Author Topic: EP198: N-words  (Read 35038 times)

Russell Nash

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on: May 08, 2009, 06:18:48 AM
EP198: N-words

By Ted Kosmatka.
Read by Kim The Comic Book Goddess.
First appeared in Seeds of Change, 2008.

They came from test tubes. They came pale as ghosts with eyes as blue-white as glacier ice. They came first out of Korea.

I try to picture David’s face in my head, but I can’t. They’ve told me this is temporary—a kind of shock that happens sometimes when you’ve seen a person die that way. Although I try to picture David’s face, it’s only his pale eyes I can see.

My sister squeezes my hand in the back of the limo. “It’s almost over,” she says. Up the road, against the long, wrought iron railing, the protestors grow excited as our procession approaches. They’re standing in the snow on both sides of the cemetery gates, men and women wearing hats and gloves and looks of righteous indignation, carrying signs I refuse to read.


Rated PG-13. Contains racism and genetic engineering.



Listen to this week’s Escape Pod!
« Last Edit: September 10, 2009, 05:35:36 PM by Russell Nash »



Wilson Fowlie

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Reply #1 on: May 08, 2009, 03:53:59 PM
I have never been happier to have an MP3 player that has the ability to speed up tracks.  Maybe for some, the slow pace would have worked - increased the tension or drawn out the drama or something - but for me, it was just excruciating.

I also found it too quiet.  (I bet Zorag did, too!)

I remember reading (or maybe hearing) somewhere that the length of the typical (average? median?) EP story was chosen so that it would be about half an hour to forty-five minutes*, to match a typical commute.  I'm not claiming that it's true, just that I heard it.  However, if it is true, then I'd like the audio engineers to keep in mind that people who are driving have to contend with the sound of tires on road, wind past windshield, cars and trucks going by.

Also, more and more audio device manufacturers - spooked by the possibility of being sued for causing hearing loss - are making their devices with a lower maximum volume (they only go to 9 :D) so it's not even possible to compensate for low levels.  I had mine as high as it would go and was still straining to hear the narration for much of the time.  It really distracts from being able to listen to and appreciate the story properly.

It's not that hard to boost the audio levels without creating distortion (or at least not enough to worry about); I've done it.  I wish I'd done it with this before listening to it.  (Hm... would that contravene the non-derivative ("don't change it") part of the license?)


*Which this one would have been, if it had been read at a faster pace!


As to the story itself: I liked it, on the whole.

I didn't realize that homo sapiens and homo neanderthalensis were genetically compatible (not that anyone knows for sure, of course, but from a quick search, there does seem to be evidence to support that possibility).

Most of the examples of racism (or is it species-ism in this case?) in the story were, of course, reprehensible, but I found myself pondering the issue of the Olympics that the author raised.  Even now, we recognize that not even all humans are equal; that's why the Special Olympics exist (or is 'Para-lympics' now? I can't keep track).

Pitting h neanderthalensis (as described) against h sapiens is like racing a German Shepherd against a Greyhound (or, conversely, pitting one against the other in a fight, if one were to stoop so low).  It would be, in a way, "not even wrong," * just pointless.  So, unlike the idea of separate Olympics for different colours of human, separate Olympics for the story's 'ghosts' doesn't bother me.

I don't think that's species-ist, but maybe I'm wrong.


*Yes, I know that phrased was coined for a completely different purpose.

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Lionman

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Reply #2 on: May 08, 2009, 09:26:58 PM
I must agree that the pace seemed slow, but I think that was used well for dramatic affect.  The story deserved that sort of treatment and focus.  The commentary afterwards on the story was, in the British, bloody brilliant!

I was very impressed and pleased with the reference to everyone being the Hero of their own story, as well as the quote from Abraham Joshua Heschel, "Racism is man's gravest threat to man - the maximum of hatred for a minimum of reason."  So, very, very well chosen!

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ajames

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Reply #3 on: May 08, 2009, 11:01:09 PM
[Spoiler warning]

All in all, a good story. I agree it seemed to drag a bit at times, but over all the slower pace worked well for the story (imo). I found the ending to be rather depressing - David stood for peace and nonviolence all of his life, and his death converted his wife, and probably his child, firmly to the path of violence. I suppose this happens all too often when one group oppresses another group, but I prefer stories which show the hope and promise within all of us to ones that mirror "reality". This story, at least, is the latter type of story done right.

Wilson, FWIW, the Special Olympics include individuals with intellectual disabilities; the paralympics include people "who belong to six different disability groups in the Paralympic Movement: amputee, cerebral palsy, visual impairment, spinal cord injuries, intellectual disability and a group which includes all those that do not fit into the aforementioned groups (les autres)." (from the paralympics.org website). The Special Olympics serves many worthy ends, but world-class competition isn't generally one of them. The paralympics, on the other hand, emphasize athletic ability and feature some amazing competitions.



Wilson Fowlie

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Reply #4 on: May 08, 2009, 11:04:18 PM
Wilson, FWIW, the Special Olympics include individuals with intellectual disabilities; the paralympics include people "who belong to six different disability groups in the Paralympic Movement: amputee, cerebral palsy, visual impairment, spinal cord injuries, intellectual disability and a group which includes all those that do not fit into the aforementioned groups (les autres)." (from the paralympics.org website). The Special Olympics serves many worthy ends, but world-class competition isn't generally one of them. The paralympics, on the other hand, emphasize athletic ability and feature some amazing competitions.

Thank you very much!

"People commonly use the word 'procrastination' to describe what they do on the Internet. It seems to me too mild to describe what's happening as merely not-doing-work. We don't call it procrastination when someone gets drunk instead of working." - Paul Graham


Talia

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Reply #5 on: May 08, 2009, 11:53:40 PM
I had no problem with the pacing, probably because racism is a hotbutton of mine and I spent most of the story in a seething rage.. heh. Yeah, things dont seem to last long when you're pissed. :)

I found it depressing and frightening too, because you know that's what people would be like - not quite that bad, I think, its an exaggeration, but the one thing people have proven themselves apt at, year after year for thousands of years, is hating difference.

I'm not sure if that's a war that can ever be won. People seem to enjoy being hateful bastards. Gives them something to cling to, I suppose.



bolddeceiver

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Reply #6 on: May 10, 2009, 08:47:38 PM
Wow.  That was amazing.  The world needs more stories of this caliber -- great storytelling, identifiable characters, deals meaningfully with a serious, difficult social issue (actually, at least two of them) without turning into a soapbox piece, and a fantastic handling of human nature (and incidentally, I thought it was paced perfectly).



bolddeceiver

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Reply #7 on: May 12, 2009, 01:53:48 AM
Forgot to ask -- all that said, was I the only one who kept thinking of those Geico ads?  ;)



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Reply #8 on: May 12, 2009, 05:44:23 AM
Wow.  That was a magnificent hour of Escape Pod.  The pacing annoyed the bejesus out of me at first, but once I got into the story, I enjoyed it.

The volume level WAS rather low, and I'm only glad I was in my nice, quiet office at home listening instead of at work or--worst--in my car.  I would have never understood most of the story if I had been.



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Reply #9 on: May 12, 2009, 03:47:04 PM
At first, I really thought this was going to be one of the stories I hated. It seemed to be a bit of a one trick pony listening through the first 10-20 minutes and waiting for the identity of the "them" (Neanderthals) to be revealed. I found it to be a bit cliched.. yeah, racism used as a metaphor.. and the pace was getting me a bit frustrated (product of the short-attention-span generation X that I am) until I started to identify with the characters, at which point I thought it was a fantastic, emotive piece of writing. Not preachy, just thought-provoking- not a superior voice which is very easy to slip into when you're talking about racism. Anyway, it certainly hit the spot for me despite the lack of action, because combined thought-provoking issues with the science fiction element really well rather than being a vehicle for either with the other tacked on, if you catch my drift. In summary- more please.



DigitalVG

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Reply #10 on: May 12, 2009, 05:01:43 PM
The paralympics, on the other hand, emphasize athletic ability and feature some amazing competitions.

And in fact, there was a lot of friction in the last 'regular' Olympics because our technology has improved enough that a paralympics runner with carbon-fiber legs has become fast enough that he wanted to compete against athletes who had flesh and bone legs. 

There was a lot of argument about the mechanical advantage of his legs vs the advantage of modern running shoes and so on.  Ultimately, he was allowed to try but failed to qualify by just a fraction of a second.  (Still making him far far faster than anyone I know)



DigitalVG

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Reply #11 on: May 12, 2009, 05:53:14 PM
I wasn't sure I was going to like this one at first, the tone that implied sneering at everything science and pop culture had got wrong and the suggestions that they were big white people and smarter than humans had the ring of white-supremacist rot with a dose of the 'noble savage' trope mixed in.  The first was quickly put down and while I'm not sure it completely overcame the second, it is worth noting that in the world, only the physical talents of the Neanderthal were really recognized.  She spoke of their ability to remember but there wasn't anything that really shown as examples of their intellectual talents, so it's possible we were simply reading the bias of a woman in love with a Neanderthal.   (And to be momentarily derogatory to the Ghosts, I must confess that, growing up in rural Oklahoma, I've known many women who had strong belief that the Neanderthal they loved was an intelligent being but they certainly had me fooled)

More interesting to me though was how I interpreted this story.  I didn't interpret it as a story about race and racism.  I interpreted it as a story about Techonologists and Luddites.   We humans are already right in the middle of a step of massive evolution and what some of us are and what some of us are becoming is a species very different from our parents and grandparents.  I was born near the beginning of that cusp.  In 1978 I was 6 years old, my dad brought home our first computer and I was instantly in love.  The Infocom games gave me glimpses into worlds beyond static fiction stories.  The lured me into programming.  Our house was so rural that we had a party line (That's a phone line that is shared between multiple houses) and so when I got my first 110/300 baud modem, I had to wait until late at night to connect to  BBSes.  UUCP e-mail could take as long as US-Mail to reach its destination, but still.  I was outside the rural Oklahoma community where I lived.  I was changed by technology, I became something different from all the people I knew there.

And it was fiercely feared.  My parents talked about 'those people' I might meet on the internet.  The alleged sleazy strangers aching to get their hands on me, the 'freaks' with nose rings and mohawks.  The monsters.  That gap has only grown worse in recent years.  With google, with wikis, with ever-present cell phones and all the information I could EVER want always available to me, I've come something different.  Still recognizably human but far removed from my parents.  The kids that are being born now though...  They will be a completely different species from my parents.  Technology will have always been available to them.  It's a very safe bet that wetware, cybernetics, and genetics WILL happen for them.  They will be faster, smarter, stronger, more connected.  Like the wife in the story, I was young enough to see all this starting and I was so entranced by it, that I can accept the new people.  My parents and other people like them are having a very hard time with it.

In recent years, we've already seen a lot of noise over Oscar Pistorius (The man with carbon-fiber legs who is almost fast enough to qualify for the Olympics) and too many cases of sports team members using various enhancement drugs to even count.  Various religions, governments, and other organizations that want to limit the amount of information different people can access, etc.   I liked this story because the parts that initially set me on edge were countered by the later parts of the story and that in some way made it clear to me that the story wasn't about race at all.



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Reply #12 on: May 12, 2009, 06:15:58 PM
The writing of this story was really great, and had the reader read faster, or cut down on her pauses, or had the editor cut down on some of the pauses, it would've been much better to listen to. Stylistically I enjoy this type of writing, and do it a fair bit myself.

But the plot quickly devolved from interesting science to "racism trope #14-a". By the end I didn't even care. And good heavens did the denouement drag oooooooooooooooooooon and oooooooooooooooooon and ooooooooooooooooon.

I think it might have been interesting to see the direction of the story if David had killed the shooter, and he was now dead because the justice system had given him the death sentence. I'm curious what happened to Thomas, who DID kill the shooter.

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deflective

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Reply #13 on: May 12, 2009, 08:06:04 PM
cin "cincinati"... ci "cincinati"... na "cincinati!"... ti "come on! come on!"  (jump to 4:35)



Talia

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Reply #14 on: May 12, 2009, 08:37:32 PM
Interesting point about it being about technology vs race. Course the key underlying concept there is the same, people being blindly hateful without having a clue WTF they are talking about. Nor caring.



Darwinist

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Reply #15 on: May 13, 2009, 02:33:50 AM
Excellent!  The story had me riveted the whole time.  Wasn't sure where it was going at all.  Loved the sad ending. 

For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.    -  Carl Sagan


Rain

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Reply #16 on: May 14, 2009, 07:37:45 PM
I thought the story itself was ok, i like the concept of neanderthals being a part of society, but this type of story has been done a thousand times and this wasnt anything special. My biggest beef was with the reading, it made the story seem like everything happen at a glacial pace, and the constant pauces quickly started to frustrate me



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Reply #17 on: May 15, 2009, 10:37:47 PM
All in all, a good story. I agree it seemed to drag a bit at times, but over all the slower pace worked well for the story (imo). I found the ending to be rather depressing - David stood for peace and nonviolence all of his life, and his death converted his wife, and probably his child, firmly to the path of violence.

You just reminded me of Ghandi.  Right down to being shot by an extremist fuckhead, and riots of violence following his death.


Forgot to ask -- all that said, was I the only one who kept thinking of those Geico ads?  ;)

Probably.


I liked the story, but wouldn't put it among my favorites. 

Alasdair still sounds terrible.  I thought this was being worked on.

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Poppydragon

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Reply #18 on: May 16, 2009, 08:27:42 AM
I liked this well enough, it did remind me a lot of Greg Bear's Darwin's Radio, but as commented on earlier the idea has been done lots already. I did enjoy the narration though, for me it was perfectly paced and suited the subject material perfectly.

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Reply #19 on: May 17, 2009, 03:02:35 AM

I found this to be an excellent and thought provoking story.  Evidenced by the comments made in this forum.

For me, this story was thought provoking for different reasons than most mentioned in this forum.  Yes, racism is an underlying theme in the story (probably not specism, since the ability to produce sexually viable offspring would prove us to be of the same species).  However, there is more to this than hatred of someone's appearance.  Think of the hatred and emotion evoked by scientific activity like gene alteration or embryonic stem cell research.  These are basically little more than concepts to those who fight for or against them.  You can't really touch embryonic stem cell research.  The Ghosts represented, for many, a gross scientific violation of ethical standards.  But they weren't concepts.  They were living, breathing, flesh and blood evidence of that violation that could actually walk into your college classroom and pull up a chair. 

Was the story about racism?  Yes.  But the hatred against the Ghosts went beyond racism.




deflective

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Reply #20 on: May 17, 2009, 04:05:51 AM
i, for one, would welcome the change in diet.



izzardfan

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Reply #21 on: May 17, 2009, 08:57:10 PM
Think of the hatred and emotion evoked by scientific activity like gene alteration or embryonic stem cell research.

Just yesterday, in one of his Twitter posts, Neil Gaiman pushed this link:  NIH Embryonic Stem Cell  Scroll down to "Not only are the guidelines far more conservative than we had hoped, but opponents of the research are systematically flooding the comment process."  The "fight", at least for this issue, has just ramped up a notch.



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Reply #22 on: May 17, 2009, 11:14:12 PM
I was hoping this would be in print somewhere online, because it looks interesting from the discussion here.
 
I just couldn't get past the narration, had to give up after about 10 minutes of really trying.  I can usually deal with bad readers and still enjoy the story but this.was.just.unbearably.slow.and.every.word.was.so.emphasized.I.couldn't.take.it.  Also very hard to hear.



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Reply #23 on: May 18, 2009, 04:12:09 AM
Wow. Just, wow.  That was one of the best Escape Pods I've heard since I started listening.  The reader's slow pace perfectly complimented the slow unfolding of the story, which hooked me from the very beginning and held me through to the end.  It was an interesting way to look at some fairly new science, and performed that very valuable service of holding up a mirror to present society and asking how we like where it's headed.  The ending leaves open what is, for me, the interesting question of, "So what happens when this whole 'exclusion of the other' thing we seem to have going leads us to mess with the wrong Marine?"

I suppose, as always, part of the impact came from what else is going on around me.  I live in Iowa, and our state Supreme Court recently ruled that excluding same-sex couples from marriage violated the state constitution's equal-protection clause.  Marriage ceremonies started recently.  And, "After the progress, the backlash."  The level of vitrol is pretty astonishing. 

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yicheng

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Reply #24 on: May 19, 2009, 10:39:32 PM
Forgot to ask -- all that said, was I the only one who kept thinking of those Geico ads?  ;)

So easy a caveman can do it!  ;-)

Several flaws in this story, never mind scientific evidence (like neanderthals not being able to speak complex words):

1) Where are the neanderthal women?  The story doesn't make any mention of it.  All the neanderthal men mated with human women, while the neanderthal women sat by themselves?

2) The story seems to imply that because Neanderthals are stronger and smarter than humans, they will end up running the world.  The fallacy of this logic utterly fails when applied to the modern world:  white-europeans didn't rule the world because they were individually smarter or stronger.  Jared Diamond of "Guns, Steel, and Germs" has shown pretty conclusively that european civilizations beat out other civilizations because they were better organized (because they lived in cities and had better food production), had better technology (guns, steel again because of food production), and because they had better resistances to their diseases (from living in cities).

3) For something written in 2008, this story expresses pretty race-centric ideas.  Paraphrasing from memory here: "When the member of one race of a superior standing marries someone from an inferior standing, the one inherits the lower social standing."  Really?  Wow!  I guess the author's never read "The Myth of Race", that shows what we label as the "races" are just artificial labels for genetic traits that were never pure to begin with.  There's plenty of archaeological evidence that neanderthals interbred with cro-magnons.  To even talk about a "superior" or "inferior" race is falling into the classic trap of racism and reverse-racism.



deflective

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Reply #25 on: May 20, 2009, 01:25:13 AM
totally agree with you about the neanderthal women, i noticed it myself.  the author seemed enamoured with the idea of a modern woman with a caveman and the much more interesting situation of the neanderthal women was completely glossed over.  these woman are more masculine than the vast majority of modern men, what would they feel like as their brothers starting pairing off with a different race?

for the inheritance through marriage quote, i think the key word is 'social.'  it wasn't talking about genetic traits but your social standing in a racially divided culture.  i wish that the pdf was searchable so we could be sure about the wording.



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Reply #26 on: May 20, 2009, 02:27:27 AM
Quote from: yicheng
To even talk about a "superior" or "inferior" race is falling into the classic trap of racism and reverse-racism.
There was also a line that was something like "...he was both more and less than human."  I was very surprised that the author could write as story like this and still maintain that that their is a linear hierarchy of beings.

The premises of Neanderthals suddenly joining human society, how they were created, and what they were like were fascinating.  But I thought they were wasted on a tired, cliched treatment of racism.   Speaking as a white American who has lived in Japan for seven years, is married to a Japanese wife, and has two mixed kids, racism is a complicated thing.  To dismiss it as ignorant, evil, and useless is an oversimplification.  Stating these opinions will go a long way in establishing that you have the right attitude towards racism, but it doesn't go anywhere towards solving the problem.  It's like dismissing terrorists and evil monsters rather than trying to understand the complex reasons behind their actions.

David could have been a more interesting character.  I would have liked to know what it's like to live with a Neanderthal.  What's your food bill?  Do they even like to eat the same stuff?  What happens when they get drunk?  Can they drive?  Aren't some of them bastards?  Super masculine men is one thing, but what about the super masculine women? 

Regarding the reading, I liked her voice, but the pace was excruciating.  Especially for a story that makes us wait to find out what it's really about. 



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Reply #27 on: May 20, 2009, 03:10:38 AM

  Speaking as a white American who has lived in Japan for seven years, is married to a Japanese wife, and has two mixed kids, racism is a complicated thing.  To dismiss it as ignorant, evil, and useless is an oversimplification.  Stating these opinions will go a long way in establishing that you have the right attitude towards racism, but it doesn't go anywhere towards solving the problem.  It's like dismissing terrorists and evil monsters rather than trying to understand the complex reasons behind their actions.

Well said.

Regarding the reading, I liked her voice, but the pace was excruciating.  Especially for a story that makes us wait to find out what it's really about. 

Also agree.  Very pleasant voice to listen to, but at that agonizing pace, spoken at almost a whisper, I kept dozing off into daydreams about owning my very own Neanderthal.



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Reply #28 on: May 21, 2009, 08:23:39 PM
I loved Kim's reading, though maybe that was because by chance I was listening to it in a quiet room so didn't have to have the volume up full and get startled when I turn on the next thing and have my eardrums battered (yes Cory Doctorow, I'm looking at you). And, if the story had found something better to do than kill the Holy Mutant (like 'Article of Faith' only five episodes ago) then I would have liked it a lot more. Some people who campaigned against racism died peacefully, in old age, just like everyone else!

Despite that quibble I enjoyed the rest of the story, the descriptions and the development (though am I the only one creeped out by how the mother more frequently referred to 'the child' than by whatever his name was?) The downward slope towards inevitability was a problem though.



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Reply #29 on: May 21, 2009, 08:35:11 PM
Sigh. Listening to this - this wasn't a story with an anti-racism message, it was a story aimed at people who are opposed to racism, for them to listen to and pat themselves on the back and feel good about themselves, because it shows how evil and stupid racists are and how non-evil and non-stupid racism victims are. Yay!



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Reply #30 on: May 21, 2009, 08:56:10 PM
Sigh. Listening to this - this wasn't a story with an anti-racism message, it was a story aimed at people who are opposed to racism, for them to listen to and pat themselves on the back and feel good about themselves, because it shows how evil and stupid racists are and how non-evil and non-stupid racism victims are. Yay!

Oh, thank God I was beginning to think I was the only one...

While I applaud the author for writing a story about an important issue, this one missed the mark for me. Initially, I was willing to write a lot of that off to the reading and the long pauses between sentences. I didn't mind Kim's voice and would love to hear other narrations from her but it felt off in this one. Maybe because the story took itself so seriously all the way through, maybe because the extra pauses gave me more time to analyze some of the inflection and leave me scratching my head...I dunno.

But then when the character bitchslapped the narrow-minded demonstrator at the end, I realized it wasn't just the narration that bugged me. That little moment seemed completely superflous to me. While, yes, we see the narrator has embraced violence, what's really important (in my mind) is the look in the kid's eye. And that would've been there regardless of what the mother did. Maybe even moreso if she hadn't done anything. Slapping a dude twice (while somehow managing not to incite a riot) struck me as ridiculous. And the "You're next" line at the end?

Alasdair's outro was spot-on. Racism is at best, idiotic. And it should be mocked. But this story did no mocking. Like eytanz said, it preached to the choir. "Racism is bad" is a lesson I think everyone listening regularly to this podcast acknowledges.

That said, reading all the positive feedback here reminds me how subjective storytelling is, and I'm really happy for the people who got more out of this story than I did.


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Reply #31 on: May 22, 2009, 05:14:03 PM
Sigh. Listening to this - this wasn't a story with an anti-racism message, it was a story aimed at people who are opposed to racism, for them to listen to and pat themselves on the back and feel good about themselves, because it shows how evil and stupid racists are and how non-evil and non-stupid racism victims are. Yay!

You've succeeded into putting into words how I felt but could not say.

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Reply #32 on: May 22, 2009, 08:23:27 PM
I guess I'm turning into a regular softie, because yet again, I really dug this story.

Kosmatka is a smart writer. 

I hear what people are saying about the heavy handedness.  There was some of that.

I hear what people are saying about the painfully slow reading.  There was plenty of that.

I even hear what people are saying about the worldbuilding quibbles (and I sure had some of my own while listening to the story).

For treatment on race and racism I prefer "I'll gnaw your bones, the manticore said" by Cat Rambo.  That was certainly executed with more subtlety.  Though perhaps, from reading the comment thread, it was executed with too much subtlety for some.

But the things "N-words" does right outweigh the things it does wrong.  Overall, it was compelling to me.  Overall, it worked.  Not a perfect story, not my dream story, not my favorite story.  But solid, well-written, with an idea played out from the present just the way I like in my SF, and some take away thinky stuff, and some pretty writing, and some characters that weren't cardboard.  I don't feel at all as though I (or Escape Pod) is settling with this story.  It's good.  Maybe not to everyone's taste, sure, but good.

1) Where are the neanderthal women?  The story doesn't make any mention of it.  All the neanderthal men mated with human women, while the neanderthal women sat by themselves?

If I might make an answer to yicheng, on issue 1, the absence of neanderthal women: I assumed that none were made (though possibly I missed the in story evidence that suggested otherwise).  There's a throwaway line about creating an army blah blah blah, and I just assumed that if you're gonna clone something, you can pick its gender, and the bias against women in the military is still quite strong most places.  So the neanderthal women haven't been consigned to old maidenhood, because they don't exist.

Point two is a pretty fair critique, though.  The assumption that in the absence of caloric restrictions, physical strength is all it takes for one species to trump the other, is pretty shallow.  Though I'm not sure the story posits that as a certainty so much as the protag does.

3) For something written in 2008, this story expresses pretty race-centric ideas.  Paraphrasing from memory here: "When the member of one race of a superior standing marries someone from an inferior standing, the one inherits the lower social standing."  Really?  Wow!  I guess the author's never read "The Myth of Race", that shows what we label as the "races" are just artificial labels for genetic traits that were never pure to begin with.  There's plenty of archaeological evidence that neanderthals interbred with cro-magnons.  To even talk about a "superior" or "inferior" race is falling into the classic trap of racism and reverse-racism.

This is kind of a mind-boggling critique.  How does one write a story that treats race as its primary subject without being race-centric?  The title pretty much proclaims this to be a story about race.  Why would you assume the author had read (or hadn't) read this or that and is imputing that some are inferior or superior to others?  Your sample line is inner dialog, expressed by the protag, who clearly has issues and who is living with the backlash of having married outside her race.  She's speaking from direct experience.  Why you would suggest that her experience is antiquated because race is social construct is a little bewildering.  She is "falling into the trap" of racism because she's experiencing it.  That's the point.

For the people who felt that the story was all about "I am not a racist, I am so great" backpatting (which, you know, I can kind of see), I would suggest the character of the sister, as a friendly representation of a racist meant to counterbalance the screaming hordes who, without a doubt, are painted as evil, stupid, religious bigots and anti-science.    In fact, where the main character moves to hatred and violence, the racist sister steps closer to acceptance and understanding the other.  Which is a nice foil.

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Reply #33 on: May 23, 2009, 09:25:02 AM
For the people who felt that the story was all about "I am not a racist, I am so great" backpatting (which, you know, I can kind of see), I would suggest the character of the sister, as a friendly representation of a racist meant to counterbalance the screaming hordes who, without a doubt, are painted as evil, stupid, religious bigots and anti-science.    In fact, where the main character moves to hatred and violence, the racist sister steps closer to acceptance and understanding the other.  Which is a nice foil.

Actually, the sister is one of the worst offences as far as this story's lack of respect to its subject matter goes. She is introduced as someone who has been a racist in the past, but has come to overcome them due to a family tragedy. So far, so good. But note that there doesn't seem to be any process involved. She shows up on the doorway, contrite and ready to start a new page. And from that moment on, she is on the same page as the narrator. When she sees the boy, she doesn't recoil, or show any sign of her cultural conditioning. She shows surprise, at how she finds him beautiful. The overall message the sister offers is: "to overcome racism, all you need to do is try, and you'll find out that the racism was totally misguided to begin with".

It's not that simple. I wish it were, but it is not. As Wakela said above, the willingness to overcome racism is improtant, but it's just the first step, not a solution. This story, for all its writing skill - and it is very well written - is superficial and inane.

Quote
This is kind of a mind-boggling critique.  How does one write a story that treats race as its primary subject without being race-centric?  The title pretty much proclaims this to be a story about race.  Why would you assume the author had read (or hadn't) read this or that and is imputing that some are inferior or superior to others?  Your sample line is inner dialog, expressed by the protag, who clearly has issues and who is living with the backlash of having married outside her race.  She's speaking from direct experience.  Why you would suggest that her experience is antiquated because race is social construct is a little bewildering.  She is "falling into the trap" of racism because she's experiencing it.  That's the point.

I think you're totally missing the point here. The problem I believe that yicheng was trying to illustrate is that the story itself is highly problematic as far as racial dialogue goes. On the one hand, it is concerned with showing the evils of racism and hate, but at the same time, the entire narrative is dedicated to establishing the neanderthal as other. It - and the narrator - is not interested at all in finding common ground, but in highlighting how different the two racial groups are. "They are not like you", it says "they are better than you. And you are evil for refusing to accept that". That's no different than the racist discourse that, for example, aimed to justify slavery by making Africans (and African-Americans) to be animalistic. Just because the story's take on this is positive doesn't make it any less racist.

Now, you may argue - and maybe you are arguing - that the narrator is meant to be an example of a positively-biased racist. She certainly cannot see past the race/species of her husband - from their courtship scene on, it is clear she is interested in him not as a person, but as a neanderthal. And I think there is a very valid reading of this story where it is as critical of the narrator as it is of the protestors. But I think you can only find this reading if you look at it. If you read the positive responses in this thread, you'll see that people are taking her at face value. So, still a failure as far as being an affective anti-racism story.

This is a well-written, well constructed story. It raises a lot of interesting ideas. I don't dispute that. But its way of handling those ideas is deeply flawed and unhelpful.



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Reply #34 on: May 23, 2009, 01:19:26 PM
it is concerned with showing the evils of racism and hate, but at the same time, the entire narrative is dedicated to establishing the neanderthal as other. It - and the narrator - is not interested at all in finding common ground, but in highlighting how different the two racial groups are. "They are not like you", it says "they are better than you. And you are evil for refusing to accept that".

I couldn't agree more.  It seems to me the protagonist wants Homo Sapiens to bow down and say "Massa" to the Neanderthals, and she wanted not only equal rights for the Neanderthals, but was willing to see them as superior if possible.  Not withstanding the physical and mental superiority, her failing was one which all racists fall into, as not seeing individuals as sentients.


... positively-biased racist. She certainly cannot see past the race/species of her husband - from their courtship scene on, it is clear she is interested in him not as a person, but as a neanderthal.
I  found that to be the case, not that I can't believe she was just attracted to him like most young lovers but, her relationship never seemed to go beyond a them and me mentality.  This couldn't have been better illustrated by the way she talked about her child, more of an object than her own baby.

As far as the... reading... goes... I... found... it... tedious.



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Reply #35 on: May 24, 2009, 01:07:59 AM
Actually, the sister is one of the worst offences as far as this story's lack of respect to its subject matter goes.

Wait, wait, wait.  Did you really just follow "all the racists are shown to be evil and that's petty and self-congratulatory" with "and the worst thing about that is the one that isn't"?  That can't be right, eh?  Say again, please.

She is introduced as someone who has been a racist in the past, but has come to overcome them due to a family tragedy. So far, so good. But note that there doesn't seem to be any process involved. She shows up on the doorway, contrite and ready to start a new page. And from that moment on, she is on the same page as the narrator. When she sees the boy, she doesn't recoil, or show any sign of her cultural conditioning. She shows surprise, at how she finds him beautiful. The overall message the sister offers is: "to overcome racism, all you need to do is try, and you'll find out that the racism was totally misguided to begin with".

Hmmm.  My takeaway on this was  completely different than yours.  Although I'll easily concede (and have already conceded, actually) that the story doesn't nuance well, I can still try to explain what I took from the sister, whom I don't believe is a magical non-racist at the end of the story, but who I do believe takes steps in that direction (which is why I said in my OP "moves toward" not "gets there") .  So frex, I notice that it's not until the graveyard that she's willing to talk about and/or touch the boy, right?  She shows up on the doorstep before the funeral and helps them get ready (the story is not specific on whether 'helping to dress' the son means touching him or fetching clothes or some other thing), but the first real touch we're told about and see isn't until they're ready to get out of the limo (when the boy is passive and asleep, btw, affording a measure of safety to someone who wishes to scrutinize).  She also calls him "the boy" which is oddly standoffish for someone referring to their nephew, as if she doesn't know his name.  I do see her struggling to overcome her bias, but I certainly *don't* see her as having shown up with it already overcome.  And actually, I took her surprise at his beauty to be *deeply* racist.  What, he's supposed to be naturally ugly?  The tropes for othering encompass two extremes, right?  Revulsion/Racism and Exoticizing/Fetishism.  Which btw, protag is exoticizing all the way, isn't she?  Problematic, to say the least.  Without getting into the mind-reading business, I think the protag is intended to be problematic.  There's a lot of clues for that, most of which have been enumerated on this thread (most of them by you, in the 'positive racist' portion of your post).  So yeah, they're definitely meant to be foils, imo, and I don't think there's any magic wand going on, for anyone.  I think there's a reason the protag isn't a Neanderthal herself.  But I digress.  We're on the sister.  She shows her ass, so to speak, when she finds it unbelievable that people would hold a hateful demonstration at a funeral.  She has no idea what it's like to be from the hated class.  She has taken her blinders off. She finally SEES: the son, the grieving sister, the hatred directed at them.  But I don't believe that's an endgame, I believe that's a first step.  An end to ignorance, maybe, but not an end to racism.  So no, I'm not getting the same overall message you are.  The plot of the story, where the pacifist 'let's all just get along' Neanderthal gets murdered might suggest an opposite overall message: it doesn't matter how hard you try to overcome racism, there's still a price, and that price is usually a bloody one.

Again, I'm not going to say there wasn't blunt applications of concepts, because I agree that there was.  But if you think the story says the sister was magic-wanded into a happy Neanderthal lover you heard a completely different story than I did.  Which happens, because people bring their own junk to the story and it's all through a lens and relative.

I think you're totally missing the point here. The problem I believe that yicheng was trying to illustrate is that the story itself is highly problematic as far as racial dialogue goes. On the one hand, it is concerned with showing the evils of racism and hate, but at the same time, the entire narrative is dedicated to establishing the neanderthal as other. It - and the narrator - is not interested at all in finding common ground, but in highlighting how different the two racial groups are. "They are not like you", it says "they are better than you. And you are evil for refusing to accept that". That's no different than the racist discourse that, for example, aimed to justify slavery by making Africans (and African-Americans) to be animalistic. Just because the story's take on this is positive doesn't make it any less racist.

Yeah, I think it's kind of interesting that the author took the whole idea of the other one step further.  Ok, so races are made up, a social construct, as yicheng indicated, though there was plenty of fabricated science to support the position that race was real and enable lots of racist bullshit in the past.  So IMO the story plays what-if.  What-if the science stuff, that these beings are actually separate species, was real?  Would that make a difference in the dialog?  In the action/reaction/social fallout?  In the possibility of integration?  Revolution?  Social equality?  Could things play out differently?  It's possible this take, where the differences are real and measurable, muddies the waters of the story's applicability to the idea of race in our own world, which we know is not supported by scientific data, not real, and just a means of social control and oppression.  But the question is an interesting one (and I think, one of the shiny sf bits that author would very reluctantly have parted with -- though that's speculation on my part, of course).  Does it make a difference if the other is truly other or we're just pretending it is? 

Now, you may argue - and maybe you are arguing - that the narrator is meant to be an example of a positively-biased racist.

Yeah, I am.  See above.  :)

So, still a failure as far as being an affective anti-racism story.

This is a well-written, well constructed story. It raises a lot of interesting ideas. I don't dispute that. But its way of handling those ideas is deeply flawed and unhelpful.

I'm curious as to what would be a helpful way to handle an idea such as racism in a story.  It strikes me as a strange assertion, to demand or hope or expect that stories be helpful.  Helpful to what?  To whom?  How would a story be an effective anti-racism story?  Can you show me an example? 

One of the things I think this story is doing, or trying to do (and in some places it fails, worldbuildy places mostly) is to compress the history of racism.  To sort of have all the different things going on at once.  So the narrator, she might represent a sixties style integrationist, right?  And then, side by side, simultaneously, we're getting the political PC stuff with the constantly changing census/application forms, the view of the Neanderthals as the objects of scientific experiment, and the extreme Klan stuff,  and the "Turner Diary" style declaration of all out race war by the narrator, and the enforced quota bits, and everything else, except instead of happening over hundreds of years it's happening over one generation.  Which was another shiny thing that completely held my attention.

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Reply #36 on: May 27, 2009, 12:11:49 PM
The pace. ... The first time I tried listening to it, I gave up around 15 minutes in, and almost decided to skip it, but a few days later I tried again in less distracting surroundings, and it was worth it.

Geico ads? Yup. I thought about those, but I got better.

I also recalled the short story version of Asimov's The Ugly Little Boy. Vaguely similar premise, but with a very different outcome.

Finally, this modern reconstruction of a Neanderthal child -

[details at  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Neanderthal_child.jpg ]
- does look a lot like the description in the story.

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Reply #37 on: May 27, 2009, 03:15:38 PM
First, I'd like to offer my apologies for not responding sooner, and for the fact that I'm basically going to drop a lot of this conversation. The reason is simple - after reading your post I decided I need to re-listen to the story in order to answer properly, but have not been able to find the time to do so - and looking over my schedule for the next couple of weeks, I won't be able to anytime soon. So, while I'd like to be able to debate this further, at the moment I can only supply half-assed answers based on fuzzy memory of details, and I don't think that's appropriate to the respect I have for either yourself or the subject matter.


Actually, the sister is one of the worst offences as far as this story's lack of respect to its subject matter goes.

Wait, wait, wait.  Did you really just follow "all the racists are shown to be evil and that's petty and self-congratulatory" with "and the worst thing about that is the one that isn't"?  That can't be right, eh?  Say again, please.

I should clarify my point here, though, as you are correct that I was confusing.

Part of what I found wrong with this story is that it presented the anti-neanderthal racism as an straightforward evil. Good people, it implies, make a different choice. For that to work, it has to be shown that racism is a choice, and the sister exemplifies that. If racists can change their stripes wholeheartedly (as I took the sister to have done), then it follows that those who do not are simply unwilling. "We, the enlightened people", the story says "are better than all the others, because we make better choices. And see how easy it would have been for them to make the same choice?" That is the attitude that I find deeply troubling, as it is no help in eliminating racism, it is only good for feeling better that we are not racist.

Anyway, there's lots of other interesting questions raised by the story, and by the post I've quoted and barely responded to, but as I said, I don't think I'm in a position to answer them properly.



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Reply #38 on: May 27, 2009, 03:37:23 PM
Pass.  I've tried several times, but just couldn't get into this story.  Between the pacing and the levels, I have to work to hard to listen to it.  I also hate getting hit over the head with the (insert societal evil here) club.  It may or may not have happened in this story, but that's where it seemed to be going.




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Reply #39 on: May 27, 2009, 11:47:50 PM
First, I'd like to offer my apologies for not responding sooner, and for the fact that I'm basically going to drop a lot of this conversation. The reason is simple - after reading your post I decided I need to re-listen to the story in order to answer properly, but have not been able to find the time to do so - and looking over my schedule for the next couple of weeks, I won't be able to anytime soon. So, while I'd like to be able to debate this further, at the moment I can only supply half-assed answers based on fuzzy memory of details, and I don't think that's appropriate to the respect I have for either yourself or the subject matter.

No pressure, no stress, no apology necessary.  It's just a conversation.  Sometimes the phone rings.  Sometimes people have other places they need to be/other things they need to be doing.  It's understood.  I didn't feel slighted.  But thanks for popping in anyway. :)

Interested in what you would say when you get around to doing so.

Though I appreciate your willingness not to be half-assed.  More people should do that.

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Reply #40 on: May 28, 2009, 09:44:24 AM
First, I'd like to offer my apologies for not responding sooner, and for the fact that I'm basically going to drop a lot of this conversation. The reason is simple - after reading your post I decided I need to re-listen to the story in order to answer properly, but have not been able to find the time to do so - and looking over my schedule for the next couple of weeks, I won't be able to anytime soon. So, while I'd like to be able to debate this further, at the moment I can only supply half-assed answers based on fuzzy memory of details, and I don't think that's appropriate to the respect I have for either yourself or the subject matter.

No pressure, no stress, no apology necessary.  It's just a conversation.  Sometimes the phone rings.  Sometimes people have other places they need to be/other things they need to be doing.  It's understood.  I didn't feel slighted.  But thanks for popping in anyway. :)

Interested in what you would say when you get around to doing so.

Though I appreciate your willingness not to be half-assed.  More people should do that.

A perfect example of why it's easy to be a mod around here.  Sometimes you weirdos are just so civil. 



Zathras

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Reply #41 on: May 28, 2009, 03:27:53 PM
First, I'd like to offer my apologies for not responding sooner, and for the fact that I'm basically going to drop a lot of this conversation. The reason is simple - after reading your post I decided I need to re-listen to the story in order to answer properly, but have not been able to find the time to do so - and looking over my schedule for the next couple of weeks, I won't be able to anytime soon. So, while I'd like to be able to debate this further, at the moment I can only supply half-assed answers based on fuzzy memory of details, and I don't think that's appropriate to the respect I have for either yourself or the subject matter.

No pressure, no stress, no apology necessary.  It's just a conversation.  Sometimes the phone rings.  Sometimes people have other places they need to be/other things they need to be doing.  It's understood.  I didn't feel slighted.  But thanks for popping in anyway. :)

Interested in what you would say when you get around to doing so.

Though I appreciate your willingness not to be half-assed.  More people should do that.

A perfect example of why it's easy to be a mod around here.  Sometimes you weirdos are just so civil. 

Must.  Resist.  Urge.  To.  Start.  Fight.

Seriously, though, is it worth my time to go read this story?  My issues with the sound are just that, my issues.  If the story is worth the effort, I'll go read it.



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Reply #42 on: May 28, 2009, 06:59:33 PM

Seriously, though, is it worth my time to go read this story?  My issues with the sound are just that, my issues.  If the story is worth the effort, I'll go read it.

If it's easy to find, then why not.  I wouldn't bust my balls looking for it though.



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Reply #43 on: May 28, 2009, 07:16:38 PM
it's already linked in this thread.  if this conversation interests you enough then you could read it to take part, but there's better stuff out there if you're just looking for a story.



Russell Nash

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Reply #44 on: May 28, 2009, 07:19:30 PM
it's already linked in this thread.  if this conversation interests you enough then you could read it to take part, but there's better stuff out there if you're just looking for a story.

Oops, asleep at the wheel here.



Zathras

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Reply #45 on: May 28, 2009, 09:27:24 PM
Followed the link and then the next link on that page.  There is no free version for this story, but there is one for Arties Aren't Stupid.



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Reply #46 on: June 03, 2009, 08:20:29 PM
Quote

"2) The story seems to imply that because Neanderthals are stronger and smarter than humans, they will end up running the world.  The fallacy of this logic utterly fails when applied to the modern world:  white-europeans didn't rule the world because they were individually smarter or stronger.  Jared Diamond of "Guns, Steel, and Germs" has shown pretty conclusively that european civilizations beat out other civilizations because they were better organized (because they lived in cities and had better food production), had better technology (guns, steel again because of food production), and because they had better resistances to their diseases (from living in cities)."


Guns, Germs and Steel is an excellent book that I would recommend to anyone.  But, your application of it's concepts to this story just don't work.  As presented by Diamond, white Europeans were able to conquer other civilizations because they had technological advantages that were the result of the resources available to them in their environments.  He repeatedly asserts that racist ideas that whites are superior are false and that different races have the same capacity for advancement but some lacked resources which resulted in the technological differences.

On the other hand, this story suggests that Neanderthals posses fundamental biological advantages over homo sapiens.  And since they are integrated into our society the resources available to our ancestors is really irrelevant.  They have at their disposal all the advancements of mankind up to their "rebirth".  So, no technological differences to overcome.  And the story suggests that they have superior mental and physical capacity.  So the only thing holding them back from usurping homo sapiens may simply be numbers.

Think of it this way, if science resurrected the cave bear, which was larger and stronger than any modern bear, and released them into the wild in Alaska . . . how long do you think before they would start eliminating the smaller and weaker Alaskan brown bear that would be competing for the same food resources?

Esteban
« Last Edit: June 05, 2009, 06:36:13 PM by Bdoomed »



Russell Nash

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Reply #47 on: June 03, 2009, 08:44:45 PM
Think of it this way, if science resurrected the cave bear, which was larger and stronger than any modern bear, and released them into the wild in Alaska . . . how long do you think before they would start eliminating the smaller and weaker Alaskan brown bear that would be competing for the same food resources?

Actually I think the cave bear would go immediately extinct again.  The Polar Bear is the largest a meat eating mammal can achieve and still be able to feed itself and that is only because of the availability of fat lazy seals lying out on the ice.  That's why when the ice is gone, most of the polar bears will follow.

That being said, I think much of your argument about the Neanderthals is correct.  The problem with our society today is that there is too much food for the taking.  This means that the Neanderthal's disadvantage (as presented by our narrator) is totally irrelevant.  If they really are smarter and stronger, they would have a natural advantage in our world.



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Reply #48 on: June 04, 2009, 01:01:31 AM
First, I'd like to offer my apologies for not responding sooner, and for the fact that I'm basically going to drop a lot of this conversation. The reason is simple - after reading your post I decided I need to re-listen to the story in order to answer properly, but have not been able to find the time to do so - and looking over my schedule for the next couple of weeks, I won't be able to anytime soon. So, while I'd like to be able to debate this further, at the moment I can only supply half-assed answers based on fuzzy memory of details, and I don't think that's appropriate to the respect I have for either yourself or the subject matter.

No pressure, no stress, no apology necessary.  It's just a conversation.  Sometimes the phone rings.  Sometimes people have other places they need to be/other things they need to be doing.  It's understood.  I didn't feel slighted.  But thanks for popping in anyway. :)

Interested in what you would say when you get around to doing so.

Though I appreciate your willingness not to be half-assed.  More people should do that.

A perfect example of why it's easy to be a mod around here.  Sometimes you weirdos are just so civil. 

Lol when was the last time you actually broke up a forum fight?

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Reply #49 on: June 05, 2009, 06:32:56 AM
First, I'd like to offer my apologies for not responding sooner, and for the fact that I'm basically going to drop a lot of this conversation. The reason is simple - after reading your post I decided I need to re-listen to the story in order to answer properly, but have not been able to find the time to do so - and looking over my schedule for the next couple of weeks, I won't be able to anytime soon. So, while I'd like to be able to debate this further, at the moment I can only supply half-assed answers based on fuzzy memory of details, and I don't think that's appropriate to the respect I have for either yourself or the subject matter.

No pressure, no stress, no apology necessary.  It's just a conversation.  Sometimes the phone rings.  Sometimes people have other places they need to be/other things they need to be doing.  It's understood.  I didn't feel slighted.  But thanks for popping in anyway. :)

Interested in what you would say when you get around to doing so.

Though I appreciate your willingness not to be half-assed.  More people should do that.

A perfect example of why it's easy to be a mod around here.  Sometimes you weirdos are just so civil. 

Lol when was the last time you actually broke up a forum fight?

I've never had to.  The most I've done was ask for cooler heads.  When the real arguments start in Gallimaufry, we always ask for everyone to link their sources.  This cuts down on just bone-headed screaming.  The religious arguments were always the worst, but we haven't had one of those in over a year.



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Reply #50 on: June 05, 2009, 02:09:07 PM
The only story response thread I recall getting heated was that incredibly divisive politics one from a while ago (the U.S. divided into red state/blue state territories or something like that).



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Reply #51 on: June 05, 2009, 02:21:19 PM
Heated debate is welcome.  I normally split it off to Gallimaufy if it isn't about the story itself.  It used to be if a character just said, "oh god," we'd have a 8 page argument about ID.



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Reply #52 on: June 05, 2009, 08:17:37 PM
WOW.... lol did you ever see XKCD's list of google searches without results? One of them was "People on the internet are too civil" but that soon changed as people saw that and made new websites and now there quite a few results.

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LadyIndigo

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Reply #53 on: June 10, 2009, 03:51:22 AM
Does it make a difference if the other is truly other or we're just pretending it is?

I should think it would matter to the other, or the people identified as such.  You can't claim to write about a big issue, then turn around and use the exact same lies that helped contribute to that issue on the premise of "what if"?  Who are you writing this story for, if you do?  Not victims of racism, in my opinion, and so it's a club of back-patting like others have said.
 
I'm not the race relations police, I'm white to boot, so I hope I don't show my own ass here.  But this story bothered me a lot.  It is so, SO easy to show a raving bigot with a bullhorn and some rocks to throw.  It's much harder to realize when you are: fetishizing someone from a different place or culture, citing some physical or cultural aspect of yourself as "normal", creating a "noble savage" image even if it's a "positive" one, viewing a mixed-race child as some sort of symbol, stating that your pain is somehow worse than another's because you are not a minority and you're still daring to be an activist...

The protagonist of the story does all those things, all of those subtle ways that many well-meaning and genuinely good people show internalized prejudice all the time, and yet we're hearing from HER as the hero in this big metaphor about racism, not from David who is a symbol and not a character in his own right.  I don't think she's an intentional symbol of this, though of course people are welcome to read it how they want.  But we're meant to identify with her and see her pain, she never receives any consequences for her own flawed views and how she "others" her husband, she never realizes she does this, her marriage never strains, and her reaction to finally strike back may even be heroic depending on listener values.   I won't even get started on the "positive" stereotypes of the other race, or eventually interbreeding to create another race that will wipe the majority out just like the KKK raves about...  I hope it's a subversion, I really do, but it'd be ineffective if so.

The one true moment in the whole story to me, from my own very limited perspective, was their argument over the magazine cover.  That's the kind of day-to-day racism I can see happening - well-meaning, unintentional, born from differences of experience.  It's also the one time we see anything of David's pain or struggle.  It's only hinted at elsewhere, and never seems like the strain it is for the protagonist.  If she IS meant to show her own flaws on the subject, I'd have liked to see much more of what her own prejudices were causing for him and their son, rather than feeling like the author is on board.

I'm curious as to what would be a helpful way to handle an idea such as racism in a story.  It strikes me as a strange assertion, to demand or hope or expect that stories be helpful.  Helpful to what?  To whom?  How would a story be an effective anti-racism story?  Can you show me an example? 

Seriously? 

Stories aren't written in a vacuum.  They influence our day or, if it's good enough, our tomorrow.  Why would someone write about racism?  Because they care, presumably.  If so, what feelings do they want to stir in others?  What actions?  If they want to help end racism, or remind others of the issue, they might want to write about racism in a way that can encourage change.  And you can't fix someone else - as others have noted, it's not that simple.  It starts with self-reflection, then the encouragement of that in others.



BethPeters

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Reply #54 on: June 10, 2009, 05:28:44 AM
Does it make a difference if the other is truly other or we're just pretending it is?
.

I'm curious as to what would be a helpful way to handle an idea such as racism in a story.  It strikes me as a strange assertion, to demand or hope or expect that stories be helpful.  Helpful to what?  To whom?  How would a story be an effective anti-racism story?  Can you show me an example? 

Seriously? 

Stories aren't written in a vacuum.  They influence our day or, if it's good enough, our tomorrow.  Why would someone write about racism?  Because they care, presumably.  If so, what feelings do they want to stir in others?  What actions?  If they want to help end racism, or remind others of the issue, they might want to write about racism in a way that can encourage change.  And you can't fix someone else - as others have noted, it's not that simple.  It starts with self-reflection, then the encouragement of that in others.

That is well said and I totally agree.  Chris Matthews isn't changing the way people think about things, he's just making people more divisive.  Good fiction gets in under the radar.  I'm not saying that about this story, which the delivery totally killed, but I think good storytelling does this so frequently and subtly that many examples are obvious while the best examples are too subtle to even know about.



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Reply #55 on: June 10, 2009, 02:46:17 PM
Does it make a difference if the other is truly other or we're just pretending it is?

I should think it would matter to the other, or the people identified as such.  You can't claim to write about a big issue, then turn around and use the exact same lies that helped contribute to that issue on the premise of "what if"?  Who are you writing this story for, if you do?  Not victims of racism, in my opinion, and so it's a club of back-patting like others have said.

I'm sorry, I believe I was vague in my first phrasing, because your reply alongside my quote indicates that perhaps I was not clear.  Instead of saying 'Does it make a difference', using that super vague 'it' as a catchall, I should probably have said 'Does the outcome change, do the reactions of people change if the other is truly other or we are just pretending they are?'  My secondary 'it' in reference to 'other' was also probably unnecessarily dehumanizing (though I didn't mean it that way, since I was intending to speak in the abstract as opposed to the concrete i.e. real othered peoples).  IOW, I'm not asking whether it's important to people whether they are or are not othered.  That's not even a question that entered my mind (because duh, of course it matters to them).  Rather, the question I was taking away from the story was whether racism (or speciesism) must necessarily play out over and over again, just as bloodily and painfully for all involved because blah blah Santayana.  In which case, since you're on about the purpose of the story, I would say that the purpose (or a purpose?) of the story was to lay out the history, in order that somebody might wisen up enough not to repeat it.  Though I have to caveat, because I'm not big on stories with purpose, and I'm always loathe to impute author motivations because of the gulf the text creates between author and reader.

I'm not the race relations police, I'm white to boot, so I hope I don't show my own ass here.  But this story bothered me a lot. 

If you are, you're not likely to get called on it, because, unfortunately, there are very few active POC posters on the EP forum threads.  I would honestly like to see/hear analysis and deconstructions of the story by POCs, because it's pretty much a whiteywhitewhite echo chamber in here, but I don't believe I'll get them, and I can't blame POCs who choose not to come into this space.

It is so, SO easy to show a raving bigot with a bullhorn and some rocks to throw.  It's much harder to realize when you are: fetishizing someone from a different place or culture, citing some physical or cultural aspect of yourself as "normal", creating a "noble savage" image even if it's a "positive" one, viewing a mixed-race child as some sort of symbol, stating that your pain is somehow worse than another's because you are not a minority and you're still daring to be an activist...

You know, it's my opinion (as I stated further up) that the story showed the whole spectrum, though I'm clearly in the minority on that interpretation, even though I believe I can back it up with textual examples (and did).  And you did the same, but then said that those examples didn't count because the author did it on accident or didn't mean it.  Alas, that's a place where I can't debate because I don't deal in authorial intent when I can help it.  Though I will say this:  I didn't believe the main character to be heroic, and I don't believe she gets out of the story without consequences. 

I'm curious as to what would be a helpful way to handle an idea such as racism in a story.  It strikes me as a strange assertion, to demand or hope or expect that stories be helpful.  Helpful to what?  To whom?  How would a story be an effective anti-racism story?  Can you show me an example? 

Seriously? 

Yes.  Seriously.  Totally.  I want someone to point me out a story and tell me: "SEE! That's an effective anti-racist story."  And you know, I'm totally on board with all fiction is political.  I'm not on board with stories as activism, though.  In the first place, stories as activism are a waste of time, you get your point across much more effectively by protesting, voting, rallying and/or waving guns around.  Actual activism > story activism.  In the second place, stories as didactic lessons are usually didactic first and art second, and I like my art to be art first and everything else second.

I'll also point out, just so you know, that my question was specifically directed to eytanz because, in the past, I believe eytanz and myself were pretty much in the same boat re:art that is art first and didactic (or anything else) second.  So he's either changed his mind generally, or only with regards to this story, which is what I find curious...why does dealing in the subject of race change the bar on what the story is supposed to accomplish?

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Zathras

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Reply #56 on: June 10, 2009, 02:56:26 PM

If you are, you're not likely to get called on it, because, unfortunately, there are very few active POC posters on the EP forum threads.  I would honestly like to see/hear analysis and deconstructions of the story by POCs, because it's pretty much a whiteywhitewhite echo chamber in here, but I don't believe I'll get them, and I can't blame POCs who choose not to come into this space.


This disturbs me.  Why would a person's color prevent them from coming here?



Talia

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Reply #57 on: June 10, 2009, 02:59:19 PM

If you are, you're not likely to get called on it, because, unfortunately, there are very few active POC posters on the EP forum threads.  I would honestly like to see/hear analysis and deconstructions of the story by POCs, because it's pretty much a whiteywhitewhite echo chamber in here, but I don't believe I'll get them, and I can't blame POCs who choose not to come into this space.


This disturbs me.  Why would a person's color prevent them from coming here?

Furthermore, how do you know?? (tho I suspect you are right....)



eytanz

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Reply #58 on: June 10, 2009, 03:23:35 PM
I'll also point out, just so you know, that my question was specifically directed to eytanz because, in the past, I believe eytanz and myself were pretty much in the same boat re:art that is art first and didactic (or anything else) second.  So he's either changed his mind generally, or only with regards to this story, which is what I find curious...why does dealing in the subject of race change the bar on what the story is supposed to accomplish?

Ah - if that was what was you were after, I think I can answer this without re-listening to the story.

I wasn't talking about what the story was trying to accompish. The story, as a story, stands on its own. And, like you, I do not wish to ascribe the author with goals that I do not know for a fact he has, and even if I did know, I would be unlikely to care much. Note that, taking it as art, I do not feel it has much merit beyond technical competence, but that is a seperate issue.

However, this story can also be taken as part of a cultural discourse about race. This is not something that the story attempts. This is something readers - as illustrated by several of the commenters on this thread - can do with the story. And, it is my belief that this story introduces more problems than it addresses.



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Reply #59 on: June 10, 2009, 06:11:43 PM

If you are, you're not likely to get called on it, because, unfortunately, there are very few active POC posters on the EP forum threads.  I would honestly like to see/hear analysis and deconstructions of the story by POCs, because it's pretty much a whiteywhitewhite echo chamber in here, but I don't believe I'll get them, and I can't blame POCs who choose not to come into this space.


This disturbs me.  Why would a person's color prevent them from coming here?

Furthermore, how do you know?? (tho I suspect you are right....)

For the irony of it I thought about digging up the thread where Anarky and Rachel strung a guy up for calling Rachel a he.  At the time she was using a SN that didn't give any hints either way.  It came down to them saying that even though it's a Science fiction forum (pre-PC days), no one should assume someone is male. 

Anarky is using the fact that the SF community is overwhelmingly white to make assumptions about our forums.  About half of our posters have said (or posted pictures) that they are white.  She's just assuming everyone else is too.  Just because nobody has stood up (except for stePh) and said they were a purple hermaphrodite, doesn't mean we don't have a green hermaphrodite sub-culture here. 

Our female percentage is higher than SF norms.  Maybe our POC percentage is too.  I know of one minority group that is highly over-represented here, but it only took one person.  Our sample size here is so small, we can really mess up the ratios.



Portrait in Flesh

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Reply #60 on: June 10, 2009, 06:22:22 PM

If you are, you're not likely to get called on it, because, unfortunately, there are very few active POC posters on the EP forum threads.  I would honestly like to see/hear analysis and deconstructions of the story by POCs, because it's pretty much a whiteywhitewhite echo chamber in here, but I don't believe I'll get them, and I can't blame POCs who choose not to come into this space.


This disturbs me.  Why would a person's color prevent them from coming here?

Furthermore, how do you know?? (tho I suspect you are right....)

It took me a bit to suss out what POC meant; then I realized, hey, I am. 

Although exactly what type is sometimes open to debate, depending on what part of the world I'm in and the purported ethnicity of the person who's labeling me.  (I've been mistaken for Hawaiian, Chinese, and, yes, even Caucasian.) 

Must be due to my Super Chameleon Powers.

I do have a whiter-than-white Bitter Half, BTW.  And I now live in a part of the country where my ethnic group is pretty sparse.  (I tried to order a cheese quesadilla once at a local fast food franchise, only to be told they didn't make quesadillas with cheese.)

At any rate, I didn't comment earlier on the story because once I got the basic gist ("oh, racism"), I could pretty much tell how it was going to end.  And...the...pauses...so very Shatnerian.  The story just didn't do much for me.  It just struck me mostly as a "racism=bad so let's stick it to the Man" kind of deal, which may have worked for me a bit more had there been a Shaft-style soundtrack playing softly in the background.

Oddly enough, I'd say the most overt racism I've experienced is from people who categorize themselves with the same ethnic background as mine.  I was born and raised in SoCal, and I can't count the number of times I was given somewhat astonished looks when I replied in English any time somebody automatically started speaking in Spanish to me (I don't speak Spanish, although I can sometimes make out most of what's being said).

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Zathras

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Reply #61 on: June 10, 2009, 06:28:12 PM
Woot!  We might get a split thread!

Seriously, though...

This discussion goes to show that no matter how hard we try, we can't be a "color blind" society.  I remember bringing home some of my Army buddies to rural, small town Illinois.  One was black, one was Hispanic.  I didn't think a thing about it - until we got there.  One of my other friends pointed out the situation.  Nothing was said or done, but there were looks.  I offered to take my friends somewhere else, but they said they were cool.  

This brings up a point that I am sure I will inadequately explain.  My friends weren't "black" or "African American" or "Hispanic".  My friends were my friends.  Menendez was Menendez and Stanley was Stanley.  I was a lot more naive then, but I was color blind.  Most of the time I would only pay attention to someone's race when trying to point them out.  

Isn't that what the goal should be?  Stanley was black, quite possibly the blackest man I've ever known.  That is not describing his race, it's describing his skin.  He was also a soldier, a gamer and a motorcyclist.  I'd have been far more likely to point him out as "the guy over there with the reflective vest on and the blue motorcycle helmet" than as "the African American" or "the Person of Color".

I'm going to stop for now, because I'm getting irritated thinking about this stuff.



Talia

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Reply #62 on: June 10, 2009, 06:37:51 PM
Dont mind the weird time stamps on this post I screwed up the quoting, because i am awesome.


 It came down to them saying that even though it's a Science fiction forum (pre-PC days), no one should assume someone is male. 


Or the other way 'round! (sorry stePH :P)

Anarky is using the fact that the SF community is overwhelmingly white to make assumptions about our forums.  About half of our posters have said (or posted pictures) that they are white.  She's just assuming everyone else is too.  Just because nobody has stood up (except for stePh) and said they were a purple hermaphrodite, doesn't mean we don't have a green hermaphrodite sub-culture here. 

Our female percentage is higher than SF norms.  Maybe our POC percentage is too.  I know of one minority group that is highly over-represented here, but it only took one person.  Our sample size here is so small, we can really mess up the ratios.

Heheh. The community is small enough I know exactly who you mean.



Russell Nash

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Reply #63 on: June 10, 2009, 06:40:36 PM

Heheh. The community is small enough I know exactly who you mean.

You totally throw off our Wookie ratio.



LadyIndigo

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Reply #64 on: June 10, 2009, 06:41:09 PM
Instead of saying 'Does it make a difference', using that super vague 'it' as a catchall, I should probably have said 'Does the outcome change, do the reactions of people change if the other is truly other or we are just pretending they are?'

I don't think they necessarily do, but I think the implications of the story are too important to play around with that.  We have too many people who still believe race is real to subvert the myth through a story like this.  Besides, it's not new, not at all, to use species as a metaphor for race in fantasy and sci-fi.  And this is one of the few things I have heard explicitly expressed by people of color as Not Helpful.  You can't create a metaphor for "we are just like you" when the "other" in question is literally NOT "just like you."  You can't talk about treating everyone as brothers and sisters when people of color are metaphorically not human and therefore (this is important) "human" means "white."  Did you picture the protesters at David's funeral as Japanese or Latino or Haitian, would you even be able to, when modern human is supposed to equal white and Neanderthal is supposed to equal people of color?  Yes, it does matter.  A lot.

In which case, since you're on about the purpose of the story, I would say that the purpose (or a purpose?) of the story was to lay out the history, in order that somebody might wisen up enough not to repeat it.  Though I have to caveat, because I'm not big on stories with purpose, and I'm always loathe to impute author motivations because of the gulf the text creates between author and reader.

Precisely why the story bothers me - there's a lot more to racism than the history of its most egregious offenses.  We aren't seperating water fountains anymore.  We still enact prejudice ever day.  And you don't change that behavior just by knowing about the big stuff - if anything it distracts from the now.

You know, it's my opinion (as I stated further up) that the story showed the whole spectrum, though I'm clearly in the minority on that interpretation, even though I believe I can back it up with textual examples (and did).  And you did the same, but then said that those examples didn't count because the author did it on accident or didn't mean it.  Alas, that's a place where I can't debate because I don't deal in authorial intent when I can help it.  Though I will say this:  I didn't believe the main character to be heroic, and I don't believe she gets out of the story without consequences.

You misunderstood, I hope I was clear - I said that the examples don't work (if they're intentional at all) because she learns nothing from them and suffers nothing from them.  Of course they're mistakes she doesn't mean to make, and it'd be great if the author meant them that way, because that's how covert racism works - almost no one MEANS to do wrong, at least in my naive view.  And I'm not saying you need a clear black and white righteous punishment or something, or to preach her wrongs, but to have her say a ton of very racist things and then say she's the heroine and never directly address it makes it feel almost like the author is on board - that he doesn't understand the implications of what she's saying either.  The narrator suffers from her anger, she suffers from the loss of her husband - I don't know how that relates to her own racism.  I'd be interested in how you think she does, as I was really uncomfortable by the end of the story so maybe I missed something myself.

Yes.  Seriously.  Totally.  I want someone to point me out a story and tell me: "SEE! That's an effective anti-racist story."  And you know, I'm totally on board with all fiction is political.  I'm not on board with stories as activism, though.  In the first place, stories as activism are a waste of time, you get your point across much more effectively by protesting, voting, rallying and/or waving guns around.  Actual activism > story activism.  In the second place, stories as didactic lessons are usually didactic first and art second, and I like my art to be art first and everything else second.

Even though I see this isn't actually to me in the end :), I'll respond anyway: first, I'd be careful with 'tell me how to do ______ if you know the way,' because it's often used by others to derail conversations about race and put the responsibility on the person who was offended - plus I don't think it's the most accurate premise in the world.  I could never write a story about a big, complicated issue and have some gold standard of effectiveness.  I can tell you what worked and didn't work for me, but there is no one angle to approach subjects like this from, or one part of the issue that needs talking about.  It is far too big for that.  "Native Son" and "Beloved" are both about race.  They are two entirely different books.  And they're only about one of many races that suffer prejudice, for that matter.

As far as the purpose of a story, why on earth would you write about a complicated and divisive issue and not be prepared for a fallout of some kind?  It's inevitable whether the author intended it or not.  And the dialogue it creates, as eytanz said very well, is problematic.  It's flawed.  

If you are, you're not likely to get called on it, because, unfortunately, there are very few active POC posters on the EP forum threads.  I would honestly like to see/hear analysis and deconstructions of the story by POCs, because it's pretty much a whiteywhitewhite echo chamber in here, but I don't believe I'll get them, and I can't blame POCs who choose not to come into this space.


This disturbs me.  Why would a person's color prevent them from coming here?

Assuming that's true, and I wouldn't know, it's probably because sci-fi is a whiteywhitewhite echo chamber as I've heard others tell it.  It's been written (or at least published) mainly by white people for a long time, it's been built on tropes created by white voices - we don't mean to make an unwelcoming space, but it's never fun to be the only one coming from another experience.  What I've heard would be helpful would be to reach out and make it welcoming - write about people of color while being respectful and not appropriating or stereotyping, and extend a hand to invite POC authors of sci-fi and make sure any sampling of authors is diverse (in multiple ways).  A lot of these words aren't mine and I hope I'm using them correctly - I'm at work on my lunch break so I'm not in the position to give due credit, but I'll try at my first opportunity.



Talia

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Reply #65 on: June 10, 2009, 07:00:56 PM

Heheh. The community is small enough I know exactly who you mean.

You totally throw off our Wookie ratio.

I'm actually an Ewok who poses as a wookie on the internet :(




LadyIndigo

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Reply #66 on: June 10, 2009, 07:11:18 PM

Heheh. The community is small enough I know exactly who you mean.

You totally throw off our Wookie ratio.

I'm actually an Ewok who poses as a wookie on the internet :(

There's a furry joke somewhere in here but I don't have the heart to make one.



izzardfan

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Reply #67 on: June 10, 2009, 07:12:20 PM
I was born and raised in SoCal ...

Having just moved to Oregon from south Orange County, may I ask what city, out of curiosity?



Zathras

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Reply #68 on: June 10, 2009, 07:18:36 PM
Well said, Lady Inigo!



LadyIndigo

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Reply #69 on: June 10, 2009, 07:25:16 PM
Well said, Lady Inigo!

LOL I might just change my name to that.  If I had a Spanish accent and a memetic tagline it'd cut down on how long-winded I can get. ;)



Zathras

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Reply #70 on: June 10, 2009, 08:01:00 PM
Well said, Lady Inigo!

LOL I might just change my name to that.  If I had a Spanish accent and a memetic tagline it'd cut down on how long-winded I can get. ;)

Whoops.



Anarkey

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Reply #71 on: June 10, 2009, 08:11:45 PM
Ah - if that was what was you were after, I think I can answer this without re-listening to the story.

Only part of what I was after...I also wanted you to give over on the 'conversion' of the sister, because I don't buy that a bit, but you won't do that without a re-listen (and maybe not then). :P

However, this story can also be taken as part of a cultural discourse about race. This is not something that the story attempts. This is something readers - as illustrated by several of the commenters on this thread - can do with the story. And, it is my belief that this story introduces more problems than it addresses.

But on some level you're still leveling the accusation at the story?  It's the story's fault we're having this muddled convo about race?  And it's the story's fault the convo is muddled instead of helpful?  Or no?  If the story were about something else we wouldn't have to go through it?  Where is this onus for 'helpfulness' stemming from?  I think the story should act as the genesis of the conversation, not the end of it.  If it presented clear solutions I (and I suspect you) would be offended that the story was without nuance or ambiguity.  

I believe the story is meant to be unsettling, and I believe it succeeds.  There's all kinds of uncomfortable stuff in there.  I think most of that uncomfortable stuff was put in there deliberately, and I don't think it's as shallow as 'oh we're so great because we're magically not racist', though as I said in the wayback, I'll grant that an element of self-congratulation does seem to be present.

Actually, thinking over what Portrait in Flesh said (thanks for weighing in), and some of what Lady Indigo has said, I wonder if the target audience for this story isn't white people.  I think the choice to use only a regular human POV character was intentional (it was the only way to set up the contrasts/levels of othering plus the 'you're swimming in it' subtext, which I thought was totally blatant but no one else seems to believe is there), and if people's interpretations that human=white and neanderthal=black or other are accurate then maybe the object lessons were for the clueless white folks and not meant to speak to POCs.  I dunno.  And maybe POCs would find the whole thing obvious and dull given their day-to-day experiences.  Even if all that is true, though, I still don't think the story wasn't worth writing, or that it's wrong, or not helpful, or that because this topic is so flammable the author should have just set it down and walked away from it.
« Last Edit: June 10, 2009, 08:13:35 PM by Anarkey »

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Anarkey

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Reply #72 on: June 10, 2009, 08:21:32 PM
As far as the purpose of a story, why on earth would you write about a complicated and divisive issue and not be prepared for a fallout of some kind?  It's inevitable whether the author intended it or not.  And the dialogue it creates, as eytanz said very well, is problematic.  It's flawed.  

I would not assume the author has not prepared for fallout.  I would not assume the author did not intend for there to be fallout.  Unless proven otherwise, I would assume the author stepped into it knowing full well what they were doing and where they were going and what might come back at them for their trouble.  At the very least, the title gives a strong indicator that he knew exactly what he was doing.

I don't understand your description of dialog as flawed.  This particular forum thread is flawed?  Please explain further.

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Reply #73 on: June 10, 2009, 08:49:24 PM
But on some level you're still leveling the accusation at the story?  It's the story's fault we're having this muddled convo about race?  And it's the story's fault the convo is muddled instead of helpful?  Or no?

No, obviously that's not the story's fault. I can't see what that has to do with anything.

If my car broke down and I attempted to get it started by swinging a jackhammer at it, you would be entitled to tell me that it's an inappropriate tool, even though it was not the jackhammer's fault the car broke down. This story does not belong in our racial conversation, even though it did not create the cultural situation we're in.

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Where is this onus for 'helpfulness' stemming from?  I think the story should act as the genesis of the conversation, not the end of it.  If it presented clear solutions I (and I suspect you) would be offended that the story was without nuance or ambiguity.  

It was without (much) nuance or ambiguity. That is why I am offended. You are reading a lot of nuance into it, but I suspect - again, based on memory of the story, so I may be off - that the nuance is coming from you and not from the story itself.

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Actually, thinking over what Portrait in Flesh said (thanks for weighing in), and some of what Lady Indigo has said, I wonder if the target audience for this story isn't white people.

If that's true, and your assumptions as to the makeup of EP's listenership are correct, then the author did not do well in choosing a market.



Anarkey

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Reply #74 on: June 10, 2009, 11:50:28 PM
If my car broke down and I attempted to get it started by swinging a jackhammer at it, you would be entitled to tell me that it's an inappropriate tool, even though it was not the jackhammer's fault the car broke down. This story does not belong in our racial conversation, even though it did not create the cultural situation we're in.

Still, using a metaphor of story as tool kind of implies some innate usefulness on the part of the story, doesn't it?  Not sure I'm willing to grant that metaphor's aptness.  And I'm still not sure where the line we're drawing is.  This story doesn't get to be part of our racial conversation because...?

It was without (much) nuance or ambiguity. That is why I am offended. You are reading a lot of nuance into it, but I suspect - again, based on memory of the story, so I may be off - that the nuance is coming from you and not from the story itself.

Ehh...maybe.  Maybe I'm putting stuff in.  I'm certainly off the bell curve of the generally accepted view.  Though I still think there's textual support for my position.

If that's true, and your assumptions as to the makeup of EP's listenership are correct, then the author did not do well in choosing a market.

Oh, my total bad...I meant to say the target audience IS white people, I just phrased it the fucked up way because I'm wondering whether it isn't white people rather than everyone, or POC or whatever.  Sorry about that.  Half the sentence stayed in my head.  Though the blather that followed should have made it clear what I was trying to say.

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Portrait in Flesh

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Reply #75 on: June 11, 2009, 12:17:50 AM
I was born and raised in SoCal ...

Having just moved to Oregon from south Orange County, may I ask what city, out of curiosity?

Santa Ana.

I spent many a shameful year working at Disneyland.   :-[

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LadyIndigo

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Reply #76 on: June 11, 2009, 12:31:56 AM
As far as the purpose of a story, why on earth would you write about a complicated and divisive issue and not be prepared for a fallout of some kind?  It's inevitable whether the author intended it or not.  And the dialogue it creates, as eytanz said very well, is problematic.  It's flawed.  

I would not assume the author has not prepared for fallout.  I would not assume the author did not intend for there to be fallout.  Unless proven otherwise, I would assume the author stepped into it knowing full well what they were doing and where they were going and what might come back at them for their trouble.  At the very least, the title gives a strong indicator that he knew exactly what he was doing.

I don't understand your description of dialog as flawed.  This particular forum thread is flawed?  Please explain further.

I assume the author prepared for fallout too, I'm saying that your position of how stories shouldn't create change is what confuses me.  It's a story and it's about a big issue.  Just as the author should expect a dialogue (and dialogue creates change), so should you. 

Right now we're not so much having a dialogue on race as we're having a dialogue on stories about race, but inevitably talk about race comes in.  I agree our discussion of race isn't any more flawed than any other conversation about race by a nearly homogenous group; there's an inherent flaw, as you said, in that we have very few POC voices here to our knowledge.  But I think we know to discuss all the stereotypes in the story because we have a larger context.  If this were as you suggested, sort of a review of racism's history (and it's not, it hardly covers Asian stereotyping and doesn't address Hispanics or Native Americans at all), and it were operating as a warning or a Race 101, someone with no other context about anti-racism work would be coming from a very bad base for all the reasons everyone has listed.  So, operating by itself, this story is a bad place to teach about racism, or to open up dialogue about racism based SOLELY on its premise.  At least based on my read of the story.

I would never suggest, incidentally, that a story about race should not be written because the topic is too big.  I think most stories about controversial topics will be lacking in some way because these issues are complicated for a reason, but that's all the more reason to talk about them.  Others have said it best, "Try and fail, try again and fail better."



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Reply #77 on: June 11, 2009, 02:29:12 AM
I'm saying that your position of how stories shouldn't create change is what confuses me.  It's a story and it's about a big issue.  Just as the author should expect a dialogue (and dialogue creates change), so should you. 

I don't believe I said anything about what stories should or shouldn't do except be art and be art before they are propaganda or anything else they aim to be.  And even that should was not a universal mandate, but rather predicated on my preference, a relative scale that applies only to me.  I certainly didn't say stories shouldn't create change.  Why do you think I said this?  I did say that stories suck at creating change, and that many other methods are far more effective than a story if what you are looking for is change.  And just to be clear, I was talking about political change, not some personal revelation individual type change. 

Also dubious, by the way, on the amount of political change creatable by dialogue, something you apparently take as a given. 

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Reply #78 on: June 11, 2009, 04:58:39 AM
And just to be clear, I was talking about political change, not some personal revelation individual type change. 

Also dubious, by the way, on the amount of political change creatable by dialogue, something you apparently take as a given. 

I think that's where we're not communicating, since I (maybe naively, but who knows?) don't think the two can be separated.  Politics come from the opinions we form individually, so those personal changes are important to the political process.     And that change doesn't always mean a "revelation" or a massive upheaval, you're the one presuming that.  It often just means poking at our way of thinking in order to change our personal rules, or maybe just keep people talking - that's still political and it's still change.  On matters like race I'd sooner emphasize personal change than national, since the very way we talk about race is often so flawed.  You can make a speech or wave a sign all you like, but until you really dig at the underlying baggage we're all carrying you're talking to a wall, and I find the little moments like a story (or an anecdote) chip away at our ideas more than big ones.  They certainly are more moving to me.  President Obama's speech about race during his campaign was dead on: combating racism is about having a conversation.

And I suspect this is something we'll just disagree on, but I don't know if you can write about a big touchy issue as explicitly as this story does, with the story so clearly sending a message, without being both art AND very political on that individual level, and letting the politics be just as important as the quality of the art.  The politics eclipse the art by the nature of what's being done.  A subtler metaphor such as in "I'll Gnaw Your Bones"?  Sure, story can be story first there.  But to me, "N-words" set itself up to Teach with a capital T, and if that's what it wants to do it can't be art first anymore, it's confined by its message.  I hope I'm making sense. :) 



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Reply #79 on: June 11, 2009, 06:57:56 AM
I was born and raised in SoCal ...

Having just moved to Oregon from south Orange County, may I ask what city, out of curiosity?

Santa Ana.

I spent many a shameful year working at Disneyland.   :-[

I grew up in Fountain Valley and Huntington Beach (went to both FVHS and Edison), and lived in Santa Ana briefly in the late '80s (off Bristol, very near South Coast Plaza).  But we moved from Saddleback Valley, specifically Lake Forest.

I don't think working at Disneyland is shameful at all!  I would have loved to!



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Reply #80 on: June 11, 2009, 08:40:39 AM
I don't think working at Disneyland is shameful at all!  I would have loved to!


I imagine i got really old, really fast.



Zathras

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Reply #81 on: June 11, 2009, 11:02:58 AM
I don't think working at Disneyland is shameful at all!  I would have loved to!


I imagine i got really old, really fast.

Why yes, yes you did.



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Reply #82 on: June 11, 2009, 12:03:55 PM
I don't think working at Disneyland is shameful at all!  I would have loved to!


I imagine i got really old, really fast.

Why yes, yes you did.

Damn it!

It got old.

Damn it!



Anarkey

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Reply #83 on: June 11, 2009, 01:16:08 PM
And just to be clear, I was talking about political change, not some personal revelation individual type change. 

Also dubious, by the way, on the amount of political change creatable by dialogue, something you apparently take as a given. 

I think that's where we're not communicating, since I (maybe naively, but who knows?) don't think the two can be separated.  Politics come from the opinions we form individually, so those personal changes are important to the political process.   

Yes.  We're using completely different versions of the word "politics".  While I have no problem acknowledging that the personal is political, I certainly don't think the two are equivalent or interchangeable.  My operating definition of politics, FWIW, includes systems under which people have no vote (and plenty of those exist), making a lot of your talk about process seem, not naive, but ...privileged?  Like you don't have to think about the possibility of politics that's externally imposed on you because wheee dialog and voting and aren't we all wonderful?  I don't think politics in non-Western European/non-North American countries usually works the way you're describing.  I think the word politics applies to governing systems of all nations, and using a definition that so obviously excludes a huge chunk of the world is a mistake.  But, ehhh, I'm ok with your definition for the purposes of this conversation...it's just not the same one I'm using.

However, I'll note that you (and others) are angry at this story for implying that race relations in this country are so simple (though, personally, I don't believe the story implied that) and not big and complicated the way they are in the real, external world and so on and so forth but then you've turned around and used a definition of politics that's very basic and doesn't encompass the complex nature of geopolitics, and in fact, looks only to the (so-called) first world as its operating basis and generalizes from there.

 And that change doesn't always mean a "revelation" or a massive upheaval, you're the one presuming that. 

Actually, no.  And this conversation will go better if you quit presuming what I presume (this is not the first time, but I've been letting them slide).  I was presuming any change at all to be unlikely.  It's my opinion that most dialog (and stories) do not change a static condition.  I don't preclude that change is possible, however incremental, I just believe it to be extremely unlikely.  I don't believe, for example, that my telling you your view of politics is way too zeroed in on the US will change your view of politics.  At all.  Not even a smidge.  And at the risk of sounding all confirmation biasy, I have had hundreds of conversations just like this one and probably only a half dozen ever changed anyone, and most of those were with kids.  This force of inertia is the process that causes the creation of stuff like the race bingo card.  The change doesn't happen, and every encounter is a square one encounter and most of the time people walk away with zero idea of what the big deal is about and zero change.  Which is totally exhausting.  Though perhaps not futile.

And I suspect this is something we'll just disagree on, but I don't know if you can write about a big touchy issue as explicitly as this story does, with the story so clearly sending a message, without being both art AND very political on that individual level, and letting the politics be just as important as the quality of the art.  The politics eclipse the art by the nature of what's being done.  A subtler metaphor such as in "I'll Gnaw Your Bones"?  Sure, story can be story first there.  But to me, "N-words" set itself up to Teach with a capital T, and if that's what it wants to do it can't be art first anymore, it's confined by its message.  I hope I'm making sense. :) 

Yes.  We disagree on this.  We have to, because I don't see this story as being strident and teachy the way you do.  I see it as blatantly about race, but I'll not grant that it so clearly sends a message, because you and I have not been able to agree on what that message is...so it can't be all that clear.  And your basis for your interpretation is all about what the author intends (to teach, or to send a message) which I can't grant, even if my interpretation is wrong, because it implies you're a mind reader.  And I don't think you are.  I'll note that while I preferred "I'll Gnaw Your Bones" on almost every level, if you go look in the discussion thread for that story, most of the listeners did not think it was a story about race.  To me it clearly, undeniably, obviously was, but that's not the takeaway most people walked away with.  At least in this story, no one is wondering or debating whether the story is about race.  People are mad that it's about race, people are offended, people are bored, people are skirting right up to the line of telling the author he had no business writing this story, but no one is like "Oh really? Race? I didn't see it."  I think we need the more blatant stories, too.  I'm glad Kosmatka wrote it.  I'm glad EP ran it.

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Reply #84 on: June 11, 2009, 05:08:40 PM
I think the word politics applies to governing systems of all nations, and using a definition that so obviously excludes a huge chunk of the world is a mistake.  But, ehhh, I'm ok with your definition for the purposes of this conversation...it's just not the same one I'm using.

However, I'll note that you (and others) are angry at this story for implying that race relations in this country are so simple (though, personally, I don't believe the story implied that) and not big and complicated the way they are in the real, external world and so on and so forth but then you've turned around and used a definition of politics that's very basic and doesn't encompass the complex nature of geopolitics, and in fact, looks only to the (so-called) first world as its operating basis and generalizes from there.

That absolutely is notable, and I appreciate you correcting me on it.  I'm certainly not above privileged thinking (no people of privilege are), even as I want to talk about and address it.  When I talk about transformative conversations about race, I'm thinking the West and civil rights and democratic process, yes - I didn't think consciously about that, but it's what I was doing.  I don't have any other knowledge base to work from.  (Racial landscapes in particular are different all over, Haiti and the Dominican Republic for example.)  I also don't see personal politics/ideals as equivalent or interchangeable with Western lawmaking, more that they are integral in shaping each other.  As far as more universal, worldwide political landscapes and the place in stories of ANY topic on a worldwide scale, I've done no reading on the subject yet to give an opinion.  There are far too many complexities there, as you said.

Actually, no.  And this conversation will go better if you quit presuming what I presume (this is not the first time, but I've been letting them slide).
 

I'm responding to what I read in your words, but misunderstandings happen.  I should have qualified that it was what you SEEMED to be presuming, but I don't see why we have to worry about whether this conversation "goes better" when we're being respectful (I hope I am, anyway, and apologize if I'm not), I have no emnity towards you at all, and I feel like we're both saying useful things.  (Even if everyone making Wookie jokes is probably tired of my pretentious ass right now. :) )

Quote from: Anarkey link=topic=2597.msg47560#msg47560 date=1244726168I
I was presuming any change at all to be unlikely.  It's my opinion that most dialog (and stories) do not change a static condition.  I don't preclude that change is possible, however incremental, I just believe it to be extremely unlikely.  I don't believe, for example, that my telling you your view of politics is way too zeroed in on the US will change your view of politics.  At all.  Not even a smidge.  And at the risk of sounding all confirmation biasy, I have had hundreds of conversations just like this one and probably only a half dozen ever changed anyone, and most of those were with kids.  This force of inertia is the process that causes the creation of stuff like the race bingo card.  The change doesn't happen, and every encounter is a square one encounter and most of the time people walk away with zero idea of what the big deal is about and zero change.  Which is totally exhausting.  Though perhaps not futile.

And yet I acknowledged your comments and looked at the angle from which I approach politics and why, and although I am trying to justify myself somewhat I also plan to remmeber myself for the future.  I don't think I'm in any way special or smart for that, just open on this particular subject.  Will I make the mistake again?  Probably.  Will I remember this and use it to avoid the mistake as often as possible until it's worked out of my personal baggage?  I hope so.  I agree it's zilch without effort, and the race bingo card is coming from people who are more concerned with being smug or "right" than having a discussion.  But I don't think those people are transformed by a protest rally or a democratic process either.  The personal experiences that those changes in law create?  Yes, but not always. 

I learned my small vocabulary of anti-racism theory through a cultural competency class on the road to being a social worker, K. Tempest Bradford's blog The Angry Black Woman, and a lot of discussion caused by whitewashed movie casting for Avatar the Last Airbender, as well as posts that popped up and were passed on throughout the blogosphere.  Among the tools that helped were diagrams, comic strips, and personal anecdotes.  I'd say those all have elements of story in varying ways.  But certainly change of my way of thinking emerged over a few years, though by no means a complete or perfect change (and I have no idea how well I'm putting it into practice). 

And your basis for your interpretation is all about what the author intends (to teach, or to send a message) which I can't grant, even if my interpretation is wrong, because it implies you're a mind reader.  And I don't think you are.

I'm not.  But I think readers have a right to comment on possible intent as long as they're open to the possibility they may be wrong.  Otherwise what's the point?  Should the author come and explain some other meaning or mechanism to the story - and he's in no way obligated to - then my opinion may well change.  But it'd change to whether his intent was executed well, and the unintentional message he sent instead, and how in my opinion (for what that's worth) he could have executed his intentions better or worse.

I'll note that while I preferred "I'll Gnaw Your Bones" on almost every level, if you go look in the discussion thread for that story, most of the listeners did not think it was a story about race.  To me it clearly, undeniably, obviously was, but that's not the takeaway most people walked away with.  At least in this story, no one is wondering or debating whether the story is about race.  People are mad that it's about race, people are offended, people are bored, people are skirting right up to the line of telling the author he had no business writing this story, but no one is like "Oh really? Race? I didn't see it."  I think we need the more blatant stories, too.  I'm glad Kosmatka wrote it.  I'm glad EP ran it.

You could interpret a few things in "I'll Gnaw Your Bones," which I loved, and I was surprised that people seemed to find NO meaning in it when I could see race and eugenics (although problematic in that POC = nonhuman way I talked about earlier) or animal rights in equal stretches.  Maybe even an intent to invoke both.  But I disagree that we need a blatant story because no one saw the racial elements in a subtler one.  Not when the blatant story isn't any good.  But I'd never say Kosmatka shouldn't write about race, even if I think he did poorly at it, because first of all no one is going to agree on how to have this conversation, including people of color.  Second, like I said, you don't know the best way to write about a big issue right away, if ever.  You learn.  I certainly wouldn't have a snowball's chance of getting it all "right" either. 
« Last Edit: June 11, 2009, 08:42:14 PM by LadyIndigo »



Portrait in Flesh

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Reply #85 on: June 11, 2009, 11:38:08 PM
I don't think working at Disneyland is shameful at all!  I would have loved to!


I imagine i got really old, really fast.

Why yes, yes you did.

Damn it!

It got old.

Damn it!

Sheesh, you kids today.   :P

My Disney experience definitely left some scarring.  It goes far beyond just seeing characters walk around backstage without their heads.  ::shudders::

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Reply #86 on: June 20, 2009, 03:33:50 PM
Anarky is using the fact that the SF community is overwhelmingly white to make assumptions about our forums.  About half of our posters have said (or posted pictures) that they are white.  She's just assuming everyone else is too.  Just because nobody has stood up (except for stePh) and said they were a purple hermaphrodite, doesn't mean we don't have a green hermaphrodite sub-culture here. 

I don't remember having claimed to be a purple hermaphrodite.  Or purple.  Or a hermaphrodite.

I thought Zorag was the purple one.

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JoeFitz

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Reply #87 on: June 22, 2009, 03:25:39 AM
Not to come down too strongly on the pro/con side for this story, I have to say that, once again, this forum has addressed the issue(s) raised by the story far more effectively than the story, IMHO.

At the end of the day, I was disappointed because what I felt was the central theme (prejudice is bad) is flipped on its head (prejudice is justified). I can not reconcile a story that decries prejudice largely, as it turns out, because it is based on factual error. H. Sapiens ought not to be prejudiced because H.N. is, in fact, superior in all respects. And H.N. has been quietly biding his time, waiting for H.S. to push him too far. And then his uptown H.S. will slap somebody!? And the half-breed boy is angry?!



DarkKnightJRK

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Reply #88 on: July 17, 2009, 03:56:37 AM
I do agree that it doesn't do that well in creating a message of "racism is bad, m'kay?" when the protagonist is prejudiced in her own way, but I wonder if that's the intent. Perhaps it's not meant to be your traditional somewhat-after-school-special ideal of overcoming prejudice, but more of the natural reactions people have when they as a minority or being friends/family of one being a victim of prejudice.

As a parable of how to beat racism, I don't think it succeeds. As a tale about human fallability, about a grieving wife who loses faith in her own social group (i.e. H. Sapians) after cruely murdering the father of her child, I think it works pretty well.



Bdoomed

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Reply #89 on: August 16, 2009, 11:38:27 PM
just listened on my trip up to move back into college
had to skip another story because it didnt work well on my car speakers, this one worked okay, it was audible :P.
great reading, awesome story, makes me hate people even more though.  Prejudice really bothers me, whether it be racism or sexism or homophobia (is that the word?).
definately keeping this episode :)

I'd like to hear my options, so I could weigh them, what do you say?
Five pounds?  Six pounds? Seven pounds?


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Reply #90 on: May 07, 2010, 05:03:12 PM
I didn't finish this one.  Mostly it was just way too preachy and message bludgeoning, starting with the title.

It seemed to me the racism discussion was hurt more by making the other race be a non-human species than it helped.  I see what the author were trying to do, but I don't think it worked.

The reading was too labored.  I like her voice, but the dramatic pauses were just too much.

Near the beginning the story was trying way too hard to obscure itself.  For instance, as she's looking at the boy, and it says something along the lines of "it's obvious what he is" but never to bothered to tell ME what is so obvious--that was really annoying to me.  I like to sink into a POV character, and at that point it was clear that she was withholding vital information from me which breaks my immersion.

And in the end, I just want a story, not a lecture on why racism is bad.  If you can get that into a story, and have the story carry the message instead of the other way around.  The title implies to me that the message is what's intended to be the focus.  Not my cuppa.