, in the Anglophone Caribbean a highly racist term directed by persons of African descent at persons of South Asian descent, I'd avoid it if I were you) read 'labourers'.

I bow to your superior knowledge. WRT numerical proportion, my impression was probably shaped by the book's topical focus on the Chinese diaspora, which would've minimized the discussion of other ethnicities in the Caribbean; it's also been several years since I read it (out of interest in my own family history via the Philippines). Nor had I previously known the present regional connotation of "coolies"; I'd merely considered the term to be descriptive of their economic situation along the lines of the many white "indentured servants" who came to the North American colonies from Great Britain. Live and learn.

Xopher @162: Oh dear. Now I'll have to reprogram my mental pronunciation from "Ksopher".

When I first ran into this controversy over on LJ, it came in a disconnected piece, the only bit of which came clear was that an editor had written a rejection letter saying that other editors cared about not getting up the noses of "sheet heads." I had no idea what a sheet head was, and found myself with the rather strange theory that he was talking about Klansman. It seemed good that there was such an outcry against bigotry of such terrible bigots, but a bit odd. Then I found Making Light and all was revealed. But it was a rather pleasant quarter hour of confusion.

I'm observing this situation as an outsider to the professional SF world and fandom--I first heard about it from Tobias Bucknell's blog--so I hope it doesn't seem presumptuous of me to comment on it. I do have a sort of secondhand fear of anti-Arab racism. I'm of European descent, but my last name sounds very Middle-Eastern, and I've been nervous every anniversary of 9/11 since the year I received a rock through my window from some anonymous stranger who must have picked my name out of the phone book.

#174: You don't feel that fandom's continuing, if grudging, acceptance of bigots is a significant factor in our lack of demographic balance?

I've seen Orcinus argue that politely failing to confront racism creates an environment in which racists assume their views are "normal," and feel more and more comfortable acting out. At its most extreme this can lead to members of the out-group being openly driven out of the community. I was disappointed to hear that a few people in the SF world (my impression is very few, although if I'm wrong please don't shatter my illusions) tried to close ranks around the editor. This is how bigots get the idea that a community might be a comfortable place for bigotry.

(Of course, that doesn't mean every bigot needs to be permanently ostracized. Hell, an unexpectedly hostile reaction might even make them rethink their bigotry and join the rest of us in the 21st century. Optimistic, I know, but I'm never quite as cynically misanthropic as I feel I ought to be.)

#88: Another thing I noticed about the Sanders letter -- and it's a thing I've noticed in several right-wing SF fans over the years -- is that even though he reads (and maybe writes) science fiction, and no doubt considers himself to be better-than-average at understanding the world because of it, and perhaps even flatters himself as capable of being able to understand alien viewpoints because of it, he nonetheless writes off a big section of humanity as incomprehensible.

This is the thing that drives me crazy.

SF, for me, is all about broadening the definition of "human." This genre asks its readers to empathize with aliens, androids, AIs, cyborgs, and an infinite variety of assorted posthumans--and that's before taking fantasy into account. I grew up in what was at the time a subculture-free and somewhat insufficiently diverse midwestern college town (my impression is that it's still behind where I'm living now, actually), and with a practically Lovecraftian degree of social awkwardness, and I think SF helped me develop an open mind. So it's always struck me as perverse that some SF fans don't have the imagination to transfer their acceptance of fictional Others to real people. I hope they find it sometime.

#178 Scraps: BTW, is there a reason you're not quoting me by name and number? Seems to me it makes discussions easier to track.

Ostracizing means conspiring to drive people away; it is not something that is done passively.

Ah, that may be the problem. I'm using the less technical term, as google defines ostracism here. Let's swap out for a term you may find less loaded which has the exact same meaning to me: What I'm saying is that excluding a few people because of their one trait "refuses to apologize for being a bigot" is a damn sight more healthy than excluding a great many people because of their one trait "brown", which is what we have otherwise.

My arguments are two, and for the last couple exchanges we've been dealing only with #1. Practical. I argue that, by continuing to accept bigots as part of the community, we are making a hostile environment for the groups they are bigoted against. The bigots will act in hostile ways, and as accepted members of the in-group the bigots make the rest of us appear supportive of their actions. I suggest that people like A Reader over at Tobias Buckell's place are just the tip of an iceberg of minorities who don't even bother to try to break into an environment that appears crummy to them; and that, if it appeared less crummy here in fandom, we'd get far more cool people to replace the few lame people we'd be throwing out.

But you say that so far as you know it's not a significant factor, so I hear you there and that aspect of the conversation is played out between us.

Argument #2 which has been quietly lying under my comments all along is Moral. Some things are very wrong, and people shouldn't have any truck with the people that do them. I put bigotry like Sanders' there. To me, it seems like if I wouldn't touch the guy with a dead skunk, I should strongly suggest to my associates that that they also steer clear of the guy. Why would it be moral to keep silent?

Julie L #180: Chinese communities in the Caribbean are quite small, though very successful as middleman entrepreneurs (in the main*). There are a few well-known Chinese figures in modern Caribbean history, the most famous of whom were Eugene Chen a Trinidadian of mixed Chinese-European-African ancestry who became foreign minister of China under Sun Yat-sen and Wilfredo Lam a Cuban of similar ancestry, who was a major artist of the early twentieth century. Surinam had a Chinese prime minister, Henk Chin-a-Sen, in the 1980s during the Bouterse dictatorship.

* By pure coincidence, I happen to have re-established contact with an old college friend of mine in Jamaica, a businessman of Chinese ancestry, this week.

#162 - Besides, Xopher is sooooo much cooler than "Kris-2-4"...

Julie 180: I won't object too strenuously to 'Ksopher'. There's something delightfully Slavic about that!

Madeline F #183 -- Allow me to direct your attention to your comment #94, in which you asked:

The unsettling impression I'm getting from all these threads is, "Oh, that William Sanders, what a racist jerk." But there's no impression of "William Sanders is dead to us, he will never work in the industry again."

K.C. Shaw @ 110: I can't be the only one with the TMBG song "Your Racist Friend" stuck in my head right now.

Well, you sure aren't now.

Avram, I would think unprofessional behaviour like that would be on the career ending side of the scale, in most professions that take themselves at all seriously.

Imagine an accountant writing that ``this company is run by sheet-heads, and so I can't understand their books'' in business correspondence.

A public figure would probably be expected to at least formally apologise.

Problem is that editing isn't a profession, and there's no professional standards, so you can't really go from one to the other as an idea of this stuff works. However, if SF publishing/fandom wants to have an communal image of moral probity, some sort of sanction is almost certainly in order.

I don't have a clue about what form that sanction should take, or anything, but if SF publishing/fandom wants to be accepted as a grown up set of institutions, using racial slurs in business correspondence is something that shouldn't happen. Apart from anything else, it's hilariously amateur, in the worst sense of the word.

Keir @ 189: The first guy to ever fire me from a job, way back in pre-history, later got fired himself. He'd written code (I'm told) to report on affirmative action statistics at the university where I'd been working, and in the comments had left helpful remarks like "number of n****rs in the administration". Helpful, in the sense of helping to get his ass fired when his code got audited.

Madeline, I always quote because post numbers can change. Not using your name was just random, not personal.

What I don't think Madeline F gets is the SF community's well-earned horror of letting itself get organized into any kind of unitary crusade.

I'm not kidding. This disinclination is the glue that holds SF fandom together across the decades. See also Cosmic Circle, NFFF, WSFS Inc.

We never all agree on anything, and that's what holds us together.

John A Arkansawyer, that is so perfect, in its own little cluster of bigoted fail.

Carl @ 152: "For a group that prides itself (sometimes aggressively so) about being open-minded, we're getting pretty insular about some things."

There's nothing open-minded about being tolerant of bigotry. It's true that unfriending people on moral grounds also relies on the "us v. them" mentality to some degree, but in this case it's a meaningful "us," and a meaningful "them." "Us v. them" distinctions based moral judgments of individuals' behavior are a lot more valid than similar distinctions based on arbitrary categories like skin color or religion. The problem with racism, sexism, and other bigotries isnt' that they draw distinctions, it's that they draw stupid, useless ones.

I eagerly await your feedback as to whether my biases/filters are running overtime.

John Chu @ 164: "Sadly, the situation improved for the Chinese living in the US at the expense of the Japanese living in the US. i.e., as we entered WWII, it became more popular to hate the Japanese instead. That isn't the way things should work."

It isn't the way it should work, but yet it so often is, demonstrating racism's arbitrary nature. To know the history of racism is to refute it--it’s simply too fluid, too dependent on the economic particularities of the time to reflect anything real.

Scraps @ 168: "Not to mention the fact that modern warfare is full of indiscriminate killing, of which the U.S. has done plenty. The civilian death toll in Iraq is one result."

Also not to mention that targeting the World Trade Center was very, very discriminating. There's a reason they tried to blow it up twice, and never went after the Statue of Liberty.

Oh, and by the way, if anyone wants to convince me that they have nothing to offer except complete bullshit, ending their comment with "I'll get down off of my soap box now and watch and see if any of you can read this without your biases/filters running overtime" is pretty much a bulletproof way of doing it.

See also: self-congratulation, inept, don't-sprain-your-shoulder-patting-yourself-on-the-back.

By the way, via the evil Nick Mamatas: Oh, "those awful "newbie" writers and their bizarre insistence on publishing rejection slips which is so unprofessional and obviously an artifact of a generation gap."

Just a nod back to the subject matter of the original post. Carry on.

John #190:

Clearly, this was a programmer who knew that nobody ever really reads the comments....

Patrick, surely Ms. LeGuin has sort of an ambience of perpetual noobness? It keeps her vital!

Uh, not for nothing, but "indiscriminate killing" is a horseshit phrase.

The Iraqi civilian death toll in Iraq is one million from 1990 to 2003 due to sanctions. Sanctions which killed a couple hundred thousand children because we wanted to instigate a coup in Iraq and get someone in there to kill Saddam for us. Bush Sr pushed for them. Clinton enforced them. Both were aware of the death toll. And even though the UN resolution said sanctions were tied to Iraqi disarmament, Bush Sr and Clinton both said they were tied to regime change.

If that is "discriminate" killing, then it is discriminating nothing other than "them, not us". Iraqi's, not Americans. And if that is our version of discriminating killing, then terrorists do the exact same thing, cause they're looking to kill "Us, not them".

The Iraq war since 2003 has killed probably at least a hundred thousand civilians, possibly two or three hundred thousand Iraqi civilians.

I haven't gone through the body counts of the number of Iraqi civilians that Saddam killed that got us to label him a terrible tyrant (He gassed his own people! Gasp!), but he's got a lot of competition from the US as far as killing Iraqi civlians goes.

Fragano @177:I, on the other hand, would be most hesitant to call someone a 'coolie', unless I knew them very well.

No kidding. I tried imaging calling her a "coolie" *even if she said that's how she thought of herself* and my mind just ... balked. And not just in Jamaica -- I don't think the term would go down well in any Chinatown in North America.

Keir@189: If I saw that comment by an accountant, I would totally read it as "This company is run by sh*theads and they have not been keeping proper records; I can't help you with it. Also, a profanity filter is in effect here."

PNH@192: Even if it were, is the industry even small enough that "he'll never work in this industry again" is a remotely credible threat? I'd think it would be extremely hard to remove someone from a profession without having a guild with total control, and outside of doctors and lawyers, I can't think of any. Publishing sure doesn't. (A conspiracy of publishers can blackball an author - unless they miss one, or new ones spring up. How do you stop a publisher from recruiting authors that have never heard of them?)

Michael, one common definition of a profession is that it has a body with total control over who practices and who doesn't. See: chartered accountants, actuaries, etc.

That's why SFWA isn't a professional body -- it has no power to sanction.

I suspect that `you'll never work again' would be reasonably credible coming from a industry standards body -- after all, if you could do it in comics in the '50s, I can't see why not in SF publishing now.

I don't think that such an industry standards body would needfully be a good thing, but it would be possible if the fan groups, SFWA, the big magazines, and the publishing houses were all in on it. There are probably ethical arguments against*, and they're quite probably right, but practically speaking, I don't think it's impossible.

*Like, restraint of trade, who died and made you king, too much like WSFS Inc., do I really want Andrew Burt anywhere near such a thing, etc.

Actually, `total control' is laying it on a bit thick, but you know what I mean.

PNH @192:We never all agree on anything, and that's what holds us together.

That's just not true at all...

albatross @ 197:

It's possible if not probable that I saw it here originally, but it seems apposite:

Codeulate: F*cking programming

Keir #202:

I'm trying to think of a worse idea than having an organization that could suppress writers and editors (and thus magazines and books) for having or expressing the wrong political ideas, but nothing is coming to mind.

More generally, even given the power, it sure seems like refusal to do business with or associate with someone, ever again, is a pretty large step. I could maybe see taking it for, say, someone who was a member of Klan. But I can't even imagine taking such a step on the basis of a single asinine, bigoted comment in a letter. I have some pretty big doubts about how much that really tells me about someone's deeply-held internal beliefs. And, to be honest, a lot of famous writers have been (and are) also famous a--holes in person.

distraxi: That's awesome.

Josh #100:

Just as an aside, what actions or statements would constitute a defense against this accusation? (I mean in general, not just this case.) Because as far as I can tell, none are sufficient. Pointing out a multitude of gay friends, coworkers, employees, students, etc., is all easily brushed aside with the "some of my best friends are gay" line. Previous non-homophobic statements can be brushed aside as trying to hide your true feelings. Short of coming out yourself (at which point I guess you'd just be a self-hating homophobe), what would be a reasonable defense?

Albatross #208: Well, how about this: Whatever actions have led people to suspect that the person in question is a homophobe? Maybe the person could try to avoid doing those things.

Like, fer instance, Nick Mamatas points out above in ct #85 that Sanders apparently "is constantly going on about cocks and homosex in denigrating ways". There's a thing to not do.

distraxi: Wow, glad I'm two floors away from the rest of my family, or I'd have woken them up with all the laughing.

Went over to Asimovs and read the thread linked to in #77. Post #1: "lynching". Classy. Further on: The Angry Black Woman unironically stereotyped as an angry black woman. Obligatory mention of "PC". Need unicorn chaser.

Echoing Madeline F at #158: have Dozois and Williams or any other editors elsewhere aside from pnh supported calling out such bigotry? In my imaginary utopia, being discovered to have such attitudes would be an automatic career-ender. But here and now, I would be very happy with SF bigwigs coming together to state unequivocally that this shit is not cool and if you get this kind of reception from someone in the SF community/industry you need to call them on it.

Albatross #208: not using hate-oriented language is a good first step to avoiding 'misunderstandings.'

Next up, it's amazing how quick something like this evaporates when the accused, instead of going bats**t crazy and defending themselves at-all-costs, they just say 'I'm sorry' and move on.

I talk about the 'cost' of just changing the behavior that leads to such misunderstandings here , as I've been called out for dumb stuff.

But if people don't want to give up that behavior and language... well then... something is going on there. Not sure what, always, but something.

This is why Jonathan Strahan is a gentleman who everyone is curious to see what he'll bring to the table in his next anthology after it was pointed out he had almost no women in his latest. He wrote a blog apologizing after thinking about the points brought up in arguments, and he sounded genuine.

And this is why the people going crazy and trying to defend the use of sheet head are dedicated to holding the line.

There's a blog post I like called how not go insane when accused of racism. It's an awesome blog post, and it's totally right on about how to recover from this.

Point of information: "sheetheads" has been, for some years, Gene Lyons's derogatory term for segregation-leaning voters, a reference to the sheet-like garb of the Ku Klux Klan.

@155 Xopher (and ceterae): I've been mostly-lurking for several months, and have been mentally pronouncing it "Zoh-fur" the whole time. This thread was the first clue I'd had that you were actually an Xmas X-man.

Dave "and now I know" DeLaney

I'm trying to think of a worse idea than having an organization that could suppress writers and editors (and thus magazines and books) for having or expressing the wrong political ideas, but nothing is coming to mind.

Slavery seems to be much worse to me, to be honest...

Seriously, I never said it was a good idea, just that it was feasible. After all, there's a lot of people over the years who've developed some very effective censorship techniques.

However, there are good arguments for the idea that, in general, if SF wants to be treated as a respectable grown up genre, it needs to recognise that racism (and bigotry in general) is ridiculously unprofessional, and actively turns people off, and that it may be necessary to have a collective `using ethnic slurs is not OK' position.

Even if it is just general expressions of disapproval or whatever.

(ObSF -- Terry Pratchett mocks `towel-head' etc very nicely in Jingo.)

Indirect documentation, December 17, 2002: segregationist sheetheads.

(via Interesting Times)

Gene Lyons's 1997 book review of The Runaway, a novel set in post-WWII rural Georgia:

... follows two boys -- one black, one white -- who stumble across a terrible secret. Could it be that a mythical white killer whom black folks call Pegleg actually exists? It's a mystery most white citizens would like to keep hidden. Everybody, that is, but Sheriff Frank Rucker. Not one but two Harvard lawyers help the sheriff make his stand against the local sheetheads.

One common definition of a profession is that it has a body with total control over who practices and who doesn't. See: chartered accountants, actuaries, etc

Is that a common definition? It seems to rule out both academia and school-teaching as professions.

Keir @ 215: "However, there are good arguments for the idea that, in general, if SF wants to be treated as a respectable grown up genre, it needs to recognise that racism (and bigotry in general) is ridiculously unprofessional, and actively turns people off, and that it may be necessary to have a collective `using ethnic slurs is not OK' position."

This sounds a bit hoop-jumpy to me. There are plenty of racists, sexists, and other sorts of bigots in literary genres considered perfectly adult and respectable--it's a bit ridiculous to require sf to purge itself of racism before it can be taken seriously. And really, is anyone in the sf community saying, "Yeah, he was being racist, and I'm okay with that?" The arguments I've been hearing are either "He didn't really mean it like that" or "How dare you publish someone's copyrighted work without permission?" I think the general principle that racism isn't okay is pretty well established here.

--which is to say, if we're going to be purging sf of bigotry, we should do it because we want to have a bigotry-free community, not to impress all them folks over at the grown-up table.

I see how that does sound a bit hoop jumpy, and it's that other genres are probably just as bad.

There's an argument that saying `I'm not going to discuss if sheethead's a slur, cause that's politics' is a way of making racism OK by moving it to the legitimate political debate column -- i.e it makes it something which people of goodwill can disagree about. It's the `equal time' principle.

Of course, that relies on the presumption that `sheethead' etc. is a racist slur, and obviously so.

David DeLaney @ 214... This thread was the first clue I'd had that you were actually an Xmas X-man

Didn't you know that Xopher in fact is the kid brother of Professor Xavier? Here is the photo that proves it.

Jesus God, Distraxi! I've been laughing hard for an hour (and sending it on to all my IT friends).

Madeleine F. #94: There's no reason fandom should have racist sh!ts in it. We're not right-wing talk radio. Hell, come to talk about right-wing talk radio, even Imus got fired.

Is is possible to throw someone out of fandom? It's not like they're getting paid to be in, or that there's a limited number of places available.

Amber #98: Have to say, the first image that came to my mind as a "sheethead" was, eh, white all over. But I'm not American.

The chatter about Sanders and the potential destruction of his career assumes that he has one. His books were mostly hack stuff -- not a slam, he annotates his bibliography with references to hackery and market-chasing on his own website -- and one can follow the downward spiral of his career from hardcovers to PBOs to Wildside pubs during their bad ol' POD days when Betancourt would let little children choose the covers, to even vanity publisher XLibris.

With the new masthead at Asimov's, he's not been getting any action on the short fiction front, and indeed has declared himself retired. All that's left is Helix, which is a tribute to the web design fashions of 1996, comes out quarterly (woo, they must be exhausted!), doesn't pay pro rates, doesn't have regular funding sources or a business model more complex than rattling a paper cup full of pennies, and which has managed a couple award nominations thanks largely to tireless wheedling and begging on the part of the principles.

LWE was surprised to discover that despite the Hugo nom (in the Locus category), and the Rhysling win (an exceedingly minor award for SF poetry), and the Neb nom (bad year for the Nebs, to say the least) it seems that some people had not previously heard of Helix.

Didn't surprise me at all.

Nick Mamatas @225: ...doesn't pay pro rates, doesn't have regular funding sources or a business model more complex than rattling a paper cup full of pennies, and which has managed a couple award nominations thanks largely to tireless wheedling and begging on the part of the principles.

The website may be from 1996, but the rest of the description sounds like every other Web 2.0 startup I've seen. Maybe they should spin Helix as a New Media SF site :)

Tangential question: If "coolie" is pejorative, is there a proper word for the sort of broad conical hat that people still wear in part of Asia when working outside in hot weather? This is actually something I need to know, not just idle curiosity.

dichroic @ #227 : I got in trouble for the hat thing once as well. I didn't realize that it meant something perjorative and got some lifted eyebrows. So I'm curious too.

dichroic @ 227: "This is actually something I need to know, not just idle curiosity."

In that case, you might want to try googling it.

Doctor Science #200: True. I doubt, somehow, that in continental North America you'd get killed. You might in Vere or Little London. And these days you might get badly hurt in Sando or Chaguanas.

regarding #211 and 158, there are editor comments in a post on David Moles's journal but most of them address the posting issue as well, not specifically the comments. (Just, more sensibly than "OMG! Copyright!") This is, one presumes, because that's what the post itself is about.

OK, since Mamatas has stood up for our right to post rejection letters, I posted one from him to the same story Sanders rejected. Thanks for the solidarity.

Serge 222: You have to tell everything, don't you? Honestly. And what makes you think I can't kill you with my brain? Perhaps I'll just convince you that you have to wear eyeshadow from now on.

Somewhat more seriously, it drove me cwazy that they called him "Eck-save-ee-er" in the movie. He should be either Zave-ee-er or Hah-vi-yay IMNAAHO.

inge 224: Is it possible to throw someone out of fandom?

No, it really isn't. It's been tried. It has always failed. The closest I know of was the case of Robert I-forget-his-last-name, a NY fan who was ostracized after an incident too ugly to relate, and that after years of being barely tolerated. He kept going to conventions, but no NY area fan would speak to him. He's since died, as far as I know of unrelated causes, and I don't think he ever understood why so many people hated/were angry at him. He was completely impervious to all feedback. Sad in a way, but he was so annoying and mean-spirited that it was hard to have any sympathy.

Luke 232: Link, please?

Xopher @ 233... Hmmm. The movie's pronounciation of 'Xavier' was rather close to the French, which would be 'ksah-vee-ay'.

Serge: They put the "eh" in front of it! Ick! And they ended with a consonantal 'r'.

Xopher @ 236... Is that how Patrick Stewart pronounced it? I expect that, with his training in the Classics, he made sure to say it the correct way.

Xopher 234: Either click my name or
http://solipcyst.blogspot.com/2008/07/story-sanders-rejected-some-at-asimovs.html

Luke 238: There's nothing in Nick's rejection that strikes me as racist (or bigoted in any way).

And if anyone's accusing YOU of being racist I haven't seen that. Obviously I haven't read your story, but neither has anyone other than the editors to whom you've submitted it (and perhaps a few friends of yours). Are you being tarred with the same brush as Sanders? That seems deeply unfair, if so.

Historical note: XLibris did not start out as a vanity press, and was not one at the time William Sanders sold them (not paid them to publish, but sold them) a novel.

Nick 225: This comment seems to really gloat over the downward spiral of Sanders' career. I don't have a lot of sympathy for him, but that really kind of skeeved me. We all know you hate him. The more you trash him for things that are perhaps foolish, maybe pathetic, but not actually evil, the more credibility you lose, because you become a biased source.

Besides, you're arguing against any attempt to make life in the SF world more difficult for him. Is that really what you want to do? I do think "let's all conspire to ruin his career" is a bad move, but I'm surprised you do.

Lawrence 240: I wouldn't worry too much about that. If William sold Xlibris a book, or had one vanity published, the first doesn't excuse the bigotry of the note nor the second exacerbate it. I think it's kind of a red herring, really (see my comments to Nick above).

I think we should get back to discussing the depravity of the Belgians, which was the real topic of this post.

What? It wasn't?

Never mind.

heresiarch, #194: It also sounds to me as though Carl is arguing the "tolerance isn't tolerance unless it includes tolerance for intolerance" catch-22, which I reject utterly. If I am required, on soi-disant "moral" grounds, not to object to those who call for my relegation to second-class citizenship... well, that puts all the power in their hands and none in mine, doesn't it? How useful for the bigots.

Keir, #202: I think another part of that definition is that a profession requires a licence to practice, and that said license can be revoked for cause by the governing body.

Xopher @ 242... we should get back to discussing the depravity of the Belgians

"I am not Belgian, I am a French-Canadian."
Darn. I can't do David Suchet accents.

heresiarch @ 219:

And really, is anyone in the sf community saying, "Yeah, he was being racist, and I'm okay with that?" The arguments I've been hearing are either "He didn't really mean it like that" or "How dare you publish someone's copyrighted work without permission?"

I think I might prefer it if people *did* say they're OK with these kinds of racist comments. I find blatant racism less rage-inducing than the rationalizations/BS excuses you've cited above. At least you can dismiss a blatant racist and move on; with the rationalizations you have to waste time pointing out the flaws in their logic and trying to reason with them.

Though it does help that the more common rationalizations are becoming so well-known that we can now point to resources like this and this as a shortcut.

I think the general principle that racism isn't okay is pretty well established here.

Where on earth did you get that idea?

As Madeline pointed out at #183, we do occasionally hear anecdotes from writers of color who take one look at places like the Asimov's forum -- where it seems pretty well established that racism, sexism, etc. *is* okay -- and flee screaming, having concluded that SF is a genre where racists are not only comfortable, but supported and tolerated.

#187 Avram: Well, I don't care so much about penalizing Sanders as about fixing the environment that we share, but I can think of various other ways to penalize Sanders. They just don't seem useful or worthwhile. I'm open to ideas, though: you're a much older hand at all this, what do you suggest?

#191 Scraps: Cool, NP.

#192 Patrick Nielsen Hayden: Lord knows I don't expect everyone to agree... People in general are contrary and individualistic. If fandom is moreso, I wouldn't be enormously surprised, given founder effects and societal pressures. But we have seen with bigots like Vox Dei that a strong lobby for equality can make a jerk into a laughingstock who doesn't get to hang around cool places, so I was hoping there was a chance of the same working against Sanders, even though he's one step higher on the cred ladder (editor vs author) and went after a group with fewer fandom representatives (racist vs sexist). I may be wrong about how much of a laughingstock Vox Dei is, though.

#241 Xopher: I do think "let's all conspire to ruin his career" is a bad move What does it profit us to have Sanders around? And on a different note, what would your reaction be if a mid-level manager at frex Honda of America had sent a supplier a letter like Sanders'?

It seems weird to me that suggesting that we speak against and actively avoid jerks is something one conspires to do. Conspire, man, sounds like that's suggesting something bad.

Madeline F @ 246... People in general are contrary and individualistic

We agree with you.

Historical note: XLibris did not start out as a vanity press, and was not one at the time William Sanders sold them (not paid them to publish, but sold them) a novel.

False. Xlibris did start out as a vanity press; it simply didn't have the author pay up front for its least expensive package. It was a back-end payment given the short discounts for even the authors and the inability of the books to make it into stores. Further, XLibris wasn't simply a printer -- the authors didn't own the books that were spit out of the POD machine, Xlibris did. (That's a better distinction between self- and vanity-publishing.) It's the same ol' vanity system, at a discount. Actually, at the time Xlibris's model wasn't too dissimilar from that of PublishAmerica, except of course that Xlibris didn't make claims about being a "traditional publisher." (By the by, I was working for Silicon Alley Reporter as a freelancer when the POD sector started making inroads and wrote on the topic, and have also published articles on PODs of that era, including XLibris, for the Village Voice. I remember the various business models of the firms extremely well.)

Again, Sanders's own recollection makes my point, and demonstrates that Lawrence is wrong. From his bibliography page: "I found the manuscript. Xlibris had a short-lived program by which they would publish your book at no charge, so I figured why not?"

"publish your book at no charge" is a peculiar definition of the word "sold" (especially "sold" repeated twice) at the very least.

Xopher: I do not hate Sanders; I find him annoying. He clearly thinks about, and spends more time talking about, me than I do him. I appeared on this thread because I was mentioned on this thread. At any rate, as I said, anyone can go to Sanders's own webpage and will see from his own bibliography that my sketch of his trajectory is accurate, and that he did indeed retire (his own word) as a writer. If you, like Lawrence, want to ignore facts because of what you see as some sort of emotional involvement, that is 100% on you and has nothing to do with me.

I'm only interested in facts, and indeed didn't take opportunities to swipe at Sanders on topics on which I don't have the facts (e.g., the suggestion that he may be a homophobe). I'd appreciate it if you didn't ascribe some universal knowledge ("We all know you hate him") to something that isn't even true.

Thanks @8 for a quick catch up.

if I ever reject a submission by means of a spluttering fulmination about the depravity of the Belgians

I don't think I'd mind getting rejections like this.

Sorry to make two comments about one, but anyway:

Besides, you're arguing against any attempt to make life in the SF world more difficult for him. Is that really what you want to do? I do think "let's all conspire to ruin his career" is a bad move, but I'm surprised you do.

Well, perhaps you are surprised because your knowledge of me is incomplete. Rather than suggesting some kind of odd contradiction, I'd recommend revisiting your insistence that I hate Sanders. I do not. Yes, I am explicitly arguing against any attempt to make life in the SF world more difficult for him.

For one thing, he is clearly rather very good at doing that himself. I see no reason to drive him out of SF, to conspire against him, or to do anything but let social nature take its course.

The last thing SF -- or any social endeavor that benefits from a diversity of opinion -- needs is a star chamber based on ideological means-testing, if only because the worm always turns. Not that anyone is seriously suggesting a star chamber, but at the same time there is really no mechanism other than a star chamber that could drive anyone out of anything in the online era.

I find pointing and saying "HA-HA!" when Sanders poops himself publicly and howls about the smell sufficient punishment for the crime of being Sandersesque.

I have to chime in with Madeline here. A really nasty piece of racism was met, among a notable segment of the great and mighty of SF, with a fine concern for Sanders' feelings; great (and entirely newfound) passion about the vileness of posting rejection letters; logic chopping to 'explain' how it wasn't racist at all... and a great echoing silence when it came to denouncing the racism.

This doesn't entirely surprise me from LWE, from memories of rasff, but from people like Gardner Dozois I find it very, very disappointing, and yeah, it does make the field a more hostile place.

Madeline 246: To Avram:I don't care so much about penalizing Sanders as about fixing the environment that we share and later, to me: What does it profit us to have Sanders around?

I'm asking a different question. Will systematically ostracizing Sanders be a net win to the environment we share? Remember, you have to count the cost of systematizing ostracism in the first place. If that mechanism can be used for a good reason (presuming this is one), it can also be used for a bad reason.

I don't think it will work anyway. Too many people will disagree with it on principle, even if they have no use for Sanders as an individual. The likely outcome of the attempt is All Fandom Plunged Into War more fannish feuding, Sanders getting more attention and support than he deserves, and someone getting carried away and doing something...intemperate.

It does not condone racism to say that going after Sanders is not worthwhile, any more than my opposition to the Iraq war condoned the behavior of Saddam Hussein.

Nick 248, 250: OK, I stand corrected. My apologies. However, you might want to examine, in your turn, what led me to the conclusion that you hate Sanders. The tone of your posts here is what gave me that impression.

You can conclude I'm reading-in, if you like. I'm just telling you how you've been coming across to me. And you came across so strongly that way that I was convinced it must be obvious to everyone; now that you've denied it, I no longer have such certainty.

And your penultimate paragraph in 250 means I needn't have written my reply to Madeline, above, though I guess I went into more detail. Madeline: read that paragraph.

Nick, I'm glad we're on the same side on this. Please don't think I bear you any ill will, and I hope you bear me none.

Xopher: You can conclude I'm reading-in, if you like. I'm just telling you how you've been coming across to me. And you came across so strongly that way that I was convinced it must be obvious to everyone; now that you've denied it, I no longer have such certainty.

Well, that's good. I think my comments here have been brief, sarcastic, and generally on point. Hate is rather stronger on all that. (For an example, one might check out that Murphy guy on the Asimov's board, who proudly proclaims his hatred for this or that person.)

Nick, I'm glad we're on the same side on this. Please don't think I bear you any ill will, and I hope you bear me none.

It's all good.

Toby@212: Thanks very much for that "not going insane" link and for the rational viewpoint you've been bringing to this tempest.

Thanks Paul. The not going insane link is a fave, because even allies or people conducting anti-racism or anti-sexist work will either unintentionally slip up or will occasionally get misunderstood. I've gotten hit with the racist brush because I look white and write about people who speak with Caribbean dialects, and I use that guide myself. Apologies or just swallowing and realizing it's not about me has been a good life lesson, and made me a lot of friends to boot. John Strahan has become one of my biggest heros of late because of his actions, the apology post. What a class act.

So again, yeah, thanks.

Madeline F #246: But we have seen with bigots like Vox Dei that a strong lobby for equality can make a jerk into a laughingstock who doesn't get to hang around cool places, so I was hoping there was a chance of the same working against Sanders

Isn't that already happening? What cool places is Sanders hanging out in?

Xopher @ 233: According to the Social Security Administration, well over 1000 sets of parents in the USA have named their sons Xzavier. And I'm afraid I know how they pronounce it.

Xopher @ 242: But which Belgians? -- the Wallonians or the Flemish?

Oh, please, that's a standard racist cop-out and Nick Mamatas nails Sanders on it.

I gotta ask though--is that the typical prose of an editor?

Sanders' initial letter is nothing like the editorial letters I see in in the academy. I'd expect better prose even from a racist.

I’m impressed by your knowledge of the Q’uran and Islamic traditions. (Having spent a couple of years in the Middle East, I know something about these things.) You did a good job of exploring the worm-brained mentality of those people - at the end we still don’t really understand it, but then no one from the civilized world ever can - and I was pleased to see that you didn’t engage in the typical error of trying to make this evil bastard sympathetic, or give him human qualities.

Let's just ignore the racist marker of "those people" and follow it in terms of syntax . . . There's no way to read "those people" other than as people who have "knowledge of the Q’uran and Islamic traditions."

All of this could have been avoided if William Sanders had remembered the essential rule of e-mail, which is never send anything in e-mail that you don't want spread out all over the Internet. Because everything gets out on the Internet. We've all had the Internet for a decade and a half now (and some folks even longer); this shouldn't be news.

Also, I solve the e-mail copyright issue by asserting that every e-mail sent to me personally, and all the content therein, become my property upon receipt. Easy.

Xopher @ 233

He's since died, as far as I know of unrelated causes

and still no one will talk to him!

Lee @ 243: "It also sounds to me as though Carl is arguing the "tolerance isn't tolerance unless it includes tolerance for intolerance" catch-22, which I reject utterly."

Yep, that's it exactly. A succinct way of putting it.

Nora @ 245: "I think I might prefer it if people *did* say they're OK with these kinds of racist comments."

As irritating as it is (and I agree), it does mean that we've won the first battle: making racism such a toxic idea that not even people who are racist can admit it and expect to be listened to. It's frustrating trying to get racists to fess up, and then to get their supporters to admit it, and so on, but that's just how it works. People will stop owning an idea before they stop expressing it, and they'll stop expressing it before they stop believing it. So it goes.

"Where on earth did you get that idea? As Madeline pointed out at #183, we do occasionally hear anecdotes from writers of color who take one look at places like the Asimov's forum -- where it seems pretty well established that racism, sexism, etc. *is* okay -- and flee screaming, having concluded that SF is a genre where racists are not only comfortable, but supported and tolerated."

When I said "here," I didn't mean fandom as a whole--I'm not nearly fannish enough to have any idea whether or not that's true. No, I was talking specifically about the argument being discussed on this thread, and I haven't heard of anyone saying, "But, those sheet-heads really are incomprehensible to civilized people! What's everyone so upset about?" They may be thinking it, but they're clearly aware that saying it isn't a winning argument.

Xopher @ #155:

And here I've been pronouncing it "<achlaut>opher", thinking the name started with a Ksi.

Fragano Ledgister #163:
I was not aware that 'coolie' is considered so racist in the Caribbean. My encounters with the word (as a child) was in its more benign meaning of 'unskilled labourer'.

John Chu #164:
That isn't the way things should work.
But sadly, we humans are very good at using minority groups as scapegoats on which to lay blame for our own failures. "I can't get work because INSERT_MINORITY_GROUP have taken all the jobs."

Tlönista #211:
That post#1 guy at Asimov's? He went septic a while back & has been lobbing great gobs of vile brown stuff at all and sundry ever since. Unfortunately, Asimov's isn't moderated (or the moderation is so light as to be non-existent). A small number of us have been fighting a rearguard action for a while but it's rough.

Things improved (or at least, the slide was arrested or slowed) when an area was set aside for the more contentious topics (religion & politics). For a while it was possible to avoid the worst of it. If you want to get into a shit-kicking contest, take it there. Elsewhere, relatively interesting & civil discourse could still be had.

In June, new forum software was introduced, which though an improvement in many ways, does not compartmentalise the sections anywhere as well as the previous software. Readers clicking on 'Recent posts' now get sewage too.

Madeleine @246: What does it profit us to have Sanders around?

It profits us as much as his work is worth to us.

#258: Is he claiming to be aware of all Islamic traditions?

Also, I found this sentence particularly striking:

I was pleased to see that you didn’t engage in the typical error of trying to make this evil bastard sympathetic, or give him human qualities.

Chris 265: And you remind me of another (relatively minor) point: since when is it an error to give a villain human qualities? I'd call it good writing. And making him in some ways sympathetic is good writing too: it's realistic.

Remember that the capacity for rage, anger, prejudice, tribalism and hate are all human qualities. Too often we want to section ourselves off and say that such people (as real terrorists, I mean) are monsters. This allows us the false comfort of ignoring the fact that humans are capable of the most monstrous things.

Giving a villain human traits or even sympathetic ones is a good way to give your reader that icky shiver that comes about when s/he realizes that s/he does have something in common with this "monster" after all. That's not only good writing: it's important, because the illusion that monstrous people have no redeeming qualities is a tool used by those very people to seduce others into complicity in their monstrousness.

Remember the nice liberal blogger who said that William F. Buckley Jr. was "a good and decent man"? He was wrong. Buckley may have been good and decent to his friends, but overall was an evil person. The idea that no true villain has sympathetic characteristics leads to the notion that anyone who does cannot really be a villain. And that's a really dangerous idea that has led to a lot of horrendous crime.

I guess that even without this flap I could discount Helix as a possible market. In my writing the most awful human villains are not without redeeming characteristics. And when I have beings who are purely evil, I tend to write them in the first person, in the most lyrical language I can muster. I guess the seductive nature of evil is not a theme that will play in the stories Sanders buys.

Dammit. You people woke me up at 3:47am this morning wondering exactly what racial pejoratives do Belgians find offensive. I'm off to the Farmers Market and there will be no artisan cheeses, fresh tomatoes and herbs or homemade tamales for any of you until I get some answers.

Chris, #265: If your villain doesn't have sympathetic or human qualities, you're not writing science fiction -- you're writing sci-fi B-movie melodrama, in the pejorative sense. (This is true even if your villain is literally non-human; if there isn't something there that the readers can wrap their human brains around, your story is going to fail. But I'm talking more at a metalevel, as a reader who despises one-dimensional characters.) I want to be able to understand why the villain does what he does, even if I still hate him to the depths of my being. And that means making him human, and perhaps even giving him some sympathetic qualities. No real live person is as one-dimensionally evil as Sanders wants his Muslims to be.

Celia #231: Thank you for pointing that out; as with any Internet slapfight there are so many links and posts it's hard to get through them all!

Nora #245: Ditto that. It is just infinitely easier dealing with people who will say things like "Unfortunately that neighbourhood is full of those people". However, even they will immediately follow it up with "But I'm not a racist".

heresiarch #261: The flip side of that is that Racist has become such a shocking label, the accused will never, ever admit to it. They almost never say "I guess that was pretty racist" and apologise. They just keep on saying "How dare you accuse me of racism!" and convincing themselves that everyone else is being oversensitive.

Soon Lee #263: Ugh, sorry to hear about that. A few foul (and active) people can poison an entire forum so quickly! I once belonged to a forum with designated long-drawn-out-debate and flame/rant sections and that seemed to work quite well; too bad the Asimovs software doesn't permit it.

265, 266: Being able to do monstrous characters who are still sympathetic is a mark of good writing, isn't it? It's even more relevant in SF, I think, because you often have to try to describe the unimaginable or completely alien while keeping people's attention.

Hopefully relevant: Re-reading Blindsight at the moment, which was a bit hard to get into at first because the only human characters are ships-of-Theseus, so augmented that it's in question whether they're still human. In my view Watts manages to create sympathetic characters whose motives and perceptions your average twenty-first century pre-Singularity person can't hope to understand. That is good writing.

Humanizing a monstrous character makes the difference between a slasher movie and Macbeth.

Xopher @ 266: I want to write a story with a villian who is really nice to his dog, just to mess with all the people brought up on the "have them kick a dog to show they're evil" trick.

Lance Weber @267 -- it very much depends on which part of Belgium you're talking about, the Flemish north or the French south. The two halves....tend not to like each other, so any sort of French or Flemish slur (sorry, nothing specific here) would be offensive. This site will probably get you further.

I can has artisan cheese?

Nick Mamatas writes, in comment #250:

The last thing SF -- or any social endeavor that benefits from a diversity of opinion -- needs is a star chamber based on ideological means-testing, if only because the worm always turns. Not that anyone is seriously suggesting a star chamber, but at the same time there is really no mechanism other than a star chamber that could drive anyone out of anything in the online era.

Tlönista @ 269: "The flip side of that is that Racist has become such a shocking label, the accused will never, ever admit to it. They almost never say "I guess that was pretty racist" and apologise. They just keep on saying "How dare you accuse me of racism!" and convincing themselves that everyone else is being oversensitive."

There is that.

I think you can have a suceesful film in which the antagonist has no human qualities.

"The Blob" springs immediately to mind, as does "Them". Mind you the story then becomes about how people react it, since the motives of the antagonist are not relevant to the story.

Debbie @271:
That was hilarious! Thanks for the laugh...

Today's selection of cheeses comes from Windsor Dairy, located just outside of Ft. Collins, Colorado.

First is the always splendid Glendevey aged in a natural rind and notable for it's deep buttery, nutty flavor and superb finish. Perfect for snacks, melted on a grilled chicken breast or added to a cheese sauce and drizzled over asparagus or broccoli.

Second is the Colona Reserve which is their popular Colona Emmenthaler that has been aged for six months. This is a new selection for me, but the nibble I had at the market was fantastic. I'm going to have a little more in a few minutes and decide how best to use it. It's so good, it may have to be a stand-alone, served in slices with some melon, fresh basil and flat bread drizzled with the some olive oil from the top shelf.

Lee @ 268: Not so. There are lots of science fiction stories where inhumanity is the purpose: The Terminator, The Humanoids, The Cold Equations, to name just a few.

Lance @ #275: Oh god, you're killing me here. Must have cheese!

In recompense, I believe there was a Monty Python sketch about what to call the Belgians... ah yes, thank you Google - Episode 37:

"Good evening and welcome to another edition of 'Prejudice' - the show that gives you a chance to have a go at Wops, Krauts, Nigs, Eyeties, Gippos, Bubbles, Froggies, Chinks, Yidds, Jocks, Polacks, Paddies and Dagoes. ...

"Well now, the result of last week's competition when we asked you to find a derogatory term for the Belgians. Well, the response was enormous and we took quite a long time sorting out the winners. There were some very clever entries. Mrs Hatred of Leicester said 'let's not call them anything, let's just ignore them' ... (applause starts vigorously, but he holds his hands up for silence) ... and a Mr St John of Huntingdon said he couldn't think of anything more derogatory than Belgians. (cheers and applause; a girl in showgirl costume comes on and holds up placards through next bit) But in the end we settled on three choices: number three ... the Sprouts (placard 'The Sprouts'), sent in by Mrs Vicious of Hastings... very nice ; number two..... the Phlegms (placard) ... from Mrs Childmolester of Worthing; but the winner was undoubtedly from Mrs No-Supper-For-You from Norwood in Lancashire... Miserable Fat Belgian Bastards."

Well OK then.

I prefer Lyle Zapato's bold stance: Belgium doesn't exist! It's a conspiracy by the New World Order! The Truth About Belgium

Terry Karney @ 274... I think you can have a suceesful film in which the antagonist has no human qualities

"An intellectual carrot. The mind boggles."
(later)
"Here's the sixty-four dollar question - what do you do with a vegetable?"
"Boil it."
"What did you say?"
"Boil it... bake it... stew it... fry it?"

(from 1951's The Thing)

"No one would have believed in the middle of the 20th Century that human affairs were being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than Man's. Yet, across the gulf of space on the planet Mars, intellects vast and cool and unsypathetic regarded our Earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely joined their plans against us."

heresiarch @270: if you have the hero kick the dog, I'd read it. :)

Brian, #276: I can't comment about the other two examples you cite, but The Cold Equations doesn't have a "villain" in any traditional sense of the word. Anyone who tried to say it did would be engaging in anthropomorphization.

Sheila Williams says her bit. Select morsels:

Tempest, for close to twenty years, Gardner Dozois periodically handed me stacks and stacks of rejection letters to read through and organize so that I could field queries and be aware of what his editorial decisions were. While the letters were filled with good humor, encouragement, and insightful suggestions, never once did I come across one that I perceived to have a hint of bias against anyone’s race, religion, gender, or sexual orientation.

[...]

Gardner and I, however, have never been supportive of intolerance, either. While we’ve run stories that may have depicted difficult, unsympathetic, and sometimes vile characters, our stories have not advocated racism, sexism, homophobia, or cultural and religious intolerance. I don’t engage in that sort of language or hold to those viewpoints in my personal or my professional life and they certainly don’t show up in my rejection letters.

[...]

After too many years of figuring out whether I can run letters, song lyrics, poetry, and homages in Asimov’s, I’ve become more of an expert on the subject than I ever set out to be. I’ve deeply admired a number of people who have engaged in civil disobedience, but I considered those people brave because they knew they were breaking a law and were prepared to deal with the consequences...

Lance @275 -- Yum. Sounds like you scored well. Thank you for 'sharing'.

Lee @281: I can't comment about the other two examples you cite, but "The Cold Equations" doesn't have a "villain" in any traditional sense of the word.

Not even the unspoken idiots in the backstory who approved such bad engineering or created those fatal corporate rules?

I watched maybe the first half of Pan's Labyrinth last week until the DVD (borrowed from the local library) hit a rough patch and became unplayable. Based on what I saw, although the movie has brilliantly imagined visuals overlaying stark political parables, IMHO it suffered a great deal from presenting the antagonist so viciously, without any redeeming human qualities unless you count the drive to create and maintain strict order in the world. (He's very tidy and meticulous.)

Julie L @ 284:

I slightly know an older guy here - "Arco", a very unusual character - whose family were Spanish Fascists. From what he's occasionally said about them and why he stopped associating with them, that character might have been a fairly accurate portrait of that kind of person. He mentioned, for instance, they used to celebrate the bombing of Guernica as a family holiday. Try to wrap your mind around that.

#245 Nora: Thanks for the links: I clicked to see what the inimitable coffeeandink was doing at present, and found that she's said everything I'm trying to say, but more gracefully.

#256 Avram: What cool places is Sanders hanging out in?

The top spot at a Hugo-nominated webzine? ;)

#252 Xopher: I'm sorry that I've been so unclear as to make it possible to mix up what I'm suggesting with Mamatas's dramatic Star Chamber suggestion. I don't think there's anything "systematic" about suggesting that fen abjure unapologetic bigots and lean on their associates to do likewise.

Your query about whether this would result in a net win to the environment we share I answered in 183 (and for that matter, 94): by continuing to accept bigots as part of the community, we are making a hostile environment for the groups they are bigoted against, and there are more cool people classed as minorities than there are cool bigots.

It's not different from moderating a forum to keep out trolls, except there is no forum owner. For it to work, there have to be a large number of people who think that harboring unapologetic bigots is worse than putting their cred behind suggesting people cut them out of fandom.

The likely outcome of the attempt is All Fandom Plunged Into War more fannish feuding, Sanders getting more attention and support than he deserves, and someone getting carried away and doing something...intemperate.

You've seen the attempt right in this thread before your eyes, and so likely results can collapse into actual results: even in a liberal feminist place like Making Light, that large number of people does not exist.

Way back in the 60s, Watt-Evans wrote:

#43: Helix is the creation of William Sanders, and the rest of the staff has very little input on policy. Certainly none of us read the story in question, or read the rejection letter before it was posted publicly.

Honestly? If I were the staff and I read that letter, my first response wouldn't be to go out and defend the guy, it would be to resign.

I think you've chosen poorly, LWE.

The top spot at a Hugo-nominated webzine? ;)

Eh, the Hugo Award for Best Locus Magazine is the least cool of the categories.

re: #270
Discworld'd Lord Veternari dotes on his dog.

Melissa #289:

Yes, but is Vetinari a villain? Sure, he's a ruthless assassin and dictator of the most Machiavellian sort, but he also seems to be the best kind of leader Ankh-Morpork could have.

#290: I get the feeling that Vetinari is a Lex Luthoresque evil mastermind who, having schemed his way into control of Ankh-Morpork, has realized that the best way to keep his job (and not get beheaded by some hero) is to run the place like a benevolent humanitarian. (Or with benevolent outcomes, at any rate... though he gets to them via Machiavellian paths.)

#290: He does throw mime artists in the scorpion pit.

But Nick @292, that makes him a *public benefactor*!

There is no question in my mind that Vetinari is *not* a villain -- the only running villain in the Discworld novels is (are?) the Auditors. Or possibly the Universe.

Would the Auditors understand villainy? They have no "ill intent," just a really, really intense sense of order.

Jules @ 280: "if you have the hero kick the dog, I'd read it. :)"

Ooh--now that'd be a hard sell.

Melissa Mead @ 289: "Discworld'd Lord Veternari dotes on his dog."

Vetinari isn't a villian at all--have you read Night Watch? The insights into the personality and motivations of a young Vetinari are quite revealing.

@ 294: "Would the Auditors understand villainy? They have no "ill intent," just a really, really intense sense of order."

Putting the question of intent aside, anyone who tries to destroy all life in the universe on a regular basis is definitially a villian.

Putting the question of intent aside, anyone who tries to destroy all life in the universe on a regular basis is definitially a villain.

I want that on a button. And as a t-shirt. Possibly also a coffee cup, a really big one. Although I might change definitially to definitively, because the world isn't ready for so useful a word.

Also, Vetinari seems to me to be a Machiavellian hero. Machiavelli seems to me to say that private morality in a leader can imperil the public good, and Vetinari will not allow concepts of right and wrong to impede what he sees as the best course for the city. He risks everything for the greater good as he defines it.

Should we add 'villain' to the spelling reference? It really has the words 'villa' and 'lain' in it.

Brian @ #276:

(I can't speak to your other two examples, not having read them myself, but)

The villain of The Terminator - stipulating that SkyNet, not its tool, is the real villain of the piece - has comprehensible motives; it's not just going around killing people for the heck of it. A large part of its motivation is a desire to ensure its own survival, which I think is a motivation we can empathise with. (Empathising with the motive is not sympathising with the motive's holder, I admit, but it's a big step forward from cardboard villainy.)

Julie L. @ #284:

I don't recall how far into the movie it really becomes clear, but the antagonist of Pan's Labyrinth does have at least one human hope, and I actually felt a bit sorry for him when it got crushed at the end.

(I still didn't like him at all, mind you.)

Serge #279:

"No one would have believed in the middle of the 20th Century that human affairs were being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than Man's. Yet, across the gulf of space on the planet Mars, intellects vast and cool and unsypathetic regarded our Earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely joined their plans against us."

"Middle of the 20th Century?" That's not how it goes.

Hopefully my local library system will disgorge another available (and less scratched) DVD of Pan's Labyrinth at some point so I can finish watching the movie-- there are lots of them out there, but they're in constant circulation; every time I've gone to a branch that claims to have a copy on the shelf, either someone got to it just before me or it's just plain gone missing.

I really, really hope that no one took small children to see it... and it's certainly making me (in an unsettling yet hopeful way) wonder how Del Toro is going to handle the The Hobbit.

Nora #245:
As Madeline pointed out at #183, we do occasionally hear anecdotes from writers of color who take one look at places like the Asimov's forum -- where it seems pretty well established that racism, sexism, etc. *is* okay -- and flee screaming, having concluded that SF is a genre where racists are not only comfortable, but supported and tolerated.

Asimov's Forum is unmoderated. Because of that, it is the small vocal minority of haters that get the attention, and without the strong medicine of moderation and banning, there's not much the rest can do.

vian @ 296: "I want that on a button. And as a t-shirt. Possibly also a coffee cup, a really big one. Although I might change definitially to definitively, because the world isn't ready for so useful a word."

Glad you like it! Also, I see you are a proofreader of skill and discretion.

Xopher @ 297: "Should we add 'villain' to the spelling reference? It really has the words 'villa' and 'lain' in it."

Alternatively, you could just brand a "V" on the hands of those of us who can't get it right. Clearly we are such. *shamefaced foot-shuffle*

heresiarch @ 270

I'd sympathize more if the dog kicked the hero.*

vian @ 296

He's your standard Lawful Neutral ruler: ya do what ys gotta do. Or as a different source would have it:

Marian: Why did you follow him to war all those years?
Robin: (somewhat quizzically): He was my king.

* Anyone remember a short story in which Lassie takes revenge for being forced to play a girl?

Bruce Cohen @ 304...

Little John: Where do we go? Which way?
Robin Hood: North.
Little John: Why north?
Robin Hood: England's there. Let's go home, John.

And later, when Marian accuses Little John of seeing her as an intruder in his friendship with Robin, he just looks at her and says that if she had been his, he'd never have left.

God, I love that movie.

Soon Lee #302,

I disagree; I think there's a lot that can be done. Moderate the damn forum, for one; why don't they? Do they want people to think their magazine's readership consists of a bunch of loudmouthed thugs and the handful of sane people who try to talk them down from the trees? I can understand not wanting to support censorship, but what the heck is wrong with enforcing a code of simple civility?

Beyond that, I think all the major editors of all the major magazines can take a simple step, like putting a statement on their websites or in their submissions guidelines making it clear that they welcome a diverse audience. And yes, they need to say so. It isn't clear, given the stuff that gets said in these forums, and the fact that people like Dave Truesdale have a column on the F&SF website. A statement like that won't do much on its own, because actions speak louder than words -- but since there have been so many questionable actions throughout the genre, I think the words are a start towards helping. We see our most prominent corporations -- especially the ones with a history of various "isms" -- making public statements about their commitment to diversity; why not a few magazines and/or publishers?

I'd love to see something like that from SFWA too, but I've already been around that particular mulberry bush.

I've known a couple of unmoderated forums that worked quite well; it just depends on the mix of personalities, and which posters emerge as opinion leaders.

Soon Lee, #302: Yeah, unmoderated forums are an entirely different kettle of fish. No matter how hard the community tries to establish a standard, the trolls will come in and shit all over the place, and you can't get rid of them sans the ability to ban. Eventually people decide that even trying to rebut them is "feeding the troll", and then you get what looks, to a newcomer, like a community where shitting all over the place is acceptable behavior. It's not, but there's no way to stop it.

Lee #308:

Trolls, spammers, and astroturfers, for different reasons, seek attention. ISTM that, as more and more widely-read sites become moderated, the unmoderated widely-read sites become bigger targets.

Avram #209/ tobias #212:

That's good advice for trying to avoid that kind of accusation, but not as a defense once it's made. The accusation is ultimately about alleged hidden beliefs or thoughts. It's pretty much impossible to disprove the claim that you harbor some set of evil hidden beliefs. That's made worse by the fact that overt behaviors that contradict the alleged belief are pretty much excluded a priori as evidence against them. You can see the seeds of this in the discussion of Saunders, before Xopher withdrew[1] the accusation of homophobia. Things like having gay friends or priminently publishing gay writers is easily brushed aside as evidence. ("Some of my best friends....")

If you accused me of homophobia, I can't see how I'd refute the claim. And I'm as sure as I can be that I'm not homophobic.

The main problem here is the accusation of guilt by hidden beliefs or ideas, which cannot be refuted. This is very different from an accusation of actions (you fire people when they come out, you write screeds about how all gays are going to burn in hell, etc.), which can actually be pointed out and discussed. But the accusation in public life seems always to move from the specific things said or done (which are usually more ambiguous than talking about "sheet-heads") to an argument about hidden beliefs.

I recommend looking at public discourse about race, to see why that's a bad thing. Some topics are minefields, including stuff that would be really good to discuss openly. Have a real discussion about affirmative action or immigration policy, and, as the night follows the day, some participants will be accused of racism. (And some will be racists, most likely. But the accusation may or may not track well with who really is a racist.) One result of this is that those discussions tend to be very constrained, and a lot of people silently hold beliefs (right and wrong) that they will never say openly except around close friends. Who wants to be smeared as a racist for disagreeing with affirmative action in public, and failing to hedge and weasel-word every comment?

And this applies, I think, to any discussion in which accusations of some hidden evil belief are an effective attack. It works with shutting up some criticism of US government policies, because who wants to be smeared as a traitor or not a patriot. (Again, this is an internal mental state which is inferred. Remember the unintentionally hilarious debate question to Barrack Obama about why he didn't wear a flag pin? It's the same damned phenomenon.) In my high school, it was a very effective way to smear someone about homosexuality--if you could put some guy on the defensive about his sexuality, you could make him do just about anything to prove his straightness. I expect it's effective in religious societies, when you smear someone as a closet atheist.

I am not sure whether there's a cure for any of this. But it's nasty, and it has ugly consequences.

[1] The other defense is, of course, having fair-minded people in the discussion, who will withdraw unfair accusations.

Lee 308: This is why I avoid unmoderated forums entirely. Trolls seem to have nothing but time to make everyone else miserable. Some, of course, are actually griefers (that is, they aren't about the fights as such but just about making discussion impossible).

albatross 310: If I'd had control of my fairmindedness I'd never have made the accusation in the first place.

Bill Higgins @ #300: That's not how it goes.

You're thinking of the wrong 'it'.

And this applies, I think, to any discussion in which accusations of some hidden evil belief are an effective attack. It works with shutting up some criticism of US government policies, because who wants to be smeared as a traitor or not a patriot. (Again, this is an internal mental state which is inferred. Remember the unintentionally hilarious debate question to Barrack Obama about why he didn't wear a flag pin? It's the same damned phenomenon.) In my high school, it was a very effective way to smear someone about homosexuality--if you could put some guy on the defensive about his sexuality, you could make him do just about anything to prove his straightness. I expect it's effective in religious societies, when you smear someone as a closet atheist.

I am not sure whether there's a cure for any of this. But it's nasty, and it has ugly consequences.

Well, I think it's safe to say that in a culture that was built on and in many cases still thrives on institutionalized racism and misogyny, we have all been programmed with these "hidden evil belief"s. It is our job to reeducate ourselves when necessary. We can begin with the understanding that this is what the culture teaches all children who are not taught otherwise.

For a further discussion on whether the issue/problem with racial discussions, is as albatross claims, the fear of being smeared or rather, internal views we hold, see this post.

nezua 313: I agree. Everyone's A Little Bit Racist. That song has humorous intent, but it's really true that racism is pandemic in society.

I know that I'm more afraid of a group of African-American teenagers than of a similar group of European-American ones. This is racism on my part.

The thing to do is keep it from affecting our actions as best we can, and try to raise the next generation so they won't have to deal with such feelings. I know that my parents succeeded in raising me to be less racist than they were raised themselves (I know from personal experience that my father's mother was and older sister is jawdroppingly racist by my standards); I recognize racist feelings when they arise in me and deal with them accordingly.

This, btw, is one way I know that attempts to control thoughts and feelings are less effective than trying to control actions. When I was young and foolish I went through a brief period where I avoided having racist feelings—by avoiding people of color! Once I realized that that was racist behavior (duh), I stopped doing it, and have had much less problem with racist feelings since then (aside from a spike in the early 90s after I and my then-boyfriend were beaten up on the street by a group of Hispanic teenagers...my fear of both Hispanics AND teenagers rose dramatically for several months, but I got over it).

Xopher @314, and thank you for it. There's not a bright line with those bad racists over there and us good people on the other side, and white privilege is not limited to those who were slaveholders, or had slaveholder ancestors. Speaking as if racist attitudes are the mark of the bad guys actually makes the kind of trolling in the Asimov's thread easier to develop, and the "but he's Cherokee!" defense superficially credible.

Sometimes all racism is is being unwilling to get on the bus with a bunch of teenagers-of-color because the last time a sililarly dressed group was loud and rude; often, all privilege entails is the flavor of rudeness to which one is subjected (for instance, as I child I was "lazy" but not "you dirty papoose" in the get-off-my-lawn tirades of our unfavorite neighbor).

#311: Being fairminded after you stop to think about it is still a heck of a lot better than never being fairminded at all. To err is human, to recognize and correct your own errors unfortunately rare.

I'm trying to find a less patronizing-sounding way to express that (and failing, otherwise I'd say that instead). I am not the judge of you. But I do think you may be judging yourself overharshly.

I think #310 points to an important problem, which I have not the slightest idea how to solve - other than stop trying to judge people on their thoughts, which is difficult enough to apply to one's own impulses toward righteous wrath, let alone convince others to adopt the same standard.

JESR 315: Wow, if I'd heard a neighbor call someone "you dirty papoose" when I was a kid, their lawn would have ceased to be an issue, and possibly to be a lawn.

Chris 316: I can't think of a better way either, so thanks. But I went overboard in my initial statement, and my later retraction, while clearly better-than-not as you suggest, doesn't actually excuse the initial unfair accusation.

Bruce Cohen @304: Well, if you're referring to Martha Soukup's
"Good Girl, Bad Dog," I remember it . . . I think it's in her collection, The Arbitrary Placement of Walls.

Nora, #306: Moderate the damn forum, for one; why don't they?

That question deserves an answer; I'm not as qualified to provide one as our Esteemed Hosts, but I'll take first crack. As I understand it:

An unmoderated forum requires very little in the way of resources; you set it up, and it more or less runs itself. However, adding moderation requires a significant allocation of resources (time and/or money), and the more active the forum is, the more resources it will take. If Asimov's wants to moderate the forum, they either have to assign someone the official position of moderator and carve out the time required to do that from that person's other duties, or they have to hire someone specifically to do moderation on the forum, and pay that person a decent wage for the amount of time it takes. Obviously, there's a tradeoff involved here, and I have no idea how much time/money would be involved for the Asimov's forum specifically, in part because I don't hang out there.

Beyond that, successful moderation is a specific skill, and one which is as yet in rather short supply. It's very easy to fall into either the Scylla of suppressing too much dissent on one side, or the Charybdis of having a de facto double standard for regulars vs. newbies on the other. There's been fairly extensive discussion of the tactics of successful moderation in various threads here -- perhaps someone who has them bookmarked can provide a link or three?

So yes, it's a valid question, but the answer isn't as easy as it might initially appear. Correction/elaboration on my response welcomed.

Albatross #310: If you accused me of homophobia, I can't see how I'd refute the claim. And I'm as sure as I can be that I'm not homophobic.

If you accused me of homophobia, I'd just refute the claim by asking you to back it up with facts, and demolishing those facts, or mocking you if you were unable to produce any. And I'm not entirely sure I'm not homophobic. (By which I mean: I'm a heterosexual male raised in a homophobic society, and have soaked up all sorts of subtle homophobic beliefs and assumptions by osmosis. Unsubtle ones too, but those are easier to notice and deal with.)

#280: Yeah, for some reason, how a character treats the dog is supposed to tell you who to root for. e.g., in the movie of THE EIGER SANCTION, (is it a spoiler to reveal what happens in a movie over 30 years old?) you know the main character is the Good Guy because while he kills the villain in a cold hearted way, he saves the villain's dog. (Need I mention that the guy killed is a wretched gay villain stereotype? Clearly, we were meant to think he had it coming.)

Coincidentally, I noticed something odd at my improv class today. The rest of my classmates were using "Chinese" to indicate that something obscure, inscrutable, or the result of a laundry service. (The last one was actually kind of funny because he looked so guilty after he said it.) I kept waiting for someone of them to do this in a scene with me so that I could call them on it during the scene. They never did that though.

At the time, part of me thought, "That stereotype is still alive?" Are there even any laundry workers left in the US? Dry cleaners, maybe?

Nora #306:
Dell Magazines, which owns Asimov's don't appear to have any willingness or desire to moderate their own forum.

nezua #313:

I read your post, but I strongly disagree.

When I hear from a black person that some situation (say, getting stopped by a cop) is very different for him than for me, I assume he probably knows what he's talking about. If several different black guys say "I'm almost as scared of the cops as of the criminals," responding that they're just feeling guilty about their own hidden criminal tendencies or some such thing is frankly pretty idiotic. Probably, they're worried that the cops seem kinda willing to beat the crap out of black men they arrest, and sometimes willing to shoot them for holding a wallet.

Similarly, if a whole lot of apparently decent and well-intentioned whites say that every time they have a public discussion about race, they feel like they're walking through a minefield, they probably really mean that. Perhaps, just like me with police stops (the cops have always been formally polite with me), you're just not seeing the same stuff we are.

The least plausible explanation, to me, is that you, from your armchair, have better understood all those peoples' inner psychological drives than they have themselves. This seems about as likely as the parallel suggestion that I've really understood more about casual prejudice in daily like than all those black people who routinely notice it and occasionally comment on it, and they're just imagining it all.

John Chu @ 322... I thought that the inscrutable Oriental had been retired by the likes of very scrutable George Takei.

Albatross, that's a dodgy analogy, because we know that blacks get disproportionately screwed over by the police from multiple sources, which is why statements about feeling more scared of cops than criminals are treated respectfully.

There's no corresponding evidence for your case of well-meaning whites.

Keir #326: No evidence of what, exactly? No evidence that public discussions of race in the US are minefields? Where the hell have you been living these past few decades?

John@322: And yet no James Bond villain ever gets any credit for their affection for their cats...

No evidence that public discussions of race involve significant false accusations of racism against well meaning white people.

Of course public discussion of racism is a minefield if you're a racist, and, to be blunt, that's why it's a minefield for lots of white Americans.

Keir, it's a minefield even if you're not. If you don't use exactly the right terms all the time, and even if you do, you're constantly under suspicion. Well, most people are pretty racist (regardless of their own race). But for obvious reasons white people are under more suspicion than people of color.

Julie L., #301, does your library have holds/requests? I just request what I want online and they let me know when the library closest to me has it. They'll hold it for me for 10 days for a new book/CD/DVD and three weeks for older ones.

albatross @ 310: "It's pretty much impossible to disprove the claim that you harbor some set of evil hidden beliefs. That's made worse by the fact that overt behaviors that contradict the alleged belief are pretty much excluded a priori as evidence against them. ... Things like having gay friends or priminently publishing gay writers is easily brushed aside as evidence. ("Some of my best friends....")"

“I have gay friends!” isn’t much of a defense because having gay friends is irrelevant to whether or not a particular comment one just made was homophobic. Bigotry isn’t an average over time: being really nice to some gay people the day before yesterday doesn’t cancel out calling someone a fag today. If you want to prove how the comment you just made wasn’t bigoted, then you’ve pretty much got to prove how the comment wasn’t bigoted, not your general moral rectitude.

Here I'm focusing specifically on the comment itself, and I think that that's exactly what one should do if accused of racism on the basis of one comment. You're right: it's impossible to prove the state of one's hidden beliefs--they're hidden, after all--but you can discuss the comment. Either the comment was racist or it was not. If it was, denying it just tends to indicate that the denier, in addition to making racist comments, can't tell the difference between racism and not-racism--which is itself another marker of racism.* If it wasn't a racist comment, then your defense would best be made by pointing that out, as Avram suggests @ 321.

I think a lot of people get into this thought-pattern: "I am a good person. Therefore, I am not a bigot. Therefore, nothing I say can be bigoted." I don't think either of those propositions follow: you can be an essentially decent, well-meaning person and still harbor bigoted thoughts, and you can say bigoted things even if you're not a bigot. And because in our society "being a good person" has such a strong relationship with "not being a bigot," people tend to see accusations of "You're being bigoted" as being attacks on their good character. This is what keeps people from engaging in good-faith discussions of issues of bigotry in our society, not baseless accusations of racism.

"And this applies, I think, to any discussion in which accusations of some hidden evil belief are an effective attack."

The difference being that there are very few Americans who secretly want to destroy America, where there are a great number of unconscious bigots.

*"It's not racism, it's just the truth--black people are just plain better at basketball!"

To amplify Xopher@330

The minefield is absolutely real, and I would trace the proof of its existence to the presence of dog-whistle racism or other forms of code words. Let's keep it on race for now, and continue with the convenient fiction of there only being two races. In this situation, there will be two groups who know the code words: the blacks, who work out the code by seeing what's used as an excuse to discriminate against them; and the racist whites, who use them to act racist in public without the non- or anti-racist whites calling them out on it.

The codes will also change as they get better-known, so they'll change regularly as well, and by region.

The upshot of this is that when in any conversation about race - or about minorities - the white participants have to wonder if they just asked someone to pass the salt or if they just said slavery was awesome.

For a specific example...

Early on in the primaries, Obama made a very good speech, and some blogger whose name escapes me at the moment praised it and promptly got flamed to a crisp by about half the Internet. This was, of course, because amongst the laudatory adjectives he used was "articulate", which is apparently a heavily loaded racist codeword. I was baffled by the reaction until I checked with people older than I was; I'd managed to live for nearly 30 years without learning that referring to a black as "articulate" means that one believes that blacks are all illiterate and can't speak English right. I don't think I was alone in my ignorance.

For added fun, in the "accidental dog-whistle" situation, the "how to not go insane when accused of racism" hints we've seen effectively all require lying. Even the best possible honest response - which, if I read these right, would be "You know, I've never heard of that before. I'll keep that in mind in the future." - boils down to "why must you overreact so much?" and the ever-popular "I'm sorry you were offended by my harmless statement."

#333
I suspect that the less racist a person is, the less likely they are to even know what the code words are, because they're likely to meet them only when other people use them in a context where that other meaning is clear.

(Hmm, maybe next time I run into Richard in the lobby, I should ask him to read this thread.)

#334

That's what makes it a minefield instead of, say, an obstacle course, right?

Hey, Nezua!

Albatross, discussions of race are minefields, but not because white people are beholden to invisible rules they only learn about after violating them. What makes a discussion of race a minefield is how the topic becomes policed once it comes up - complaints about political correctness, for example, or attempts to make the two sides of the discussion rhetorically equal, even though they are not. Accusations of being oversensitive, or that your tone is wrong and you should try to be nicer, and so on.

There's also the fact that many people, when told they just said or did something racist, take that as a direct accusation that they're racist, and racist is evil, and therefore you're calling them the devil. So once that happens, the discussion becomes a mess as people try to defend their "I'm not a racist" status after saying or doing something that was by itself racist.

So yeah, race discussion is a minefield, for exactly the opposite reason from what you claim. It's not people of color who make it an issue.

Early on in the primaries, Obama made a very good speech, and some blogger whose name escapes me at the moment praised it and promptly got flamed to a crisp by about half the Internet.

It was Sen. Biden, who called Obama ``the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.'' (CNN)

From memory, there were people for and against regarding that as a racist statement. The TAPPED archives for the period would be a good source for pro/con arguments.

Now, Biden's a politician, and he should know what words mean, so he can't escape on the ignorance claim. Neither Obama, nor the Rev. Jesse Jackson, both quoted in that story, called it racist -- ok, Obama can't call much racist, but I can't see Jackson soft-pedalling -- and I doubt that Biden's political career took much of a hit from that particular episode, given he's still seen as a serious VP or Sec'y of State candidate.

He said something dumb, he apologised, everybody moved on, and half a year later, people can't even reliably associate him with the gaffe. It actually seemed like an example of the system working, to be honest.

#333 Michael Martin: the "how to not go insane when accused of racism" hints we've seen effectively all require lying

Why would it be lying to apologize for not knowing something important to the people you're talking to?

nezua: O HAI

Xopher #330:

If you don't use exactly the right terms all the time, and even if you do, you're constantly under suspicion.

So apologise, and move on. Being accused of racist speech is, in fact, not worse than being subjected to racist speech. Which is why conversations about race with white people are minefields. They're so...sensitive.

Although you undoubtedly did not intend it, that has the same overtones as "you can't even ask a woman out nowadays without being slapped with a sexual harassment lawsuit", a statement I have heard from many an old codger.

One of the many useful things a TG friend taught me is that there's a difference in range of implications between "I didn't mean to give offense" and "I didn't realize that was offensive".

The first one doesn't have to slide into "...and therefore it's all your silly fault for finding offense", but it easily can.

The second one makes it much easier to follow with "...and so now I've learned something important, and will try not to do that again, thanks".

Michael Martin @ 333:
... Even the best possible honest response - which, if I read these right, would be "You know, I've never heard of that before. I'll keep that in mind in the future." - boils down to "why must you overreact so much?" and the ever-popular "I'm sorry you were offended by my harmless statement."

I don't really see how the first statement is equivalent to either of the following ones.

If you casually brush by or bump into someone, and they yell out in pain, and you accuse them of overreacting, and they tell you that (for example) they were injured yesterday right where you hit them -- then saying, "Oh, I didn't realize that was the case; I'm sorry" seems like a perfectly reasonable thing to do, and does not boil down to saying, "Well, still, why did you overreact so much?"

Paul A. at #312:

If Serge prefers the infusoria-free Hollywood rewrite of Mr. Wells's majestic opening, I can't stop him.

Peter Erwin@ 341 sets up the hypothetical If you casually brush by or bump into someone, and they yell out in pain, and you accuse them of overreacting, and they tell you that (for example) they were injured yesterday right where you hit them -- then saying, "Oh, I didn't realize that was the case; I'm sorry" as a parallel to racism. As Tionista already said at 339, So apologise, and move on. Being accused of racist speech is, in fact, not worse than being subjected to racist speech. Which is why conversations about race with white people are minefields. They're so...sensitive..

What has happened to our society where an involuntairy cry of pain (physical or otherwise) is taken, not as a prompt for an immediate and shame-faced apology, but as a new and worse offense than the thoughtless action that caused it?

JESR @343:
*sigh* That's the problem with you bleeding heart types - logical reasoning escapes you, so let me spell it out:

1. A cry of pain is clearly a cry for help.
2. Anyone who asks for help is demonstrably not self-reliant.
3. Those who are not self-reliant support big government, socialist states.
4. Anyone who would divert government funds from the War on Terror to throw money away on useless parasites is no true patriot.
5. True patriots never have to apologize to the unpatriotic; attempting to coerce an unneeded apology from a patriot is offensive to all patriots.

PJ Evans @334:
I suspect that the less racist a person is, the less likely they are to even know what the code words are, because they're likely to meet them only when other people use them in a context where that other meaning is clear.

Not my experience at all. My experience is that the less racist a person is, the more self-aware they are, because to be un-racist in a racist society requires active work.

Part of the reason the discussion is a minefield is because of what is technically called "privilege". The core of privilege is not having to notice or deal with things that other people do have to deal with -- especially when a lot of their problems are caused by you not noticing.

Consider the problem of DWB, or "Driving While Black". Many (most?) white Americans don't know what DWB means, or how widespread it is, or how much it constrains the lives of black men in particular.

If you aren't aware of DWB, does that make you a racist? I don't see how it could, but it doesn't make you non-racist, either. It makes you *privileged*, unthinking.

I think part of the reason for the "minefield" is that a lot of white Americans think they deserve a cookie for *not* noticing racial divisions in America -- that not noticing means they are not racist. But unfortunately it doesn't work that way: not noticing the structures of the society you're in doesn't mean you're above or outside them, it just means they work for you.

It's like shopping without checking prices. If you do that, you *could* say it's because "I don't think money should be important". But what is really going on is that you're rich.

This thread strongly reminds me of the first time I got hit with the "you're so intolerant of intolerance!" canard.

I was, maybe, 15, and I'd just come inside angry and frustrated and appalled because my neighbor was making terrible racist comments in front of his 3-year-old son and the rest of us kids: "I don't know why my wife's so late getting home. I guess some black kids downtown must be having fun."

He repeated this several times, as though he thought it was very funny.

(I'm guessing that the repetition also stemmed from a very real worry that his wife was, at this moment, being gangraped by black teenagers. But there's only so far my sympathy goes when the fear is based on a racist assumption that all black men just live to rape them white wimmins.)

So, anyway, I start griping to my mom about this, and she favors me with a smug smile that I can see in my mind to this day as she says, "Niki, why are you so intolerant?"

Me: "What?!"

Her: [shakes head, keeps smiling.] "You're just so intolerant."

Now, Mom's not by any stretch of the imagination racist, at least no more so than a great many people I respect, which is to say, not deliberately racist but at times inadvertently prone to evincing the attitudes upon which they were raised. In any case, looking back on some of our interactions then and now, I am convinced that for her, it is sometimes more important to take her self-righteous daughter down a peg than to address whether the self-righteousness is perhaps based on a valid argument. This especially comes up when racism is in the conversation, because racism makes me spittin' mad and, well, yes, somewhat self-righteous.

Anyway, I walked away from that interaction with two conclusions:

1) I have got to come up with a better response to this bullshit than just dropping my jaw and screeching "What?!"

2) Apparently it's considered more impolite to notice racist sentiments than it is to actually express and support them. Huh.

It's amazing how people who proudly "call a spade a spade" only see such plain talk as a virtue when "spade" is a euphemism for "n****r". When the garden implement in question is racist speech, why, being all mealy-mouthed and "tolerant" is suddenly the next thing to Godliness.

I have to agree with Madeline F that if a community wants to be a welcoming one, its members need to call out its members' bigotry. Defending it in the name of Geek Fallacy #1 is a mistake. Because when bigotry raises its ugly head, ostracizing will happen. No exceptions, no escape. If censuring bigotry results in ostracizing the bigots, that's sad, but failure to censure bigotry creates an atmosphere in which bigotry is tolerated, which results in ostracizing those whom the bigots don't like. Since it's going to be one or the other, I'd choose the ostracizing that's based on harmful behavior rather than harmless personal traits.

(Really, it's jackasses in the unmoderated public sphere all over again.)

Which isn't to support the concept of the "star chamber" and the thought police. No, I'm more about informed choice. Information: Sanders is a bigot. Choice: Will not do business with. As it is everyone's right to make fully informed choices, I see no reason why anyone should keep the information on the down-low.

Well. No good reason. I'm sure one might argue that we shouldn't mention Sander's bigotry, because criticizing Sander's bigotry might hurt Sander's feelings. But, y'know, hearing someone rip off a prime exhibit of bigotry has the strange effect of diminishing my concern for their feelings by about, on average, 97%.

This seems to be the next stage: what happens when an author wishes to withdraw from being associated with Helix. "And I'd have rejected you if it hadn't been for your pesky positive discrimination".

Doctor Science, #345: I think part of the reason for the "minefield" is that a lot of white Americans think they deserve a cookie for *not* noticing racial divisions in America -- that not noticing means they are not racist. But unfortunately it doesn't work that way: not noticing the structures of the society you're in doesn't mean you're above or outside them, it just means they work for you.

Very well put! And then you get the (less common, but occasionally encountered) type who insists that NOTICING racial or cultural differences at all makes you racist -- that to be "color-blind" requires being literally unaware of whether a person is white, black, brown, Asian, or whatever. (Needless to say, every person I've ever heard express this argument has been white.) I've gone rounds more than once with one of these, who also insists that noticing differences at all means you are automatically assigning rank to said differences. Oy.

Re Anna way back on #14 - I think "to illicit sympathy" is one of the most malaproppriate phrases I've ever read, and I think it deserves to become an idiom. "To illicit" is to elicit illicitly.

Lee, the idea that any difference must be ranked is also an epidemic in our society. People who are infected by this particular mental virus think everyone else is, too: They're the people who think Pagans want to convert Christians, who think gays want to "convert" straights, etc.

They want everyone to be like them—and they regard that as a generous impulse, since of course they're the best. So they think everyone else is the same way, but that can't be tolerated, because that means "they" want the best to become lessened.

Off the subject, but:

Lance Weber @ 267 and 275! Which farmer's market you at? I thought you sounded local when you mentioned tamales, but then you followed up with a post about Windsor's Glendevey (mmm, Glendevey) and I knew for sure. Is there any chance I might have already stood in line behind you at A-MAIZE-ING's booth in Boulder one of these past Saturdays?

Aw, damn, eyelessgame (nice moniker - anagram for Mongo?) ... I was gonna post pretty much exactly that right after my #346 ("Yes, LWE, true, but... no, no, I think Anna has the right of it"), but then I thought, "Nah, it was two days ago, the moment is past." Curses! But yes, it's rare to see such an apt homophone mistake as "illicit sympathy" in this context.

John Chu @ 322, there was still an existing Chinese laundry in Waltham, MA -- thirty-five years ago. My mother used to take her sheets there, until we got a washer large enough to handle king-size linens. Some of her oldest bed sheets still bear a laundry mark - our number was 59.

I have no idea how long it lasted past 1973. I suspect if it weren't for the recalled Abercrombie t-shirt, the meme would be nearly dead.

Nicole J. LeBoeuf-Little @351:

Yes you probably have! I live in Longmont, so I rotate between the Longmont and Boulder markets. We should do a ML Breakfast at the Farmer's Market meetup!

Miller farms had their first harvest sweet corn in last weekend and oh nom nom nom nom nom...my youngest spawn ate 4 ears tonight despite having that whole "missing half her front teeth" thing going.

Until a few years ago, one of the more popular late-night social spots in Kingston, Ontario, was the Chinese Laundry Café. At the time I was going to university in that city, a small group of activists -- the "South East Asian Womyn's Collective" -- protested the place "on behalf of" their fellow students, on the grounds that it was promoting stereotypes. Mr. Lee, former owner of Lee's Chinese Laundry (which had occupied the site previously), had been quite pleased to have his business commemorated by the name and Chinese-themed decor of the restaurant. The Womyn's Collective went so far as to send a letter to the café's owners, demanding that they change their name and sign, calling them "white penis-heads". The owners, a lesbian couple, were amused enough to have the letter photoenlarged so they could post it in the café's window. Most of the other asian students didn't seem to be happy about the Collective's claim to be speaking for them. The whole brouhaha faded away after a year or so, as the Collective found a variety of other things to object to.

I think it's important to celebrate differences, not magnify them into barriers. I like knowing about different cultures, families, storytales, foods, country views -- the more I travel, the more I've marveled at how much the earth looks the same everywhere. Of course, there are dramatic differences in the notable places, and that's what makes them so interesting. One grandmother came from Transcarpathian Rus, the other came from mid-Ireland; they both liked the mid-Hudson Valley of NY because it looked like their childhood homes -- and this same view reminded my "Chinese grandmother"* of the area around where she grew up on Mainland China. All three women had different ways of cooking chicken, all of which I find tasty. All three had different ways of drinking tea, and all three spoke more than one language, which allowed me to build a comparison dictionary for my 9th grade anthropology class that literally spanned the globe.

So it makes me sad and angry to see close-minded people who reject "others", no matter what kind of "other" they may be.

*A very good friend of my parents, she was self-described as our Chinese grandmother.

John Chu #322: Are there even any laundry workers left in the US? Dry cleaners, maybe?

Yes! Most of the dry cleaners and laundromats near my home in Brooklyn are Chinese-owned.

P J Evans, #334, there's an Ellison story that has lists of racist slurs. When I first read it, I only knew a couple. The next time (as an adult), I knew 10 or so. The last time, it was about half. I'm afraid to read it again and find out I know more.

OK, Stephen Colbert pretending to be drunk, ranting about the Belgians taking over Anhuyser-Busch (which I can't be bothered spelling right).

He called them "waffle-humpers."

I can't imagine doing better than that.

> anagram for Mongo?

Why, yes. I have gone by "Image" (or, where the pretension is properly recognized as ironic, "iMage") in some online fora, but this common name tends already to be taken in most mature environs. But yes, Peart proved they're equivalent.

And since I don't game nearly as much as I'd like, it's appropriate on another level.

ObTopic: when you were called "intolerant", it seems like it is more rudeness that was being objected to than intolerance. Consider the genesis of this thread, where Sanders was intolerant, but the person who posted excerpts of his letter was (by some social yardsticks) rude, and all sorts of people are hiding behind their objections to the latter in order to avoid confronting the former.

(It's safe to shun rude people. It's not safe to shun racists; racists are typically armed, crazy, and stupid: a bad combination to piss off.)

Having been in enough situations where I alienated people who agreed with me by being too strident, I've started to recognize the virtue of finding ways to express displeasure with another's values politely. Not terribly good at it yet, though.

Eyelessmongo #360: It's not safe to shun racists; racists are typically armed, crazy, and stupid

In my experience, racists are typically just like other people. The most outspoken ones are generally elderly; not much of a physical danger to anyone but themselves.

Yes, do let's be careful of stereotyping racists here.

Respectfully yours,

The Armed & Crazy Value of Stupid

I had a dream the other night. Not a good dream. I dreamed I was being carjacked.

Being carjacked by a Young Black Male.

This was one of those Two-Second Dreams, where the content is disturbing enough you barely get into it before you wake up to find your heart thunping and muscles tensed and your wife saying "What the...? Why did you just kick me?"

After those first few seconds of alarm and panic, until you realize you're safe in your home, comes the more thoughtful reaction:

"A Young Black Male carjacker? I'm dreaming in stereotypes?! Damn it!!"

Bruce, @ 363 "A Young Black Male carjacker? I'm dreaming in stereotypes?! Damn it!!"

That or your brain was borrowing a convenient and common image from the media [1] to try and illuminate some aspect of your day.

Alas that there is some aspect of your current circs which makes you feel all put-upon and run-away with like that. May whatever it is resolve itself.

[1] Evil types they are. May all of their children have extremely small members. Including the girls.

Lee and Doctor Science: I find the best response is:

"You don't see colour?"

*slowly looking the person up and down critically*

"Explains that outfit, then."

Erwin@341

The original statement includes an explicit disavowal that you've done anything wrong - there's a definite claim that your statement was intended to be harmless. You really do only regret the fact that you inadvertently caused offense, and you cannot honestly apologize for the failing that their reading of your statement implies you had. To use my original example again, Dodd, if he was not intending to be racist, cannot honestly apologize for implicitly impugning the eloquence of all black people, because he didn't - his intent was merely raising up one specific person. (If I have misunderstood this mess, and it is actually the case that calling a black person well-spoken in any terms whatsoever cannot be done without being "racist", then something is seriously broken and I refuse to have anything to do with this protocol. I refuse to accept that one can't compliment a person without simultaneously tearing down an entire class of people who vaguely resemble them. If this sparks fights, I will simply have to turn them to breaking this toxic idea.)

The key difference, I think, is that bumping into someone is universally recognized as a slight in the first place - you'd ordinarily apologize for bumping into somebody anyway. Also, there isn't the "you said something racist, therefore you are racist, and no decent person should ever deal with you ever again" overtone - which a quick scan of this very thread will make clear exists. In order to make it match the first statement, the person you bumped into would also have to either imply or directly state that, say, you should have your driver's license revoked because you are clearly too clumsy to operate heavy machinery. It's still not a good match because any equivalent here is overreacting. And I think this is because there's no equivalent to privilege here. Which brings us to...

Doctor Science@345

We're talking about slightly different things here, and as my initial take at my first post used privilege as its touchstone, so...

The core of privilege is not having to notice or deal with things that other people do have to deal with -- especially when a lot of their problems are caused by you not noticing.

The essence of the dog whistle is that the privileged are divided. There's one group actively dedicated to causing problems for the non-privileged, and also actively dedicated to hiding it from non-like-minded members of the privileged group.

So, let's say we want a fruitful dialogue between the privileged and the non-privileged. There are four groups:

A: Privileged, malevolent. Members of Group A are reviled by public consensus, and have to at least give the veneer of respectability. In this case, people that are actively part of a racist society and who care deeply about keeping the race power structure static (or rolling it back).

B: Privileged, naive. The ones that are primarily complaining about minefields.

C: Privileged, informed. Members of group B with enough information about group A that they can deliberately and conscientiously not look like a member of A. You can start as a C by being raised in a deeply A environment and then explicitly rejecting it.

D: Unprivileged.

(There is also E: Privileged, malevolent, but unaware of the fact that they are malevolent. I bring this up only to note that this group is not the same as B. I'm not using it in this example because as far as D is concerned, this group is just a subset of A, and this post is long enough already.)

If you're trying to have a conversation about privilege, only Cs and Ds can talk. As can't talk because they are, in effect, the problem that we're trying to remove.

Bs can't talk because they can't become Cs in a manner that will make them acceptable to Ds. Their options are:
- to accidentally cause a lot of offense and learn by trial and error, which is a major imposition on the Ds (see below), or
- explicitly seek out every major group A environment and then don't do any of that. At this point, the B is now a Known Associate of As and thus an unacceptable risk.

This situation is particularly aggravating for the unprivileged because Group A is rigging the game to make groups A and B look as similar as possible. So, when somebody says something objectionable, the D needs to make a snap decision:

- Treat it as if it were in good faith and risk continuing abuse if this was in fact an A, or
- Treat it as evidence that the speaker is A and effectively end or derail the conversation immediately.

(Or suffer silently, but we will take it as read that this is an unacceptable option.)

Part of B's privilege is that they don't have to deal with this, either. All they notice is people suddenly accusing them of enormous levels of malevolence. Furthermore, anything they could do to try to prove that they're working in good faith can be replicated by A to confuse the issue.

I don't see a way around this. If B and D are trying to have a civil discussion about privilege, B has to say first, either directly or as part of the context, "I'm here in good faith. I am not just setting you up for a massive parade of denigration, and if it looks like I am, these are innocent errors." Saying that directly forces D to make the call of "is this an A or a B" right there, without waiting for B to misstep first.

Following up A. J. Hall at #347: Sanders continues to be super classy to authors who now want their stories off the site.

Xopher #359: InBev is a Belgian-Brazilian conglomerate. It is waxing great.

Sanders Classiness Watch: Now with more extortion.

I'd heard of Helix before this, through mentions in anthologies and the like, and knew only that it was a small SF magazine that published some decent stuff. Opinion: innocuous. Not anymore...

Michael Martin @ 366:
To use my original example again, Dodd, if he was not intending to be racist, cannot honestly apologize for implicitly impugning the eloquence of all black people, because he didn't - his intent was merely raising up one specific person. (If I have misunderstood this mess, and it is actually the case that calling a black person well-spoken in any terms whatsoever cannot be done without being "racist", then something is seriously broken and I refuse to have anything to do with this protocol. I refuse to accept that one can't compliment a person without simultaneously tearing down an entire class of people who vaguely resemble them. If this sparks fights, I will simply have to turn them to breaking this toxic idea.)

You're misremembering what happened. What Senator Biden [not Dodd] was quoted[*] as saying was this: “I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that’s a storybook, man.” That statement does not just say that Obama is articulate; it implicitly but very directly implies that Obama is unusual and amazing because he's all those things that other African-Americans are not -- that he's the first to be articulate (and bright and clean and nice-looking).

That's a pretty blatantly racist thing to say, even without a pre-existing context where people (almost always white) have traditionally stereotyped blacks as being "inarticulate", where in contrast "articulate" may have been used as condescending term ("Gosh, he's awfully articulate for an X").

[*] I say "quoted as" because if you go back and analyze what Biden actually said (that is, the audio recording of the interview), as linguist Mark Liberman of Language Log did, then it's possible (though not necessarily obvious) to argue that the original reporter made things worse with how they transcribed and punctuated Biden's words. It may have been the case that what Biden was intending to say was something like [and here I am deliberately paraphrasing and adding charitable interpretations]: "He's the first mainstream African-American [candidate]. And he's also articulate, bright, etc. [unlike many candidates of whatever race]."

Even if we give Biden the benefit of the doubt[**], however, the reaction of many people to the published statement -- their perception that it reflected a racist attitude -- was, I think, justified.

[**] In which case he was merely being patronizing towards Obama as a person and being massively careless with his speech (especially for a politician being interviewed).

Tlönista @365: You win an internet, in a set of rainbow colors.

I'd say that his response to Yoon Ha Lee, and his later extortion attempt needs a new thread. This guy has certainly responded over and beyond my expectations.

Why such a nutjob deserved someone with as much class as Lawrence Watt Evans defending his actions and acting as a friend is beyond me.

I'm sure he'll be a popular topic of discussion at Readercon though.

So, now that Sanders is extorting money from the writers who are abandoning the sinking ship of Helix (I assume that they are legion...), isn't his career effectively over? Could this go on the "Writer Beware" blog on the SFWA website? Cause the new writers who come into the field maybe aren't as connected--they might oughta know about the escalating craziness...

And, I know this is WAY off topic...but can someone explain this: eyelessgame (nice moniker - anagram for Mongo?) from Nicole la Bouef's post at #352? It is Driving Me Batsh1t. Google has failed me utterly. Is it something to do with Blazing Saddles?

JimR @73:
can someone explain this: eyelessgame (nice moniker - anagram for Mongo?)

The lyrics of the Rush song "Anagram (For Mongo)" include the line "image just an eyeless game".

The song is a compendium of anagrams and near-anagrams. (Image - i = game), for instance.

I would come up with an insuting name for Belgians, but my British phlegm constrains me.

Tlonista, #365: ROFL! That one's going into my armory for future use...
(Sorry about the lack of umlaut -- I'm not sure how to make one appear here.)

Peter, #370: That statement does not just say that Obama is articulate; it implicitly but very directly implies that Obama is unusual and amazing because he's all those things that other African-Americans are not -- that he's the first to be articulate (and bright and clean and nice-looking).

Yes, exactly. Now, politicians are like writers in one important way: their careers revolve around the proper use of language (FSVO "proper"). I find it really, really difficult to believe that anyone who's been in politics as long as Biden has could contemplate a statement like that and not notice the incredibly racist implications. Just reading it here rocked me back on my heels -- sort of a "Whoa, shit, he actually SAID that?!" reaction.

eyelessgame @ 360*

(It's safe to shun rude people. It's not safe to shun racists; racists are typically armed, crazy, and stupid: a bad combination to piss off.)

I've met a lot of racists (hell, I've been one now and then; nobody is immune to the poison), and they've been shockingly average in all respects, very few burning eyes and slimy tentacles. However, I once knew one just like your description: armed, crazy, and stupid. He's the only person about whom I ever thought, "I sure hope he doesn't come back from combat." He was scary and he was disgusting.

* The number resonates nicely with your handle.

Michael Martin @366:
Shouldn't the unprivileged you've lumped together in D be sub-categorized as well? Perhaps using open-minded vs. close-minded across the board or something...

Peter #370:

Just out of curiousity, how did the widespread cries of racism in that case make the world a better place? Does anyone really think Biden thought that Obama was the first articulate, clean black man in history? Or that he was trying to imply that? Or that anyone was going to honestly take that message away? Is there anyone who really thinks this comment implied anything except that Biden did a bad job of saying what he was thinking?

As far as I can tell, this fed the weekly outrage machine by which 24 hour news keeps viewers, and got some folks on TV for crying foul or for defending Biden, but probably had no other positive effect. (And keeping 24 hour news stations going is a "positive effect" only in the same sense that keeping crackhouses or spamming rings in business is a positive effect.)

As another question, if you were a prominent white politician, would you like to discuss the amazing phenomenon of the guy who's very likely to be our first black president in an unscripted setting like an interview? Because that does seem like one of the biggest, and most hopeful, things that's happened in US politics in the last 30 years or so. But the Biden quote and media response made a hell of an example for everyone, right? Bill Clinton similarly got accused of racism for comparing Obama's win (largely due to getting the great majority of black voters) in South Carolina with Jesse Jackson's earlier win there.

Thanks, but I'm pretty sure I swiped it from someone wittier.

Tlonista #339:

In fact, I'd say that the biggest racial issues in the US (say, the black/white difference in school performance, especially in poor, overwhelmingly black and brown, neighborhoods) are a good 3-4 orders of magnitude more important than the danger of being accused of racism in a political argument.

But the threat of that accusation or implication controls what discussions about those issues take place in public. That threat is an effective way to put someone on the defensive in a political argument, and it absolutely is used that way at times.

More broadly, if you are white and want to take some positions in political arguments, you are very likely to find yourself spending twice as much time and energy writing each post, or choosing your words. This doesn't go into making you a better person, or solving any problems. Some part of that effort serves to minimize the chance of giving offense, but most of it serves the same purpose as the overdetermined language in some legal and standards documents--the goal is to immunize you from certain charges or misinterpretations. One result is that it's easier not to get involved in those discussions in public. It seems to me that many people do exactly this. It's a rational response to the incentives they face.

I would come up with an insuting name for Belgians, but my British phlegm constrains me.

In today's modern Galaxy there is of course very little still held to be unspeakable. Many words and expressions which only a matter of decades ago were considered so distastefully explicit that, were they merely to be breathed in public, the perpetrator would be shunned, barred from polite society, and in extreme cases shot through the lungs, are now thought to be very healthy and proper, and their use in everyday speech and writing is seen as evidence of a well-adjusted, relaxed and totally un****ed-up personality.

So, for instance, when in a recent national speech the Financial Minister of the Royal World Estate of Quarlvista actually dared to say that due to one thing and another and the fact that no one had made any food for a while and the king seemed to have died and most of the population had been on holiday now for over three years, the economy was now in what he called "one whole joojooflop situation," everyone was so pleased that he felt able to come out and say it that they quite failed to note that their entire five-thousand-year-old civilization had just collapsed overnight.

But even though words like "joojooflop," "swut," and "turlingdrome" are now perfectly acceptable in common usage there is one word that is still beyond the pale. The concept it embodies is so revolting that the publication or broadcast of the word is utterly forbidden in all parts of the Galaxy except for one planet where they didn't know what it meant. That word is "Belgium".

Josh 372: Yeah, I was still acting like he was out of touch on his long motorcycle ride (and also I was in the grip of Geek Social Fallacy 1—thank you, Nicole 346). I (naïve soul that I am) thought he might yet come back and make some kind of apology. He's clearly a megascumbag.

Consider my ostrakon with his name on it dropped in the jar.

And I sure with Lawrence Watt Evans would stick around here (though give up defending Sanders, who's beyond the pale for real). He sure seems like the kind of guy to have for a friend, and I for one would welcome our new overlords his continued presence in the fluorosphere.

Neil 375: *pounds you on the back to break up the British phlegm* I know you have a bad climate there, but geez.

Argh. I sure wish (not with) LWE would stick around. Damnation.

Biden did not utter that line with any racist intention whatsoever. Biden is not my favorite politician -- but, then, I wonder if I have any favorite politicians.

However, Obama himself, and Clinton, and the whole passel of dems running for the dem nomination to be POTUS, at the debate that week, declaimed emphatic and loud declarations that Biden was no racist, when -- russert I believe -- asked Biden to comment on his racist remark. Obama immediately jumped in and stated without any qualification that Biden was no racist and had no racist intent hidden in his choice of words. He said so because he knew Biden, and worked with him, often.

It was one of those moments, early in the primary season, that provided those glimmers of hope, that yes, maybe, that the election of one of these was possible, and with that election some of the terrible developments in this nation in the last 8 + years would be rolled back, and that there might be change. It made one think the dems could have spines, and not go with that pernicious 24-hour cycle garbage gabblefest that passes as news and political commentary in this nation. My hopes were, of course, proven to be false.

I've been away, in one of the great centers of historical and contemporary racism in this nation. Am catching up. This discussion of bigotry is nuanced and enlightening. Thank you all, who are participating.

Love, C.

Constance@385: Regardless of Biden's intent, or Obama's defense of him, for me as a black woman, "articulate" is one of those code words that usually means, "You're different from the rest of those black people". From the receiving end, the subtext inevitably comes across to me as "Wow--I didn't know you people could speak standard English and sound intelligent."

It seems to me that the Obama campaign has very purposefully avoided making any protestation of ill-treatment on account of racism. I think this has been a very canny move -- as soon as they did anything that could be interpreted as playing the race card, that would become the only story being talked about.

Anyway, I don't think Obama's public defense of Biden is all that telling in the question of whether Biden's remarks were racist. Obama had to comment. If he'd said the remark was racist, he'd be accused of playing the race card. Further, he'd seem petulant and rude -- attacking a fellow Democrat, attacking someone who'd been praising him. And a candidate needs to seem relentlessly positive. It would be a huge net loss for Obama to criticize Biden, and Obama is too smart to make that mistake (even if he were inclined to do so.)

(I've left unaddressed here the issue of whether Biden's comments actually were racist, or whether Biden himself is. I'm just saying that I don't think Obama's defense of Biden is terribly conclusive.)

Albatross @ 381, in fact, those moments- like Biden's speech, like the racism wank which consumed the SGA fandom last year where Darkrose, above, was a particularly helpful and instructive voice- do have utility, to those who shut up and listen for a while and have the guts to confront their own unconscious racial privilege. Such moments are as educational as hell and incrementally they are the way to understand how us well-meaning liberals participate in, reinforce, and perpetuate institutional racism.

If one intends not to be racist, one has to work at it.

JESR #388:

Assuming Biden wasn't really trying to say that Barrack Obama is the first smart, clean, well-spoken black guy in American politics, what lesson about racism is to be learned from the outcry about his comment?

"What lesson, etc..." As Darkrose explicitly addressed this issue in #386, I'd recommend you read that post; I am not a person of color, and so my reaction would be mere heresay.

Re: Sanders' whine about the people asking to have their submissions pulled from the Helix archives -- either only three people have asked to have their stories pulled, or his assistant has "already had a hell of a lot of extra work handed her because of it". He can't have that both ways.

Darkrose 386: I understand that about 'articulate', but what then can we say about Obama to compare him favorably to McCain in terms of his speaking ability?

My apologies for using the word a lot in the rest of this comment. I'm trying to show how I want to use it, and ask what I can say instead that has the same meaning without the racist connotation.

He IS more articulate than McCain, who as soon as he's off text becomes a burbling inarticulate mess. Our current waste-of-skin POTUS is also inarticulate. Kerry was inarticulate when it mattered most.

It's rare for Presidential candidates to be as articulate as Obama. It's rare for ANYONE (any race, politician or not) to be as articulate as Obama. It will be nice to have a POTUS who can actually talk and make sense and impress us with both language and ideas.

Well, I suppose I can say THAT. But you see why I want one word that says that? I'm not saying "he's better'n them mushmouths" or anything like that, I'm saying he's better than candidates usually are.

albatross #381:

Although I get a lot of exposure to American politics and media, I’ve never lived in the States (only next door), so please take the following opinions with a grain of salt!

But the threat of that accusation or implication controls what discussions about those issues take place in public.

I honestly do not think that white people, at least in North America, constrain their speech because they are afraid that people of colour and their allies will accuse them of racism. Anti-immigration rhetoric, for example, is heavily steeped in xenophobic if not outright racist sentiment, and this inevitably seeps from the shock jocks into newspaper op-eds and television talk shows. The same goes for discourse on terrorism – have you really not noticed how hateful anti-Muslim sentiment like the kind *ahem* Sanders spouts has become more acceptable and mainstream since September 11? Further, people like Bill O’Reilly, Michelle Malkin* and Rush Limbaugh, who defend racist positions and use harmful, derogatory stereotypes, are somehow still afforded a national audience. I’m not sure such people are intimidated so much as playing martyr.

It is not sensible for a white person to avoid discussing race “in public” – by which, I gather, you mean “where non-white people or allies can hear” – because they’re afraid someone will criticize their language.

I’m sure it seems rational for them. It is simpler to just say what they think, and not have to worry about whether they’re using sloppy phrasing that misrepresents their intentions. It takes up so much valuable time typing “I’m so sorry, I had no idea that was a racist dog-whistle/slur/stereotype. It was wrong to say that. What I meant to say was...” I’m sure they find it easier to stay out of the sorts of discussions where they will be called on any thoughtless gaffes – where people of colour might think badly of them, without considering that what they express may not be at all what they intend!

But while I can see where you’re coming from, I do disagree. Putting energy into confronting your unconscious biases does make you a better person. The time and energy white people spend not saying racist things saves the rest of us all that time and energy we’d have spent trying to get the white people to just friggin’ apologize and move on.

In summary: If white people really are scared to talk about race in front of POC** (and I don't think they are), that's their problem and they are responsible for it. Not POC.

_____
* Malkin is actually Asian, though you wouldn’t think so, considering she wrote a book defending WWII internment camps. There’s some serious identity issues going on there.
** "People of colour".***
*** I'll shut up now.

Marilee @331: My library system does have holds-- normally there's a small fee, though the branch where one of the Pan's Labyrinth copies had gone missing offered to waive it for me-- but at this point, when I borrow library DVDs, I really want to take a look at the surface first. With holds, yo're stuck with whatever copy is first available.

Xopher @392: : I understand that about 'articulate', but what then can we say about Obama to compare him favorably to McCain in terms of his speaking ability?

I was just thinking about this. "Eloquent" isn't a neutral synonym either; although it sets a higher standard (if you're ineloquent, you can still make yourself understood), it may also carry connotations of artistic obfuscation vs. "plain-spoken" types whose words may thud, but who (as the trope may go) are at least telling the truth.

#386 ::: Darkrose

Regardless of Biden's intent, or Obama's defense of him, for me as a black woman, "articulate" is one of those code words that usually means, "You're different from the rest of those black people". From the receiving end, the subtext inevitably comes across to me as "Wow--I didn't know you people could speak standard English and sound intelligent."

I comprehend that very well, no doubt!

But what this particular event, in the dem debate, seemed pointed to do, was to claw up ugliness where none was, in order to help the repugs, and hurt all the dem candidates, including Obama. I had no belief whatsoever that Russert actually gave a short damn about racism in Biden at all, or even that he believed it either. It was cheap, and directed to create an ugliness that wasn't there, for the edification of actual racists and rethugs.

Or that's how it seemed to me, considering who was involved.

Change the cast of characters, I very likely could have seen something else.

Love, C.

Xopher @ 392:
I'm not sure what would really be wrong with what you said at the end. If you said, "Obama is very articulate, especially for a politician", then I think it would be rather harder to take offense -- since what you've done is make explicit that the comparison class is all politicians, not other African-Americans (or even other African-American politicians).

The problem with what Biden said (or seemed to have said) was that he reinforced the "black are not articulate" trope with his words ("... you got the first mainstream African-American [candidate] who is articulate ... that's storybook, man.")

[ assholery deleted ]
[ IP: 206.170.104.3 ]

boy howdy.

Does the disemvoweler have a 'remove shouting' option?

I mean, what else can you say?

Ginger... I'm not sure I want to know how one can do that to a sheethead. Is that a blanket statement? Or a pillow too bitter to swallow?

Maybe what one really has to do is work at not being stupid.

The New Yorker has a lot of work to do in that area.

It seems to have no idea at all how wide spread that meme is, that Obama's a Muslim and a disguised Islamist terrorist, and how deeply it is believed in the middle of the country, by so many.

The farking PUBLISHERS of those community newspapers, owned in bundles by big corps in AZ and so on, who have a political agenda, you bet! publish this meme as fact in their papers. Just like they publish throughout the Midwest the latest vileness that 'we superior -- Name Your State Here -- are so different than Those People down New Orleans way, who just sat around and let themselves get flooded and then waited for rescue, with their hands out -- when they weren't murdering and looting, of course -- wheras We take care of ourselves and our neighbors by ourselves and we don't get any gummit money or help at all

They publish this garbage in those papers as fact.

If you write to these papers, provide the facts, they won't publish those letters.

So many people jumping yo these lies with relieved joy because they WANT to believe them.

Additionally, these same people including very elderly people, know that professing outright dislike of Obama because he is, you know, not white, is not o.k. (though some of them give themselves away, by referring to the 'Japs').

But to be outraged because Obama is a Muslim (usually they use the term, 'Mohammedan' or 'Moslem') terrorist is not only permissible, it proves patriotism.

Funny, the further away from Ground Zero these people live, the more angry they are with the Iraqis, who are also the same as 'Moslem terrorists,' and who they also now believe were responsible for 9/11.

The farkin' New Yorker man. How much can you not spell teh stupid? This played right into the wingers' political playbook. Because the airwaves are again all garbage gabble about, "Is Obama a Muslim?" It's even now, "Are Obama and Michelle Muslim terrorists?" Even on supposedly progressive talk radio -- this is all they are talking about.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Love, C.

...sullying an excellent post.

And now there are four who have taken down their stories from the Helix abode. I am thinking more will do the same.

Xopher @ 392, how about "he's an excellent communicator" or "a fantastic speaker" or "the man can give a hell of a speech" (which are things I've said about Obama)? He's thoughtful, he's inspiring, he's got charisma.

"Articulate" is a particular condescending code word. There's all kinds of ways not to use that word and still compliment Obama's speaking ability.

Xopher, I rather like calling his speeches "Ciceronian."

Constance @402: [The New Yorker] seems to have no idea at all how wide spread that meme is, that Obama's a Muslim and a disguised Islamist terrorist, and how deeply it is believed in the middle of the country, by so many.

Sometime last week, NPR interviewed some members of a group identified as "Latinas for McCain" (I think this is the audiofile), and it rubbed me the wrong way in all sorts of directions.

*cautious tiptoeing on the path of good intentions*

As Constance points out, there are all sorts of people who are happy to swallow the lies that Obama is/was Muslim (loaded with the further baggage of the "all Muslims are terrorists" meme), or that he's primarily funded by foreign powers with nefarious intentions. According to the NPR angle, the McCain Latinas are primarily motivated by believing those smears and reacting against them, more so than by seeing much positive merit in McCain per se. Even though the reporter did point out that these things are false *and* widely believed by many groups, it gave me an uncomfortable twinge that the story was generally making these Latinas look obstinately stupid, with a degree of gender/ethnic-specific targeting vs. the larger pool of people who believe those lies.

This was not helped when he tried to gently disillusion them, and received answers which are probably just as widespread through the general population of anti-Obaman lie-believers but which I hadn't previously heard-- e.g., the repudiation of Reverend Wright somehow proves that Obama really was a Muslim in his youth, since his willingness to "abandon his faith" means that he has no moral principles, which somehow further implies that a.) he abandoned Islam for the sake of similar political expediency, b.) is perfectly willing to lie about it, and c.) nevertheless somehow remains Muslim in his heart.

This "logic" made me very depressed, esp. since I bet it was deliberately constructed by Anglo men in a conservative think-tank and astroturfed all over the place.

Ginger 400: I mean, what else can you say?

"Ban him forever"?

Tlönista @ 393:
I honestly do not think that white people, at least in North America, constrain their speech because they are afraid that people of colour and their allies will accuse them of racism.

Um... I don't think you have much basis for a blanket statement like that. The argument is not "All white people, at all times constrain their speech." It's more like "Many white people", or perhaps "Most white people trying to be decent", or something of that nature. Being able to cite O'Reilly, Limbaugh, Malkin, etc., merely demonstrates that: a) some people in the media are relatively unconstrained; and b) there is some fraction of the media audience willing to listen to them.

And, as you hint, people like O'Reilly and Limbaugh are not especially interested in avoiding giving offense -- rather, they want to offend.

I don't think plucking examples from the mass media is a very good basis for making comprehensive statements about the mindsets of an entire population, particularly if, as you say, you don't have any direct personal experience of that population.

391: William Sanders is charging $40 to remove stories from the Helix archives. I suppose this means his assistant will now have less extra work. I'd hate to think that he'll profit financially from his behavior.

Just because he can do this, though, doesn't actually make doing this a good idea. He's not exactly showing anyone that he, in fact, can behave consistently in a professional manner. (Even if this were a reasonable thing to do, the way he announced his new policy was provocative, deliberately, I assume.)

As an aside, that he can do this took me by surprise. Strange Horizons explicitly says that authors have the right to remove their own work from the SH archives at any time. I'll have to check what the other e-zines' policies are.

Serge @ 401: Personally, I think it's a sham -- a ruffle on the bed rock of lies that has been uncovered by the valance efforts of people who don't rest on their laurels. We should bolster their morale by draping them with accolades.

Xopher @ 408: I knew you'd want to say that, so I left it for you. Really. Look! Isn't that a rare Yellow-Bellied Sapsucker?

I honestly had no idea that 'articulate' was a code word. I use it _all_ the time, especially when formally evaluating people (recommendations, interviews, reviews, etc). I'd really hate to think someone else might take what is probably a sizable body of evidence at this point in my career the wrong way.

Also, for me there's a clear difference between being articulate and being comprehensible. The latter should be considered a minimum qualification in any public facing profession while the former is something to strive for.

Thanks to Bush's War on Comprehensibility, I probably need to readjust my thinking about that, too.

Peter Erwin@409: Why is it a bad thing to have to pause and consider whether your words are going to communicate what you want them to communicate before you say them?

Ginger @ 411: It's a great comforter to see so many folks going to the mattresses for what they believe in. The high thread count here is further evidence we're thinking along similar linens.

Tlonista@393

I don't think the claim is that they're "scared to talk about race", it's that they don't want the reputation hit for looking like a racist asshole, and that they believe - with reason - that merely not actually saying racist things isn't good enough. They also need to avoid dropping cultural markers that say to minorities "I despise black people", and those cultural markers have been getting progressively more subtle over time.

I agree entirely that confronting unconscious biases is good. Heresiarch's "But that's just the way it is, black people are better at basketball" sample line at 332 would be an obvious example of that at play.

I don't see that mechanism in play at all with, for instance, Xopher's sample statements at 392. None of the words are intrinsically racially tinged, and dictionaries certainly don't mark the word as offensive. (Darkrose would know better than I, but I get the distinct idea that "articulate" only has racist overtones when applied by whites to blacks. It absolutely does not for white-on-white, where it matches the dictionary definition exactly.) So where's the unconscious bias that needs curing?

Tlönista 393: I honestly do not think that white people, at least in North America, constrain their speech because they are afraid that people of colour and their allies will accuse them of racism.

You are incorrect. I do, for one. Doesn't all the discussion of 'articulate' mean anything to you? We're trying to avoid being offensive, and that's at least in part because we think it's bad to be racist and don't want to be OR be thought racist.

As for "people of colour and their allies," I count myself in that group. I have worked hard to eradicate racism from my own thoughts, I don't tolerate it in others, and I do guard my speech to avoid saying things that SOUND racist, even—especially—when I'm among racist whites (presumably what you mean to exclude by the phrase "people of colour and their allies"). I collect the eyerolls and the namecalling ("bleeding heart," "political correctness nazi") and go on my merry way.

If your sentence above is anything other than a way of saying "All white people in North America are openly racist," I'm not sure what it does mean. Since that would be a pretty racist statement itself, perhaps you'd better explain.

Xopher #392: I understand that about 'articulate', but what then can we say about Obama to compare him favorably to McCain in terms of his speaking ability? [...] He IS more articulate than McCain, who as soon as he's off text becomes a burbling inarticulate mess.

Perhaps the word(s) you're looking for include "good extemporaneous speaker"? And maybe even "clear-thinking"?

OK, I'm answered on 'articulate'. Thanks, everyone!

Peter Erwin #409: You're right, that bit was a stupid argument to make. The most inflammatory media figures definitely don't represent all Americans. There are plenty other writers, journalists, bloggers, etc., who discuss race more thoughtfully...and for all I know albatross is right, and more people would but for fear of making gaffes.

Still I hope the point still stands that people shouldn't be so overly cautious.

Xopher (crossposting?): I got unnecessarily fired up. I don't mean that white N. Americans are openly racist. I do mean that white N. Americans, in general, freely discuss racial issues even though they know they might get accused of racism. This goes for well-meaning and malevolent people alike -- admittedly for different reasons!

My (obviously clumsy) point was that even if it was the case, as albatross implied, that POC & allies are very quick to criticise, white people shouldn't be put off from joining the conversation. The "articulate" exchange (which I mostly missed while afk, sorry) is a really good example of that.

Cool?

Re: 'articulate'.
I've completely missed it, not being American. I've always used it as a compliment, as a positive word. That it is seen as a codeword for racism disturbs me. Are there any other perfectly inocuous words that I should be avoiding because they've been co-opted into 'Secret Racists' Cant'?

re: calling Obama the first articulate African American.

Perhaps it's the benign tyranny of distance, but when it was reported here (Oz) my first thought was "hell - has anyone told Martin Luther King? James Earl Jones? Maya Angelou? Oprah(YMMV)? Condi Rice (loathe her politics, but she can sling a fair speech)? etc etc"

I think almost everyone's missing the point on "articulate" here. It can be a perfectly good word, and is a compliment. So are words like "literate", "intelligent" and so on.

But when someone, anyone, says that someone is the first articulate/literate/intelligent African-American... that should indeed lead to cries of "OMGWTFDYJS?!" * When that someone is an allegedly liberal-and-other-good-things Senator, who one would expect to know something about choosing words carefully, the cries of "OMGWTFDYJS!?" should be redoubled. I'm sure it's correct that Russert was just out to stir the pot and make a big stink, but really it was kind of a dumb-founding thing to say.

As to what Darkrose commented above... if I may respectfully differ, I don't think it's the choice of word, I think it's how it's said and the other words that go along with it. I doubt there's a compliment in the world that can't - intentionally or unconsciously - carry the freight of "...not like the rest of Your Kind." ** (Adding a "surprisingly" or "amazingly" could do it, or just voice tone and pacing.)

* ... 'did you just say?'

** "You know what, Stuart, I LIKE YOU. You're not like the other people, here, in the trailer park." - The Dead Milkmen

When I perceive something as a conversational minefield, and it's a field I want to cross, I find that listening more and talking less works well. And that most of the worst mines are in the directions I'm inclined to flail after I step on the first mine, but that stepping on one mine can usually be recovered from if I get ahold of myself and keep from flailing.

And that people who have to negotiate mine fields with every waking interaction with the world can get understandably testy when they want to talk about it but I want to make sure we talk about my little mine field, too, and that they should be sure to make it safe for me if they want me to listen.

@albatross 379: When we have an outcry over language which is racist or is perceived as racist even if we "know" that the speaker didn't intend racism and is probably not especially racist him or herself, it focuses our minds on what is offensive -- what of our thoughtless remarks should we be thinking much more carefully about? It also emphatically rejects the negative connotation of the statement. If no one had spoken up about Biden's comment, it would have let stand the comment that Obama is the first articulate black American. The outcry affirms that "articulate" is not limited to whites and Obama.

If I say something racist in a public forum and no one calls me on it, that's equivalent to acceptance of it. The outcry rejects it. I think it's a good thing, even if I think the speaker had no ill intent and even feel badly for them. Heck, friends of mine have called me on racist language that I had never perceived as racist, and wow, I am really glad they did. It'd be tough to hear it from strangers, but I'd rather be told than to blunder on in ignorance tossing offensiveness about willy-nilly.

Tlönista 420: Cool.

@Scraps 424 Beautifully and succinctly put. I'm bookmarking that.

Maybe getting it on a t-shirt.

Soon@421

For another example of self-censorship, I've been deliberately avoiding the word "innocuous" in this thread because insisting that something is "perfectly innocuous" felt to me too much like claiming anyone offended by it was being "oversensitive."

Clifton@423

Read Darkrose's comment again. Using it even as a compliment gives offense, and it does so regardless of intent. The term got hijacked and carries ugly connotations even when the speaker doesn't intend it. That's exactly what makes it a "mine".

Scraps@424

If they want them to talk. Listening is easy, but it's not a dialogue. This is all in the specific context of "We want to have a dialogue", i.e., both people speaking, which is not remotely the entirety of race relations and in fact isn't even demonstrably necessary for the removal of injustice. Examples were demanded for why a white would ever find it necessary to "self-censor" or why the "minefield" was anything other than "worrying about exposing your unconscious racism". That's why there's been this focus.

#407:

Even though the reporter did point out that these things are false *and* widely believed by many groups, it gave me an uncomfortable twinge that the story was generally making these Latinas look obstinately stupid, with a degree of gender/ethnic-specific targeting vs. the larger pool of people who believe those lies.

I would argue it takes a certain amount of stupidity for a woman and a member of an ethnic minority to support a candidate who's hostile to women and ethnic minorities. (And that's assuming that they're *rich, heterosexual* Latinas *born in the U.S.*, otherwise there's even more ways supporting McCain is shooting themselves in the foot.)

IMO, supporters of the modern Republican Party can be divided into a few broad groups:
1. People who genuinely benefit from Republican policies (corporate CEOs, the oil, finance, and prison industries, etc.) I think Republican policies are disastrous except to the corrupt few, so accordingly, I think this group is pretty small - nowhere near enough to keep the party in power, even when you factor in the fact that they literally own the media.
2. People who don't mind their own personal deprivation if the government is implementing an ideology they approve of (Grover Norquist would be here if he weren't in group 1; you might think religious extremists go here, but I think most of them probably belong in the third group.) Principled conservatives used to belong here, but most have left the party as they realized that what it was really up to bore little resemblance to their ideals. It's hard to imagine someone with a genuine ideological commitment to the modern Republican Party's real present-day agenda (people who support what they *think* the party stands for belong in the third group).
3. Dupes (as GWB said in a rare moment of accidental truthfulness, you can fool some of the people all of the time, and those are the ones you want to concentrate on).

(Shorter me: crooks, zealots, and dupes.)

The Latinas for McCain (assuming they're not just some kind of astroturf organization) would seem to fall pretty squarely in group 3. You don't get into that group by your incisive critical thinking skills - in fact, that's how you get *out*, if you have any incisive critical thinking skills.

So if Latinas have a wide range of intelligence levels, and only the stupid ones are at risk of becoming McCain supporters (for the reasons outlined above), it follows that Latinas for McCain is made up largely of stupid people. (Reciprocally, the set of all Latinas who *aren't* in Latinas for McCain would have an average intelligence slightly above the overall population average.)

Michael, I said listening more and talking less, not shutting up.

My wife -- she's black -- has noted many times that conversations with whites about racism almost inevitably turn into people of color being told how they are responsible for carefully getting the message across, being sensitive of the white folks' delicate feelings, etc. You can see this in action in just about any online conversation on the subject. And you can see it in this one.

Of course it's a mine field. People's feelings have been being rubbed raw their whole lives, then they keep having to explain the same basic stuff repeatedly, keep having to reassure people that of course it isn't you personally, keep having to stay even and measured lest they upset someone -- and that's with the people who are sympathetic.

I've stepped on some mines, and maybe I didn't deserve some of them; but I've also been a damned fool, and learned. And I'm never going to complain about it being difficult for me to have a conversation about racism. It's, well, unseemly. IMGDO.

Latinas drawn to McCain may be attracted by his not-insane attitudes on immigrants. If Nezua's still reading this thread, maybe he can shed some light.

albatross @381:
More broadly, if you are white and want to take some positions in political arguments, you are very likely to find yourself spending twice as much time and energy writing each post, or choosing your words. This doesn't go into making you a better person, or solving any problems.

No, it does. Having to think carefully about how other people feel is part of becoming a better person.

Look at my shopping example again. White or other privileged people have been buying stuff without needing to look at the price tag -- you pick out what you like, you wave plastic, you leave.

Of *course* having to pay attention to those price tags takes more time. Of *course* it feels like a minefield -- what, pay attention to *every* price?!? *Every* time?!?

But just like when you first learned to shop with a budget, figuring out how your words are going to come across to POC (or women, or whomever) will get easier with time, and you'll develop reflexes that tell you things like: starting a sentence with, "so-and-so is the first [good quality X] member of [any group Y]" *cannot* end well.

Scraps as 424,

Thank you. I have been trying to figure out how to say that, and hoping that someone else would so that I didn't have to. Thank you.

Xopher #392, I don't think a sentence like "Obama is more articulate than McCain" is likely to cause trouble, since the speaker is clearly comparing Obama to McCain. The problem comes with statements like "My, that Obama is so articulate", where it seems like there's an implicit comparison being made with other blacks.

If you look at Biden's full statement, as Keir quoted it up in #337, the comparison is explicit: "the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy".

Thing is, articulate is actually a pretty weak compliment. It means able to speak clearly. It's a good ability to have, but it's not something to get very excited about. It's like saying someone is good at arithmetic. Yeah, OK, it's nice that he can balance his checkbook, but there are entire realms of number-related endeavor beyond mere arithmetic. This is another reason the word is problematic as a compliment -- it implies that the mere fact that an African-American can speak clearly is surprising.

Looking to describe Obama's speaking ability, articulate falls short, because not only does he speak clearly, he also speaks movingly. I'd say he's a rousing speaker.

Scraps@430

people of color being told how they are responsible for carefully getting the message across, being sensitive of the white folks' delicate feelings, etc. You can see this in action in just about any online conversation on the subject. And you can see it in this one.

Actually, I can't (or, more precisely, I haven't remembered seeing it, and a quick rescan doesn't bring it up). I see a great many assertions that it happens, which I will easily believe. But I don't see anyone saying it directly. The closest I've seen is in the assertion that not being racist and not appearing racist are two different things, that they're very hard to do simultaneously, and that if the minority doesn't at least pretend that the bumbling white is speaking in good faith[*], a dialogue is impossible.

That means, to pick some apples and oranges out of this thread, reacting more like Darkrose@386 and less like either of the reactions in the first sentence of Madeline@94.

I haven't seen any "I don't want to be criticized for my use of language" in this thread. I have seen a bit of "I don't want to be personally maligned and designated an acceptable target for retaliation unless I consciously do something to deserve it" (Lance@412, Soon@421), but that's not the same thing.

Unless it is. So, where's it happening in this thread?

* This is assuming that comity is a goal. If you have other reasons to believe that they aren't acting in good faith (hi, original topic of this thread), then there's no real reason for it to be so, and none of this applies.

FWIW, there was more to Biden's comment than just the "articulate" bit. Even more patently racist, to my mind, was the "clean" part. Together, it was pretty unmistakable.

albatross @ 379: "Just out of curiousity, how did the widespread cries of racism in that case make the world a better place?"

Rather than wasting time, I'll just second Rachel's post @ 425; she nails it.

@ 381: "One result is that it's easier not to get involved in those discussions in public. It seems to me that many people do exactly this. It's a rational response to the incentives they face."

Being able to choose not to talk about race in public is another example of white privilege.

Darkrose @ 386: "Regardless of Biden's intent, or Obama's defense of him, for me as a black woman, "articulate" is one of those code words that usually means, "You're different from the rest of those black people". From the receiving end, the subtext inevitably comes across to me as "Wow--I didn't know you people could speak standard English and sound intelligent.""

There's the flipside, too: all the racists who heard Biden's comment probably thought he was being racist too--the difference being they were no doubt quite pleased about it. If no one had been loudly outraged at Biden's comment, they probably would have thought to themselves, "Oh, so I can get away with that kind of thing too."

Avram@433

Sadly, able to speak clearly is no longer a taken-for-granted trait amongst our candidates, even if you just go for basic comprehensibility.

That said, "articulate" has quite a bit more of a positive connotation as I learned it. It's "clearly" in all senses. Writing clearly is more than just penmanship - it's about being able to pick the words and sentences for maximum informational impact. Speaking clearly is similar, but you have to do it on the fly. It is a genuine talent, and the gap between "articulate" and "inarticulate" is large.

Obama is a rousing speaker, yes, but that's an emotional impact. He can also transmit a good deal of information for effect. That he can do both at once is what makes him a great communicator.

Michael Martin @ 434: "Actually, I can't (or, more precisely, I haven't remembered seeing it, and a quick rescan doesn't bring it up)."

Really? Isn't that the natural implication of albatross's argument? As I read it, it goes something like this: A lot of well-meaning white people choose not to engage in frank discussions of race for fear of being tarred as racist--i.e., that the PC brigade's ferociousness has actually caused more harm than good by muffling frank discussion of race issues. The natural implication of that, in my mind, is for POC and the PC brigade back off a bit and cut those well-meaning whites some slack. People have responded to this in several ways:

a) Whether or not they have any racist intent, their words can still be unacceptably racist.
b) Believing you are not a racist and not wanting to be a racist isn't the same thing as not being racist.
c) Putting the onus on POC to tolerate the well-meaning flailings of white people discussing race is a bit whack, given that one of the major outcomes of racism is that POC already get more than their fair share of rhetorical (and literal) bruising.

(Did I miss any?)

The overall point is that an important part of being a well-intentioned* white person is accepting that you've got all sorts of privilege and racist indoctrination that you don't know you've got, and that as a result you're going to say stupid things and POC and more-aware whites will call you on it. And you should be grateful for it. I know it's not a particularly attractive scenario for well-meaning whites, but unfortunately it's not possible to deconstruct white privilege without, you know, deconstructing white privilege.

*As opposed to "well-intentioned"--it's very possible for people to deliberately maintain a veil of ignorance about themselves to refuse confronting the nasty facts of racism, and the extent to which they are complicit. In other words, the line between A and B isn't necessarily as clearly defined as you say. (Nor the line between B and C.)

But I don't see anyone saying it directly.

Not word for word, if that's what you mean by directly; but I'd say it's clearly implicit in the landmine metaphor for whites participating in a racism conversation. Albatross's 310 and 324 are examples of what I'm talking about, and much of the conversation on the same subject since that point. In particular, the attempted parallel between black folks talking about police stops and white folks talking about being disbelieved or misunderstood when they try to talk about race would make me gape in disbelief were I black. Albatross said

Who wants to be smeared as a racist for disagreeing with affirmative action in public, and failing to hedge and weasel-word every comment?

He also said

Just out of curiousity, how did the widespread cries of racism in that case make the world a better place? Does anyone really think Biden thought that Obama was the first articulate, clean black man in history? Or that he was trying to imply that? Or that anyone was going to honestly take that message away? Is there anyone who really thinks this comment implied anything except that Biden did a bad job of saying what he was thinking?

I'll say again, this is all my opinion; but if you don't see how this is an example of the necessity of black folks being sensitive to the white folks' feelings, I'm not sure how far we're going to understand each other.

I wonder if this minefield metaphor is overly dramatic. In a real minefield, the mines are deliberately hidden with ill intent to inflict maximum damage. In a conversation about racism, the mines are in plain sight if you know what to look for and take the trouble to look.

I wonder if this minefield metaphor is overly dramatic. In a real minefield, the mines are deliberately hidden with ill intent to inflict maximum damage. In a conversation about racism, the mines are in plain sight if you know what to look for and take the trouble to look.

albatross@381:
More broadly, if you are white and want to take some positions in political arguments, you are very likely to find yourself spending twice as much time and energy writing each post, or choosing your words. This doesn't go into making you a better person, or solving any problems.

Yeah, it does go to solve at least one problem actually. It goes to solve the problem of you accidentally pissing off, hurting, insulting, and making life just a little bit harder for some of the people who are probably going to be hearing you. Some white people do think that is worth putting in the time and energy to double check what it is they're saying.

Remember Wilde: "A true gentlemen is one who is never unintentionally rude."

Albatross #381: More broadly, if you are white and want to take some positions in political arguments, you are very likely to find yourself spending twice as much time and energy writing each post, or choosing your words.

Because it would be just awful if people actually took a bit of time to choose their words carefully.

Lance & Nicole: I work at Jay Hill Farm stand at the Boulder farmer's market on Saturdays. Stop by and say Hi...

I'm just glad Windsor Dairy was at the market for a couple of months before I found out I am allergic to cow's milk: their cheese was wonderful when I could have it.

Last week I finally got the good news that goat milk is OK for me, so I can at least patronize Haystack Dairy again.

Heresiarch@438, Scraps@439, Allan@440

Busted - I was kind of skimming albatross's comments all through, since the subthread I was most active in involved what Soon Lee called The Secret Racists' Cant.

a) Whether or not they have any racist intent, their words can still be unacceptably racist.

Indeed.

b) Believing you are not a racist and not wanting to be a racist isn't the same thing as not being racist.

This is true, and generally what I've been talking about with respect to "unconscious bias".

c) Putting the onus on POC to tolerate the well-meaning flailings of white people discussing race is a bit whack, given that one of the major outcomes of racism is that POC already get more than their fair share of rhetorical (and literal) bruising.

This depends crucially on what you mean by "tolerate."

From Lance Weber@412:

I [since I was unaware of the code-word status of "articulate"] use it all the time, especially when formally evaluating people (recommendations, interviews, reviews, etc)

So, suppose someone gets a job recommendation from him that includes it, and decides that this is a racist statement and they won't tolerate it.

Not tolerating it by writing back "dude, that's a code word for racism" is obviously acceptable - that's what I meant by "assumption of good faith".

However, if they failed to tolerate it by posting it on the Internet wondering aloud why this racist thug still had a job, then this would also be, as you say, "a bit whack."

So, to answer whether you missed any, I will add:

(d) It is not socially acceptable to be openly racist anymore; other whites will turn on you if you are. There is thus a group of privately-but-consciously racist whites, and they are the ones who find the codewords necessary.

(e) It is thus entirely possible to make a statement that can be read as racist when there is not even a subconscious bias inclining one to do so.

One of the disagreements in this thread appears to be whether or not situations covered by (e) are, in fact, actually racist.

Scraps:

And this after a direct statement by Biden -- "trying to imply" indeed -- whose racism is explicit and undeniable, however unconscious it might well have been. But it's more important to understand Joe Biden -- understand the hapless white man -- than to talk about the racist statement.

If we accept that it was explicit and undeniable, then there's a point. But then, there isn't a lot to say about the racist statement ("WTF is this?"), and the fact that everyone immediately rushed to his defense is a separate, noteworthy fact.

On the other hand in the "Why should Lance keep his job" example, the "poor, befuddled, white[*] man" would, indeed, be the crux of the question - the only answers end up being "he shouldn't, because he's a racist scumbag" or "he should, because you're reading racism in where it is not." And that's a question, ultimately, that's about him, not the recipient. We already know the recipient thought it was a terrible thing, or the question would never have even been asked.

If you think that it is the recipient's feelings that are more important to this question, then we do, indeed, have a pretty fundamental disagreement, and it's probably somewhere that has nothing to do with race. I'd be happy to explore it.

Allan@440:

In a conversation about racism, the mines are in plain sight if you know what to look for and take the trouble to look.

Yes, but. These are called "racist code words" for a reason. Lance, Xopher, Soon, etc. are exactly the people that the privately-but-consciously-racist designed the code to hide the racism from. The implication that their ignorance of this is thus a sign of their privilege - or worse, evidence of racist indoctrination - is a bit bizarre, and it is not justified by the fact that the privately-but-consciously racist mistreat minorities more.

Similarly, "just think through what you're going to say; it is, after all, just basic courtesy" is not going to save you when you don't have the facts you need in order to get the right answer. I'll reiterate Soon's question: where do I find a copy of the Secret Racists' Cant so I know what not to say? It took me 30 years and a national scandal to learn about this "articulate" thing, and I haven't exactly been living in a monestary. There've gotta be others. If it's obvious to all with eyes to see, point me to the heading.

* I'm assuming here that Lance is white and male. Also, sorry for picking on you in this post.

That Biden -- he was on a roll, having declared for the nomination. He'd found a rhythm, and he was going with his flow. You can feel that, even just reading the words as he uttered them in that interview with The New York Observer, at the end of January, 2008, when assessing this particular opponent:

[ "I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that's a storybook, man." ]

The other side of what happened with Biden's choice of 'first' was Michelle Obama's own use of 'first,' when she said,

"What we have learned over this year is that hope is making a comeback. It is making a comeback. And let me tell you something -- for the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country. And not just because Barack has done well, but because I think people are hungry for change. And I have been desperate to see our country moving in that direction and just not feeling so alone in my frustration and disappointment. I've seen people who are hungry to be unified around some basic common issues, and it's made me proud."

Neither of them harbored ill intent, I, at least, am certain. I believe I understood what Michelle Obama was saying, and I felt it, and I agreed with it.

But the press went to town, and the talkshows.

The rightwing shills were the loudest, the longest and the shrillest in condemning both Biden and Michelle Obama in these instances. The hypocrisy, the irrelevance of either facts or information to the rightwing, sees either side of the equation as fodder for their howling -- for getting their memes out there to the public -- the memes their public wants to believe.

The NYer should have thought about that, it seems, but it didn't. That's the drawback of living such a life that is so very comfortable. You are so insulated, so you make errors, very bad ones.

Love, C.

Michael Martin: You return again and again to the question, "How can I know what is racist?" Again and again the answer comes back, "People tell you when you fuck up."

I'm curious why you're not hearing the answer. I suspect it has something to do with the way you didn't seem to hear the answer, "An apology for not knowing is an honest apology."

Michael Martin @445:

where do I find a copy of the Secret Racists' Cant so I know what not to say? It took me 30 years and a national scandal to learn about this "articulate" thing

No, you don't need the Sekrit Code Word Book. Biden's problem wasn't really calling Obama "articulate", it was saying (not just imply, *saying*) that no other black man had been articulate (or "clean", fercrissake) before.

Any time you say that "this is the first time a member of group X has shown up with not-all-that-remarkable good quality Y" *you are in trouble*. That's all the Sekrit Decoder Code you need to know.

As for the rest, the Code is called "being American". You might not know what "DWB" stands for, but if you're American you can figure out what "Driving While Black" probably means. My *12-year-old* can figure it out, and we had to explain to her why we talk about "dialing" a phone.

Of course it's possible to say some hurtful in all innocence, not understanding in any way that's what you did. So? It still hurt someone, and they have the right to say so, and maybe won't be very careful about the feelings of the person they're responding to.* So what should the first person do? Defend his/her innocence? Be hurt in turn and reply in kind? What do you do when you offend someone unintentionally? You apologize. At least that's what we do here at Making Light. Just recently a lot of us were trying to explain that to someone who started an argument with an insult and didn't see that at all. How is this different?

As an analogy, what would you do if you unwittingly said something to a friend that made them recall a very painful and traumatic incident? Say if you knew a woman who had been raped, and you said something that sounded to her like an insensitive comment on it. Would you spend all your time defending your right to say it, or insist she was "too sensitive"? I wouldn't.

Lest you think I'm overdramatizing, let me point out that rape is a horrible experience that can be followed by severe emotional reactions, stress reactions, damage to personal relationships, and a host of other concomitant difficulties. Being pulled over for DWB, or patted down on the street for Breathing While Black, is a horrible experience with subsequent emotional, stress, and personal problems. I'm not trying to compare the two experiences, or quantify them, I'm simply pointing out that they're both painful and leave behind a set of long-lasting negative consequences, and that this should earn some consideration and respect from those who talk about and to those who experience these things. And because we can't always know what might cause hurt, we should, after considering what we say carefully, be willing to apologize and vow not to make that particular mistake again.

If this analogy offends anyone, I apologise. I think that in the discussion of race in the US, at least, we who are not POC very often forget what it is we don't experience because of the color of our skins, and so tend to minimize it. I'm hoping a very dramatic analogy will make it clear that minimizing is one of the problems we face in trying to have an open and honest discussion of race.

* We see that on this blog all the time, and no one seems surprised.

Madeline@447: Because I've been subdividing things more finely than the rest of them, and so they were listed individually as slightly different things, with different answers. See my many posts in this thread where I agree point-by-point with the various responses.

I was also (possibly mis-) reading Doctor Science and others as claiming that it is possible for any person with a shred of empathy to be able to avoid making the mistakes in the first place, which I doubted, and which your comment to me apparently takes for granted is false. (As far as I was concerned, most of the discussion I was in was around the question "if it *isn't* false, then how do we avoid placing pointless additional burdens on POCs, and if it is, what protocols will minimize them?")

Doctor Science: I'm not talking entirely about Biden here. As I read Darkrose's comment, any use of the word at all carries that connotation, and you'll have to take my word for it that it's entirely possible to be an American for 30 years and never run across this fact until it makes the national news is a more explicit context. (Her comment also, as a data point, matched the responses I got when asking about it at the time.) The people parsing Biden's statement in particular and coming up with "harmless" forms of it I was reading as exactly the "flailing of hapless white people" that was under discussion.

"The first articulate, clean, etc." being bad is indeed deducible from first principles as you say. DWB, once expanded, it deducible from general cultural knowledge, but I'm not sure how the concept applies to not giving offense in a discussion, except as an unrelated example of privilege. "Articulate" being a standalone slur, however, seems no more deducible from first principles than "clean" being a standalone slur would be.

Bruce Cohen: That whole thread may boil down to me thinking "I'm sorry you've been hurt; this was unintentional" isn't an acceptable apology since it makes no admission of actual wrongdoing. I agree that in the situation you describe (and that Madeline describes) it's still the best response, but I continue to also believe that someone who doesn't like you can paint it as a "non-apology apology".

At this point I seem to be producing more heat than light, so I'll shut up unless someone has direct questions to ask.

I like the way a friend of mine put it:

Being told to stop saying "that's so gay" about something you don't like: not a hardship.

Being fired because your boss saw a picture of you with the person you love and have committed yourself to and said "that's so gay": a hardship.

Being told to stop comparing things you dislike to female genitals: not a hardship.

Being denied a chance to do work you are well qualified for because the boss doesn't care to work with people who have female genitals: a hardship.

And on and on like that. Rephrasing things shouldn't be a hardship, particularly not to people who pride themselves on being literate and rhetorically capable. After all, if you don't have bigoted intent but it turns out that some of your words are conveying bigoted meaning, you didn't do it right and should be appreciative of those who give you the info you need to express your actual thoughts more clearly. And if you did have bigoted intent, then it's well to be called on it so that you have a chance to reflect on what's wrong with your values.

Not one scrap of any of that begins to compare to real discrimination in action.

Addendum to "Subthread (for eyelessgame)" - yes, the "for Mongo" subtitle on the song "Anagram" is a deliberate Blazing Saddles reference. (The band have confirmed it in interviews! Or at least in one of the ones I have on tape! Of which I have many, because my teenage years were spent in rabid fandom, trading tape recordings of interviews and live shows with people from Prodigy and Usenet! Squee! .../flashback)

Continuation of the Boulder Farmer's Market subthread: OK, here's the plan. [glances conspiratorially over shoulder] So, I'll give Elyse the codeword, which she will indicate to Lance, and then we will have our Sekrit Meetup over there - [draws arrow on chest a la football QB in huddle] - where we will further conspire to -

Or maybe we should just all meet up at The Tea Spot after the market packs up. The ML After-Market Taking Of Tea, With BYOT(amales) Optional!

Obligatory comment on actual topic of actual thread: Scraps, more kudos for your 424. You've put your finger on it with your second para: "Oh, sure, you get passed over for jobs, called you names, treated like a zoo animal, pulled over and ticketed for driving in white neighborhoods... but look at me! I have to be so careful trying to talk to you people!" Cry me a river. It's like when That Guy walks into an internet discussion about issues surrounding male-on-female rape, and blurts out, "But what about all those false accusations of rape that some women make to get men in trouble?"

Re: that categorizing system of people you can and can't talk to: I have friends who fit very firmly into "privileged and naive." They congratulate themselves on their colorblindness, they don't understand why black people don't just "let it go," they think that 98% of the reason for current racial tension is angry black people "not letting it go," and they seem firmly immune to understanding any explanation of white privilege.

"Yes, the reason you just aren't seeing it is you're privileged. The obstacles black people face every damn day are absent for you, because you are white."

"OK, but... why do they have to be so bitter about it?"

Very recently I was made aware of one very petty and obnoxious thing that rude white people do to black people not of their acquaintance: "Ooh can I feel your hair it's so different! [reach-touch-pat-pat-pat]" That made my jaw drop. That made me want to run out and loudly apologize on behalf of all USians who share my lack of melanin. You know that mental conception we all have for the worst possible X that could possibly exist? I had to adjust downward my mental conception of the rudest possible thing anyone could give themselves permission to do in public without actually intending to do anything rude.

So, anyway, I bring this up to one of my "Category B" friends:

"Being treated like an exotic animal in a petting zoo, or like an exception to Default Human (TM), is grossly dehumanizing."

"Well, isn't it better to be treated like something exotic, than it is to be treated like someone ordinary and boring?"

"The word you're overlooking here is animal. Exotic animal. Ergo dehumanizing."

"But, if you look at it this way, humans are animals."

But after awhile of this back-and-forth, I think understanding finally dawned: such behavior is patently offensive, those who are not recipients of such behavior have the privilege to be unaware that it happens, yadda yadda yadda. But my correspondent continued to aver that, rather than be angry and bitter about it, black people should graciously accept the such opportunities to conduct a teaching moment.

So, yes, I am starting to believe that there is no meaningful dialogue to be had there. Still, I can't stop myself from continuing to try. I am ... cough, cough, splutter ... attempting to graciously accept the opportunity to have a teaching moment.

Nicole, all you can do is remember serendipity and give it a shot, I figure, when it comes to people who aren't getting a clue. Wisdom strikes at the most unlikely of times and places.

Another one of those really useful things friends taught me:

Privilege isn't all about what you do. Rather, it's about what people do because of who they think you are. To take a practical example: I'm a white guy with a checkered credit history. But the best available data say that if I were to go seek a loan, I'd fair better - significantly better - than a randomly selected black, Hispanic, or other non-white guy with about my history but a vastly better credit history. I don't seek this out; I'm not whispering to loan officers, "Just between us whities, can't you cut me a break?" or anything like that. They would be doing it for a whole lot of reasons about cultural and institutional practice completely outside my control, which nonetheless give me an unfair advantage. That's privilege.

That's the hard thing about privilege, in fact. The kind of break routinely given to white seekers of loans, mortgages, and the like is not something they can affect much at all, except perhaps negatively. If I were to make enough fuss necessary to find out whether I was getting treated better than a comparable non-white applicant, they'd most likely toss me out as trouble and keep right on doing whatever it is they're doing when I'm not around. No quantity of individual virtue on my part (and I'm pretty good in most regards when it comes to race) will make my lender treat the next minority applicant one whit better, unless perhaps I inspire some personal virtue in the particular loan officer I'm dealing with it. Change, if it comes, will almost always have to be mandated, and let folks grow into it as best they may.

I'm sure I'm missing out on all sorts of nuance on account of 'not being American', but this seems to me to be a case of 'covert racism' - spotting it, and calling the people out who practice it.

Earlier, I was more concerned by words shifting meaning from out under my feet.

Bruce Baugh @ 453: "Privilege isn't all about what you do. Rather, it's about what people do because of who they think you are."

Very true--though I would add an "also" in that second sentence. A fair bit of privilege is about what you do. It's the more noticeable part, though, and therefore much easier to extricate oneself from. A lot of otherwise progressive people miss out on the more subtle, less-voluntary parts of privilege, and it's good to draw attention to them.

#447: Without intending to speak for Michael Martin, I have to say that being told that you've screwed up is not the most comfortable way of finding things out. It's also a gradual, trial and error process. What I infer is that he wants to learn all of it upfront so that he doesn't ever say anything unintentionally racist in the first place.

Unfortunately, I really can't think of a better way than paying attention to your surroundings, learning from others, and unavoidably, making the occasional mistake. People of good faith will forgive you when you apologize. (Or, at least, that's what I keep telling myself.) This doesn't actually make the mistake less painful or less mortifying, but I have no clue what to do about that.

#450: Anyone who doesn't like you can paint anything you say as a "non-apology apology." I would, however, buttress the "unintentional" with "and I won't ever say that again." Realizing that it was unintentional doesn't really make it hurt less. Being assured that you won't suffer that wound again at least binds the wound up to heal.

(I believe Miss Manners also suggests phrasing along the lines of "I was delirious" or "I had a moment of temporary insanity." A look of mortification also helps, but I find that comes naturally.)

Nicole @ 452: oh, God, the HAIR thing! THAT was something that, when I learned what a common, everyday hassle it was for women with African hair, REALLY helped me understand the daily level of guarding-against-intrusion they have to face.

I'm pale enough and European-featured enough to benefit from "white privilege" most of the time, and a borderline case where "looks Jewish" is a deciding factor. I also have curly hair. REALLY curly hair. Not nappy, but about one classification short of it. Which means, for a lot of my life, I've had what Ramona Quimby calls "boing-boing curls."

And even white privilege doesn't insulate me 100% from people who failed to learn in KINDERGARTEN that We Don't Boing Other People's Curls, Ramona.

And if I have to put up with it SOMETIMES, and WOC have to put up with it a whole lot more... oh, man, if it happened to me as often as I've heard some women report, I'd have a record for assault by now.

As for "graciously accepting the opportunity to have a teaching moment" -- yeah. I'll join you on the "cough, splutter" there. I got paraded up in front of the class for every Jewish holiday in elementary school to Explain My Different Traditions to the class, or so it felt like, and this in a suburb where we had a large enough Jewish minority that the schools closed for the High Holidays, some years. White privilege is what lets me not have to brace for such "teaching moments" every day and in every interaction, and I'm grateful for it, because being someone's "teaching moment?" Is TIRING.

If I had to face that every single day, every time I stepped out of my door?

My patience and tolerance would be pretty damn thin, all the time.

452, 457: Wait, the hair thing is supposed to be limited to non-European hair?

I get morons (mostly women, who should know better) touching my hair all the time, just because it's long, and my hair couldn't be more European if it tried--medium brown and very slightly wavy.

Maybe it's "non-typical"* hair, and mine falls into the category by virtue of how long I keep it?

I am already regarding my prospective future pregnancy with dread, because people will touch pregnant bellies without permission and I don't really want to give birth in a jail cell for assault.

* That is to say, non-typical in the opinions of the morons doing the rude touching, not in reality.

[I'll admit up front, I have nothing like the time needed to address all these comments.]

General nitpick: The issue isn't whites vs POC[1], it's whites who are speaking/writing, and many different people of all colors who respond, and who often respond with charges of racism or cries of outrage about word choices. There are plenty of POC who are very careful to only level a charge of racism at people with a lot of evidence, and there are plenty of whites who pretty gleefully accuse whole groups, movements, sides of a political issue, or even political parties of racism on very thin evidence.

Avram #443 and several others:

Can I take this (let alone the rather long and disspiriting discussion of the evils of the word "articulate" when used by whites to describe blacks) as an acceptance that discussing racial issues is, indeed, a task that requires a bunch of extra care for whites? Is that a statement that you can agree with?

There are some topics where, if you bring them up, you'll have to spend twice as long writing each post, be twice as careful choosing your words, and in which, if you should make some dumb verbal misstep, you will likely be accused of racism. Many of those topics also involve a pretty casual tossing-around of racism allegations at people on one side of the issue.

All else being equal, will you devote most of your time to writing/talking about those topics?

Consider Biden's verbal misstep. Nobody seems to think it was anything else. The claimed racist interpretation is frankly goofy (which is how you can tell it's a misstep, like if a physics teacher told you something that resolved to "force equals mass times velocity."). And yet, he got a certain amount of crap for it, much more than he'd have gotten from an unrelated misstep.

Now, imagine you're another prominent white politician. Are you interested in giving an unscripted interview about Obama's amazing rise? It's twice as hard, and has twice the risk of blowing up in your face.

It's pretty obvious that, all else being equal, sensible white politicians will be super careful about discussing Obama's rise. Will that make the country better off, or worse off? Is the decrease in accidental offense given, the increase in casual unconscious racism coming to the surface and being pointed out, worth the cost that fewer people will honestly examine that rise to power? I don't know how to even begin to answer that question.

It's also pretty obvious that sensible whites with an interest in politics will be pretty reluctant to discuss all kinds of racially-charged issues, because those discussions take way more work and care and carry way more risk of being called nasty names than other discussions. How does that work out, for the nation? It looks to me like one result is a lot fewer people willing to discuss some issues. And while some of those issues (affirmative action, frex) are relatively small things that mostly aren't all that important, others (the black/white performance gap in school, immigration, the awful sinkholes of poverty and crime and hopelessness in some mostly minority urban neighborhoods) are pretty important issues. Issues that are getting fewer ideas, fewer honest discussions, less thought, because getting involved in those discussions is more-or-less taxed.

The incentives here are important. The badness of getting called a racist (whether for bad word choices, phrases that some people are offended by for historical reasons, or even because of some subconscious racism on your own part) is nothing like the badness of getting the crap beaten out of you for driving while black. But it's enough to create an incentive to stay out of these discussions, and that's almost certainly a bad thing.

I almost certainly won't have time to come back to this thread today, so I'll try to come back tomorrow or late tonight and see if I can respond to other stuff. In the meantime, is it possible to try parsing my comments in non-offensive ways? Like, if you read my response to nezua, it ought to be absolutely clear that I am not equating black mens' fear of a beating at the hands of the cops with whites' fear of being called a racist in public. I suppose I could have added a disclaimer at the end to make that clearer. And another to make clear that I agreed that there is substantial evidence that blacks get shot and beaten up by cops more than whites. And another to say that.... And that's the problem. I don't think I'm a bad writer, though I don't compare to a lot of the folks here who make their livings with words. But it's quite a strain for me to hedge and footnote and caveat every statement in order to try to close off all possible offensive misinterpretations. That kind of approach to writing will make my writing ugly and convoluted and hard to read, and it's also not fun. This is kind-of what I'm talking about with the incentives.

[1] People Of Color, which I guess is sort of the set of people who aren't white.

Carrie S, yeah, I'd say any "non-typical" hair attracts the morons. Nappy, boing-boing curls, unusually long, funny colors, Mohawks, dreadlocks... people forget their manners, if they ever learned any.

If you add a studded leather jacket and very stompy boots to the funny-colored or Mohawked hair, that at least serves as a deterrent, sometimes. Maybe it's along the lines of a puffer fish's spikes.

Maybe that's a whole untapped market in maternity clothes! Forget "can't I look professional instead of cutesey or like I'm wearing a giant tent," how about "I would like to look dangerous so people don't TOUCH me."

AMEN, sister!

Scraps @#424 and a bunch of other people too: Thank you. I had stopped reading this thread because I did not have the energy or patience to engage with the discussion as it was going, and I am heartened and grateful to see your comments.

(I have some bookmarks on race, rhetoric, and the "tone" question saved on delicious, which may be of interest.)

John Chu @ 456

This doesn't actually make the mistake less painful or less mortifying, but I have no clue what to do about that.

There's nothing you can do about it. It's a fact of life, as much as DWB is for an African-American, and, IMO, a whole lot easier to live with.

One of the things you learn when you raise kids and/or animals is that you will be stepping in shit. No amount of dancing around and being aware of your surroundings is going to protect you from that moment when your attention is distracted by something vital ("OMG! Does that scream mean the kid just took a header down the stairs?") and you get it all over your shoes. Here's the thing, though: it's not so terrible. Sure, it's embarrassing, it's messy, it's a pain to clean up, and the smell sticks around for longer than seems fair. But life goes on, and after the initial disgust, you start to realize that you're better off just cleaning up and moving on than standing there cursing the universe.

We all of us do dumb things now and again, often without even realizing what it is we're doing until it's done. Embarrasment happens; clean up and move on.

Bruce Baugh @ 453

No quantity of individual virtue on my part (and I'm pretty good in most regards when it comes to race)

I'm really not picking on you or trying to embarrass you, but this phrase reminds me of things I've said that I squirm about when I recall them. It's almost a reflex, when you're talking about acts you consider uncool or socially unacceptable, to put in a phrase that points out how good you usually are about such things. It does make me feel better when I say these things, and that's one reason why I root them out on preview (and sure wish I could do that in RL): they don't make anyone else feel better, they interrupt the flow of what you're trying to say, and they're just so gormless*.

Like I said, not singling you out, just saying how this reminds me of me.

* You know, finding a word that means "silly, usless, and ineffective" that doesn't refer to some characteristic of a particular group of marginalized people is not easy if you've been raised in the US.

Carrie @458

People who touched my pregnant belly without permission were liable to get a pat on their own belly in return.

I don't know if their shock taught them a lesson or not, but I know it made me feel better.