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Thoroughly Nonracist Nonsense

Synopsis: Weird Tales was planning to publish the first chapter of Victoria Foyt’s Saving the Pearls: Revealing Eden, a novel which editor Marvin Kaye described as a “Thoroughly Non-racist book,” calling it:

…a compelling view of a world that didn’t listen to the warnings of ecologists, and a world that has developed a reverse racism: blacks dominating and detesting not just whites, but latinos and albinos, the few that still survive of the latter are hunted down and slaughtered.1

Revealing Eden is a science fiction novel, which is not what Weird Tales usually published. I.e., Kaye was going out of his way to promote this book, which is totally not racist.

Kaye condemned those who criticized the book as lacking in “wit, wisdom and depth of literary analysis to understand what they read.” I like to think of myself as someone who rolled reasonably well on those stats, so I figured I’d download the sample to my phone and give it a read.

Excerpts from the first chapter are indented. My thoughts are italicized.

EDEN JUMPED at the sound of approaching steps. They must not see.

Black people are “them.” There’s totally nothing racist about setting up a racial us vs. them dichotomy in the very first line of your book.

Eden shot to her feet, her heart racing, as a plump, dark-skinned lab assistant appeared on the other side of the partition. It was only Peach, who wasn’t as cruel as the rest of them.

From the fourth paragraph. Our heroine is named after the garden of paradise, while our heavy and not-quite-as-bad-as-the-rest black woman is named Peach. Totally not racist!

Had Peach forgotten that Eden’s skin only had a dark coating? Maybe she was passing, after all. Wouldn’t that be nice. Eden almost enjoyed pointing out the truth.

Eden wears totally-not-blackface both to protect her from the sun’s radiation and to make herself look beautiful. Also, Peach is apparently an idiot, despite being Eden’s supervisor.

In that quiet, treasured space, [Eden] allowed herself one small but true thought: I hate them.

To sum up so far, we have a white protagonist in a world where black people are cruel, idiot overlords, and she hates them. But maybe the author is going to do some clever and totally-not-racist inversion.

That bitch Ashina was now fifteen minutes late and Eden wanted to take her break. She glanced around the lab, hoping for a sign of the haughty Coal.

Black people are Coals. White people are Pearls. Also, the second Coal we meet is a haughty (uppity?) bitch.

Eden flinched. One of them was touching her. White-hot light exploded in her head. Before she knew it, she blurted out an incendiary racial slur.

“Get your hands off of me, you damn Coal!”

“Coal” is an incendiary racial slur … which our protagonist is constantly using in her narrative. Also, I’m a little curious why the author uses and defends the term in interviews. I’m sure there’s a totally-not-racist reason, though!

###

I only read the sample, so it’s possible that Foyt manages to use the reversal of traditional U.S. racial dynamics to produce an insightful and important work that goes beyond nasty, bullying, caricatured Coals and the brilliant-but-persecuted Pearls. But the first chapter that I read doesn’t move beyond these simplistic dynamics and one-dimensional portrayals of a heroic white girl in a world dominated by nasty, dull-witted blacks.

And that first chapter is what Marvin Kaye was going out of his way to showcase in Weird Tales, a magazine which had earned a place on the 2010 Hugo ballot under the leadership of former editor Ann VanderMeer. That is what Kaye defended as a Thoroughly Non-racist book.

I’m more than willing to grant that the author probably did not deliberately and intentionally set out to write a book based on racial caricatures and stereotypes, that she intended no offense when she hypersexualized black men or described Eden’s black love interest as a “beast man,” that her premise, which relies on Eden and her white father being smarter than all of the evil blacks, was not meant to be hurtful. I accept that she didn’t try to write a story which takes place in a world almost identical to the paranoid fear-rantings of a lifelong KKK loyalist. (“This is what will happen if you let them darkies take over!”)

If you choose an incredibly narrow definition of racism as intentional, deliberate, fully conscious harm, then an argument could be made for Kaye’s defense of the book.

It would be a very poor argument. And it’s yet another incredibly problematic example of a white man in a position of power standing up and lecturing people of color, in a most condescending fashion, about how they don’t understand what racism is, and that he is declaring this book officially Not Racist.

I see now that Kaye’s piece has been pulled, and the magazine is apologizing for any pain and offense it caused. Kaye is traveling and hasn’t responded yet. While I appreciate the apology from the higher-ups at Weird Tales, I remain highly disturbed that the editor ever thought this was in any way a good idea, that he was so supportive of this novel that he was going out of his way to defend  and support it … up until the Internet landed on his head.

I’m sure Marvin Kaye, like Victoria Foyt, had absolutely no intention of causing harm. But lack of intent doesn’t undo or negate the harm caused by ignorance, and Kaye’s actions have been harmful indeed.

ETA: And it sounds like Kaye and the publisher were told months ago that this was a bad idea. (From Jeff VanderMeer – also includes a screenshot of Kaye’s post.)

ETA x 2: N. K. Jemisin – This is how you destroy something beautiful…

—

  1. Kaye’s original post has since been yanked from the Weird Tales site. ↩
August 20th, 2012 | Tags: | Category: Uncategorized

34 comments to Thoroughly Nonracist Nonsense

  • Paige Vest
    August 20th, 2012 at 10:34 pm

    Thank God for screenshots! I wonder what they hoped to gain by deleting Kaye’s article?

    Also, regarding the ‘apology’ issued by Harlacher, the publisher… it seemed pretty half-assed to me. Especially after reading this comment he left in the comment thread of said apology post:

    “Also, the website was hacked and he didn’t write that.
    No, that’s not true.”

    HAHAHAHAHA!

    HAHA!

    HA…

    Yeah, that wasn’t even a little bit funny.

  • sistercoyote
    August 20th, 2012 at 10:36 pm

    There is not enough *facepalm* in the world for some of these people.

  • Marko Kloos (@markokloos)
    August 20th, 2012 at 10:38 pm

    That’s some spectacularly shitty prose on top of being racist twaddle.

  • Mitaukano
    August 20th, 2012 at 11:43 pm

    Every time I see/hear/realize that this book is around I curse the skies.

  • Gabriel
    August 20th, 2012 at 11:53 pm

    I’ve been following this with much headeskery for about a week now (followed a link from Fandom Secrets and almost sorry I did!!)

    Can I just say how much I thoroughly, cordially destest the phrase “reverse racism?” The reverse of racism would be NO RACISM.

    I know, I know, small point. But still. Someone on the internet is soooo wrong…

  • Kathryn
    August 21st, 2012 at 1:46 am

    According to someone on another site, Kaye is the same person who allowed Hamlet’s Father into an anthology.

    Says it all, if it’s true.

    • Jim C. Hines
      August 21st, 2012 at 7:47 am

      Sigh…

      • Kathryn
        August 21st, 2012 at 9:00 am

        Not sure if sighing is directed at me or the situation :p

      • Scott Kennedy
        August 21st, 2012 at 1:50 pm

        While Kaye is guilty of amazingly bad judgement re: Save the Pearls, I remember looking into the Hamlet’s Father issue after Subterranean republished it. Kaye was stuck with the Card for that Anthology. Tor had Card under contract, and Kaye had the book ready to go, except that Card wouldn’t provide his piece. Finally, after something like 9 months, Kaye was given Hamlet’s Father. Kaye makes it clear in the introduction to The Ghost Quartet that Tor, not he, selected Hamlet’s Father.

        And that’s about the only issue whereon you’ll find me defending Kaye.

  • Elizabeth A. Mancz
    August 21st, 2012 at 9:05 am

    Might I have my students in my Human Diversity classes read this blog? As an example of why we need to talk about race and other prejudices, this is excellent. As long as someone can write junk like this and someone else can defend it (the editor of a well respected journal, for pity’s sake), we need to talk about this stuff. I will send here to read it, so they know who wrote it etc.

    I had totally missed this, so thanks for bringing it to my attention.

  • Elizabeth Moon
    August 21st, 2012 at 10:08 am

    Besides all that…remember Heinlein’s _Farnham’s Freehold_? We already had a role-reversal black/white book, which everyone now agrees is, yes, really-truly racist because just reversing who’s on top does not make it non-racist. People have foamed at the mouth about the evilness of Heinlein showing dark-skinned people being as tyrannical as white people.

    The book’s not only racist–and badly written–but unoriginal as well.

    “The reverse of racism would be no racism”–Gabriel. YES! With a trumpet, Gabriel.

  • Whitney
    August 21st, 2012 at 1:00 pm

    Apart from being a disgusting display of an extremely racist worldview–no matter what protests Kaye may make about it being totally not racist–this is also a very upsetting example of what happens when good magazines or publishing houses are taken over by people who won’t leave the professional publishing to the professionals. The racism of the piece not only flies in the face of the good things Weird Tales has done in the past, but the terrible writing in that excerpt shows that Mr. Kaye has no concept of what quality writing is, and therefore has no concept of how real, quality publishing works. This does not bode well for the future of the magazine. Thanks so much for posting this. I’m definitely making a note on my Duotrope account to never submit to Weird Tales.

  • Groblek
    August 21st, 2012 at 3:41 pm

    Wow. I’m appalled. Admittedly, anytime I see something advertised as “Totally not X”, my automatic reaction is to tell them to pull the other one, but wow that’s bad. Both appallingly racist and badly written.

  • Jeannette
    August 26th, 2012 at 8:42 pm

    I’m finding it a little sad that in all the conflict over this terrible, terrible book more attention hasn’t been given to Malorie Blackman’s “Noughts and Crosses” series. They’ve been out for some time, admittedly, and I suspect they were more popular in the UK than the US, but in short: a similarly premised racial dystopia with protagonists and narrators from both sides of the divide. Needless to say, I think they’re insightful and generally pretty good young adult books about racism (among other things) written by a PoC.

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    August 29th, 2012 at 1:01 pm

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  • JW
    September 15th, 2012 at 10:36 am

    You know, I was looking up quotes about freedom of speech. I saw many great lines. Then I saw yours. I don’t know who decided to include it, but it obviously didn’t belong. You seem to have a problem with people that think differently than you do. You’re tearing apart a book that has nothing to do with you. It’s another writers view, however right or wrong. It’s sickening actually. I’d get into a longer diatribe, but seeing how you like to suppress even your own thoughts with medication, I probably shouldn’t. I guess you see the world as having one answer for everything, and damn anyone who doesn’t see things like you do. It’s a shame you cannot open your mind and see not everything is racist because it mentions skin color. I’ve grown up in a neighborhood as a minority. 33% white. I know the things that go on. It’s people like you, who have a “token” black friend and treat them like a pet that are truly the racists.

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