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Are (White) Novelists Racist?
Racism. Misogyny. Homophobia. They’re all working off a common assumption: a given culture has a norm, and anyone who’s different from the norm is just that — different, and therefore, of course, inferior.
Feminists have for example long argued that using language like “mankind,” or making the assumption that “he” also implicitly includes the legions of “she,” effectively sets up two tiers: the norm and the not-norm. Well, of course mankind means everybody — but it says “man,” doesn’t it? And language and culture follow each other.
I’m a product of my culture. I’ll admit to my racism; I actually don’t think anyone who says they’re not racist is quite in touch with reality. My accidental advantage was to be born Caucasian, and that accident has gifted me with layers of privilege I did absolutely nothing to earn or deserve. I started to list some of those privileges here, and gave up: twenty pages on, and I’d still be writing.
That’s a very long introduction to what I really want to talk about: fiction.
I’m fascinated by language; it’s one of the reasons (well, that and having no discernable talent in any other direction) I became a writer. And I’m generally careful about the way I use it. Except… except.
There’s a horrible racism embedded in much — if not most — of the fiction I read…
