You cannot convince people you don't have an agenda, because you do. The agenda is to try to allow more opportunities to minority authors. Just have to maybe own it and use your stats to back up the argument why they should try harder for those authors to be represented more. Sometimes people just won't agree in any case.
Interesting. "Came with the report"? Who wrote the report? Did they compare the diversity of the books with the diversity of the city? The ratio should be about the same.
partially I have a penchant for iconoclasm (without a cause), but mostly I don’t go out of my way to avoid these films and books, there is just always something a little more interesting for me. I probably would like game of thrones but that’s a huge investment in time I am not willing to make, so maybe that one is actively avoiding
The report doesnt look at city demographics. The report looks at the size of the library and the size of the collection, surveys libraries of similar sizes throughout the US, and averages it. Compared to the mass majority of libraries my size, ours falls behind the average. (Its a whole other argument about collection reflecting demographics, unfortunately....) The break down was the percentage of books we had in diverse areas... Black, indigenous, latino, etc. Disabilities, mental illness, LGBTQ.
That's what I thought. So predictable. What then is their basis for acceptable levels of diversity? Absolutely equal levels of representation for black, white, Asian, Hispanic, etc? And that's the problem. That conversation needs to be had before anyone can go pushing for equality. First it must be determined what exactly equality means and on what basis it's being judged.
That got me looking... Providence is roughly 55% White, which seems to make sense. Libraries and other art "venues" up here are overwhelmingly diverse. Progressive Northeast and whatnot.
It depends. If part of the purpose of the new work is to comment on the original stories and characters, then this is a good way to pull all of the content of the old stories into the new reimagining in a way that would be more difficult and probably less effective with entirely new characters.
I wonder how many people who complain about "white" characters being recast complain about the reverse phenomena. John Wayne as Genghis Khan, Tom Cruise in the Last Samurai (white saviour), Keanu Reeves in 47 ronin (another white saviour), Scarlett Johansson as Motoko Kusanagi in Ghost in the Shell. Although it amuses me when the indignation is wrongly directed. I recall coming across complaints about Ben Kingsley as Gandhi. Ben Kingsley was born Krishna Pandit Bhanji.
It is interesting to me to get to what is really going on with complaints about this sort of thing. I can understand someone who likes the source material saying that the reinvention or repurposes just isn’t their cup of tea. Fair enough. It may or may not be mine either, in any given instance. But the original source material remains in place, intact, and no one is forced to read the new material (except, perhaps, if assigned in a class). So, when I see anger or strong emotion, epithets, or what have you directed at the new works or even the idea of them, I feel like there is something more at work than simply being a fan of the source material.
And the James Patterson freaks who don't seem to care that almost all of 'his' books are written by someone else (yes, I know he isn't an author anymore, he's a 'brand', but still ...).
I meant a whole other conversation for here lol. Id be derailing the thread too much. Its already being had in libraries, mine included. Webinars, annual conferences, etc.
I saw the first episode of GoT. Didn’t make it any further into the series. Same thing with Walking Dead.
Anne Hillerman took over writing books with father Tony's characters and has done a fine job, keeping the rhythm and flavor of the originals while adding her own influence. I like her work as well as I did her father's and am happy to have the series continue in such capable hands.
Cleopatra's race is a bit of a contentious subject. On topic: People seem obsessed with race these days. Who cares if a character is black or white? Even if it is non-fiction. I watched some English adaptation of the Illiad, or the Trojan war where Achilles was black, and it did not bother me. Diversity for me is human strength, it gives us uniqeness and character. I hope in the future that there will be as many colours of humans as there are flowers on Earth. Some people have wished for us all to become one race so that racism disappears, I think that is a silly wish, we will just find other ways of hating and classifying each other. Racism will be part and parcel of humanity for as long as we remain in this form and mind. And now that I end my comment, I too realise I may actually be obsessed with race and colour...
Wikipedia notwithstanding, I haven’t seen a serious case made for her being anything other than a Macedonian of the Ptolemy line. The factual underpinnings of the counterarguments seem thin at best.
I used to crack up as a kid watching white people playing Indians in the Westerns, and a white guy playing Charlie Chan. And I remember seeing so many actual Chinese Americans in the show Kung Fu and being impressed. That show broke a lot of ground. Of course a lot of Chinese worked on the railroads, and they hired actual Chinese Americans to play them. For many of the actors it was the beginning of long careers.
Fair enough. Time is valuable and if you have a backlog of other things to do then I can understand it.