Facades
My head's been tearing itself apart the last few days over a lingering question about my as-yet prospective writing career. See, I want the stories I write to be unconventional, and defiant, and principled, and one of the ways I want to do that is to write stories about under-represented populations: people of color, LGBTQIA, the disabled, etc.
The question has been whether I feel I have a right to tell stories for certain populations that I don't belong to. Specifically, I made one of the protagonists in my superhero story a Black transwoman. For juvenile purposes, I will say that I intend to go 'whole-hog' with the idea (penises). It will explore issues of Blackness and racism (she was born on the South Side of Chicago), and it'll bluntly explore her transition and her identity and love life.
But I keep coming back to the same question. Do I have the right to tell the stories of Black characters? Even if I try to make it as authentic to the experience as possible, is it still insulting? Am I allowed to write the N-word in this context?
This post isn't about those questions, which I more-or-less have answered satisfactorily for myself as of today. This post is about the realizations I've had along the way.
Everyone who is born or raised in America is racist. That is an inescapable truth, and the reason is that our media is racist. Our cultural memes are generally racist. We see Black and Hispanic people only as gangsters and thugs because that's what we see in movies and TV shows, and when we see otherwise it's generally as that character's rejection of their ethnic 'norm.' They're trying to 'make something of themselves,' as opposed to the rest of their community. It's shitty.
I don't know that there's any cure for it beyond improving representation, and that takes time. For now, it's mostly a matter of learning to recognize it in yourself and policing it. As a part of this process, I think some people do something one might call 'performative wokeness.'
It becomes important for us to be seen as not racist, as open-minded and tolerant. We drift into cultural appropriation, trying to speak the verbal and non-verbal language. We make a show of listening to hip-hop and R&B. We shit-talk other White people on social media.
Some of us (like me) ask Black people shitty questions, like 'is it okay to write the N-word if I'm quoting lyrics, in the interest of artistic integrity?'
Seriously. I sent that question to an editor at The Root on Twitter as a DM. Within a matter of hours I realized how stupid that had been. Is 'artistic integrity' really so important to me that I'm willing to hurt others by using a word so associated with hate? Is it really too much to ask to let Black people have literally one fucking word that only they can use?
I though to send him another message explaining that I realized how stupid my question had been, and to explain the conclusion I'd come to, but this is about the point where I had the next necessary realization in this process:
I was just looking for Black approval. I wanted to be 'invited to the cookout.' As well-intentioned as that might've been, the reality is that's just another form of tokenism, and tokenism isn't tolerance. It's not equality of regard.
So now I have all this White guilt, and I have to go through the difficult process of owning it and processing it and knowing that I can't just have a random Black person anoint me with Wokeness to absolve it.
Fast forward to the past few days. I start thinking about finding some place on Reddit to ask Black people about whether White people get to write stories about Black characters. Isn't it better to write outside of your own point of view? Or would I be taking away the chance for a Black person to tell this character's story? Would I be taking advantage of our cultural push for diversity to score points?
Here I was, about to ask another stupid question (yes, they exist). And I realized that the answers to the question didn't matter. It would just be more theater, and it wouldn't change the reality that trying to write that story will be messy as fuck. People will of course be offended by it, and that's not gonna go away if one Black person gives me their blessing, both because they're not a monolith and also because, if I'm writing purely for praise, then I'm not writing authentically, and I'm not being genuine, and all that other beatnik bullshit I like to window-dress with.
So I'm gonna write my stories with my diverse cast of characters, stories that don't shy away from the messiness of race and gender and sex and all that, both as a challenge to myself to learn how to see their points of view, and also because they're the stories I want to tell.
Again, not the point. Not really. If that were the point, then this, too, would just be theater, a way for me to display my Wokeness to people who already like me, which is probably stupid. I gotta do this shit stream-of-consciousness like, so I had to meander to get to this point because that's the phase of creative endeavor that I'm in: finding my voice.
The pretense is the point, here. The performance. That's what the struggle actually is: what is the value of the performances I put on for others? Is it even possible to live without facade?
Tonight, I feel pretense is necessary to a degree. If we live in a universe devoid of inherent meaning, then what do we have to guide us beyond pretense? What pushes me to tell stories, to entertain, if not some pretense about the value of telling stories? Of making people smile? Of an act of kindness in cruel times?
My brain rants and raves about 'authenticity,' possibly the most bullshit of all buzzwords, and it tears at my pretension and strips away my guideposts because I have to be real. I have to be the realest motherfucker to ever walk the Earth or fuckin' die tryin' because I tell myself that that's the only way to be genuine, to be 'AUTHENTIC,' but what if all that word means is the absence of everything that I tell myself matters?
What if all it means is that nothing is true except that nothing is true?
And in this still void, this proverbial abyss in which I house all my imaginary monsters and thus myself, I see that which I already know: 'Truth' is function of belief. The thing that makes something matter is one's desire for it to matter. The V For Vendetta line about using lies to tell truths.
We are all storytellers in our own way. The very lives we build for ourselves are our purest works - a collection of attractive lies that form the necessary basis for subjective meaning. It's really no wonder that I have turned a lifetime of trying to understand myself into a propensity for understanding and crafting stories.
And the only person whose blessing I need to begin in earnest is my own. I don't know how close I am to that, and maybe I'll forget this a few times along the way, but I'll get there. Maybe tomorrow I'll feel completely different about all this, but I'll get there.
Even if I have to lie to myself to do it.
The question has been whether I feel I have a right to tell stories for certain populations that I don't belong to. Specifically, I made one of the protagonists in my superhero story a Black transwoman. For juvenile purposes, I will say that I intend to go 'whole-hog' with the idea (penises). It will explore issues of Blackness and racism (she was born on the South Side of Chicago), and it'll bluntly explore her transition and her identity and love life.
But I keep coming back to the same question. Do I have the right to tell the stories of Black characters? Even if I try to make it as authentic to the experience as possible, is it still insulting? Am I allowed to write the N-word in this context?
This post isn't about those questions, which I more-or-less have answered satisfactorily for myself as of today. This post is about the realizations I've had along the way.
Everyone who is born or raised in America is racist. That is an inescapable truth, and the reason is that our media is racist. Our cultural memes are generally racist. We see Black and Hispanic people only as gangsters and thugs because that's what we see in movies and TV shows, and when we see otherwise it's generally as that character's rejection of their ethnic 'norm.' They're trying to 'make something of themselves,' as opposed to the rest of their community. It's shitty.
I don't know that there's any cure for it beyond improving representation, and that takes time. For now, it's mostly a matter of learning to recognize it in yourself and policing it. As a part of this process, I think some people do something one might call 'performative wokeness.'
It becomes important for us to be seen as not racist, as open-minded and tolerant. We drift into cultural appropriation, trying to speak the verbal and non-verbal language. We make a show of listening to hip-hop and R&B. We shit-talk other White people on social media.
Some of us (like me) ask Black people shitty questions, like 'is it okay to write the N-word if I'm quoting lyrics, in the interest of artistic integrity?'
Seriously. I sent that question to an editor at The Root on Twitter as a DM. Within a matter of hours I realized how stupid that had been. Is 'artistic integrity' really so important to me that I'm willing to hurt others by using a word so associated with hate? Is it really too much to ask to let Black people have literally one fucking word that only they can use?
I though to send him another message explaining that I realized how stupid my question had been, and to explain the conclusion I'd come to, but this is about the point where I had the next necessary realization in this process:
I was just looking for Black approval. I wanted to be 'invited to the cookout.' As well-intentioned as that might've been, the reality is that's just another form of tokenism, and tokenism isn't tolerance. It's not equality of regard.
So now I have all this White guilt, and I have to go through the difficult process of owning it and processing it and knowing that I can't just have a random Black person anoint me with Wokeness to absolve it.
Fast forward to the past few days. I start thinking about finding some place on Reddit to ask Black people about whether White people get to write stories about Black characters. Isn't it better to write outside of your own point of view? Or would I be taking away the chance for a Black person to tell this character's story? Would I be taking advantage of our cultural push for diversity to score points?
Here I was, about to ask another stupid question (yes, they exist). And I realized that the answers to the question didn't matter. It would just be more theater, and it wouldn't change the reality that trying to write that story will be messy as fuck. People will of course be offended by it, and that's not gonna go away if one Black person gives me their blessing, both because they're not a monolith and also because, if I'm writing purely for praise, then I'm not writing authentically, and I'm not being genuine, and all that other beatnik bullshit I like to window-dress with.
So I'm gonna write my stories with my diverse cast of characters, stories that don't shy away from the messiness of race and gender and sex and all that, both as a challenge to myself to learn how to see their points of view, and also because they're the stories I want to tell.
Again, not the point. Not really. If that were the point, then this, too, would just be theater, a way for me to display my Wokeness to people who already like me, which is probably stupid. I gotta do this shit stream-of-consciousness like, so I had to meander to get to this point because that's the phase of creative endeavor that I'm in: finding my voice.
The pretense is the point, here. The performance. That's what the struggle actually is: what is the value of the performances I put on for others? Is it even possible to live without facade?
Tonight, I feel pretense is necessary to a degree. If we live in a universe devoid of inherent meaning, then what do we have to guide us beyond pretense? What pushes me to tell stories, to entertain, if not some pretense about the value of telling stories? Of making people smile? Of an act of kindness in cruel times?
My brain rants and raves about 'authenticity,' possibly the most bullshit of all buzzwords, and it tears at my pretension and strips away my guideposts because I have to be real. I have to be the realest motherfucker to ever walk the Earth or fuckin' die tryin' because I tell myself that that's the only way to be genuine, to be 'AUTHENTIC,' but what if all that word means is the absence of everything that I tell myself matters?
What if all it means is that nothing is true except that nothing is true?
And in this still void, this proverbial abyss in which I house all my imaginary monsters and thus myself, I see that which I already know: 'Truth' is function of belief. The thing that makes something matter is one's desire for it to matter. The V For Vendetta line about using lies to tell truths.
We are all storytellers in our own way. The very lives we build for ourselves are our purest works - a collection of attractive lies that form the necessary basis for subjective meaning. It's really no wonder that I have turned a lifetime of trying to understand myself into a propensity for understanding and crafting stories.
And the only person whose blessing I need to begin in earnest is my own. I don't know how close I am to that, and maybe I'll forget this a few times along the way, but I'll get there. Maybe tomorrow I'll feel completely different about all this, but I'll get there.
Even if I have to lie to myself to do it.
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