Call me cynical, but....

[laceblade]

I have my LiveJournal friendslist divided into different sub-groups because it's too unwieldy for me to read all at once.

Thus, published authors are in their own group, and I read them all en masse.

And I must say that it is really, really interesting to me that almost every single one of them, from mildly obscure to ridiculously famous, has posted in outcry about AmazonFail today - the first day links spread anywhere at all.

Whereas, some of them have yet to say one damn thing about RaceFail.

I know it's hard to keep up and everything, but if you have a platform and you use it to post outrage, selective outrage can be very telling of privilege.

Comments

[goldjadeocean.livejournal.com]

...Except it's not a fair comparison. Racefail is not (no matter how much people would like it to be) a clear-cut example. There are a lot of ways any random person could come up to it and go, "Y'all are on CRACK" which is what kept happening. It took a lot of reading and working to understand to get why Racefail is problematic.

This is simple.

A fairer comparison would probably be the number of people who posted about the Helix fiasco, and this.

[mystickeeper.livejournal.com]

While I certainly agree that it takes a lot of effort and work to keep up with RaceFail, I don't think a person needs to read many posts to see why it was problematic.

[goldjadeocean.livejournal.com]

...There are perspectives on that.

The PoC on my flist have largely been unsupportive of the anti-racists involved in Racefail, and a person going back and reading over Ebear's original posts (the common recommended starting point) will, in my experience, have difficulty understanding why she is considered so fucking heinous.

Unlike this situation, it is not an easy situation to automatically grasp and reach a decision on.

[mystickeeper.livejournal.com]

That's interesting! We don't have the same flist, obviously, but I've seen lots of PoC getting along quite well with anti-racists.

In regards to Elizabeth Bear....I didn't write her off as completely fucking heinous until after coffeeandink was outed, but I really don't find EBear to be what RaceFail is about, or even central to the fail itself. Yeah, lots of comments originated on, or stemmed from some of her posts, but the conversation is more about race and people freaking out about it than Bear.

I do agree that one might have trouble figuring out what the deal is, specifically with her, if a person was reading posts out of order (through no fault of their own!) or even not knowing which posts were important, or sometimes which PARTS of posts, etc.

While I agree with you that it can be really really hard to get a clear picture of RaceFail, I also agree with what littlebutfierce said below, about some people making posts saying things like "I haven't read everything but I think racism in sf/f is wrong!" That's a pretty simple comment to make, and one I would have appreciated (especially early on) from big-name authors especially.

[handyhunter.livejournal.com]

Yep.

[sasha-feather.livejournal.com]

I agree with you that it is telling of privilege. It affects many of these authors directly, and that's reflective of the lack of POC/ally voices in SF/F versus the comparative wealth of GLBTQI/ally voices. I also think that Amazon is a *lot* more visible than livejournal (which is where most of RaceFail happened), and that this affects all of Amazon's publishing/sales, whereas RaceFail was somewhat more specific to the SF/F community. This offense is more clear-cut and easier to understand, and thus easier to spread the word and post about. I think it's important to be careful when making comparisons-- one offense is not the same as another, even if they have similarities.

[la-luna-llena.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I want to second that RaceFail was more SF/F while LGBT books don't all fall into that category -- a lot of authors wouldn't have been aware of the speculative fiction world.

YOUR authors may have been, and may also have been confused about the arguments and not had time to focus on them.

[mystickeeper.livejournal.com]

Yeah, RaceFail was more SF/F [although the things we were discussing were obviously not so limited], but I think that every single author on my FL with the exception of Sarah Dessen can be considered SF/F.

[bibliofile.livejournal.com]

Yes, what S said.

Also, you (MK) may also be cynical. Embrace the power of "and."

[mystickeeper.livejournal.com]

I responded to S's comment above.

[mystickeeper.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the current one is more clear-cut, but that's part of my point, I guess.

Yes, it is harder to keep up with RaceFail; yes, making a post might end up NEGATIVELY affecting an author's *gasp* sales; yes, you have to work a lot harder to be informed if you're not used to talking about race....so, if you're in a position power, DO THAT.

*shrug* I certainly didn't mean to call them the same situations; I just meant that one was relatively easy to take a stand on, while the other takes work, and therefore means a bit more to me.

[littlebutfierce]

I know it's hard to keep up and everything, but if you have a platform and you use it to post outrage, selective outrage can be very telling of privilege.

Yes.

Even if people were put off by the sprawling size of RaceFail & what they saw as not-clear-cut issues, there were lots of people who posted tepid "I haven't read everything but I think racism in sf/f is wrong!" posts, at the least.

And then, there were people who didn't.