I'm a white guy, so I absolutely can't speak for any POC. But I'm queer and disabled, so I'm coming from that POV, and to me some of it's about representation. It's about actually having characters who are something like you in a story.
It's easy, as a white man, to dismiss that - we don't need to think about it. Our race and gender are all over the place - we can count on The People In Charge to generally look a fair bit like us.
But once you step outside that box, the guarantee is not there. So you grow up being shown that the hero (or even just the Really Interesting 3D Bad Guy)is never someone who looks like you.
So that matters even if you're talking about a world where race (as we know it) "doesn't matter". Because we don't live in that world.
(Apologies if I've stepped on any toes here - hopefully this hasn't come across as the white version of mansplainning, but I saw no-one had answered yet.)
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branchandroot
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Date: 2010-06-08 12:41 pm (UTC)It's easy, as a white man, to dismiss that - we don't need to think about it. Our race and gender are all over the place - we can count on The People In Charge to generally look a fair bit like us.
But once you step outside that box, the guarantee is not there. So you grow up being shown that the hero (or even just the Really Interesting 3D Bad Guy)is never someone who looks like you.
So that matters even if you're talking about a world where race (as we know it) "doesn't matter". Because we don't live in that world.
(Apologies if I've stepped on any toes here - hopefully this hasn't come across as the white version of mansplainning, but I saw no-one had answered yet.)