Thoughts on that Shriver thing
Fine, I finally caved and read the whole transcript for Shriver's speech. While reading it, I couldn't help but think of the time I visited the Creation Museum in Kentucky. A beautiful museum built from nearly $30 million in private donations from rich, conservative Christian groups. The opening diorama of the museum included a video of two archaeologists: an older white man and an Asian man, named "Kim." "Kim and I differ from our assumptions," the older white man said. "Kim believes these bones we found came from millions of years ago. I believe they were from only a few thousand years ago." See? The museum reinforced, over and over again, early on, what we have here is a difference in opinion, not fact. After it had done the work of ignoring the facts upon which the theory of evolution is built, the rest of the museum -- again, beautifully presented -- went through the motions of showing how Adam and Eve lived with the dinosaurs, how dinosaurs were wiped out by the great flood, etc etc.
In Shriver's speech, she denies the existence of a difference of power. She uses her own German heritage as an example of why she should be able to wear a sombrero. Not all of her points are completely *wrong* -- I think it's fruitful to discuss how and if and when fiction writers should write from outside their skin (in fact, I believe in writers' right to do so -- if done well, with research and empathy, with a conscience) -- but it doesn't matter because the context of her speech ignores some fundamental truths. She posits appropriation as if it's just a matter of not eating pad thai and not wearing geisha costumes, but ignores the underlying point of appropriation, the power differential. She ignores the difference between cultural appropriation and cultural exchange and conflates the two. She puts everything on equal field (and assumes Thai people would gladly trade pad thai for Carolina BBQ?). Without the acknowledgement that some people have less voice, less opportunity, less power than others, without an exploration of WHY such a movement for sensitivity and awareness (even taken to its greatest extremes -- and yes, the way she plucks out certain examples out of context certainly makes them seem ridiculous and extreme) exists, then of course I can see why her arguments make sense to some people, why I see a (thankfully small) number of people on my feed agreeing with her. Of course they seem logical. Her arguments make sense if in this world, what differences that existed between us were *merely* differences and no one was privileged over anyone else. You live in a blue house and I live in a green house. Feel free to write about living in a green house. But if living in a green house means I get assumptions made about who I am, how I live, if I'm secretly a traitor and that I smell bad -- maybe think twice. Or at least, treat it carefully, with dignity. And yes, make sure it's not exploitative.
Towards the end of the Creation Museum, I entered a room where the walls were dark with graffiti, papered with magazine covers and articles where scary black and brown people held guns and white families cowered in fear. Earlier on, the museum had seemed a joke to me. So funny! I thought as I watched Adam riding the back of a triceratops. But by the time I reached this point of the Museum, a growing unease exploded in my gut as terror. Somehow, the logical endpoint of all of this had circled back to this. These terrifying others, threatening "our" way of life. I use quotes because of course "our" doesn't include me.
I understand a general fear by writers who belong to a majority that a politically correct climate means they're being censored. It threatens the casual assumption of entitlement in fiction -- that fiction writers can be whatever they want to be because it's fiction! It's hard, isn't it, when you are being looked at closely for what you write and how you write it. But censorship isn't the same as critique, and being asked to do better isn't the same as saying don't do it at all. Writers on the margins have long been held to a higher standard to be seen at all -- we haven't had the same luxuries to "be whatever we want to be." "There's already one of you on our list," we're told, or "Nobody wants to see an ethnic writer write about THAT," or the reverse, "Can't you write about something about your culture," or "Sorry, that's good writing but we wouldn't know how to market that."
The desire that writers writing outside of themselves be more thoughtful in their writing isn't one of censorship. It's about the less powerful asking the powerful: Please be responsible. We're not your tokens. We're real people. Let us tell us our own stories. And please, if you're going to tell it for us, if you insist on it, please have some integrity. Please include us in your vision. Please be mindful.
We're asking writers like Shriver to be more thoughtful about the how and the why, the way we have had to be to survive.
There's a lot more I could pick at in this speech, but why? Her basic assumptions are false, which makes her entire argument nil. She's saying, Shh, let's assume power is a difference in opinion. Adam walked the earth with dinosaurs.
