Hi, this is something I've been thinking about since I've joined this forum back in 08; is there a place on here people of color can talk and share their experiences with one another? Sometimes I do feel alone in a certain sense on here. I've been gone for a few years so I'm not sure if y'all might have a poc community on here now.
We don't have anything official on the forum (we divide the forum by genre and writing form, but without any rigid boundaries) but there are probably some/many POC around here you could connect with if you can find them/they find you).
I'm wondering how do I find them though? it would be weird if I was in someone random thread and asked "hey, who in here is black?" you know.
I'd be curious to know what's so specific to black people that us white folk couldn't possibly understand or be able to contribute in a meaningful way?
Society has not progressed so far that all forms of racial segregation have been eliminated. Races are still differentiated in society in certain meaningful ways, they still have different experiences. People obviously appreciate interacting with people with those same experiences.
It's what happens all the time. Pretending it isn't there doesn't help, so it can be helpful to sort of go with it, just as it can be helpful to fight it.
Says the white woman living in a mostly white neighborhood in the land of whiteness. I , on the other hand, live on 5th Street. That would be five blocks away from downtown Jacksonville. My next door neighbors are black, the working class neighborhood in which I choose to live is predominately black, and I daresay that every morning as I leave my house and go about my life I brush shoulders with more black people than every last person put together on this thread. Ah, a wonder it is to me... the condescending, nose-in-the-air opinions of folks who cling to the status quo and yet believe themselves enlightened. Our shared experience is Life. That is what bonds us, not the color of our skin.
Obviously the person who started this thread has a different perspective on the issue. And if I have to decide whose perspective to trust on an issue of what it's like to be a writer of colour, I'm probably going to trust the writer of colour, not someone who lives near some black people.
If you want to argue against the idea of people with specific shared experiences discussing those experiences, maybe you should start a debate room thread.
@S-wo : I only know about one active POC writing forum. The problem is, though, the larger forum it belongs to has some problems, and I wouldn’t normally recommend it. I can PM you if you want. @Komposten : Any chance the mod staff could MAKE a POC subforum here? It seems like a pity the only POC subforum I can find on the Internet is so bad.
As a forum we have historically resisted the urge to create subforums dealing with identity politics. You'll notice there is also no LGBTQ+ subforum, though I myself have been a card-carrying member of the Friends of Dorothy long enough to remember when that phrase still held some currency, and I'm not the only member of the staff who is queer. Such a subforum does not exist and I won't be championing one. I am also not the only member of staff who is a POC. At the risk of putting the broken record on the turntable yet again, it's a writing forum. We're here to talk about the creation of stories.
But we also have the lounge in which we talk about anything so no, it's not just about writing stories.
Instead of a subforum, perhaps a thread in the Lounge where writers of color can share their experiences in the way you describe. I think you could accomplish the same thing in that way.
I kinda feel like that'd end up a trainwreck for reasons demonstrated above, though admittedly no more so than a sub-forum would. A group conversation might work better, maybe.
Okay, but.... a group conversation with who? Everyone except Iain Sparrow? Like OP said, there’s no way to know who is and who isn’t POC.
No, there isn't. I don't think there's a perfect solution. That's just the best I can come up with for giving OP what they want without giving the mod team too much of a headache.
Personally I don’t see what is to be gained by having any discussion within any social demographic about any topic to the exclusion of other groups. Segregation, marginalisation and discrimination don’t get solved by targeted groups talking among themselves. Groups with differing ideologies and viewpoints have to communicate in order for any kind of social change to occur. If the goal is of discussing shared experiences, why does that need to be within a sub-section? Personally I would love to be able to hear those experiences too, as a white person living in a predominantly white area. In fact, I would tentatively suggest that social groups who have a history of conflict could probably accomplish more by sharing their lives and experiences and learning about each other than they ever could by sharing those experiences only with other people who also have had those experiences. If everyone in the room has shared your experiences, what’s the point of sharing them? And what is it about people who don’t belong to that group that makes you think they shouldn’t also hear your experiences?
We have private groups on this board. There's one for romance writers, one for the military gang... maybe others I don't know about. I can only speak for the romance group, but - romance writers get shit on sometimes. I don't think it's bad on this board, but there's enough of an attitude that there are times I don't want to discuss a romance-specific issue with the larger crowd. On the open forums I've been lectured about the nature of romance novels by non-romance writers, heard the standard "just a romance" comments, and tolerated (or, more often, refused to tolerate) various expressions of distaste and ignorance. So, yeah, sometimes I discuss romance on the open boards where I'm aware I may have to either ignore ignorance or waste energy trying to educate someone who's not likely interested in being educated. Sometimes I just don't feel like having that fight. So it's been nice to have a romance group where I know I won't have to put up with the nonsense. (Honestly, it's not a very active group. But it's still there, last time I checked). It's also a good spot to ask questions that are specific to romance writing/publishing. I can certainly imagine some parallels to writers of colour.
Forgive the hack job on your quote Bay, but I want to make sure I'm replying to what seems to be the heart of the matter... This is a good point, and one which I hadn't thought of. People might want to discuss issues specific to their experiences without feeling they have to justify that position to people who only want to argue against them. Or who are deliberately causing trouble. Somewhere in the back of my mind is a concern that if you discuss these things only with people who won't dissent, then you're not really discussing it - you're all just agreeing with each other. Or, at least, you're going to get a more limited range of responses because the people with whom you are discussing it are more likely to share your point of view. I can understand that from the point of view of romance writing, because romance is a genre of literature. If others don't read or write in that genre, then they are not necessarily going to be in the best position to advise on subjects specific to that genre. But is being of a certain ethnicity a literary genre? Or is it that issues of ethnicity are a theme which can occur within many genres? If the former, then I would argue that there is a rationale for a sub-forum for this genre, though I would suggest that it is "writing of colour", not "writers of colour", since anybody can write in any genre without necessarily having had the experiences about which they are writing. If, however, it is more that people want a space to discuss issues of ethnicity more generally, or as writers, or within a piece they are working on, then I would suggest that that is a discussion which can be had with a wider range of people than only those who belong to that ethnicity. After all, we all bring varying perspectives on a wide range of topics, even if they don't directly affect us.
I agree this is an issue if you only EVER spend time in your safe zone. But sometimes you're just tired, you know? Sometimes you don't want the fight. Also, sometimes there's stuff that doesn't need to be discussed. Like, for romance, the definition of what modern genre romance is. There's no need to discuss it. It's a fact for anyone who's paying attention. Sometimes I don't want to have to educate someone else about a fact they refuse to accept. There's no point hearing their opinion, because their opinion is just wrong. And it's not my job, unless I choose to make it my job, to educate people about the modern romance genre. I trust you can see the parallels. Well, yeah, a lot of bookstores have African-American fiction sections, and there are sub-genres of romance dedicated to characters of colour. In terms of whether only writers of colour should be writing in these genres? That's a whole different question (you can probably do a search for appropriation and see some of the iterations of it that have come up on this board, as well as on the wider web.) And, honestly, I can see a writer of colour creating a character of colour in a genre dedicated to characters of colour, posting about it on the open board, and having to tolerate (or, again, refuse to tolerate) some pretty useless if not downright ignorant "advice" from other posters. (Possibly including me. I'm not trying to set myself up as any kind of a paragon in all this.)
