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Race issues
Jun. 7th, 2010 03:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
adalgerI need help.
I'm a middle-aged white guy, mostly passing for any privelege I don't outright possess, so I'm at a bit of a disadvantage understanding some discrimination and outright fail; this I admit. I want it clear that I'm asking for help in understanding, and am honestly confused and not trolling or stirring up trouble / controversy.
That said, I'm sort of missing the point of the racebending revenge fic-a-thon. How does altering the appearance of someone in another universe that doesn't have the racial issues ours have and then pretending it should make a difference to how those characters interact in that universe, really relate to anything at all?
Some of them, I completely understand. Sherlock Holmes being of dark-skinned descent (or, even better, from India!) would make a huge difference to his characterization. But ... well, Tolkien? What difference would it make to anyone there how many different skin colors humans came in? There are racial tensions between the races that actually exist in Middle Earth, but rewriting Aragon as Hispanic makes no sense, because there is no Spain. I understand that replacing everybody except the bad guy with white people is horribly wrong because it caters to the nastiness of people who divide the world into "white guys" and "bad guys". I ... kind of understand that a story so obviously based on Asian culture, in a good and respectful way, should give Asian audiences faces that look like them, too. But I'm lost on how changes races of people in random stories to races that don't even exist in the story setting is relevant.
This comes out a lot more defensive than it's meant. Please understand, I want to learn so I can do the right thing. Help?
I'm a middle-aged white guy, mostly passing for any privelege I don't outright possess, so I'm at a bit of a disadvantage understanding some discrimination and outright fail; this I admit. I want it clear that I'm asking for help in understanding, and am honestly confused and not trolling or stirring up trouble / controversy.
That said, I'm sort of missing the point of the racebending revenge fic-a-thon. How does altering the appearance of someone in another universe that doesn't have the racial issues ours have and then pretending it should make a difference to how those characters interact in that universe, really relate to anything at all?
Some of them, I completely understand. Sherlock Holmes being of dark-skinned descent (or, even better, from India!) would make a huge difference to his characterization. But ... well, Tolkien? What difference would it make to anyone there how many different skin colors humans came in? There are racial tensions between the races that actually exist in Middle Earth, but rewriting Aragon as Hispanic makes no sense, because there is no Spain. I understand that replacing everybody except the bad guy with white people is horribly wrong because it caters to the nastiness of people who divide the world into "white guys" and "bad guys". I ... kind of understand that a story so obviously based on Asian culture, in a good and respectful way, should give Asian audiences faces that look like them, too. But I'm lost on how changes races of people in random stories to races that don't even exist in the story setting is relevant.
This comes out a lot more defensive than it's meant. Please understand, I want to learn so I can do the right thing. Help?
