bcholmes | WisCon: Saturday, and What I Didn't Say (Reply)

Saturday was a nice, full day at WisCon. I didn't quite get up early enough to make it to the 8:30 panels, but I went to an interesting panel at 10:00 am called "Officer Unfriendly: Problematizing Law Enforcement and the 'Justice' System". My interest in the topic is largely fuelled by Canada's training of police forces in Haiti, and the system of "killing all the bandits". (By the way, a new documentary, Haiti: We Must Kill the Bandits was premiered about a week ago in Portland).

I enjoyed the panel for its nuanced view of the police, and its recognition that the police is one part of a larger system that's fundamentally broken. orangemike make a coupl'a good comments, including one that helped us to not forget that police are people and some of what they deal with is wrong and tragic. But I think the most powerful comment, for me, came from Buzz, a GLBT activist who talked about working in groups to push for hate crimes legislation.

Buzz asserted that hate crimes legislation was usually a pretty easy sell when talking to middle-class, white GLBT-folk, and it was usually a good basis on which to build later legislation such as non-discrimination legislation. But, he said, when the conversation occurs in groups with a larger non-white or non-middle-class constituency, the conversation changes. In these cases, he said, people are very resistant to the new laws believing that they will disproportionately be applied to people of colour and the poor. That comment stayed with me for most of the con.

I've been pretty straight-forwardly pro-hate-crimes law (to the extent that I've always viewed it as a no-brainer), and this comment gave me pause. It was also pretty timely, given the business with Malik Zulu Shabazz being refused entry to Canada recently. (I don't really know the full details of that situation, but it left a bad taste in my mouth).

After a good meal with lcohen, my after-lunch panel, as circled in my book, was going to be "Why is the Universe So Damn White?" But at the last minute, I was intrigued by the sound of a panel called "Liking your Life in an Unlikeable World: Personal Energy for Political Work." This turned out to be one of the panels I mentioned most often in later discussion. I think I tend to get the WisCon schedule each year, and pick out all the panels that speak to my favourite topics. This now having been my eighth WisCon (!), I feel like a lot of those panels propel these topics a bit further each year.

But "Liking Your Life" was, in many ways, a brand new topic for me. And that made it seem "fresher" somehow, which is why it stood out. A lot of the panel talked about "extroverted activism" versus "introverted activism": the latter seeming to fit a writer's life well. Octavia Butler was cited as someone who reached a lot of people through her work and yet was terribly shy and introverted. It was during this panel that Eleanor Arnason said that, if one got a few drinks in her, she'd admit that she wished that she could have died with Che Guevara in Bolivia — not because she wanted to be dead, but because she wished she had that kind of dedication to changing the world.

Hanne Blank also cited two quotations that I later recycled in another panel: "No one should be denied their image in art" and "It is the job of art to provide that which life does not". She credited the quotations to an African filmmaker (Nigerian, I think she said), whose name she was unable to remember.

I don't know that the panel really kept completely on topic, but I enjoyed it a lot.

Next up was the big, double-bill of Cultural Appropriation. I've seen a number of instances of this panel at WisCon, and I think that, in some past years, the people who speak best on this topic had grown a bit tired of having to say the same things over and over again. And so the panel in past years hasn't been stellar (the last time I saw a really good version, it included badger2305 and larbalestier. But that was a few years ago.

I did not see last year's panel, but it certainly became a big deal in the blogosphere after WisCon. And knowing how WisCon works, I expected this year's panel to be well-prepared. And it was really good. badger2305, Candra Gill, M.J. Hardman, Yoon Ha Lee, Nnedi Nkemdili Okorafor-Mbahu and one other person whose name I've mislaid. The panelists mostly declined to take comments from the audience, preferring instead to talk amongst themselves. badger2305 is, for the record, almost entirely composed of awesome.

I wish I could itemize the topics that came up. But among those I remember are:

the assumption that there is no such thing as "white culture" (this topic reminded me a lot of this ethnographic analysis of white culture posted late last year).
The complexities of hybridized cultural history, and the various ways that the borders of cultural identity are policed. One woman spoke about being seen as "too white" because she grew up in a white suburb.
White guilt and the general behaviour of white people seeking gold stars, and how that interferes with so much education about racism and cultural appropriation. There was some talk about proper ally behaviour, and seeking gold stars is not what's needed.

The second timeslot of the panel was supposed to be the audience participation time. alanbostick facilitated the panel, and after a slightly nervous start, it was pretty effective. I learned a lot of really good things from this part, too, but there was some annoying behaviour in that panel, too.

Once again, I watched wild_irises handle three situations with amazing skill. One situation was in response to Buzz, the GLBT person who, although really trying to be productive, asserted once too many times that there was still way too much Racism 101 stuff to do before having a difficult conversation like Cultural Appropriation. I understood where he was coming from, but it was his first WisCon, and I think he wasn't familiar with a lot of the stuff WisCon has done. Eventually wild_irises said, plainly, but pleasantly, "I'm sorry, Buzz, but you're wrong."

Early in the panel, one woman (Roslyn) expressed a great deal of doubt about the panel. I heard her as saying that, as a person of colour, she'd been in countless versions of that kind of workshop, and she was skeptical of it producing anything positive. Initially, she kept articulating her reservation by saying, "I have no idea what you people are even talking about." There was an exchange that went something like this:

wild_irises: I have a question for Roslyn. I'd like to know what you want to talk about.
Roslyn (taken back a bit): Do I sound confrontational to you?
wild_irises: You don't sound confrontational. I'd say you sound unhappy.

I think wild_irises really twigged to the idea that Roslyn was expressing Not Feeling Heard, and deftly made space for Roslyn to air her concerns.

There was a third interaction, when wild_irises said, "I'm hearing a lot of white voices interrupting when Roslyn said she'd like to speak next." Me, I had been thinking the same thing, but unsure how to say it, and debating whether or not another white voice should enter the conversation just then. I've reflected on that in the time since then, and concluded that, for me, this was a good example of how white guilt can be used to justify my own inaction.

Speaking of which, there was a person who drove me batshit crazy. Not just on that panel, but on a few panels. Wouldn't. Stop. Interrupting.

During the moderation panel on Friday, badgerbag made the excellent point that we all (moderators, panelists, and audience) have responsibility to help deal with difficult people. And I didn't play my part. So, I think what I wish I had said was this:

[Facilitator], I'd like to say something that I think will introduce conflict. I'm feeling profoundly uncomfortable with a lot of the things that [Difficult Lady] is saying. I think my discomfort comes from two sources: first, I think she's speaking far too much, and interrupting far too much, and she needs to make room for others to participate more fully. But even more, I think that when she speaks (in particular, when she speaks to people of colour), the way she phrases her contributions really sound patronizing. She speaks as if she has all the answers, and she's generously sharing her wisdom about race issues with people of colour and I feel strongly that she isn't speaking from the position of authority that she seems to claim. In particular, I think she's demonstrating behaviour that exemplifies a lot of what we're talking about in this panel.

I didn't say that, but I wish I had. I had been rehearsing it in my head, but never got it out. Part of that was the "white guilt justifying inaction" thang, and part of it was not wanting to become the mean person in the workshop (yeah, like, I'm never mean).

So. Hm.

After dinner, there was the Tiptree auction, which wasn't as amazing as previous years. There wasn't really any Spacebabe stuff to bid on (and who is this Space Dame imposter, anyhow?)

I didn't make it to any other panels after that. And it was one of the only evenings that I really spent any time at the room parties. But a good day.

Afterward:

Here's a really good thread that talks about the second part of the cultural appropriation panel, and some of the problems that happened on it.

Also, I became aware of (and immediately ordered from Powell's) Nisi Shawl's book, Writing the Other.