how to disappear completely

[mimesere]

listening to jack johnson always makes me want to watch surfing documentaries. step into liquid is my favorite of them, as it is *gorgeous*.

anyway.

The main serious post I keep waffling on making is a little bit about bandom (and right there I've lost a bunch of people) but it is mostly about race and how one of the things that BUGS THE SHIT OUT OF ME about the way fandom treats race is the disappearing of people of color and *especially* the disappearing of biracial people in the larger context of discussion persons and characters of color.

Because see, I'm still really pissed about some comments that were made last year (I can hold a grudge like you wouldn't BELIEVE) about there being no people of color in bandom (Pete Wentz would like to disagree. As would Travis, Ray, Gabe, Alex Suarez, Matt Cortez, Disashi, Brendon, Tyga and others) because they're there. They're *obvious*. FFS, STOP SAYING THEY ARE WHITE. STOP IT. *breathes* In terms of diversity of race/religion/sexuality, bandom *wins forever* over any other popular fandom I've seen. FOREVER. Black, Latino, A/PI, Jewish, atheist, Catholic, undivulged flavor of Christian, mostly straight but NOT ENTIRELY, bi and out, allies and supporters, actual conversations about sexuality and the perceptions thereof. This fandom owns. Also, Greta and Vicky T and Maja do not have penises.

Um. Hey, apparently I started making this post! But okay, here's why it bugs me and I will try to leave it at that: by calling them white, by making the assumption that they are white without bothering to look, people are basically rendering them invisible. And this is doubly troubling to me because for a lot of them, we're talking about people who are biracial and that's got a whole passel of problems that go along with it.

The other thing that just bugs the shit out of me is the continued European assertion that they don't consider latinos to be of color. That's nice. THEY DO. What they perceive trumps what you perceive. Period. And all of the annoyances at the way Americans frame the discussion of race in American terms and all the different contexts in the world doesn't change that latinos from this particular side of the globe DO NOT CONSIDER THEMSELVES WHITE. There are *other* issues at work with which, frankly, I'm not even remotely qualified to talk about , but the primary issue for me is that they are not white. You can say all day long that they would be considered white in Europe and that's nice, but that's problematic in its own way. Other people than me who are smarter and more articulate should discuss this.

(somewhat relatedly, I got an email a while ago about the Jesus Walks vid which basically said that if Gunn's arc had been anything like that on the show, they would have kept watching. Here's the thing: that *was* Gunn's arc on the show. That vid was me attempting to show everyone else the show I had *always been watching*. It was there for everyone to see, Gunn was AMAZING and it made me sad every day in that fandom that people were being all SPIKE and ZOMG ANGEL IS BEIGE and ZOMG LINDSEY and meanwhile my darling was off kicking ass and negotiating the difference between the greater good and uh, what Angel thought was the greater good -- opening an orphange = good! being emo about how you're not sure you're doing good = lame and boy was there more to talk about with moral ambiguity and beigeness there. ANYWAY. This post is more than long enough and I need to get ready for work.)

There's an excellent post here that talks about some of the same issues: http://ohinternets.livejournal.com/38940.html in Psych fandom.

Comments

[fox1013.livejournal.com]

I can hold a grudge like you wouldn't BELIEVE

Oh, honey. I think I would believe it.

[mimesere.livejournal.com]

*adores you* I keep thinking there are people in the world who don't know that, um. I'm a crazy grudge-holding bitch.

[raveninthewind.livejournal.com]

Great post, and it contains many things I've thought myself, more than once.

[mimesere.livejournal.com]

I think about it all the time, mostly in the context of, "OH GOD, I AM SO GLAD TO BE IN A FANDOM WHERE PEOPLE LOOK LIKE ME!" but there's the flip side which I talked about here.

*sigh* I will probably go climbing back in to my corner of optimism and not headdesking at the world soon. But yeah. Hi :)

*hugs you a lot*

[bexone.livejournal.com]

I realized, mid-boobgate, how refreshing it was to have a fandom where at least the source material was relatively free of skanky race-and-gender issues, even if the fandom wasn't.

And then I realized how sad that is, that I can honestly say a fandom that involves lyrics like "what a shame, the poor groom's bride is a whore" and "once a whore you're nothing more" is refreshingly unskanky. and now I'm gonna go listen to my "tired of taking this shit" angry-girl-rock playlist for a bit.

[mimesere.livejournal.com]

I'll be honest, that line is a BIG part of why I'm not actually a Panic fan.

...oh Paramore. FRONTED BY A GIRL. Still calling other girls whores. *facepalm*

[trixiesfic.livejournal.com]

In terms of diversity of race/religion/sexuality, bandom *wins forever* over any other popular fandom I've seen. FOREVER. Black, Latino, A/PI, Jewish, atheist, Catholic, undivulged flavor of Christian, mostly straight but NOT ENTIRELY, bi and out, allies and supporters, actual conversations about sexuality and the perceptions thereof. This fandom owns. Also, Greta and Vicky T and Maja do not have penises.

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes! Thank you. There are many things I love about bandom, but this is definitely at the top of that list.

[mimesere.livejournal.com]

I feel I should clarify that I mean the diversity is in the source text and not (necessarily) in the fandom. I mean, my corner of the fandom is AWESOME and I don't tend to venture outside it. But I do love being in a fandom where I can look at my source and go WOOOOO a lot.

[shrift.livejournal.com]

I remember spluttering when people were saying that bandom is totally white and made up only of dudes.

Because, seriously? Seriously? How on earth do people elide reality like that? Is this a case of "bandom only consists of the people we're interested in, and by that we mean white dudes"?

Because, EW.

This kind of attitude is why I started and will continue to do a female vocalists music post every month.

[mimesere.livejournal.com]

To be fair, when I saw people saying that it was mostly people who were not in bandom who were looking for a reason that they were better than it and why it sucked and was bad.

But yeah. I fully support female vocalists post! My rockin' chicks playlist makes me happy a lot.

[ngaio]

It's not that *I* don't believe that Latinos are people of colour, it's that it's not an automatic classification (one I'm striving to overcome) which I've come to believe is institutionalised in the UK. I gave blood just after the last discussion and noticed on the part of the form where you have to declare race it didn't give Latino as an option. I'm also not saying they would be considered white by me, either pre- or post-previous discussion (I would have ended up saying 'European' if I was describing someone in my head, pre-discussion), but that *officially* (going via blood donation options which are the only ones I've seen in the intervening time) they would have to declare as 'Other' and define themselves because ... I don't know - Not a significant percentage of the UK population would declare 'Latino' as an option to make it worthwhile to put it as an option? Because whoever wrote the form didn't see it as an option (which is, of course, a circular problem)? So this is something of a *national* issue which needs to be tackled. (I can't speak as to the attitudes of non-Brits, or, I suppose, of anyone not-me.)

I also think the UK as a whole is too Euro-centric which adds to the problem. But don't get me started on politics!

Sorry that sounds a bit defensive, but I was feeling that way a bit. Even if you're educating us one at a time we (who read your LJ) are listening, and we aren't saying you're wrong or that the people you're talking about are wrong. I'm saying that last time you changed how I thought about this, and that means I can change the mind of the next person and the next and the next. And we'll get there.

Also, please don't hate me because I'm inarticulate and come from a stupid country.

Incidentally to another bit of your post, please feel free to love on Gunn muchly. He was the best character in the entire damn show (I have a hate for Angel like you wouldn't believe) and needs more love and some day someone'll write the Xander/Gunn fic I want.

[mimesere.livejournal.com]

Right, no, I'm not...I'm not angry at the people? I'm just *frustrated* because it feels like a lot of the time when something like this gets brought up, one of the European fans will chime in with, "But here, they would be white!" and then I start seeing red. And I really do get that it's a contextual issue and that Hispanic in Europe does refer to Spain and that region, but just like I do remember that and keep it in mind, it annoys me when the reverse isn't true for people. *I* wouldn't consider someone from Spain to be of color, but I also differentiate between person-from-Spain and person-from-central/South America because they're different. And that's when I get annoyed by the, "But we do not have that here!" or "I see them as white!" or "We do not have the race issues that you have in the US!" because that treads alarmingly close to the bad kind of "color-blindness."

And it's not that I think the UK should have Latino as a separate option because it's not as large an issue for you there as it is for us here, but other/having to define is a far cry from white and that feels a lot like what some of the Europeans are saying when they say that Hispanic, for them, is the same as white.

I don't know. I am not being very articulate either. I don't hate you! I think you are very very awesome.

[latxcvi.livejournal.com]

Posts like this are why you're my boo, forever and always, miss lady.

[mimesere.livejournal.com]

*hearts*

[callmesandy.livejournal.com]

I heart this post and I am not even in your fandom. :)

[zvi-likes-tv.livejournal.com]

Is that Penny Johnson in your icon? When did she and Taye Diggs do something together?

[annaalamode.livejournal.com]

You are my favorite person in the whole wide world. (Well, you and Chase Utley.)

[mimesere.livejournal.com]

Heee. *hearts*

[ladysorka]

You are so incredibly my favorite.

[mimesere.livejournal.com]

*g*

[zvi-likes-tv.livejournal.com]

You forgot Ray Toro, but otherwise, this was an awesome post.

Perhaps we should make a bandom chart? Guys in Bandom Who are White / Everyone else. We could illustrate with their pictures and give little stats on the way they are not white guys.

[mimesere.livejournal.com]

Ray was third on my list! After Pete and Travis :) I would never forget Ray!

There probably should be a chart with pictures. Mmmmm pictures. There could be pictures of my pointy headed darling! And also Ray! And the dorks in Cobra Starship!

*hearts every one of them*

[nostalgia-lj.livejournal.com]

I think we're used to "European = white" to the point where it genuinely doesn't occur to us to have something like "hispanic" as a category, which is problematic when dealing with America where the distinction is made. I know there's a few people I was surprised to think of as non-white, like that guy from BSG and apparently Martin Sheen? To an extent it really is "colour-blindness" in the sense that we haven't thought of it as a racial distinction. I sometimes miss who's latiny, which in American terms is a fail and I accept that but do plead some understanding that my cultural background is at work there.

[minim_calibre]

Martin Sheen's father is Spanish-from-Spain (and his mother's Irish), so he's not Latin American Hispanic, but he still had to change his name from Estevez to Sheen to get work, you know? Because apparently, Ramon Estevez sounded too ethnic.

North and South America are a big old mess of colonial-era issues, basically.

I have a first cousin who is paler than me (which is hard to do). White-blond hair, what's left of it, and pale pink skin.

But he's not a white guy, he's Metis.

[skywardprodigal.livejournal.com]

I know it's really short notice, but would you please consider cooking up something about you'n'bandom, or you'n'Gunn for POC in SF 9 if this isn't a piece you did write for it?

:D

Cookies? Of the cyber persuasion?

[mimesere.livejournal.com]

To my intense embarrassment, I uh. Have no idea what to write? I thought about it! But I am kind of...puzzled by the POC in SF carnival. I like it and I read everything that's linked, but I get all flaily and incoherent when I think about doing something myself.

[queenofhell.livejournal.com]

People not knowing that Brendon and Pete are biracial makes sense to me, though, especially because I've only ever seen Pete refer to himself as a white dude, and I think especially Brendon's Mormon background tends to make people assume he's white. But yeah, saying bandom has no people of color is insane.

[lemonsherry.livejournal.com]

I dont think its really just Pete referring to himself as a white dude, its more us all just assuming he's white because he doesnt go around declaring his ethnicity, you know?

Like with someone like Travis, who doesnt do it either, its obvious that he isnt white just by looking at him, but for someone who isnt really accustomed to the intricacies of mixed people or whatever (because I immediately recognized that Pete wasn't fully Caucasian) its easy to come to a conclusion about them, especially when you haven't been given any reason to question it.

[impertinence.livejournal.com]

Agreed.

The Pete thing is interesting, because I think if you met him or just knew him casually you wouldn't necessarily know he wasn't white, but in the context of his (upper middle class) community, with people knowing what his parents looked like? I'd imagine it'd make an impact.

[mimesere.livejournal.com]

Pete's interesting in all kinds of ways, not the least of which is race and his relationship to his own ethnicity and everything.

[lemonsherry.livejournal.com]

word.

[lemonsherry.livejournal.com]

clicked post comment too soon.

one of the most appealing things about bandom as a woman of colour has always been its diversity. I guess those outside of it would turn a blind eye to some of the best aspects of this part of fandom, but there's no where else I've found people writing about Pete/Pharell, or have artists like Travis and Disashi being squeed about, or seen posts pop up on your flist about Patrick singing with The Roots and Lupe Fiasco, or have someone like Gabe who is so obviously in love with his culture and ethnicity.

Not to say that race or femininity is dealt with perfectly in fandom, because it still rubs me the wrong way when i read people literally attacking the girlfriends, or het fic, or seeing the dearth of fic dealing with anybody in Gym Class. But bandom is really on par, or even surpassing, many others in terms of its diversity, and i love it the more for it.

[neverneverfic.livejournal.com]

This post is truly truly made of win. The way bandom invisiblizes POC is something that I spend tremendous amounts of time bitching to redbrickrose about. And is also something I apparently participate in (sorry Brendon!). I am very very glad that you posted about it.

Anyway, in my experience bandom is way behind the curve in terms of having race conversations. Like, other fandoms may be fucking them up all over the damn place, but at least the conversations are happening. here...not so much. which is weird to me because we have so many poc in the source material you'd think there'd be conversation to be had. But I think that one of the major conversations that we need to have is about the fact that we have so many poc in the source material and people think they are white. and having that conversation would mean people realizing that not everyone they think is white is white and...yeah.

I hope this post sparks some good discussion :)

[mimesere.livejournal.com]

Heh. My perceptions of conversations about race are really...skewed? I want to say, because I talk about race in my corner of bandom A LOT (most of those conversations happen via AIM or email or gtalk because I pretty much talked myself out of race discussion via LJ).

But yeah, a lot of what bugs me -- and which causes me to flail at people and rant incoherently -- is that people are like, "ha ha gabe is white!" and I go NO HE IS NOT STFU! (I wish I could say that I am exaggerating about the STFU, but sadly I am not) and then I rant some more. Hence this post.

[warmingweather.livejournal.com]

I got linked here by neverneverfic, and I just wanted to drop a comment saying that I really appreciated reading this post.

And this is doubly troubling to me because for a lot of them, we're talking about people who are biracial and that's got a whole passel of problems that go along with it.

Yes, that's exactly it.

I understand that at first glance, from an outside perspective, bandom may appear white and male, because the majority of subjects that get talked and written about the most are male and white (Patrick, Ryan, Jon, Frank, Gerard, etc). And I do think that could be the source of a productive conversation within bandom- why we're the most fannish about those people and not others, though there are certainly factors outside of race and gender that influence it.

But it should honestly take about a second for even non-bandom people to realize that people of color and women DO exist in this fandom, and for them to claim otherwise is ridiculous.

(Step Into Liquid is a gorgeous movie. I also really enjoy Riding Giants)

[mimesere.livejournal.com]

And what's funny to me is that the people that I hear about most (and who I have *always* heard about most) start with Pete Wentz who is a person of color (and fairly, er, obvious in it? like, the specifics of what exactly makes up his heritage is fuzzy, but that Pete was a person of color is one of the things that drew me to this fandom to begin with). Then yes Patrick and Gerard, then Brendon (also a PoC, though I did not know it at the time). I heard about Travis before I heard about anyone else in Panic. So my perception of bandom has always been that it is a place where there are people of color, rather than it being someplace where I learned that the people were there.

And then, right when I got in, there was Maja and I heard about Greta and then Vicky T joined in, so I dunno. My flist is skewed though.

[megyal]

Here from metafandom and obviously living under a rock, because where did people say that?

And now, I am bristling after the fact.

[mimesere.livejournal.com]

It came up a couple times last year when people were complaining about the mass migration to bandom and I think it also got brought up during the ridiculousness of the stage gay wank. But it's something that I've been sitting on for a while because it just annoyed me that much.

[minim_calibre]

A dictionary of word!

[mimesere.livejournal.com]

*hearts*

[norabombay.livejournal.com]

For good or ill, I was not aware that Pete Wentz was biracial.

That said, I haven't exactly spent a huge amount of time thinking about Pete Wentz, period.

And the song with "the bride is a whore" should totally get a feminist cover. I'm just saying. Imagine Courtney Love & Hole in their prime.

[mimesere.livejournal.com]

Many songs by Panic at the Disco would be interesting if covered by women.

[fallingfortruth.livejournal.com]

As one of those invisible biracial people (I'm 1/8 Cherokee, and fishbelly white) I really appreciate this post. And another place that I really appreciate about bandom (and admittedly, it's a symptom of being RPS, I think, rather than a fictional show with writers' biases showing up) is that there's such a wide range of CLASS. You have Pete and Joe who are from upper-middle class families in nice neighborhoods, and you have Frank and Ray and the Ways, who grew up in the shitty part of Jersey with parents who were definitely not affluent. But again, you very rarely see that getting mentioned in fic.

Which I, coming from a military family in rural Oklahoma, really get frustrated with. But then, I would. *long suffering sigh*

(Also, you seem EXTREMELY awesome. Want to be friends?)

[rawkenr0ll.livejournal.com]

GABE SAPORTA WAS AN ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT WHOSE FATHER SOLD SCARVES ON THE STREET TO FEED HIS THREE KIDS EVEN THOUGH HE WAS A LICENSED DOCTOR BACK IN URUGUAY.

AND NOW HE OWNS A $739 000 APARTMENT IN THE EAST VILLAGE.

FUCK YEAH- TAKE THAT, POVERTY.
INSPIRATIONAL STORY OF THE YEAR.

/cheerleading for people that made it

[ravenclaw-devi.livejournal.com]

OT, but... may I have a link to that Jesus Walks vid?

[mimesere.livejournal.com]

Where it is available for download:
http://mimesere.livejournal.com/557300.html

streaming @ imeem:
http://www.imeem.com/mimesere/video/IWPFIR4Y/ats_jesuswalks/

and someone (not me) uploaded it youtube somewhere.

[buddleia.livejournal.com]

I do miss US distinctions and identities and references. I hope I can always be corrected and learn to correct myself so I don't piss other people off. And, yes, I also get a bit antsy about all the race discussions which, yes, frame everything from a US pov. OTOH, where does any European get off on telling someone else they are or are not white? Do people do that? I would never, NEVER.

[mimesere.livejournal.com]

I think a lot of the reason the race discussions do frame from a US pov is because it's...Americans talking about it. And especially it's Americans talking about US-based media so it's kind of, well yeah we're talking about it in US-terms. US-terms are what make up the discussion. If it were British fans talking about British media, I would (hope and) imagine that it would be framed from the British POV and that I could then learn something from that.

(much as it pains me) Going back to Welshgate: it would never have occurred to me that being Welsh was, to the people in the UK, on par with being black in the US. So I take that and incorporate it into my worldview and if it comes up, then I have to take that into account. OTOH, it doesn't look to my admittedly biased eyes that the forms that racism takes against the SE Asians in the UK is that much more different than the forms that racism takes against *insert minority here* in the US. And maybe it is different. But there's not enough of that conversation happening in fandom for me to see it and become aware, where I do think that it gets brought up enough from the US side to kind of...show where we're coming from and what the potential issues might be. I don't know. I'm probably not making a lot of sense :(.

[pandorasblog]

Here vita metafandom. I'm not in bandom but a good friend is, so I hear quite a lot of what goes on, and I like/recognise most of the bands well enough. I'm mostly interested in how issues of race and fandom interaction intersect.

I do think it's arrogant for anyone to say "well, if they were in Europe they'd be white", because they're not in Europe; they come from a different perspective and experience and how other people would have identified them in an alternate European existence is neither here nor there. But there's also a certain assumption inherent in some of those statements, maybe because so often in fandom generally people not from the US get fed up with US-centrism that we perceive in fan culture/conversation. I think that if we see ourselves as the ones pointing out mistakes rather than as people equally capable of making mistakes, then we have a problem.

[mimesere.livejournal.com]

I don't know that I think it's entirely unfair for the conversation about race in fandom to be US-centric or framed by the US understanding of race; for one, it's largely the US fans of color that are bringing up the issues and starting the conversation and for the other, a lot of these discussions tend to spring up around media that is either based in the US or formed by US politics. I could talk about how some actors of color from the UK come to the US because there are roles here for them to play and how that's problematic in and of itself. I can talk about watching British media and wondering what exactly is so different about racism in the UK when it seems to my admittedly US-centric eye to be incredibly similar. But I'm not from the UK. I don't know a lot of the politics surrounding things. I mean, I get that maybe it's not white-vs-black racism and is, instead, white-vs-southeast asian racism, but the forms in which these issues are presented read very similar to the forms that racism take *here*. But I don't know. I have to take the word of the UK fans that this is not so.

But, more, I didn't say that people were saying, "if they were in Europe they'd be white" and that's not what's frustrating me. What's frustrating to me about, "We don't have that distinction here and so I don't see it" is that the phrase is used as a way of sidestepping the issue of, "Here are some people of color that you didn't notice or that you ignored or that you assumed were white." Well, okay, you don't have that distinction in Europe; latino is not a identifier that you are familiar with. Now you know it exists. Now you know the basics of it.

I didn't know until relatively recently that white-on-white prejudice still existed wrt the british vs the welsh. I know that now and it is something that I can take into account when consuming media where that might come up.