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.

[fox1013.livejournal.com]

It is my favorite thing about you!

[raveninthewind.livejournal.com]

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

[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*

[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*

[raveninthewind.livejournal.com]

*squishes you back*

I've spent much of my life (half) in a place where not only was I an Other, but part of a tiny, tiny minority. It's better now in Seattle. I still get that feeling of Otherness at times, but it's balanced by the other times. So, progress, for me personally, but it is sometimes sigh-worthy.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[bexone.livejournal.com]

in my head, it's balanced partly by the the mostly unskankiness of the new album (she's a handsome woman occasionally makes me frownyface, but the rest of the album is pretty much "we totally love each other! and ryan loves his girlfriend who is awesome!") and partly by the I'm-sure-they-didn't-mean-it brilliant subversive feeling of being in a crowd of thousands of girls all singing that line from lying... ("more wit, a better kiss, a hotter touch, a better fuck than any boy you'll ever meet"). which leads into questions of context and authorial intent and power differentials and other things that are coming up (over and over and over) in boobgate and amanda-gate, so I have to stop now because my blood pressure is going up again. um.

i still, for the record, hate, despise, and cannot listen to"build god, and then we'll talk," both for the lyrics and the disgusting, horrifying pornomime video.

[callmesandy.livejournal.com]

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

[annaalamode.livejournal.com]

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

[ladysorka]

You are so incredibly my favorite.

[annaalamode.livejournal.com]

My favorite thing about you is your shiny hair! Or something. I hit reply and then realized that I can't pick just one favorite thing about you. I fail!

[zvi-likes-tv.livejournal.com]

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

[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.

[thelana.livejournal.com]

I dunno. I'm probably somebody similar to the people you are pissed at, but I do think that Eropean issues really are different in this case. Not just in regards to Hispanic vs Spain (aren't original spaniards considered sort of the white people in South America compared to the more native and mixed population? Errr, besides the point).

Europe has it's share of people of a differnt from white-white hue if you want to call it that. Italians, Turks, Greeks for example. And while there are some of collective insults (fe tschusch means stranger and covers a lot of white Eastern European minorities too), in general people don't have a problem seeing them as European and more importantly do indentify them with their home country (including in their insults). It's like if Americans actually distinguished between Mexicans, Bolivians, Chileans and Argentians and identified them each based on their history (though admittedly that between Italians, Turks and Greeks, they each speak a different language and have a different religion which probably makes things much easier).

I don't think it's an attempt to be politically correct nor an attempt to gloss over differences. It just that for them this hue totally falls into something that is within their experience of "Europeans like us/a relative of mine might pop up looking similar to that" and for example isn't recognized as a very different beauty standard.

But usually when the topic is brought up people bring up the shared history aspect. Yet isn't that exactly the thing that makes it a historical/cultural issue than (just) a color issue? Hence, isn't it misnamed?

"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."

There is a difference between saying that they don't have race issues and saying that their race issues look different. And they are. You have very different population percentages for starters. You have different backgrounds (descendants of slaves vs. immigrants). You have different socio-economic distributions (the cheap labour jobs that might be taken by Mexicans in the US used to be taken (sometimes still are) by Eastern Europeans who are white in Europe for a long time). Some race issues are universal. But a lot of them are also heavily influenced by the local situation. So, hell yeah, of course the race issues would be different. It's a different places with different histories aftre all.

The UK has race/ethnicity issues that are unique to them (immigrants from India and Pakistan because of the unique history they share). France has race/ethnicity issues that are unique to them (immigrants from North Africa and a handful of island territories which still belong to France and where the inhabitants are still full French citizens). And they issues are different from the ones you might encounter in Sweden or Germany or Russia. Sometimes there are similarities and sometimes there really is no equivalent.

[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.

[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?

[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.

[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.