I was looking at the latest at Dear Author over the cover kerfluffle.
It used to be just me and ONLY me as far as the black point of view. Nope, I wasn’t perfect, but I did the best I could.
There used to be several people such as A with wordy and clueless racist passion against blacks in particular. Way more than one. People you see everyday online too and other authors. There was this chick who wrote for Cobblestone who reminds me of A. Very, very proud of passing and feverishly supporting whiteness in every way while absolutely hating her blackness–not that she ever stated it straight like that.
These multiple people would jump on me, call me names and whatnot. Everybody else would stand by–maybe with a touch of hand wringing, detailed derailing analysis and basically, simply tons of derailing, period. Other minorities than blacks would ALWAYS come up. “They have it as bad as you Negroes, so why are you complaining, Negra?” Folks would stroke out defensively if the word racist was used, and go on and on about how uncomfortable the word made them and how the issue wasn’t stated to their liking, but not tolerate any discussion of actual racism.
Now there are multiple, thoughtful, frank and intelligent people who support the minority point of view and won’t allow derailment of the discussion–and dare to use the word racism. Those former status quo and racism defenders have mostly faded away into lurkdom.
Thanks to the owners of the romance sites and blogs that kept bringing the unpopular and uncomfortable subject up. Authors such as Jill Sorenson who seemed as if she was business-as-usual at first can pull back and admit understanding of a different point of view. Thank you, Jill, your later comment was appreciated.
This is what I once envisioned. Things seem to have improved a good deal.
Lord, it is frickin’ goooood to stay out of it. Super nice delete function at DA, BTW.
Did you hear about Bloomburg changing a cover after readers were upset that the cover model didn’t depict the character’s ethnicity? http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/jan/22/bloomsbury-change-race-row-book-cover
er, Bloomsbury. Sorry!
Yes! It’s a good thing attention is being brought to this issue, and what did it was people speaking out.
Now that whites are writing POC, how these characters are portrayed on covers is getting attention.
I have to admit, it bothers me when black authors have even more substantial injustice done, and it’s rarely, if ever, a popular topic of discussion.
But as Millenia reminded me, we have to start somewhere. At least they can now talk about blacks at all–and that’s a huge step in the right direction.
I applaud the publisher for doing the right thing and stopping the discrimination by changing the racial representation on the cover. And I also applaud everyone who came out so strongly in support of equality, like the Dear Author folks did.
Isn’t it interesting, though, how they don’t do the same when the author of the book being misrepresented isn’t white…but black, perhaps? The outrage and support, the detailed contact info with a call for everyone to flood the publisher with complaints…doesn’t seem to happen when the author isn’t white. Proof that the cover is racially inaccurate isn’t acknowledged and addressed at all – rather that’s overlooked in favor of disparaging the author and defending the publisher’s rights to decide what a cover looks like since they’re taking the risk on the book.
Why the difference in response to the exact same complaint? Tsk. Tsk.
I think it all serves to paint an increasingly undeniable picture, don’t you?
It only happens when the author is someone they can relate to, preferably white, or at least Not Black.
Racism against blacks is entrenched in this country. That they can do even that much when the issue involves blacks, even peripherally, is a huge improvement.
I have to publicly note even the slightest improvement ’cause I’ve harshly criticized how Romanceland deals with blacks.
The criticism and lack of support you got for exactly the same issue was appalling, Millenia, and happened only because you are black. Ed Champion should particularly be ashamed. Also, it was relatively quiet when Penguin settled with you on the issue. So sad.
It is sad, Monica. And even worse of an experience to go through. But like you said, it’s slowly changing, and that’s something to roll with! Keep the light on every bit of what’s actually happening – not what people say is happening.
I think you’ve done a huge amount to raise awareness of racism in romance. I know that I wouldn’t have had a clue about the separate shelving of AA romances if it hadn’t been for the column you contributed to at AAR, and you’d obviously got a history with Laurie at AAR which went back long before that.
As far as Dear Author in particular is concerned, I have the impression that there have been a few posts there which may have contributed to raising awareness in their readers about racism in publishing.
Back in January 2009 Jia reviewed Jade Lee’s The Concubine and began like this:
But I think it was Handy Hunter’s post at Dear Author in October which had a particularly big impact on readers of Dear Author that previous posts haven’t had. I might well be wrong about that, but that’s the feeling I got when I read the comments on that (long) thread. I suspect that it might have had less impact had it not been for the fact that Jade Lee turned up to comment on what had happened to her books set in China (including the one reviewed earlier at DA). They had significantly lower sales than other, similar, books in the Blaze line. I think that up to that point, some people hadn’t really taken on board the fact that (white) readers do discriminate against stories with protagonists who aren’t white. Before that, it was often stated that quite a lot of AA readers liked the AA section, and that white readers just hadn’t noticed the AA romances because they were stuck in AA section and that the big publishers were being too conservative in not printing books with Black or Asian protagonists. But Jade Lee’s comments rather challenged any assumption that it was only lack of access to books with non-white protagonists that led to them not being so widely sold.
I suspect that Handy Hunter’s post, the video she linked to by Chimamanda Adichie (quite a lot of people stated that it had really made them see the issues in a new way), and Jade Lee’s comment, all combined to made quite a few people more sensitive to issues surrounding race and how it affects what’s published, how/where it’s published, and who reads what.
Then in November DA had a post up about a romance by Carmen Green, and in it Janine wrote this:
So I think at DA this recent history of posts has probably (a) raised awareness among readers who just hadn’t thought about the issues very much before and (b) helped to ensure that “Those former status quo and racism defenders have mostly faded away into lurkdom” on this topic, because they’d now be aware of the DA bloggers’ views about the issues.
Laura, your comment was extremely enlightening to me. I was completely tuned out with what was happening in Romanceland the last year or two.
I’m not surprised that Jade Lee stepping in and talking about her experience is what made the difference.
I don’t think a black person can be heard yet on the race issue. Maybe it won’t happen in my generation, but maybe my daughter’s or her child.
Jade Lee’s comment did seem to have a powerful impact. It couldn’t be argued that her low sales were due to niche shelving, lack of distribution, or poor writing. My impression is that some people find it difficult to accept racism as the explanation for things until after they’ve ruled out all other possible explanations. I did see one comment on the most recent thread in which someone suggested that the low sales were due to Harlequin readers being “conservative.” Which is an interesting use of the word “conservative,” particularly given that Blaze is one of the raunchier category romance lines.
All the same, I do think that Chimamanda Adichie’s talk really got some people thinking about the impact of the exclusion of certain ethnicities/races of characters from romances. Of course, she’s Nigerian, not African American, she’s not a romance author, and she wasn’t talking about racism in the romance genre, so perhaps those things make a difference.
Chimamanda’s talk was powerful and cuts across all cultures. We don’t have a single story, nobody does and no group does.
But the segregation and avoidance of our books is because of the perception of black romance writers only having one story to tell.
Thank you again for this link, Laura. I really appreciated it.