proof i still don't know how to stfu: exhibit #2332154
as usual, I’m going to complain about racism in the RP comm (and media in general? idk) because it’s rampant and ugly and I’m not going to shut up about it until it’s dead and gone and you all stop being gross. Now, this was written about racism, but honestly, you can apply a lot of these to things like religion, sexuality, gender identity, etc too- they often intersect and manifest in similar ways– that said, I wanted to talk about race, so that’s what this post is going to focus on.
Things I Am Desperately Tired Of:
You all always ask us to write you an entire doctoral thesis with an annotated bibliography and 400+ citations that has been peer-reviewed, edited, and replicated by multiple independent sources to justify us headcanoning characters as PoC so I want to turn the tables on you all.
In fantasy and mythology, in particular, since I guess that’s what I tend to side on: Why is your interpretation of some human-looking entity, like the spirit of a forest or something, white? Why is the pantheon-less god of time a white guy? Why is an angel OC white, why is a mermaid OC white? Canon characters too! Why is your interpretation of a character that wears a mask and has their skin completely covered all the time in canon a white person when they take that mask off? Why are you arguing that a character that is racially ambiguous is white? Why does your character HAVE to be white?
I’m serious. Why can their story only be told through a white lens, through a white experience? Why is whiteness the default you go to? Why is the White Experience™ the only experience you think is worth writing about?
Now, I’m not saying you can’t write white characters, or that white characters can’t be interesting. I’m not telling you that you have to feel bad about writing white characters. I’m not even telling you you need to write characters of color. What I’m asking you is to think about why “white’ is your default. I’m asking you to become aware of your (hopefully) unconscious biases and to critically think about them. Consider giving someone else representation, consider trying to learn something, to go outside your comfort zone. White is not the only valuable perspective. White is not the best perspective. White should not be the default.
white character, colorful mask
“Oh,” you say! “Then I’ll just change my faceclaim for this character and make them brown/black/asian/native/etc and call it good! That’s what you want, right?”
No. No, that is not what the fuck people mean when they say they want representation. Representation is not just skin color. Culture is not skin color. Ethnicity is not skin color. We are all the products of our upbringing, of the society and world we grew up in, and our daily experience through said society and world. It is not enough to make a character with brown skin, curly hair, dark eyes, and a big nose that has the experience of someone that grew up white. A rich, educated black woman is not going to have had the same experience going through life as a white woman of comparable wealth and education. That’s just not how the world works- and people of color are very much aware of this! You can’t just change a color palette, alter some features, and say you’ve made a good character of color. That’s not representation, that’s not authentic. I’m not saying I’m not 100% for casting, say, an Asian actor for a role previously played by a white person. But that’s not good enough.
I want to look at a character in media and see myself in them, just like all you white people can. I want to have so many characters I can relate to like that that I don’t even count them anymore. I want there to be so many characters of color in books that they’re no longer confined to the “ethnic” section of the library or book store, that I don’t tell every single one of my friends when I find a book that has just one. I want to log on to my RP blog on tumblr dot com and see people enthusiastically writing characters of color, excited to thread with them. I want you all to see us as worth your goddamned time.
And that requires a lot more than appearances- and if you’re going to write a character from a race, culture or ethnicity you’re not a part of, you’re going to have to do a hell of a lot of work and research. It’s a different experience from yours and from anything you’re used to- you can’t half ass it.
And honestly, if you think it’s too much work to write a character that isn’t white, and you think we’re asking too much for you to break your defaults, your writing is crap. Like, straight up, I’ll say it. You’re a crap, lazy writer. I’m not saying you have to be perfect! You’re going to make mistakes, that doesn’t make you a bad writer. I’m also not saying you can’t have any white characters at all. I’m not saying that you’re a bad writer because you’ve never considered this until now. But I am saying that if you, as a writer, can’t muster up the effort to do research, try writing from a different perspective, and go outside your comfort zone, your material is shit. That is literally what writers have to do to write good stories- researching is a part of writing! Some of you have never stepped inside a laboratory a day in your fucking life and yet can write a realistic enough biologist. You may have never even changed the oil in your car, but you can write a damned good mechanic. You’re not a fifty year old man, but you can write a good wizened character. You’re not a fucking vampire, but you do a mean Dracula. Why the hell can’t you apply that effort, that time, that passion to writing a character that isn’t white? Why? Please, someone explain. What is it about people of color that you find so impossible to relate to that elves that live in on a floating rock in outer space don’t present the same problem? Please, tell me, I’d love to know why the fuck my people are more bizarre and less human than aliens to you.
But point is, you can’t half ass it. And I love Oscar Isaac as much as anyone, but you don’t get off the hook because you cast him and then play him like he was a rich white man his whole life.
gross, ugly stereotypes & fetishizing
Stop it. Just fucking stop it. It’s ugly, it’s racist, it’s disgusting, and honestly, you can shove your entire fist up your own ass. It’s 2017 and if you’re a grown ass adult, you should know better- and let’s be fucking real, you do know better, we all know you do, stop playing the fucking victim. You’re an asshole, fuck you.
And if you really, genuinely don’t know (doubtful, but technically possible), when someone calls you out, shut your ignorant ass up and go fucking read up on it instead of crying because someone on the internet said you were a racist. Trust me, there are entire libraries worth of people of color calling you white folks out on your bullshit. Educate yourself and stop being so fucking gross.
whitewashing & cultural appropriation
This is both for graphics and characters. Here’s the thing: if your muse is a PoC, their FC, if they have one, better damned well be too. And if your muse’s FC is brown, don’t photoshop the hell out of your icons so no one can tell. Brown is not ugly. Black is not ugly. And yes, race and ethnicity are not skin color, I said that myself. But colorism is real and even besides that, why won’t you let brown characters be brown? It’s not technical ability- trust me, as someone that has used photoshop -3 times, it is not that hard to apply an edit that doesn’t wash out someone’s skin tone. And it’s not that hard to correct- you have an undo button!
As for characters, if I see any of you playing an Egyptian god’s FC as a skinny white boy one more time, a kistune cast as a blonde white girl, a spirit of a mountain range in Brazil played by Ian Somerhalder, a fucking demon from Indonesia as a redhaired freckled white guy, le juro a Dios, I will step out of this fucking screen and strangle you myself. Why!!! Why the fuck, how the fuck, why the fuck would that be their human FC? Why!!!!!
Even if they had all the power in the world and could change their appearance at will, WHY WOULD THEY CHOOSE TO BE WHITE IF THEY ARE FROM A NON-WHITE MAJORITY COUNTRY??? Just for real, answer that. If you can give me an answer that doesn’t sound like white supremacist bullshit, I’ll shut the fuck up for life. But stop trying to find excuses to make a character of color white. That’s gross, there’s absolutely no need, there is absolutely no need.
not finding muses of color interesting
Look at your threads real quick. How many of them are with muses of color? How many of them are with white characters?
Notice a disparity? Yeah, we do too.
Now, I know!!! I know there are not a lot of us that play muses that aren’t white. Sad to say, but I think I probably follow most of them, and I know tumblr RP, even the fandomless indie OC world, is huge. But we are not impossible to find! We are not hiding! No, what I have seen happen is that muses of color are passed over and ignored, criticized much more harshly than white muses, and generally ostracized from everyone else. And it’s not our writing, it’s not that we all just happen to magically, as a group, lack talent (that’s racist, Becky)- it’s that your progressive values only extend as far as “protect (white) (cis) (conventially/eurocentrically attractive) female muses!!!!!!”. You don’t actually care about diversity, that’s what it comes down to, and it’s obvious.
Stop ignoring us! Stop this performative, fake ass white liberal bullshit and actually care about us and our characters as much as you do the 300 different versions of what’s his face edgy-white-boy from that one movie.
And don’t think you’re slick because you have a white writing partner that has one muse of color on their multi-muse blog that you write with sometimes: there’s a very interesting disparity in treatment between muses of color that are played by PoC and muses of color that are played by white people, and I’m sure you know which way it’s skewed. Amazingly, when PoC are played as stereotypes or fetishized (always by white people, let’s be honest), they get really popular really fast. But PoC writing their own stories well, with care and attention to detail and passion? Nah, we’re just not your style or you’re already busy with other threads or we/our muses just don’t happen to click with you/your muses, nothing personal, and you’re not a racist, it’s just, you know, it is what it is uwuwuwuwuwu
white people being afraid of the mean scary poc of color minorities
Why the fuck are you white people so afraid of us? You think we’ll beat you up? Say mean things? Block you? Talk about you to our friends? Ooh, terrifying.
Is it a fear of being called a racist? Here, I’ll make it easy:if you’re white, you’re racist. There, done, and look at that- you’re fine. You lived. No one touched a hair on your head, look at that!
Turns out, being told that something you did or said is racist is not the worst thing in the world! And you can do and say racist things without being a member of a hate group or without assaulting people on the streets! If you grow up in a racist society, you have to unlearn those racist ideologies that you unconsciously incorporated into your way of thinking and acting. There’s a lot you can read up on regarding how this happens, but know this: being the product of a racist society does not make you, by default, a bad person. What makes you a bad person is your inability to confront your implicit biases and prejudices and work to change them. What makes you a bad person is you putting your personal emotional comfort over the safety and well-being of millions of people that happen to be mentally, emotionally and physically affected by your inability to swallow your pride. What makes you a bad person is you caring more about me saying you’re racist than caring about the fact that your words and actions enforce a very real, very pervasive system of oppression founded on white supremacy.
There is so much more I could add, but this is already long and I’m tired.
TBH I’m just fucking tired. I am tired of white bullshit irl all the time, I am tired of it where my hobbies are, I am tired of it in the media and I am tired of so many of you so much like oh my god. But no rambling, no more, like I said, this is already long so:
tl;dr- White is not better than anything else. White should not be the default. PoC are human beings and just as interesting and deserving of consideration as your white fave. Racism is bad. Do better.
Nothing too controversial!!!!!!
That’s it, I’m done, tune in next week for more bitching- and please, again @ my fellow poc, feel free to add, of course.
And yes @ white people, you are v much encouraged to reblog this. No, you are not allowed to complain about how I’m mean and I should be nicer so you’re not racist or how racism is fake anyway or how me calling you white is as bad as you calling people *insert 10000 slurs here* or how I’m infringing on your free speech or how it’s “just my preference to be racist” blah blah bullshit. Consider this me expressly not asking for your bigoted, ignorant opinion or comments or input, thanks.
