Stand-in Bigotry: When your faves don’t have the range
Note: This was taken from a twitter thread, and not necessarily written for essay form, so it hasn’t been edited as such. Sure, I smoothed a few things over, but it is what it is. Leggo.
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I was talking with a friend and fellow writer about many of the issues facing science-fiction and fantasy storytelling, one such issue being how stand-in bigotry in storytelling (usually) doesn’t pan out. IE, people attempting to use things like racism as shortcut world building without ever attempting to, y’know, interact with said racism.
In short, when folk don’t have the range.
That was a mouthful, and I promise I’ll break it down, but first let me clarify a few things.
When I say “stand-in bigotry,” I mean it looks and sounds like bigotry does in the real world, but it’s not factually applicable. In the story, people hate robots, magic users, aliens, elves or whatever, but none of those things really exist. Stand-in bigotry is functionally racism, or at least it looks like it on the surface, but it doesn’t engage with real world racism in any meaningful way except to use it as literary shorthand. A prop. A way to let the reader or viewer in on how the world works and who we should be rooting for.
Oppressed = magic users. See how poorly they’re treated.
Oppressor = non-magic users, of all races and genders.
Magic users win? Yay!
Cut and dry, not gross social justice nonsense to get in the way, right?
This method of storytelling falls short, for a number of reasons. We’ll get to that.
Usually, stand-in bigotry is a tool writers use in an attempt to make a point. Maybe the story is examining what it means to have one’s humanity denied. Maybe it’s attempting to examine oppression. Most of the time, it’s to drive conflict for the protagonist(s) because they are a member of the fictionally marginalized group. They’re a robot. Or they’re magical. Or they’re an alien. Or someone they know is one of those things. Or they eventually meet someone they care about who is one of those things. Or, and this is my least favorite reason for doing this, we’ve landed face first in a racist redemption arc. Man I hate those things.
Whatever the case may be, certain storytellers will make up some way to fictionally oppress their characters, usually via some visually distinguishable characteristic, and expect that to be good enough. But that premise alone can’t do the heavy lifting. Why?
BECAUSE RACISM ACTUALLY EXISTS!
Racism is a real-world issue that real world viewers or readers face every day, and the writers of these stories seem to either forget this or intentionally ignore it. Neither, is a good look.
Now, maybe you’re reading this and realizing that you’ve done this in your stories. You aren’t trying to say racism doesn’t exist, or at least you’re not meaning to. And you’re certainly not intentionally ignoring it. So why is this a problem you need to deal with? Let me explain.
….no, is to much. Let me sum up.
Books or movies or TV shows or video games will use a form of coding — sometimes even racial — to say “hey, this thing happening in this fake world is just like what happens in the real world.” People are mistreated. It’s bad. Maybe there are protests. Maybe there are laws or old prejudices that make the world this way. Usually there are “reasons” for the things that happen in your world and your story. These reasons could be one of the following:
· Robots literally are not human and should not have rights.
· Magic is dangerous and needs to be controlled.
· This race of aliens/beings was on the other side of some ancient war.
And here is where things have already started to go sideways, because you are now attempting to make your racism or oppression logical or rational, and this? This is the crux of the problem, because racism is not logical. There is no real “reason” for it to exist. There is no cut and dry “yep, that checks out” for what non-white people have to deal with in the real world. Yet, some writers are hell bent on trying to make this a thing, and that shorthand I was talking about is now extended to real world struggles.
Take Detroit: Become Human. Robots are coded as Black people with actual negro spirituals and mess. They want rights, they want an ammendment to the law made, so forth and ro on.
Or look at Bright, the movie on Netflix. Listen, I love Will Smith, but….
………
Orcs. That’s…that’s all I’m gonna say.
Then there’s any number of books or games where magic exists and the people who use it are oppressed, held in camps, sold as slaves, second class citizens, if they’re seen as citizens at all. Looking at you Dragon Age games, even though I freaking love you. All of this is usually done by writers or show runners or developers who have no clue how real racism actually works. Or at least not on the level they’re trying to…emulate? Bring to mind? Evoke?
Actual racism, at its core, is between people. There’s no sensible reason for it to exist save for people wanting to be horrible to one another for social, economic, or colonial gains. Sure, bigots will provide what they believe are rational reasons, because it’s easier for them to act they way they do if these “reasons” provide cognitive dissonance.
A great example of this is cited in Post Traumatic Slavery Syndrome, Dr. Joy DeGruy. In her book, and on YouTube, the good doctor goes into detail concerning how this dissonance was fundamental for slave owners and everyone else involved in the slave trade to be able to sleep at night after being so monstrous to Black people.
For instance, scientists claimed Black people didn’t feel pain the same way anyone else does, that Black people are somehow able to take more physical abuse than anyone else — something that’s been carried over into the medical field through today — so they could be worked harder.
Or Black women are inherently promiscuous in nature, to the point where they can’t be r*ped, it’s just how they are, so assaulting them isn’t an actual crime.
ALSO CARRIED OVER TO TODAY.
These were literal laws in some cases.
Know what, folk are lazy, let me get a link. Educate yourselves, then come back. This piece isn’t going anywhere.
Finish the video?
Good.
So, to recap, real world racism is people being shitty to other people. Magical racism is people being shitty to (sometimes) people who are dangerously different, or not human, or not from here, or…
You connecting the dots yet? This…this is what white supremacists and colonizers say. And if you are writing these stories, you can literally make this bullshit TRUE if you’re not careful. Which (usually) people aren’t. Because, like I said, they don’t want to engage with real world bigotry and oppression, they ignore it, or they forget it’s a thing. They just need a system for their characters to fight against arbitrarily.
Once again, Detroit: Become human actually pisses me off because the point of the game is for the player to go through this whole thing of trying to debate whether the androids are human and deserving of personhood and decency and THAT IS NOT A DEBATE TO BE HAD IN THE REAL WORLD. Someone’s humanity is not up for debate, ever. People are not machines. Whether they deserve rights cannot be questioned. Writing stories where bigotry actually has this feasible argument on its side is…ugh.
But I digress.
Sometimes, writers will engage with the bullshit in the text. Or on screen. They will meet it head on instead of hand waving or wand waving it away or trying ridiculous — clumsy at best, malicious at worst — parallels between their fictional world and the real one. Sometimes.
Most of the time that engagement just doesn’t happen. Maybe it’s because they don’t know how to engage it. Maybe it’s because they never had to think about how. Maybe it’s because publishing and gaming and entertainment and society as a whole are a mess. But when you point this out…well, people act like you’re the problem. (I’m sure the comments will be a treat.)
Anyway, the coding thing I mentioned can be intentional or not intentional, but it’s there. And maybe the people creating these things don’t intend for this to be the case, but — say it with me, now — intent doesn’t matter.
That’s why lots of non-white writers, particularly Black ones, say things like YOU CAN’T WRITE IN A VACUUM. Racism based on skin color might not exist in your world, but it exists in this one, and when you draw parallels to it without engaging with it, shit hits the fan. Because you can’t just pretend these things aren’t real. It gives off a very gross “I don’t like all these icky politics and PC culture in my Hallmark movies” vibe.
You’re taking racism, which is this horrible, terrible thing, and making it palatable in a way you prefer so you can then engage it on a level you’re comfortable with. That doesn’t help anyone, and your comfort isn’t what’s important here. So, like I said, people very often just don’t have the range for stuff like this, and flub things horribly as a result. On top of that, this is lazy as hell writing and world building, and you should probably wanna do better from an artistic standpoint, if nothing else.
So…maybe educate yourselves and try to flub it less, I guess?
No, I will NOT be answering questions.
No, I will NOT provide “clarity.”
No, I will NOT listen to how you’re attempting to do it and offer insight on how to do it “right.”
Google is free, I am not, do your own homework, and please LISTEN to marginalized people.
