Confessions of an Epic Indian

Racism in SFF Bingo Card courtesy of Alas, a blog.

Today’s Science Fiction and Fantasy field, while possibly bearing some strands of DNA from other countries and cultures intermingled in its genetic makeup, is undeniably dominated by American authors, particularly in America.

And a sizable majority of those American SFF authors are white. Virtually all of them are American. And I won’t even venture to guess how many are Christian.

But. But. I am so tired, people. I am so tired of the hatefulness, the racism and sexism. I am so tired of looking in the Asimov’s forums being a slap in the face because all the decent people in there can’t drown out the racism and sexism spewed by S.F. Murphy and David Truesdale. I’m tired of having to forebear it. –Micole

Which itself begs the question: Why is a genre that’s always so proud of its ability to explore worlds unable to integrate the world into its fold? Why is American SFF publishing not representative of American society and culture as a whole? Why is this white enclave dominating the genre and the field?

If we don’t call this shit out, people will think it’s totally okay to do it, snickering on the down low in emails.

–Tobias Buckell

SF author Tobias Buckell, of Caribbean origin, but himself now living in the continental US of A, has talked on his blog about his own experiences with racism.

The recent Helix controversy brought out another ugly instance of racism in American SF.

When will we, as a community, collectively shunn these people until they go away? Because, seriously, this has to stop. Pandiwadulous? PC Nazi? If people like this aren’t shut down and put out of the group, they will not stop, they will not get better, but they will infect others, drive folks away, and make the “professional” venues they’re associated with look like safe harbors for hate and bigotry. –K. Tempest Bradford

Other American SF writers like K. Tempest Bradford have admitted that such bias exists, and have spoken out against it. Although their rants are invariably tempered with mention of the two or three SF editors they know and are working with who are definitely not racist or biased, because, how could they be, if they’re working with them? Punches are pulled, no doubt about it. And nobody seems to have the balls to really call a spade a spade–or, to use a less unfortunate turn of phrase, a white lily a white lily.

And think about it. Can these really be isolated examples?

Is American SFF publishing full of such perfect beautiful atypical American individuals that they’ve transcended issues of race, sexism, bigotry, bias, and the like?

I don’t think so.

Writers like Bradford, Buckell, and others who have spoken out against racism are always cautious to do so in small measures, focussing their ire, often disproportionately, on individual cases like Sanders of Helix Magazine. This is understandable. These writers want to make a living in that field, and are undoubtedly afraid of antagonizing people they work with on a daily basis, or people they hope to work with someday.

No doubt, they also haven’t seen such bias openly exhibited by those fellow professionals and colleagues–not yet.

And of course, not all white Christian American SFF editors, agents, publishers, authors, etc, are bigots, sexist, racist, etc.

But certainly, there can’t be just one racist in the whole field! That’s as absurd as saying they’re all saints with haloes and lovely white wings.

All of America is white-boy-centric, remember, so if I want to get published, I don’t have a lot of options. –Nora K. Jemisin

If anything, the very imbalance in the racial and cultural composition of the field in America itself points to a deep malaise.

The recent attempts by some editors to claim that they’re open to multicultural writing, that they welcome submissions from women writers, that they look forward to international writer submitting work, is itself an admission that these were failings of the field until now.

Private skirmishes between PoC (People of Colour) on various blogs, forums, private correspondences, the echoes of which one reads about though one rarely knows the full details of those skirmishes, hint at a much wider problem.

So is American SFF racist? And sexist, bigotted, culturally insensitive, etc?

Well, I suspect a great number of professionals in the field might be. Since they’re all hardly likely to hold a rally proudly proclaiming their bias, or to march in a parade proclaiming Racist Pride in American SFF anytime soon, or even to wear white sheets and stick burning crosses in front of the houses of non-American, non-white, non-Christian people seeking a toehold in the field, it’s impossible to ever identify all of them, or even most of them.

It would also be unfair to tar the whole field with the racist brush (or sexist, bigotted, etc) without knowing the full extent of the bias in the genre. And there are a few notable instances of SFF publishing pros who do speak out openly on the issue, thereby at least acknowledging that the malaise exists, which is the first step to rooting it out.

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. –Patrick Nielsen Hayden

This much is true and beyond dispute: The proportion of PoC in American SFF is far lower than its representation in the American population at large. There are fewer books and stories by non-American, non-Christian, non-white authors being published in American SFF than in mainstream American publishing. Still worse, there are fewer bestsellers in the genre than in mainstream fiction: How many Kite Runners or A Thousand Suns do you see in the SFF genre? None. While every second day there seems to be a Middle Eastern or Indian or Pakistani or Asian author hitting the bestseller lists in other genres within America itself.

Then again, to ask for American SFF to do away with its own all-American home-grown racism, as well as bigotry, sexism and even (gasp) cultural bias, might be asking for too much. After all there are clearly rifts even within the groups of PoC working within the SFF publishing field, with many American professionals being PoC but still either innocently naive and uninformed about other cultures, or too immersed in their own American identity to understand and appreciate the work of other cultures.

I’m not as up on Asian and Indian culture as I am on my own, that’s very true. I do try not to make culturally insensitive remarks, but I know I must sometimes fail at that due to my own lack of knowledge. I do what I can to educate myself and to listen. If I failed at that many times, as you say, I can only work to do better…. On the ABW [Angry Black Woman blog] I remember one post where I unwittingly engaged in Asian stereotypes and it took me a while to recognize it. –K. Tempest Bradford

I’m not claiming to know any inside truths. Merely asking hard questions. Questions that I don’t think any American author, editor, agent, publisher, blogger, or even reader, dares to ask, or wants to ask.

And I’m looking for answers and solutions.

Not solutions like segregation, which at least one editor apparently thinks is a good thing when she groups all her international writers into a ’special’ issue, completely failing to realize that international writing needs to be integrated into the body of American SFF rather than detached and made into a sub-sub-genre within it.

Not an apology. Not recompensation. Not reparations. Because, let’s face it, hell will freeze over before they ever come.

But a debate, a discussion, a ferment, a questioning, a challenging of the status quo.

And I do this because I don’t give a damn about whether or not I’m published in any American SFF magazine or by any American SFF publisher. Because I don’t write SFF, not in the severely limited American definition of what’s SFF at least. And because I have personally been a victim of such racist abuse, bias, and cultural insensitivity more times than I can count.

And because I read and love American SFF and care about it. And want to see it change. For the better.

Read more about racism in American SFF:
–here
–here
–here
–here
–here
–here
–here
–here
–here
–here
–here

And remember, these are only the public discussions. And only a random selection of a few of them. I could write a book about the issue. And perhaps I will someday.

Meanwhile, this is the only blog post I’m opening up to comments. Tell it like it is, even if it hurts. Well, apart from a couple of intense comments by one of the writers quoted above, I’ve received a half dozen offensive ones that, in my opinion, don’t merit posting online. And when I say offensive, I mean offensive as in the use of terms like the ‘n’ word, ‘turbanhead’, ‘raghead’ and so on. I don’t feel obliged to respond to such abuse, nor to post them here. So I’m deleting all comments and maintaining the site-wide ‘no comments’ rule on this post as well. Readers of my work can always comment on the Readerswrite Page as usual.

In parting, one of the finest SF writers ever published–and not just one of the finest SF writers of colour, please note–the late great Octavia Butler, in this lovely brief interview with NPR conducted during the time of the UN Conference on Racism which took place in early September, 2001.

Simple peck-order bullying is only the beginning of the kind of hierarchical behavior that can lead to racism, sexism, ethnocentrism, classism, and all the other “isms” that cause so much suffering in the world. –Octavia E. Butler