To Know, To Will, To Dare and to Talk About It

[bcholmes]

An interesting post about whether RaceFail can be analyzed along media/book fandom lines. I don't claim to agree with it all, but it's food for thought. I like this part, especially:

I think racism is everyone's fight. This time, I think it became too much and too often the fight of "media" fandom; it can't stay that way. I also think that this particular fight against racism revealed some deep-seated fault lines in a community I care deeply about, fault lines that deal with prejudice and inequality and power and privilege. The racism did break my heart, and it made me extremely angry, but it was the fact that it happened in this community that made it so upsetting for me -- not because racism in this community is worse than racism anywhere else in the world, or even because I ever thought that fandom was free of racism (I certainly never thought that, it would have been a massive delusion) -- but because in this case, really paying attention to the racism in science fiction fandom meant that I had to look a little more closely at my community, and looking a little more closely at my community meant that I had to become aware of a division I had previously done my best to ignore. I can't ignore it anymore, and I'm glad of that, because I would always rather be aware.

Some of the comment threads are good reading, too. I think there's an interesting thread about the differences between publish and multicasting.