Things White Authors Like To Do: Call For Comfort

Sandra Modell,

The word you are avoiding mentioning in your journal (including keeping out of comments), the word that upset a fellow Clarion West workshop attendee, the word you are claiming you had no idea could trigger such upset - is NIGGER TOES.

And you're claiming White Woman Tears for that??!

Talking about how: "A confused reader is an antagonistic reader." Call it a hunch, but I'm fairly certain Ursula Le Guin would be just a little bit appalled to see a quote of hers used to distract away from a critical point of media representation for minorities by a writer so encased in privilege that she, (you), could claim you stand outside your own society and are not caught up in stereotypes - because somehow, you alone have the power to save the universe not pay attention to them.

"I wasn’t going to give anyone the satisfaction of driving me away." - you say in the same post in which you mention someone so upset by your written word that they were crying and stammering. But YOU are the victim. YOU are the one made to feel SMALL, because someone pointed out your words, were incredibly racist.

You also claim "I’m not ashamed of what I wrote. I can see why it upset people, but I’m not ashamed."

So apparently you're yet another recruit to keeping the SFF genre so disgusting, ismist and self satisfied no minorities will want anything to do with it. Well that's one way to keep it 'pure' I'm sure.

PS: The real victim in all this is NOT the story. The story wasn't reduced to tears and anger at yet another set of stereotypes, animalistic stereotypes, about itself and similar others. The story didn't sit in that workshop and hear itself casually slurred. The story didn't get called confused and antagonistic aka 'emotional angry black woman/person'. The story didn't have you judging it.

You admit right off you LIKE your story. You called the woman who pointed out how hurtful it was 'the one who set off the powder keg'.