Creating Fandom as a Safe Space for Fen of Color

Words We Will Use

PoC: Abbreviation for People of Color. This is currently the mainstream term used by US anti-racist activists and self-identifying PoC to mean ethnic and racial minorities, used instead of the term minority, which implies inferiority and disenfranchisement. The term emphasizes common experiences of racial discrimination or racism. People from some Commonwealth countries prefer the term non-white because of colour implies coloured.

Privilege: Privilege is a right, favor, advantage, immunity, specially granted to one individual or group, and withheld from another. White privilege is an historically based, institutionally perpetuated system of: (1) Preferential prejudice for and treatment of white people based solely on their skin color and/or ancestral origin from Europe beyond what is commonly experienced by the non-white people in those same social, political, and economic spaces (nation, community, workplace, income, etc.); and (2) Exemption from racial and/or national oppression based on skin color and/or ancestral origin from Africa, Asia, the Americas and the Arab world. U.S. institutions and culture (economic, legal, military, political, educational, entertainment, familial and religious) privilege peoples from Europe over peoples from the Americas, Africa, Asia and the Arab world. In a white supremacy system, white privilege and racial oppression are two sides of the same coin. "White peoples were exempt from slavery, land grab and genocide, the first forms of white privilege (in the future US)."1

Race: Race can be understood as a concept that signifies and symbolizes sociopolitical conflicts and interests in reference to different types of human bodies. Although the concept of race appeals to biologically based human characteristics (so-called phenotypes), selection of these particular human features for purposes of racial signification is always and necessarily a social and historical process. There is no biological basis for distinguishing human groups along the lines of "race," and the categories employed to differentiate among these groups reveal themselves, upon serious examination, to be imprecise. Although they refer to corporeal characteristics like skin color, hair texture, and eye shape, these categories acquired their significance for sociohistorical reasons, not because they have any "natural" importance. For this reason the boundaries of racially defined groups are both uncertain and subject to change. Indeed whole groups can acquire or lose their racialized character as historical and social circumstances shift.2

Racism: Racial prejudice reinforced by a power differential, which results in a system that leads to the oppression of or discrimination against specific racial or ethnic groups.

Imbroglio: Discussions, debates and metastorms in fandom, preferred to the terms "wank" or "kerfuffle". Wank and kerfuffle are derogatory because they imply that the people who are doing the discussing are approaching it with a seriousness or passion unwarranted by the subject at hand.3

We, Us, Ours, and other first person plural pronouns: Fans of Color and Jewish fen.

Sources

(1) Virginia Harris and Trinity Ordoña, "Developing Unity among Women of Color: Crossing the Barriers of Internalized Racism and Cross Racial Hostility," in Making Face, Making Soul: Hacienda Caras. Edited by Gloria Anzaldúa. SF: Aunt Lute Press, 1990. p. 310.

(2) Race and Racism - Defining Race http://science.jrank.org/pages/10949/Race-Racism-Defining-Race.html

(3) A little bit more about imbroglio (I am still retired, though) http://zvi-likes-tv.livejournal.com/417418.html

Colours of Resistance http://colours.mahost.org/

IBARW2: Terms, definitions and disclaimers by lj user oyceter http://oyceter.livejournal.com/630739.html

White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack by Peggy McIntosh http://seamonkey.ed.asu.edu/~mcisaac/emc598ge/Unpacking.html

The Unapologetic Mexican http://www.theunapologeticmexican.org/

Words We Will Not Use

Online Resources

Discussion Guidelines

  1. This panel will not include discussion of white people. A panel on white people, fandom, and race is a really awesome idea, but it is not the panel we are having at this time and in this room. We realize that 'white' is a permeable category, and that people(s) get defined in and out of it all the time, but we are not discussing it at all today.

  2. This panel is not a therapy session, a teaching session, or a distribution center for street cred and ghetto passes. This panel is a planning meeting. The idea is to leave with behaviors we can enact on our journals and mailing lists, maybe even with specific words we can use, so that fandom is a good place for us to be in.

  3. Many people treat fandom as their safe space or community space. Sometimes this is used as the reason for people not to examine their privilege or their offensive behavior because that would be challenging and "too hard". If you do not agree to the basic principle that fandom should be an equally safe space or community space for ALL people, and not just at your convenience, then this is probably not the panel for you.

Discussion Topics

  1. What do we mean by safe space?

  2. What is helpful (and what is not helpful) when one of us calls someone out on her racism and the person who has been called out (or her friends) attacks?

  3. How do we find new fen of color? Do we just keep publicly reiterating our own ethnicities, so when people come into fandom, they realize that not everyone is white? If we realize that a fan we're talking to is not white, do we say, "Psst, here's the secret handshake." What's the secret handshake? Are we inviting people to Dead Bro Walking? Are we gonna keep a list of FOC that we can pass around? What?

  4. How do we let people know that we're just talking, not teaching? Is the only option friendslocking? Posting to deadbro? Write a disclaimer at the top and screen comments? (What do you do in a non-LJ situation?)