Romani representation in comics blows up LGBT panel
October 10, 2016 9:20 AM Subscribe
At New York Comic Con last weekend, the Q&A for a panel on LGBT representation in comic books included a question about Romani representation. Writer Peter David responded with a story about a Romanian tour guide telling him that Romani parents break their children's legs to make them better beggars. He retold the story on his blog, saying further, "Apparently the only thing that matters is the sensitivities of activists, and if you take issue with actions that the people they represent have taken, then clearly there is something wrong with you."
The questioner was Vicente Rodriguez, who has written about the importance of Romani representation in comics. In the aftermath, Twitter reacted, and fellow panelist Chris Claremont eschewed further comment, saying "Eh... that’s a question for Peter." Elana Levin of ComicsBeat likened David's remarks to the anti-Semitic blood libel, and thanked Rodriguez for bringing the issue into the light.
The questioner was Vicente Rodriguez, who has written about the importance of Romani representation in comics. In the aftermath, Twitter reacted, and fellow panelist Chris Claremont eschewed further comment, saying "Eh... that’s a question for Peter." Elana Levin of ComicsBeat likened David's remarks to the anti-Semitic blood libel, and thanked Rodriguez for bringing the issue into the light.
Ah, so I guess my distaste for corny dad-humor and horrible puns was really just a distant-early warning system that did its job in keeping me far, far away from Peter David's writing all these years.
posted by Strange Interlude at 9:30 AM on October 10, 2016 [5 favorites]
posted by Strange Interlude at 9:30 AM on October 10, 2016 [5 favorites]
Peter David is a great writer, but he also has a pronounced, persistent tendency to rub people the wrong way. (Witness this old thread about the banning of scans_daily from LiveJournal after David complained about one of his comics getting posted there.)
posted by Halloween Jack at 9:31 AM on October 10, 2016 [3 favorites]
posted by Halloween Jack at 9:31 AM on October 10, 2016 [3 favorites]
I had a Romanian doctoral student (from Transylvania!), who led a rather bleak life there, including surviving the revolution in '89 when bullets were fired into her home. She was vociferously down on the Romani and repeated some of these slurs, which I found hard to believe. She couldn't offer any direct proof, only that it was general knowledge. I still don't understand the antipathy toward this group, but I can imagine that over time the out-group is bound to behave badly in reaction to their treatment by the larger society. People are the cause of and solution to most of life's problems, yet again.
posted by Mental Wimp at 9:34 AM on October 10, 2016 [6 favorites]
posted by Mental Wimp at 9:34 AM on October 10, 2016 [6 favorites]
I can't believe I missed out on this: I was at New York Comic Con. If these questions had come up anywhere, I would have expected them at the panel for Hulu's "Shut Eye", which is actually (in part) about a Romani crime family. And the head of that family wasn't shy about using the G word either.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 9:43 AM on October 10, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 9:43 AM on October 10, 2016 [1 favorite]
The old guard I keep waiting to die (or at least retire to silence) keeps getting younger and younger.
(Or, more accurately probably, closer to my own age.)
posted by MCMikeNamara at 9:45 AM on October 10, 2016 [18 favorites]
(Or, more accurately probably, closer to my own age.)
posted by MCMikeNamara at 9:45 AM on October 10, 2016 [18 favorites]
The crazy thing is, if Peter David was really curious about the experience of the Rom people, it isn't all that hard to actually get hold of them. There are about 1 million in America, and they have their own advocacy groups and online representation and all that.
I have several Romani friends on Facebook who sought me out because I have written sympathetically about Irish Travellers in America, who are not the same ethnic group but have a similar and often parallel history, and to this day, even in the United States, are the subject of exactly the same sort of horrible rumors that have led to Romani people and Travellers being persecuted for centuries.
I'm in Omaha, somewhere in the middle of America, writing on a little-seen personal blog, and wound up with Romani friends because I addressed a different ethnic group.
So, as I said, not hard to get hold of.
posted by maxsparber at 9:45 AM on October 10, 2016 [66 favorites]
I have several Romani friends on Facebook who sought me out because I have written sympathetically about Irish Travellers in America, who are not the same ethnic group but have a similar and often parallel history, and to this day, even in the United States, are the subject of exactly the same sort of horrible rumors that have led to Romani people and Travellers being persecuted for centuries.
I'm in Omaha, somewhere in the middle of America, writing on a little-seen personal blog, and wound up with Romani friends because I addressed a different ethnic group.
So, as I said, not hard to get hold of.
posted by maxsparber at 9:45 AM on October 10, 2016 [66 favorites]
I've had some less than pleasant interactions with Roma people in my life, and I let this experience be the basis of my opinion of them, and many experiences of my family from the south of Poland where this minority is most numerous did nothing to change it.
Then I grew up.
When you see something that shocks you, this really should be the beginning of your cognitive adventure, not the end of it. Especially when you're a writer, ffs! Painting the mental portrait of an oppressed minority based on a couple of non-interactions with its members is simply wrong, from every conceivable point of view. Like painting a landscape looking at the end of your nose.
posted by hat_eater at 9:49 AM on October 10, 2016 [41 favorites]
Then I grew up.
When you see something that shocks you, this really should be the beginning of your cognitive adventure, not the end of it. Especially when you're a writer, ffs! Painting the mental portrait of an oppressed minority based on a couple of non-interactions with its members is simply wrong, from every conceivable point of view. Like painting a landscape looking at the end of your nose.
posted by hat_eater at 9:49 AM on October 10, 2016 [41 favorites]
Peter David has always had the whiff of the bully about him, the amiable man who likes to tease you and joke around with you and only gradually you realise that it's not funny but rather hurtful and mean spirited. He had a good reputation back in the nineties because he was one of the few comics people to hang out with fans on Usenet as well as being a voice against the Wizardisation of comics, regularly putting the boot into people like Erik Larsen or Rob Liefeld for ruining comics - in retrospect though, I'm with "Name Withheld".
A talented writer, at least for the shallow pool of superhero comics writing and good at bullshitting, but even reading his Buyers Guide columns back in the early nineties quickly made me realise he's somebody who's prone to confuse his opinions for facts and this is of course a prime example of it.
He's a tourist to Romania for a few weeks to work on a movie or something, a Romanian tour guide tells him something horrible about what those Romani do to their children (while all he could think about explaining why an eight year old girl is crippled is Chernobyl (!)) and he kept believing this for the next two decades. No research, no investigating whether what he was told was the truth, not even the basic understanding that Romania in 1993 is a far different place than Romania 2016 and that even if that particular incident did happen as he imagined it, it has little or nothing to do with wanting better representation of Romani people in comics.
If this incident isn't prejudice/racism overwhelming intellect, nothing is.
posted by MartinWisse at 9:52 AM on October 10, 2016 [29 favorites]
A talented writer, at least for the shallow pool of superhero comics writing and good at bullshitting, but even reading his Buyers Guide columns back in the early nineties quickly made me realise he's somebody who's prone to confuse his opinions for facts and this is of course a prime example of it.
He's a tourist to Romania for a few weeks to work on a movie or something, a Romanian tour guide tells him something horrible about what those Romani do to their children (while all he could think about explaining why an eight year old girl is crippled is Chernobyl (!)) and he kept believing this for the next two decades. No research, no investigating whether what he was told was the truth, not even the basic understanding that Romania in 1993 is a far different place than Romania 2016 and that even if that particular incident did happen as he imagined it, it has little or nothing to do with wanting better representation of Romani people in comics.
If this incident isn't prejudice/racism overwhelming intellect, nothing is.
posted by MartinWisse at 9:52 AM on October 10, 2016 [29 favorites]
But if you're a lazy storyteller looking for a stock plot device (a curse, say--right, Joss?), why would you want to know more about the culture and the people?
posted by rikschell at 9:53 AM on October 10, 2016 [4 favorites]
posted by rikschell at 9:53 AM on October 10, 2016 [4 favorites]
guys I was on vacation in Italy you won't believe what this Venetian merchant told me about the Jewish moneylenders! They literally remove the skin from people to pay for debts! Fucked up if you ask me.
posted by griphus at 9:55 AM on October 10, 2016 [92 favorites]
posted by griphus at 9:55 AM on October 10, 2016 [92 favorites]
What a prick. I hope he bled.
posted by maxsparber at 10:01 AM on October 10, 2016 [11 favorites]
posted by maxsparber at 10:01 AM on October 10, 2016 [11 favorites]
Just reading the tumblr description of that panel made me feel physically ill. What the FUCK, Peter David.
The best/worst part is that David was soooo horrified by the disabled children he saw in Romania that it spurred an intense loathing of Romani, and yet he clearly never bothered to research the story further, because about five minutes on google will give you plenty of commentary on how "evil [g-words] cripple their children!‼" myths feed into and in turn are fed out from ongoing antiziganist hatred.
posted by nicebookrack at 10:08 AM on October 10, 2016 [11 favorites]
The best/worst part is that David was soooo horrified by the disabled children he saw in Romania that it spurred an intense loathing of Romani, and yet he clearly never bothered to research the story further, because about five minutes on google will give you plenty of commentary on how "evil [g-words] cripple their children!‼" myths feed into and in turn are fed out from ongoing antiziganist hatred.
posted by nicebookrack at 10:08 AM on October 10, 2016 [11 favorites]
It seems he did some research after people ripped him a new one. Better late than never.
posted by hat_eater at 10:18 AM on October 10, 2016 [21 favorites]
posted by hat_eater at 10:18 AM on October 10, 2016 [21 favorites]
As someone who literally knows nothing about this, I might have responded that the question was inappropriate for a panel about LGBT characters and left it at that, I guess.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 10:26 AM on October 10, 2016 [10 favorites]
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 10:26 AM on October 10, 2016 [10 favorites]
This starts me thinking: How many writers of comic books really think the world exists the way it's been depicted in comic books, where whole nations all have the same personality and your tragic backstory is always the fault of some villain? I've been assuming for a long time that a lot of these stories are this way because it's not a great medium to give a lot of backstory for things that happen. I'm not so sure, now.
posted by Sequence at 10:29 AM on October 10, 2016 [8 favorites]
posted by Sequence at 10:29 AM on October 10, 2016 [8 favorites]
Loved his Star Trek novels, but DAMN. What an ignorant jerk.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 10:29 AM on October 10, 2016
posted by The Underpants Monster at 10:29 AM on October 10, 2016
My German/Hungarian/Romanian grandmother (it's complicated) told very similar, racist, obviously impossible stories about Jews to those that my Hungarian in-laws tell about Romani. How can someone whose ancestors were directly affected by Central Europe's racist view of an entire people take that same region's racist view of another entire people at face valve?
posted by thecjm at 10:30 AM on October 10, 2016 [6 favorites]
posted by thecjm at 10:30 AM on October 10, 2016 [6 favorites]
How can someone whose ancestors were directly affected by Central Europe's racist view of an entire people take that same region's racist view of another entire people at face valve?
I've really never known oppression to build empathy in the oppressed on a cultural wide basis, honestly.
posted by griphus at 10:33 AM on October 10, 2016 [49 favorites]
I've really never known oppression to build empathy in the oppressed on a cultural wide basis, honestly.
posted by griphus at 10:33 AM on October 10, 2016 [49 favorites]
He's a tourist to Romania for a few weeks to work on a movie or something
Yeah, that's one of the things that stuck in my craw when I first read his piece about Romania, 15 years ago - the only reason he witnessed the exploitation of that child was because Romania was a cheap place to film instalments in the Trancers series; there's a disconcerting lack of self-awareness re: exploitation there.
It seems he did some research after people ripped him a new one.
I'm happy to read that; he's a prickly, sometimes prickish pear, but for me David was a pretty important writer in terms of bringing diversity/progressiveness to mainstream comics when I was reading them.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 10:34 AM on October 10, 2016 [3 favorites]
Yeah, that's one of the things that stuck in my craw when I first read his piece about Romania, 15 years ago - the only reason he witnessed the exploitation of that child was because Romania was a cheap place to film instalments in the Trancers series; there's a disconcerting lack of self-awareness re: exploitation there.
It seems he did some research after people ripped him a new one.
I'm happy to read that; he's a prickly, sometimes prickish pear, but for me David was a pretty important writer in terms of bringing diversity/progressiveness to mainstream comics when I was reading them.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 10:34 AM on October 10, 2016 [3 favorites]
>> The importance of intersectional queer/antiracist activism aside, I 1000% guarantee that if you talk or ask questions about racism and oppression in general or antiziganism in particular at a comicbook panel, some people are going to complain that it's ALWAYS an "inappropriate" topic, no matter what panel. Was there a "racism and diversity in comics" panel at NYCC on which David was a panelist that the subject could've been addressed there instead?
posted by nicebookrack at 10:45 AM on October 10, 2016 [4 favorites]
posted by nicebookrack at 10:45 AM on October 10, 2016 [4 favorites]
I've been to Turkey a couple of times, and found the Turks friendly, helpful, really positive people, until the subject of the Kurds came up. Then out came the epithets--lazy, thieves, stupid, they sell their children into gangs, etc. etc. I could have been in my stereotype of the Old South with whites talking about blacks.
posted by etaoin at 10:49 AM on October 10, 2016 [14 favorites]
posted by etaoin at 10:49 AM on October 10, 2016 [14 favorites]
At Northern State University in SD, they call their homecoming celebration stuff 'Gypsy Days'. It's a big deal, there's a parade and everything. It's supposedly named that because of a time in the early days of the university where a group of Romani working on the railroads joined in on the celebrations and played a pick-up game against the school team. This basis is not common knowledge, neither of my alumni parents knew about it, I had had to dig it out of the school website.
Whenever I try to mention that it's kinda weird that a public school uses a slur as the name for it's homecoming celebrations, I get incredible push-back. There's the expected "What, it's just a name", 'too PC' sort of stuff, but when I can get someone engaged on it something else comes out, that they don't understand or believe that Romani people and culture is a currently existing thing, and not a historical oddity. They'll even concede that it might be a mean thing to say, but don't think there's anyone around to care. It's fairly similar to people's treatment of jokes and references to Native culture, treating it as part of the past or dead instead of a active and living thing.
posted by neonrev at 10:52 AM on October 10, 2016 [20 favorites]
Whenever I try to mention that it's kinda weird that a public school uses a slur as the name for it's homecoming celebrations, I get incredible push-back. There's the expected "What, it's just a name", 'too PC' sort of stuff, but when I can get someone engaged on it something else comes out, that they don't understand or believe that Romani people and culture is a currently existing thing, and not a historical oddity. They'll even concede that it might be a mean thing to say, but don't think there's anyone around to care. It's fairly similar to people's treatment of jokes and references to Native culture, treating it as part of the past or dead instead of a active and living thing.
posted by neonrev at 10:52 AM on October 10, 2016 [20 favorites]
It seems he did some research after people ripped him a new one. Better late than never.
Kind of? Maybe? Maybe not?
I mean, it's not a particularly strong apology. The words are there, and it wants to be strong, but it more or less ends with "sure, I acted in an unconscionable manner but I totally said sorry a few times and then this guy kept hassling me, I guess you just can't please some people amirite ¯\_(ツ)_/¯".
posted by tocts at 10:55 AM on October 10, 2016 [14 favorites]
Kind of? Maybe? Maybe not?
I mean, it's not a particularly strong apology. The words are there, and it wants to be strong, but it more or less ends with "sure, I acted in an unconscionable manner but I totally said sorry a few times and then this guy kept hassling me, I guess you just can't please some people amirite ¯\_(ツ)_/¯".
posted by tocts at 10:55 AM on October 10, 2016 [14 favorites]
I mean, it's not a particularly strong apology.
Compared to, say, Trump it's positively self-flagellating.
Seriously, I think the key point is that in addition to his public apology he also sat and talked at length with the person he attacked.
posted by chavenet at 11:17 AM on October 10, 2016 [8 favorites]
Compared to, say, Trump it's positively self-flagellating.
Seriously, I think the key point is that in addition to his public apology he also sat and talked at length with the person he attacked.
posted by chavenet at 11:17 AM on October 10, 2016 [8 favorites]
I spent some time in Romania this year, loved it, met lots of people from all walks of life, but every single one of them, without exception, started spewing hate about the Romani sooner or later, whether I had brought up the subject or not. This included the very liberal, PhD holding, internationally ranked chess master who had been one of the organizers of the 1989 revolution. There were no exceptions.
posted by Cosine at 11:30 AM on October 10, 2016 [7 favorites]
posted by Cosine at 11:30 AM on October 10, 2016 [7 favorites]
Obviously the "I once had a bad experience with [X] so having stereotypes about [X] isn't bigotry" dynamic happens in all directions, but I have probably heard more conversations about Romani that have some variation of "But they really are all [bad thing]" than any other ethnic group. And from people who would not say the same thing about another group (at least in public).
posted by feckless at 11:30 AM on October 10, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by feckless at 11:30 AM on October 10, 2016 [1 favorite]
The crazy thing is, if Peter David was really curious about the experience of the Rom people, it isn't all that hard to actually get hold of them. There are about 1 million in America, and they have their own advocacy groups and online representation and all that.
One objection presented in Congress during the 1866 discussion of the 14th Amendment was that explicit birthright citizenship would make Romani American citizens. Pennsylvania's Senator Cowan:
...I am as liberal as anybody toward the rights of all people, but I am unwilling, on the part of my State, to give up the right that she claims, and that she may exercise, and exercise before very long, of expelling a certain number of people who invade her borders; who owe her no allegiance; who pretend to owe none; who recognize no authority in her government; who have a distinct, independent government of their own—an imperium in imperio; who pay no taxes; who never perform military service; who do nothing, in fact, which becomes a citizen, and perform none of the duties which devolve upon him, but, on the other hand, have no homes, pretend to own no land, live nowhere, settle as trespassers where ever they go, and whose sole merit is a universal swindle; who delight in it, who boast of it, and whose adroitness and cunning is of such a transcendent character that no skill can serve to correct or punish it; I mean the Gypsies. They wander in gangs in my State... These people live in the country and are born in the country. They infest society.It's unsurprising that "Making America Great Again" in the eyes of so many Trumpistas and other conservatives involves doing away with the 14th Amendment, possibly retroactively.
posted by XMLicious at 12:06 PM on October 10, 2016 [9 favorites]
She couldn't offer any direct proof, only that it was general knowledge.
See also: the blood libel, "young bucks" and "welfare queens", and so on and so on throughout history whenever oppressors need to justify their oppression.
posted by tobascodagama at 12:10 PM on October 10, 2016 [7 favorites]
See also: the blood libel, "young bucks" and "welfare queens", and so on and so on throughout history whenever oppressors need to justify their oppression.
posted by tobascodagama at 12:10 PM on October 10, 2016 [7 favorites]
In light of XMLicious' post, the "anchor baby" myth probably belonged in my list as well.
posted by tobascodagama at 12:11 PM on October 10, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by tobascodagama at 12:11 PM on October 10, 2016 [1 favorite]
I 1000% guarantee that if you talk or ask questions about racism and oppression in general or antiziganism in particular at a comicbook panel, some people are going to complain that it's ALWAYS an "inappropriate" topic, no matter what panel. Was there a "racism and diversity in comics" panel at NYCC on which David was a panelist that the subject could've been addressed there instead?
nicebookrack
You should probably reconsider your guarantee, because over the four days of NYCC they had panels and discussions like:
INDEH: Native Stories and the Graphic Novel – In Conversation with Ethan Hawke and Greg Ruth, Body of Evidence: How We See Ourselves in Comics, Cosplay Rule 63, WNDB Presents: Women and Gender Nonconforming Writers of Color in Digital Media, Body Confidence and Positivity in Cosplay, Coding Meetup: Women in Technology, X-TRAORDINARY: The LGBT Characters of the X-MEN, #WeAreComics: How Women Keep Changing The Game, Afropunks & Blerds: The Black Nerd Renaissance, Race & Sexuality: a Conversation with Ta-Nehisi Coates, Tee "Vixen" Franklin & Steve Orlando, Comics & Politics, You Fight Like A Girl! and Other Awesome Ideas Involving Women in Pop Culture, #BlackComicsMonth: Diversity in Comics, Queer Representation in All-Ages and Youth Media, Asian Pacific American Comics and Culture, Women Warriors: An Homage to Strong Female Characters in SFF, Queer Culture: LGBT Presence in Pop Culture, Where are the Wheelchairs: Disability in Media, Moving Beyond The Strong Female Character, Be Your Own Superhero: Intersectional Feminism in Comics, Crazy Talk: Mental Health, Pop Culture and Empowerment, Supergirl’s Not Black!: On Being Black, Queer and Cosplaying, Black Heroes Matter, Geeks of Color IV: The Force Awakens, Scream Queens: Female Horror/Thriller Writers, The Non-Compliant Geek's Guide to Self Care, People Of Disabilities In Cosplay, Super Asian America, Comics With A Message, Diversity, Class Systems and Equality in Fantasy, Queer Enough?, Strong is the New Beautiful - Empowering Girls Through Entertainment, Women of Marvel, Women of Color in Comics: Race, Gender & the Comic Book Medium, FanBrosShow Presents - Inclusion Is Revolution: Reclaiming Geek Culture, and We Need Diverse Books: #WhitewashedOut in Books & Media
There was plenty of discussion of oppression in general, and racism, and intersectional racism where, despite your guarantee, "questions about racism and oppression in general or antiziganism in particular" would not only be welcomed but encouraged.
I feel like MetaFilter shows some of its prejudices in these kinds of threads and tends to talk about all comics readers as if they were universally knuckle-dragging neckbeard "GamerGate" types. Of course those people exist, but progressive ideals and beliefs are far more prevalent at cons than MeFi gives them credit for.
It's also odd to see, in defense of a particular writer's bigotry, a comment like Sequence's painting an entire profession as composed of idiot, ignorant racists.
posted by Sangermaine at 12:13 PM on October 10, 2016 [17 favorites]
nicebookrack
You should probably reconsider your guarantee, because over the four days of NYCC they had panels and discussions like:
INDEH: Native Stories and the Graphic Novel – In Conversation with Ethan Hawke and Greg Ruth, Body of Evidence: How We See Ourselves in Comics, Cosplay Rule 63, WNDB Presents: Women and Gender Nonconforming Writers of Color in Digital Media, Body Confidence and Positivity in Cosplay, Coding Meetup: Women in Technology, X-TRAORDINARY: The LGBT Characters of the X-MEN, #WeAreComics: How Women Keep Changing The Game, Afropunks & Blerds: The Black Nerd Renaissance, Race & Sexuality: a Conversation with Ta-Nehisi Coates, Tee "Vixen" Franklin & Steve Orlando, Comics & Politics, You Fight Like A Girl! and Other Awesome Ideas Involving Women in Pop Culture, #BlackComicsMonth: Diversity in Comics, Queer Representation in All-Ages and Youth Media, Asian Pacific American Comics and Culture, Women Warriors: An Homage to Strong Female Characters in SFF, Queer Culture: LGBT Presence in Pop Culture, Where are the Wheelchairs: Disability in Media, Moving Beyond The Strong Female Character, Be Your Own Superhero: Intersectional Feminism in Comics, Crazy Talk: Mental Health, Pop Culture and Empowerment, Supergirl’s Not Black!: On Being Black, Queer and Cosplaying, Black Heroes Matter, Geeks of Color IV: The Force Awakens, Scream Queens: Female Horror/Thriller Writers, The Non-Compliant Geek's Guide to Self Care, People Of Disabilities In Cosplay, Super Asian America, Comics With A Message, Diversity, Class Systems and Equality in Fantasy, Queer Enough?, Strong is the New Beautiful - Empowering Girls Through Entertainment, Women of Marvel, Women of Color in Comics: Race, Gender & the Comic Book Medium, FanBrosShow Presents - Inclusion Is Revolution: Reclaiming Geek Culture, and We Need Diverse Books: #WhitewashedOut in Books & Media
There was plenty of discussion of oppression in general, and racism, and intersectional racism where, despite your guarantee, "questions about racism and oppression in general or antiziganism in particular" would not only be welcomed but encouraged.
I feel like MetaFilter shows some of its prejudices in these kinds of threads and tends to talk about all comics readers as if they were universally knuckle-dragging neckbeard "GamerGate" types. Of course those people exist, but progressive ideals and beliefs are far more prevalent at cons than MeFi gives them credit for.
It's also odd to see, in defense of a particular writer's bigotry, a comment like Sequence's painting an entire profession as composed of idiot, ignorant racists.
posted by Sangermaine at 12:13 PM on October 10, 2016 [17 favorites]
The first time I ever heard the legend of the gypsy and the nails from the cross was from a Romani-American in 1993. Needless to say, I was unsurprised when he stole from me (a signed first edition) two weeks later. I've long wondered how I should treat that story and the subsequent theft - I don't think of any ethnic group as more likely to commit thefts, but if that story is commonplace in a community, it seems like it would lead to increased theft from non-members of the community.
It would ease my mind a lot if I could be persuaded that the story was made up by my acquaintance, propagating onto the internet shortly afterwards.
posted by Radiophonic Oddity at 12:13 PM on October 10, 2016
It would ease my mind a lot if I could be persuaded that the story was made up by my acquaintance, propagating onto the internet shortly afterwards.
posted by Radiophonic Oddity at 12:13 PM on October 10, 2016
I used to have really negative opinions of Romani based in part on personal experiences, which were informed to a large extent by existing stereotypes and bigotry. At the time I thought "well ok, with other people this would be bigotry, but in this case it isn't." There was something almost reassuring about being able to say that I knew they were awful people, like I didnt have to expend any mental energy over it, and no one expected me to.
I mean, and that's the key. I didn't give it any thought because I didn't think I had to. It was only when I did, when I learned about the Romani in this country and worldwide, when I learned about their activism and attempts to fight stereotypes - the same stereotypes I swallowed whole - that I realized I was being 100% racist and needed to change my attitude. And I think people love having bigotry they don't have to feel guilty about, that they don't have to think about. It's like taking the night off from critical thought. And it just speaks to how marginalized they are as an ethnic group that it's so common.
Anyway, I'm ashamed about all this, but every time I read something negative about Romani I'm reminded of it and I try to let it be a lesson.
posted by teponaztli at 12:16 PM on October 10, 2016 [5 favorites]
I mean, and that's the key. I didn't give it any thought because I didn't think I had to. It was only when I did, when I learned about the Romani in this country and worldwide, when I learned about their activism and attempts to fight stereotypes - the same stereotypes I swallowed whole - that I realized I was being 100% racist and needed to change my attitude. And I think people love having bigotry they don't have to feel guilty about, that they don't have to think about. It's like taking the night off from critical thought. And it just speaks to how marginalized they are as an ethnic group that it's so common.
Anyway, I'm ashamed about all this, but every time I read something negative about Romani I'm reminded of it and I try to let it be a lesson.
posted by teponaztli at 12:16 PM on October 10, 2016 [5 favorites]
It's so convenient to hate on Romani due to an evil version of the No True Scotsman fallacy: no true Romani is good, so good people are not Romani, and bad people are Romani! QED or some shit.
Every con artist and pickpocket ever=definitely Romani! Ordinary people going about their lives, some even having blue eyes or blond hair=definitely not Romani!
I had a discussion once with my then-boss about tourist safety abroad, which turned into an incredibly maddening argument (with me biting my mouth to not get fired) over my boss's insistence on using "[g-words]" and "pickpockets" interchangeably in warning about the dangerous streets of Rome. Because "opportunistic and professional criminals could be anywhere and anyone" made less sense to my boss than "every Romani person in Italy is a member of a vast organized criminal underworld of pickpocketing." Seriously?!
posted by nicebookrack at 12:17 PM on October 10, 2016 [3 favorites]
Every con artist and pickpocket ever=definitely Romani! Ordinary people going about their lives, some even having blue eyes or blond hair=definitely not Romani!
I had a discussion once with my then-boss about tourist safety abroad, which turned into an incredibly maddening argument (with me biting my mouth to not get fired) over my boss's insistence on using "[g-words]" and "pickpockets" interchangeably in warning about the dangerous streets of Rome. Because "opportunistic and professional criminals could be anywhere and anyone" made less sense to my boss than "every Romani person in Italy is a member of a vast organized criminal underworld of pickpocketing." Seriously?!
posted by nicebookrack at 12:17 PM on October 10, 2016 [3 favorites]
Peter David, earlier today:
Sigh.
posted by Frayed Knot at 12:21 PM on October 10, 2016 [4 favorites]
...And I’ve been assessing my actions during the panel that lead to all this. After all that, I have to conclude that I’m ashamed of myself.I don't quite know how to read this. One the one hand, he seems truly contrite, and really does seemed to have learned something. On the other "I apologize to those that I've offended" is the weakest apology one can give. Then again if you read the whole post, he really does seem sorry for what he's done, so perhaps it's just some really bad word choices. By a professional writer. Who should know better.
[snip]
And what did I do? I helped, in some small way, to make matters worse. I have never felt more mortified.
[snip]
So I hereby apologize to every Romani that I offended with my comments.
Sigh.
posted by Frayed Knot at 12:21 PM on October 10, 2016 [4 favorites]
On the other "I apologize to those that I've offended" is the weakest apology one can give.
I don't know anything about this guy, honestly, but it's possible you can read it more charitably. "I'm sorry to those I've offended" is slightly better than "I'm sorry if they were offended", which is truly the worst.
posted by Jimbob at 12:26 PM on October 10, 2016 [11 favorites]
I don't know anything about this guy, honestly, but it's possible you can read it more charitably. "I'm sorry to those I've offended" is slightly better than "I'm sorry if they were offended", which is truly the worst.
posted by Jimbob at 12:26 PM on October 10, 2016 [11 favorites]
I wonder how much of this rant was spawned from the author's mistaken belief that he needs to be perfectly representative in order to be on the side of light.
Maybe, consciously, or unconsciously, he thought he was doing pretty good, what with the increased LGBTQ representation, and the women and characters of color he's written over the years. Maybe he considers himself pretty progressive, maybe even fairly fluent in most social justice discourse. And so, when some dude with a chip on his shoulder tries to hijack a panel on a topic he feels strongly about, he got unreasonably angry. Basically, he reacted the way unwoke white folks react to being called racist.
And yeah, the anger is a problem, but a bigger problem I think is idea that you have to win at intersectionality bingo in order to meet the bare minimum standard of "good" for society as a creator. No one thought that he was racist against the Roma for not writing more Roma characters, but that doesn't mean that's it's wrong to ask him to consider doing it. But because he feel pride in generally not being racist, he got caught up in the anger of what he assumed as an accusation, in an inappropriate forum to boot.
So yeah, allies need to internalize the fact that marginalized groups don't need any one particular ally to shoulder the burden of allow us to see themselves in their works. If an author shows reasonable amounts of willingness and skill to write about people that don't look/act/love like him, that's enough for me.
On the one hand, I know that I get caught up in the bingo game too -- I was recently grumbling about how Overwatch (which does an amazing job, diversity-wise, IMHO) doesn't have a black woman character (spoiler alert: it would appear that someone heard me). On the other though, if I had complained about this to Blizzard, it would not help if Jeffrey Kaplan got all bent out of shape and when on a public rant about all the good things that his games have done for XY and Z people, and it's not my job to placate his feelings and remind him that he doesn't have to be perfect.
So yeah, shitty response to questionable question, not entirely remedied by the public apologies, but if he's really sitting down and talking to the questioner privately, I'd say he's at least on the right track, now.
posted by sparklemotion at 12:28 PM on October 10, 2016 [5 favorites]
Maybe, consciously, or unconsciously, he thought he was doing pretty good, what with the increased LGBTQ representation, and the women and characters of color he's written over the years. Maybe he considers himself pretty progressive, maybe even fairly fluent in most social justice discourse. And so, when some dude with a chip on his shoulder tries to hijack a panel on a topic he feels strongly about, he got unreasonably angry. Basically, he reacted the way unwoke white folks react to being called racist.
And yeah, the anger is a problem, but a bigger problem I think is idea that you have to win at intersectionality bingo in order to meet the bare minimum standard of "good" for society as a creator. No one thought that he was racist against the Roma for not writing more Roma characters, but that doesn't mean that's it's wrong to ask him to consider doing it. But because he feel pride in generally not being racist, he got caught up in the anger of what he assumed as an accusation, in an inappropriate forum to boot.
So yeah, allies need to internalize the fact that marginalized groups don't need any one particular ally to shoulder the burden of allow us to see themselves in their works. If an author shows reasonable amounts of willingness and skill to write about people that don't look/act/love like him, that's enough for me.
On the one hand, I know that I get caught up in the bingo game too -- I was recently grumbling about how Overwatch (which does an amazing job, diversity-wise, IMHO) doesn't have a black woman character (spoiler alert: it would appear that someone heard me). On the other though, if I had complained about this to Blizzard, it would not help if Jeffrey Kaplan got all bent out of shape and when on a public rant about all the good things that his games have done for XY and Z people, and it's not my job to placate his feelings and remind him that he doesn't have to be perfect.
So yeah, shitty response to questionable question, not entirely remedied by the public apologies, but if he's really sitting down and talking to the questioner privately, I'd say he's at least on the right track, now.
posted by sparklemotion at 12:28 PM on October 10, 2016 [5 favorites]
It would ease my mind a lot if I could be persuaded that the story was made up by my acquaintance, propagating onto the internet shortly afterwards.
A lot of marginalized groups end up being over-represented in certain criminal classes, and it's important to remember that the mythology that is told in those classes is often not representative of the larger group. Jews were supposedly overrepresented in both pimping and smuggling in Europe -- possibly true, as Jews were frequently the tavernkeepers in Eastern Europe, which was inevitably paired with prostitution, and also tended to make up a lot of the merchant classes, which gave them a mechanism for smuggling when the government clamped down on stuff they had been importing legally.
And, if you dig around, you can find some rabbinic statements that suggest that Jews and gentiles are not the same, and gentiles need not be treated with the same respect as Jews (Baba Kamma 113b, as an example, says that if a Gentile makes a mistake that profits a Jew, the Jew need not correct the mistake, while Baba Kamma 113b says you can hide the inferiority of merchandise from a Gentile and sell it for full price. Baba Kamma 113b says, essentially, that you can steal from a Gentile if they possess something that a Jew would give for free, and on.
Now, not knowing that the Talmud is not so much law as a collection of very opinionated Jews screaming at each other across the centuries, and so no one thing said by any one rabbi is definitive, but instead tools to teach Talmudic method, one might think that Judaism as a whole condones criminality against Gentiles. And there were Jews who were criminals. A little mental math and we reach the conclusion that there is something criminal about Judaism.
There isn't. However, if there are a people, like Jews and Romani (and the two often had dealings with each other), who have been relentlessly targeted and excluded by mainstream society, who are continuously forced to live in dire poverty, who are criminalized as a class, who are held to be corporately responsible for the behavior of any individual, who are only reported on when they commit crimes consistent with prejudices against them (and, then, are identified by their ethnicity in the report), well, you do have the perfect conditions for both creating a criminal class of a percentage of the population and extrapolating that to the remainder of the population.
And you see this with almost every single minority group that is held to be racially different. Across the board.
posted by maxsparber at 12:32 PM on October 10, 2016 [52 favorites]
A lot of marginalized groups end up being over-represented in certain criminal classes, and it's important to remember that the mythology that is told in those classes is often not representative of the larger group. Jews were supposedly overrepresented in both pimping and smuggling in Europe -- possibly true, as Jews were frequently the tavernkeepers in Eastern Europe, which was inevitably paired with prostitution, and also tended to make up a lot of the merchant classes, which gave them a mechanism for smuggling when the government clamped down on stuff they had been importing legally.
And, if you dig around, you can find some rabbinic statements that suggest that Jews and gentiles are not the same, and gentiles need not be treated with the same respect as Jews (Baba Kamma 113b, as an example, says that if a Gentile makes a mistake that profits a Jew, the Jew need not correct the mistake, while Baba Kamma 113b says you can hide the inferiority of merchandise from a Gentile and sell it for full price. Baba Kamma 113b says, essentially, that you can steal from a Gentile if they possess something that a Jew would give for free, and on.
Now, not knowing that the Talmud is not so much law as a collection of very opinionated Jews screaming at each other across the centuries, and so no one thing said by any one rabbi is definitive, but instead tools to teach Talmudic method, one might think that Judaism as a whole condones criminality against Gentiles. And there were Jews who were criminals. A little mental math and we reach the conclusion that there is something criminal about Judaism.
There isn't. However, if there are a people, like Jews and Romani (and the two often had dealings with each other), who have been relentlessly targeted and excluded by mainstream society, who are continuously forced to live in dire poverty, who are criminalized as a class, who are held to be corporately responsible for the behavior of any individual, who are only reported on when they commit crimes consistent with prejudices against them (and, then, are identified by their ethnicity in the report), well, you do have the perfect conditions for both creating a criminal class of a percentage of the population and extrapolating that to the remainder of the population.
And you see this with almost every single minority group that is held to be racially different. Across the board.
posted by maxsparber at 12:32 PM on October 10, 2016 [52 favorites]
I'm suddenly assuming the alternative, that the other writer knew what he was getting into, asking an apparently offtopic question. The question led to the panelist blowing up, and to me this reveals Peter David's working hegemonic assumptions--that is, what is more deeply troubling is how we LGBT are used as a token category as other minorities do not fall within the sanctioned ontology. It's not healthy to deal with traumas and anger in the way the exchange transpired, and yet the panelist's reaction seems to suggest how things are.
posted by polymodus at 12:47 PM on October 10, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by polymodus at 12:47 PM on October 10, 2016 [2 favorites]
Hah, and of course I jumped the gun and commented on the original post on Peter David's blog having not read the later apology.
I think that he recognizes the error in judgment he made, which to me has two main points: the generalization of a handful of people he saw in Bucharest as a stand-in for an entire ethnic group, and the uncritical acceptance of an account from a tour guide.
It's not unlike many of the other deep-seated biases even well-meaning people have about people they have little to no personal contact with. Very few people (and I may be generous here) are complete racists. But given limited experiences, explanations from others that on the surface may make sense, and cultural history that's accepted as common knowledge, nearly everyone will catch themself saying or doing something awkward or wrong after misreading a situation due to preconceived notions. Hopefully it's not in front of an audience on a recorded panel, but it happens.
In a political season where stereotypes and ethnic slurs are being trotted out on stage and uncritically accepted by a significant number of people, it's nice to see at least one person be taken to task who acknowledges that they uncritically accepted something that definitely needed a lot more criticism.
posted by mikeh at 12:53 PM on October 10, 2016 [1 favorite]
I think that he recognizes the error in judgment he made, which to me has two main points: the generalization of a handful of people he saw in Bucharest as a stand-in for an entire ethnic group, and the uncritical acceptance of an account from a tour guide.
It's not unlike many of the other deep-seated biases even well-meaning people have about people they have little to no personal contact with. Very few people (and I may be generous here) are complete racists. But given limited experiences, explanations from others that on the surface may make sense, and cultural history that's accepted as common knowledge, nearly everyone will catch themself saying or doing something awkward or wrong after misreading a situation due to preconceived notions. Hopefully it's not in front of an audience on a recorded panel, but it happens.
In a political season where stereotypes and ethnic slurs are being trotted out on stage and uncritically accepted by a significant number of people, it's nice to see at least one person be taken to task who acknowledges that they uncritically accepted something that definitely needed a lot more criticism.
posted by mikeh at 12:53 PM on October 10, 2016 [1 favorite]
Ok I know nothing about this guy except what I saw in that video and read through the links here and can I just say I LOVE the reaction of the girl in the row closest to the camera who turns with a wtf amused expression and then tells her friends "vamos" and makes that gesture, let’s get out of here. Imagine if everyone had walked out and just let the guy talk to himself, clearly that’s what he’s most interested in, himself. The classic "me and my big mouth", first in crazy old man rant form in front of an audience, then in detailed self-redacted retelling in a blog post with hundreds of comments, then in the form of another blog post with a suddenly contrite apology, getting yet more comments.
I know nothing about this guy but one thing is sure, he’s ready to get into politics.
posted by bitteschoen at 2:08 PM on October 10, 2016 [1 favorite]
I know nothing about this guy but one thing is sure, he’s ready to get into politics.
posted by bitteschoen at 2:08 PM on October 10, 2016 [1 favorite]
It's pretty much anthropology 101 that if your informant tells you about the shockingly evil things that Those People do, the best response is to smile and nod and not necessarily believe it.
posted by overeducated_alligator at 3:17 PM on October 10, 2016 [3 favorites]
posted by overeducated_alligator at 3:17 PM on October 10, 2016 [3 favorites]
And when your informant claims to be a member of the ethnic group in question? The excerpt quoted in the post says that the tour guide was Romani; the person who told me the Jesus legend was as well. I never believed any of the stories about the perfidy of the Romani, in part because the same stories are told about many other ethnic groups, but I have to wonder at the psychological forces at work when group members talk about the group to outsiders in this way.
posted by Radiophonic Oddity at 3:55 PM on October 10, 2016
posted by Radiophonic Oddity at 3:55 PM on October 10, 2016
I'm disappointed, but not surprised.
As a teen and young adult I was a big fan of PAD's work in the Star Trek novels, Young Justice, Supergirl and his various stints on Spider-Man; he's a dramedy writer with a real knack for balancing light-hearted humor and sharply unsentimental characterization in the same stories, without tipping over either edge into mawkishness or pointless cynicism.
I'm still very fond of most of those stories, some with qualifiers and some without, but as a somewhat-older adult I lost interest in following his work. Partly due to changing tastes, partly because of his abrasive online presence, and most relevantly to this conversation, because in looking back on works of his that I loved I began to recognize an ongoing strain of antiblackness in his work--not blatant avoidance or fear, but an insidious faux-progressive "support" of black people against racism... you know, as long as they're nice about wanting to be treated equally. And then he pretty much said as much on his own blog in 2009, soooo.
More recently, I'd heard from other fans that he was producing smarter, more thoughtful work about race in X-Factor, where one of the major characters is an black Muslim woman; I never got around to reading more than excerpts and reviews of it myself but I saw enough that I felt comfortable giving him a mental toast for having grown as a person.
So much for that. Out of context, I can see how his apology today might seem like a decent if imperfect apology; given his history, I see this as part of an ongoing trend of a man who wants to think of himself as forward-thinking and open-minded doing the absolute minimum amount of self-examination required that he can keep thinking of himself as a good person without having to question his underlying worldview. His assertion in 2016 that the man who challenged him at the panel "demand[ed] the impossible" doesn't sound that qualitatively different from his claim in 2009 that racism would totally be over if only black people would stop being oversensitive.
posted by bettafish at 4:09 PM on October 10, 2016 [5 favorites]
As a teen and young adult I was a big fan of PAD's work in the Star Trek novels, Young Justice, Supergirl and his various stints on Spider-Man; he's a dramedy writer with a real knack for balancing light-hearted humor and sharply unsentimental characterization in the same stories, without tipping over either edge into mawkishness or pointless cynicism.
I'm still very fond of most of those stories, some with qualifiers and some without, but as a somewhat-older adult I lost interest in following his work. Partly due to changing tastes, partly because of his abrasive online presence, and most relevantly to this conversation, because in looking back on works of his that I loved I began to recognize an ongoing strain of antiblackness in his work--not blatant avoidance or fear, but an insidious faux-progressive "support" of black people against racism... you know, as long as they're nice about wanting to be treated equally. And then he pretty much said as much on his own blog in 2009, soooo.
More recently, I'd heard from other fans that he was producing smarter, more thoughtful work about race in X-Factor, where one of the major characters is an black Muslim woman; I never got around to reading more than excerpts and reviews of it myself but I saw enough that I felt comfortable giving him a mental toast for having grown as a person.
So much for that. Out of context, I can see how his apology today might seem like a decent if imperfect apology; given his history, I see this as part of an ongoing trend of a man who wants to think of himself as forward-thinking and open-minded doing the absolute minimum amount of self-examination required that he can keep thinking of himself as a good person without having to question his underlying worldview. His assertion in 2016 that the man who challenged him at the panel "demand[ed] the impossible" doesn't sound that qualitatively different from his claim in 2009 that racism would totally be over if only black people would stop being oversensitive.
posted by bettafish at 4:09 PM on October 10, 2016 [5 favorites]
And when your informant claims to be a member of the ethnic group in question? The excerpt quoted in the post says that the tour guide was Romani [..]
I don't think he does say that. In fact he says
Anyway, it's great that Peter David walked his bigotry back, a bit. He still goes off at them for begging and "dumping" their children in orphanages. Not like nice people, who have plenty of money and whose families are never broken.
Q: if Romani parents value their kids as potential beggars and thieves why are they in orphanages?
A: They're just that bad. They do it even though it makes no sense.
Q: Did your guide actually tell you that all the beggars you saw were Romani, all the thieves you heard about were Romani, all the kids in orphanages were Romani? Why would you believe such an obviously self-serving piece of racist deflection?
A: ...
posted by Joe in Australia at 4:16 PM on October 10, 2016 [4 favorites]
I don't think he does say that. In fact he says
Did my guide lie to me? I don’t think so. Why would he? I think he genuinely believed it. I have no doubt he asked the same questions of his parents and they told him what they believed, what they were told, going back generations, because the Romani have been biased against for centuries.The implication is that his guide was not Romani. Maybe you misread "Romanian"?
Anyway, it's great that Peter David walked his bigotry back, a bit. He still goes off at them for begging and "dumping" their children in orphanages. Not like nice people, who have plenty of money and whose families are never broken.
Q: if Romani parents value their kids as potential beggars and thieves why are they in orphanages?
A: They're just that bad. They do it even though it makes no sense.
Q: Did your guide actually tell you that all the beggars you saw were Romani, all the thieves you heard about were Romani, all the kids in orphanages were Romani? Why would you believe such an obviously self-serving piece of racist deflection?
A: ...
posted by Joe in Australia at 4:16 PM on October 10, 2016 [4 favorites]
I have an eye exam appointment coming up soon. Apparently it's needed.
posted by Radiophonic Oddity at 4:21 PM on October 10, 2016
posted by Radiophonic Oddity at 4:21 PM on October 10, 2016
The excerpt quoted in the post says that the tour guide was Romani;
Romanian != Romani.
posted by Etrigan at 4:55 PM on October 10, 2016 [2 favorites]
Romanian != Romani.
posted by Etrigan at 4:55 PM on October 10, 2016 [2 favorites]
"guys I was on vacation in Italy you won't believe what this Venetian merchant told me about the Jewish moneylenders! They literally remove the skin from people to pay for debts! Fucked up if you ask me."
When my family travelled within Italy, at the highway rest stops they had official signs that said "Distrust the Gypsies." My family was kind of blown away by how casually official the racism was. And how tautologically beggars were classed as "gypsies" all over, irrespective of ethnicity.
I do think this is one of those times when most Americans are pretty clueless out of ignorance more than spite — similar to depictions of Native Americans in European pop culture.
posted by klangklangston at 6:11 PM on October 10, 2016 [2 favorites]
When my family travelled within Italy, at the highway rest stops they had official signs that said "Distrust the Gypsies." My family was kind of blown away by how casually official the racism was. And how tautologically beggars were classed as "gypsies" all over, irrespective of ethnicity.
I do think this is one of those times when most Americans are pretty clueless out of ignorance more than spite — similar to depictions of Native Americans in European pop culture.
posted by klangklangston at 6:11 PM on October 10, 2016 [2 favorites]
Oh wow! Elana is one of my closest friends. I've pointed her to this thread, so hopefully she'll show up.
posted by Navelgazer at 8:23 PM on October 10, 2016
posted by Navelgazer at 8:23 PM on October 10, 2016
Mod note: Corrected spelling of her name in the post.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 8:49 PM on October 10, 2016
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 8:49 PM on October 10, 2016
I certainly don't see all comic writers as ignorant racists. What I wrote, precisely:
How many writers of comic books really think the world exists the way it's been depicted in comic books, where whole nations all have the same personality and your tragic backstory is always the fault of some villain?
The problematic black-and-white backstories of a lot of comic stories are something I have always had a tendency to put down to the medium, and I've assumed fairly enlightened attitudes from the writers. Clearly, in this case, the writer was not actually that enlightened. There are a lot of comics I like. I'm not a die-hard fan, but I consider myself a fan. And as a fan, I have to be critical of my media, and that means that maybe I need to stop assuming that all of these things come from an enlightened place. This is absolute proof that there can be worse sentiments below the surface of stuff I previously considered relatively innocuous.
It is not saying that they're all racist idiots to say that there's a strong possibility that far more of them are predisposed to some forms of racism--and even just certain cognitive biases--than I previously considered. I can't keep telling myself that they probably all mean well if I don't have reason to know that they did.
posted by Sequence at 10:08 PM on October 10, 2016
How many writers of comic books really think the world exists the way it's been depicted in comic books, where whole nations all have the same personality and your tragic backstory is always the fault of some villain?
The problematic black-and-white backstories of a lot of comic stories are something I have always had a tendency to put down to the medium, and I've assumed fairly enlightened attitudes from the writers. Clearly, in this case, the writer was not actually that enlightened. There are a lot of comics I like. I'm not a die-hard fan, but I consider myself a fan. And as a fan, I have to be critical of my media, and that means that maybe I need to stop assuming that all of these things come from an enlightened place. This is absolute proof that there can be worse sentiments below the surface of stuff I previously considered relatively innocuous.
It is not saying that they're all racist idiots to say that there's a strong possibility that far more of them are predisposed to some forms of racism--and even just certain cognitive biases--than I previously considered. I can't keep telling myself that they probably all mean well if I don't have reason to know that they did.
posted by Sequence at 10:08 PM on October 10, 2016
The comics medium does not have some built-in limitation that makes its practitioners more likely to think in black and white terms. You may be thinking of superhero stories, which are not a medium, but rather a genre; you can write superhero novels, make superhero movies. Comics can be used to tell any type of story.
Personally, I don't think superhero stories are any more likely to appeal to limited/racist thinkers than any other kind of story. This seems like a weird road to go down.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 11:21 PM on October 10, 2016 [3 favorites]
Personally, I don't think superhero stories are any more likely to appeal to limited/racist thinkers than any other kind of story. This seems like a weird road to go down.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 11:21 PM on October 10, 2016 [3 favorites]
There's a lot of this sort of thing floating around in the world and it sucks.
Greece is a lovely country but my memories of visiting are always going to be overshadowed by an experience I had there. My wallet disappeared while I was visiting the Acropolis of Athens -- I had it at the entrance and didn't have it when I went to buy a bottle of water on the way out. Which yeah, kind of sucked but could happen just about anywhere and from now on I'll be more careful.
The thing which cast a shadow over the rest of my Greece visit was that every Greek to whom I mentioned the matter -- security at the site, the clerks at the hotel, a friend of my aunt's, a merchant in a store in another part of the country who asked how my trip was going -- every one, when they heard that my wallet had been stolen, immediately blamed the theft on Albanians. It was really off-putting and I just stopped mentioning what had happened.
And then one day, about a year after I got home, I was reading a story about the rise of Golden Dawn and found myself thinking "yeah, I could totally see how that could be happening, they're all so racist" and I realized that I was doing the exact same sort of generalization and projection myself. Headslap moment. It's really easy to fall into these patterns without thinking, especially when an extra bit of data comes in that seems to confirm biases we have built from the kind of limited experience we probably would never accept as "proof" from someone else.
posted by Nerd of the North at 7:23 AM on October 11, 2016 [5 favorites]
Greece is a lovely country but my memories of visiting are always going to be overshadowed by an experience I had there. My wallet disappeared while I was visiting the Acropolis of Athens -- I had it at the entrance and didn't have it when I went to buy a bottle of water on the way out. Which yeah, kind of sucked but could happen just about anywhere and from now on I'll be more careful.
The thing which cast a shadow over the rest of my Greece visit was that every Greek to whom I mentioned the matter -- security at the site, the clerks at the hotel, a friend of my aunt's, a merchant in a store in another part of the country who asked how my trip was going -- every one, when they heard that my wallet had been stolen, immediately blamed the theft on Albanians. It was really off-putting and I just stopped mentioning what had happened.
And then one day, about a year after I got home, I was reading a story about the rise of Golden Dawn and found myself thinking "yeah, I could totally see how that could be happening, they're all so racist" and I realized that I was doing the exact same sort of generalization and projection myself. Headslap moment. It's really easy to fall into these patterns without thinking, especially when an extra bit of data comes in that seems to confirm biases we have built from the kind of limited experience we probably would never accept as "proof" from someone else.
posted by Nerd of the North at 7:23 AM on October 11, 2016 [5 favorites]
I grew up in the rural South and have personally known a number of poorly educated, poverty-stricken people. Think the classic stereotype of poor white trash. Of those people, I knew at least one or two parents (typically the dad) who advised their children to quit school, deal drugs, or other similarly bad advice. One parent of a close friend of mine in high school, told his 15 year old daughter that she either needed to start stripping or start having babies to bring in some money for the family.
Initially, I saw his actions as an indication that all of "those" people were to blame for their own poverty. However, with a little thought and understanding I realized that the question I should be asking is not "How are those parents so bad they would do that to their children?" but instead it should be, "How is it that their situation is so bad, that parents think that advice is good for their children?"
I think if a tour guide told me the obvious horror story about the Romani, my first response wouldn't be to blame the Romani parents, but to wonder why they felt forced into such actions. If it's true, that says a lot more about society than it does about the Romani parents. And if it isn't true, why are we so broken that we are not only willing to believe such awful things about a group of people, but that we take that awfulness as justification for their continued oppression?
posted by teleri025 at 7:23 AM on October 11, 2016 [6 favorites]
Initially, I saw his actions as an indication that all of "those" people were to blame for their own poverty. However, with a little thought and understanding I realized that the question I should be asking is not "How are those parents so bad they would do that to their children?" but instead it should be, "How is it that their situation is so bad, that parents think that advice is good for their children?"
I think if a tour guide told me the obvious horror story about the Romani, my first response wouldn't be to blame the Romani parents, but to wonder why they felt forced into such actions. If it's true, that says a lot more about society than it does about the Romani parents. And if it isn't true, why are we so broken that we are not only willing to believe such awful things about a group of people, but that we take that awfulness as justification for their continued oppression?
posted by teleri025 at 7:23 AM on October 11, 2016 [6 favorites]
Um, Peter David, the lesson here isn't to be skeptical of horrible racist libels about entire peoples without studying the evidence first; the lesson is to try and have enough common sense and basic regard for your fellow human beings to reject that kind of shit out of hand.
The next time someone you barely know speaks what amounts to a blood libel, your answer shouldn't be "Off to the internet for research!" It should be, "What the fuck is wrong with you?"
posted by DirtyOldTown at 7:28 AM on October 11, 2016 [8 favorites]
The next time someone you barely know speaks what amounts to a blood libel, your answer shouldn't be "Off to the internet for research!" It should be, "What the fuck is wrong with you?"
posted by DirtyOldTown at 7:28 AM on October 11, 2016 [8 favorites]
The next time someone you barely know speaks what amounts to a blood libel, your answer shouldn't be "Off to the internet for research!" It should be, "What the fuck is wrong with you?"
This is basically why I felt like his apology was fairly weak. And sure, OK, he doesn't have to please anyone, least of all me. But, good lord, this.
He spends a lot of time basically saying "wow, turns out I was wrong about Romani in particular", when what he should have been saying is, "as a general principle, assuming this kind of thing is true about a whole ethnic group or race is inappropriate", and/or "as a general principle, literally yelling at someone about how I don't care about their concerns with respects to representation of their ethnic group or race is inappropriate".
posted by tocts at 9:23 AM on October 11, 2016 [8 favorites]
This is basically why I felt like his apology was fairly weak. And sure, OK, he doesn't have to please anyone, least of all me. But, good lord, this.
He spends a lot of time basically saying "wow, turns out I was wrong about Romani in particular", when what he should have been saying is, "as a general principle, assuming this kind of thing is true about a whole ethnic group or race is inappropriate", and/or "as a general principle, literally yelling at someone about how I don't care about their concerns with respects to representation of their ethnic group or race is inappropriate".
posted by tocts at 9:23 AM on October 11, 2016 [8 favorites]
(boy, the drama in that old MeTa thread! It was intensely effective, though - it shifted my linguistic consciousness about the g-word just completely.)
posted by mwhybark at 11:38 AM on October 11, 2016
posted by mwhybark at 11:38 AM on October 11, 2016
"I'm sorry to those I've offended" is slightly better than "I'm sorry if they were offended", which is truly the worst.
"I'm sorry to those I've offended" is pretty much what we want, right? He's apologising to those he offended.
We're so used to hearing "I'm sorry if you were offended" or "I'm sorry you took offense" that we've forgotten what a real apology sounds like.
That said, I'm truly stumped that writers in the public eye can be so boneheaded about representation in this day and age and would say such a truly gross thing in the first place. But if he's going to apologise, directing it at those he offended seems reasonable to me.
An unqualified "I'm sorry" isn't quite enough.
posted by crossoverman at 6:21 AM on October 12, 2016 [1 favorite]
"I'm sorry to those I've offended" is pretty much what we want, right? He's apologising to those he offended.
We're so used to hearing "I'm sorry if you were offended" or "I'm sorry you took offense" that we've forgotten what a real apology sounds like.
That said, I'm truly stumped that writers in the public eye can be so boneheaded about representation in this day and age and would say such a truly gross thing in the first place. But if he's going to apologise, directing it at those he offended seems reasonable to me.
An unqualified "I'm sorry" isn't quite enough.
posted by crossoverman at 6:21 AM on October 12, 2016 [1 favorite]
The next time someone you barely know speaks what amounts to a blood libel, your answer shouldn't be "Off to the internet for research!" It should be, "What the fuck is wrong with you?"
I feel there should be a joke told by someone from Bucharest starting with "I once ran into a group of American tourists and oh my god the things I saw and heard, don’t even talk to me about fairness to Americans now" but hmm no it’s not going to work the same way is it. But it’s so predictable and yet still so striking how for people like this guy, it never even crosses their mind that they could be on the receiving end of ANY sort of worst rumours and impressions and bias attributed to a whole nationality/group/ethnic community etc. Because they are in a position where putting yourself in other people’s shoes is not even conceivable. Because even when they go abroad, they are never foreigners or "other" in the way those "other" people are. Never.
posted by bitteschoen at 7:01 AM on October 12, 2016 [1 favorite]
I feel there should be a joke told by someone from Bucharest starting with "I once ran into a group of American tourists and oh my god the things I saw and heard, don’t even talk to me about fairness to Americans now" but hmm no it’s not going to work the same way is it. But it’s so predictable and yet still so striking how for people like this guy, it never even crosses their mind that they could be on the receiving end of ANY sort of worst rumours and impressions and bias attributed to a whole nationality/group/ethnic community etc. Because they are in a position where putting yourself in other people’s shoes is not even conceivable. Because even when they go abroad, they are never foreigners or "other" in the way those "other" people are. Never.
posted by bitteschoen at 7:01 AM on October 12, 2016 [1 favorite]
So a rich Hollywood guy goes to Romania or Hungary or Bulgaria because you can hire extras for cheap and a few bucks to the local mayor lets you film in a National Park. Hangs out with some upper class Romanians (or Hungarians or Bulgarians) and picks up their racist opinions about Roma. Its a sorry situation, but Romanians can get quite eloquent in their racism towards Roma: blaming them for crime on a racial basis exonerates the "pure" Romanians (or Magyars or Bulgarians) and deflects the focus to their own victim mentality. (Watch this film for theclassic Film guy in Romania experience.)
So Peter David spews back what he had been told while in Romania by somebody who, obviously thinks that this crippling by intent is part of "Gypsy Culture". Yes, I have seen Roma beggars on the streets in East Europe. I have also spoken to Roma activists and community leaders who are disgusted by the situation and hit the streets to address them in person. People beg because they are on the lowest level of the economy. People fall into crime for the same reason. A vast majority of Roma in East Europe, however, remain virtually invisible because they are quietly working in lousy jobs in the agricultural and manufacturing and service sectors well out of the public eye. Go into a butcher shop and the butchers in front are white - but the meat cutters in back are Roma. You will absolutely never see a Roma working in a shopping mall, a bank, or as a waitress - anywhere out in front facing the public - and it is not because there are no qualified candidates. It is simply inbred racism.
Once I expressed surprise when I was introduced to the chief electric contractor at a huge Bulgarian festival who was Roma. We spoke in Romani, and he said "You think people would let me string all these lighting systems up if they knew I was Roma? No way!"
As far as the allegation that they break their own children's legs is concerned, I have no idea if they do. I have been associating with Roma for nearly 40 years and have not met anybody who was involved in that. I do know of beggars who pretend to be lepers , but in fact simply rub their skin with poison sumac to get an attention getting rash. But that is because they are beggars, not because they were born Roma. The main concern of Romani activists is, in fact, in approaching members of their own communities and addressing issues just like this. That is what is ignored by gasbags like David.
posted by zaelic at 4:11 AM on October 13, 2016 [14 favorites]
So Peter David spews back what he had been told while in Romania by somebody who, obviously thinks that this crippling by intent is part of "Gypsy Culture". Yes, I have seen Roma beggars on the streets in East Europe. I have also spoken to Roma activists and community leaders who are disgusted by the situation and hit the streets to address them in person. People beg because they are on the lowest level of the economy. People fall into crime for the same reason. A vast majority of Roma in East Europe, however, remain virtually invisible because they are quietly working in lousy jobs in the agricultural and manufacturing and service sectors well out of the public eye. Go into a butcher shop and the butchers in front are white - but the meat cutters in back are Roma. You will absolutely never see a Roma working in a shopping mall, a bank, or as a waitress - anywhere out in front facing the public - and it is not because there are no qualified candidates. It is simply inbred racism.
Once I expressed surprise when I was introduced to the chief electric contractor at a huge Bulgarian festival who was Roma. We spoke in Romani, and he said "You think people would let me string all these lighting systems up if they knew I was Roma? No way!"
As far as the allegation that they break their own children's legs is concerned, I have no idea if they do. I have been associating with Roma for nearly 40 years and have not met anybody who was involved in that. I do know of beggars who pretend to be lepers , but in fact simply rub their skin with poison sumac to get an attention getting rash. But that is because they are beggars, not because they were born Roma. The main concern of Romani activists is, in fact, in approaching members of their own communities and addressing issues just like this. That is what is ignored by gasbags like David.
posted by zaelic at 4:11 AM on October 13, 2016 [14 favorites]
OH yeah, the blind distrust and hatred of Romani is intense, and the people who harbor this hatred have a tendency to be evangelical about it.
My dear, intelligent, open-minded, liberal mother--whose work takes her into various European countries constantly, where she works with counterparts in education nonprofits--has been warned away from the Romani by colleagues in Italy, Romania, Bulgaria, etc. And apparently some of this sunk through--when I was preparing to go backpacking in Europe in junior year of college, she put her hands on my shoulders, looked me in the eyes, and with genuine worry said, "Don't trust any g*****s."
Several years later, I was a dinner guest with 5 or 6 Malawian priests in the archdiocese of Zomba--just me and them. Half of them had spent some years working in Rome, and conversation turned to the Romani. Apparently the Italian priests they worked alongside would routinely launch into 20-30-minute tirades about Romani people, laced with expletives and full of bile. The priests' takeaway from this wasn't "wow, those priests were really prejudiced," but rather, "wow, those g*****s sure must be a problem." Again, the priests in Zomba warned me against associating with "those people" should I find myself in their vicinity.
To my knowledge, I have never personally interacted with a Romani person in my life (though I am very likely mistaken in that belief). But neither had the people I spoke with in these stories. I was getting this all third-hand. People who harbor intense hatred often have an interest in being justified and vindicated in that hate, and will seek to spread their hatred to as many people as they can in order to shelter themselves in the warmth and security of being told they're right to feel the way they do.
posted by duffell at 4:37 AM on October 18, 2016 [3 favorites]
My dear, intelligent, open-minded, liberal mother--whose work takes her into various European countries constantly, where she works with counterparts in education nonprofits--has been warned away from the Romani by colleagues in Italy, Romania, Bulgaria, etc. And apparently some of this sunk through--when I was preparing to go backpacking in Europe in junior year of college, she put her hands on my shoulders, looked me in the eyes, and with genuine worry said, "Don't trust any g*****s."
Several years later, I was a dinner guest with 5 or 6 Malawian priests in the archdiocese of Zomba--just me and them. Half of them had spent some years working in Rome, and conversation turned to the Romani. Apparently the Italian priests they worked alongside would routinely launch into 20-30-minute tirades about Romani people, laced with expletives and full of bile. The priests' takeaway from this wasn't "wow, those priests were really prejudiced," but rather, "wow, those g*****s sure must be a problem." Again, the priests in Zomba warned me against associating with "those people" should I find myself in their vicinity.
To my knowledge, I have never personally interacted with a Romani person in my life (though I am very likely mistaken in that belief). But neither had the people I spoke with in these stories. I was getting this all third-hand. People who harbor intense hatred often have an interest in being justified and vindicated in that hate, and will seek to spread their hatred to as many people as they can in order to shelter themselves in the warmth and security of being told they're right to feel the way they do.
posted by duffell at 4:37 AM on October 18, 2016 [3 favorites]
Politico: Lithuania’s ‘extreme tourism’ rankles the Roma
VILNIUS, Lithuana — Ištvan Kvik is brimming with indignation, barely able to find the words to express the revulsion he feels for the new tours being offered on the outskirts of his hometown Vilnius.posted by XMLicious at 10:30 PM on October 24, 2016 [1 favorite]
A company named Vaiduokliai, or Ghosts, just began its first tours of the Roma village of Kirtimai, advertising the trips as an “extreme challenge.”
People are being “treated like animals on a safari,” says Kvik, a Roma singer and community organizer, who fears such tours may further strengthen existing prejudices against the country’s Roma population.
Vaida Šulniūtė, the interim director of Vaiduokliai, which also offers prostitution-themed tours of Vilnius as part of its “sinful city” packages, says the company isn’t trying to perpetuate stereotypes but rather break them down.
“We explain Roma traditions and mention social projects,” Šulniūtė says.
...
“We have traveled to many places but never visited this place in our own city,” says one tourist who declined to give her name.
Klemontovič, the tour guide who now studies social work, pointed to a house in the settlement. “This is where I used to buy heroin,” he says.
...
As many as two thirds of landlords say they would not like to rent an apartment to the Roma, so municipal officials occasionally have to mediate between families and landlords as housing is a priority.
...
In the end, this may be the last chance for tourists to see the village of Kirtimai before it disappears.
It has already shrunk from 500 to about 370 people due to emigration and people moving into government housing. Officials want to relocate another third of the village’s residents into municipal housing in the next two years. Kvik thinks it’s a step in the right direction, giving Roma better access to schools, running water and even central heating.
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posted by Etrigan at 9:21 AM on October 10, 2016 [49 favorites]