alias_sqbr

So, one of the standards I try to hold myself to is to be open to criticism and other points of view. Two criticisms I've had people make of me (directly and indirectly) here and there are that
(a)This whole blogging about racism and feminism etc is pointless or otherwise a bad idea
(b)People who disagree with me (or don't feel as strongly) on these or related issues find this lj unwelcoming/intimidating

(EDIT: I'm paraphrasing, and I think I've accidentally created straw-critics who you are all defending me from when the actual things people said really weren't that bad, mostly. My plan for a "nice simple links post instead of a tricky thinky real post about race" seem to have been less than successful...)

Now I'm still feeling a bit too dumb to write a proper post on either issue, but looking through ibarw I came accross three posts which go into the first question really well:

• rilina: IBARW: Why I'm participating
  
• coffeeandink: Why I participate in IBARW
  
• The Angry Black Woman: Doing Something About Racism
  

( Read more... )

So, it's International blog about racism week.

I've never gotten around to joining in before (though I have posted about
racism at odd intervals) but as it happens have been heading towards
posting about this sort of stuff for a while.

So, two small and hopefully uncontroversial questions to start with:

Question 1: There's a lot of interesting science fictiony ideas involving
race, as well as questions about the racial subtexts to fandom itself. I
personally find these interesting, and have recently noticed there isn¡¦t
a lot of that sort of thing discussed at Swancon.

Am I just missing it and it is actually there? Are other people interested
or is it just me? I'd think of running some myself but I'm an ignorant
white science major who hasn't run many panels so I'd probably mess it
up horribly :)

Question 2: Something I've noticed recently and Do Not Like are racist
undertones in fandom, especially amongst the younger unisfans. What are
other people's experiences? Is it getting worse or am I just being an "In
my day.." old guard, or possibly only now losing some of the blindness of
white privilege? What's it like being a not-white fan in such a
blindingly pasty demographic? Any different to the regular grind of
Australian society?

I'm mostly interested in local west Australian fandom (since I've mostly
heard about online fandom) but stuff about the internet or international
fandom is cool too. And those less pasty than myself are under no
obligation to talk about such a loaded topic if they'd rather not!

May post about my own experiences when I'm not ill (wrote this yesterday, naively thinking I'd be able to proofread before posting tonight) Will suck at responding for a while but didn't want to miss the week since I was so close!

Since it seems unfortunately necessary to say: if someone says they have a
different experience to you that doesn't mean they assume you're stupid
or a liar, and nor should you assume that about them. Also:

IMPORTANT NOTE: off topic, ranty or flamey replies go here.