I must hear some version of this a dozen times a month:
“I am plain vanilla white American. But I want to tell stories that have never been told before, without stealing. And I also don’t want people to hate me.”
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So…what we have here is someone who wants to write about a wider range of humanity than what he generally sees onscreen in in print. But he also wants to be respectful of the concept called “cultural appropriation.” This is admirable, and I can see how people get lost. While I cannot offer an absolute answer, I can discuss my own perspective here, briefly, and in greater detail on tonight’s LIFEWRITING LIVE (6pm Pacific).
I wondered the same thing. In my early writing career, questions of writing white people, or women, or gay people, or foreigners, or those of different psychological or political persuasions was daunting. I’d been hurt by negative or condescending portrayals. But even worse by exclusion. What to do?
- My life would be poorer if it were not for writers writing across cultural, racial, and gender lines. That being the simple truth, I would never discourage people from trying.
- You will never make everyone happy. What you can do is be true to yourself and your world view. Do that, and it is my experience that reasonable people will honor your efforts.
- You probably don’t have anything to teach black people about being black. But you can certainly teach us about how white people see us, which is valuable. And you can educate white people who have put less thought into it than you have.
- “Cultural appropriation” is a genuine concern. It is also one of the only ways that humanity progresses: I do something, you copy it making little changes, if those changes improve the results I copy your changes. Memetic evolution. But…I’ve seen situations where actual members of a group were excluded, while the excluders play games with the symbols and rituals and art forms of the excluded. I find this destructive and self-serving in the extreme. There will never be total agreement on “how much is too much” so all we can do is try to treat others as we ourselves would wish to be treated.
- The ONLY time I would not encourage people to write “the other” is if they do not offer them equal humanity. In other words, if your secret belief is that (for instance) black people are inferior, I’m not gonna spend my time and energy encouraging you to promote that view. Nor are you likely to be long-term successful in concealing that attitude. For instance, note the following logic chain:
- BLM has no legitimate concern. There is no systemic racism.
- There are clear differences in performance/results between racial groups. Infant mortality, life span, incarceration, education levels, inherited wealth, etc.
- If there is no difference in the systemic context, the other logical conclusion is that the people themselves are not equal.
- If you side-step and say it is “culture” then you are just kicking the ball down the road: either that culture was imposed from outside (systemic racism) or it arose spontaneously from within. The question that reveals this is: “under the same historical circumstances, would white people have suffered as much for as long?” Anything other than an enthusiastic “yes” should be interpreted as a belief in inequality.
That logic chain doesn’t say such a belief is “wrong.” It says that once you deny a difference in context, you are de facto promoting a difference in content. That 99% of the time, that is the dichotomy, and pretending otherwise is disingenuous.
Ultimately, we cannot perform the multi-generational experiments necessary to test either position to a solid conclusion. All you can do is amass data, and decide which pile you have more faith in. It is up to you which path you take.
But if you, like me, choose faith in equality, then you have to stand by it. That means you can’t say “black people are equal, except that white people are evil.” Nope. If you don’t see the contradiction there, you’ve got a problem, and if you are white, that problem is one of self-loathing.
No, you have to take a view of humanity that embraces–or rejects–all of us.
Personally, I’d choose embracing. Loving humanity, and considering us basically equal. Those who share THAT POV are my closest brothers and sisters. I adore seeing what they have to express about how human being interact, the meaning of history, the ethical structure of the universe. Love it.
How to do this? We’ll take a tiny fragment out of the overall LIFEWRITING program and show how it applies here, tonight at 6pm PST on LIFEWRITING LIVE!
Namaste
Steve
Steven Barnes 