Smart Bitches, Trashy Books

I’m glad a mainstream romance author has a protagonist who’s had some homosexual encounters in his past, but I’m disappointed that Stuart, who’s pushed some interesting envelopes in the past, seems to be sticking with tradition in making those same-sex encounters traumatic.

I’ve been pretty vocal about this topic on AAR, so I won’t repeat myself here, but I just want to point out that I’ve yet to read anything that indicates exactly what Stuart’s going to do with Jensen’s experiences; that is, whether she will have Jensen characterize them as pleasurable or traumatic or what.  Has she specifically said this? 

I hope he got pleasure from them, because after years of reading about women who were pseudo-raped into orgasm, I’d like it to be acknowledged that straight men can get pleasure from unexpected places, too.  NOT that I’m equating m/m sex with forced seduction—only saying that both male and female bodies are capable of enjoying all sorts of things outside of the mainstream boy-girl missionary dance of love, and I think Romance should be more egalitarian in showing this :).

Why can’t a guy in a romance novel just enjoy cock because he enjoys cock

Exactly. I love you, you wonderful, dirty, wicked bitch.

Before I clicked the “More” button, I got my hopes up that this might be a really interesting book, but now I’m not so sure. Does he ever say he actually enjoyed these encounters with men, or is it some angst-y thing with him? I’ve read a few books where the guy had same sex encounters in the past (usually not by his choice), and it takes the heroine’s almighty vagina to make him right again. Ugh.

“I won’t be buying it because it’s too far outside my comfort zone.”

Candy, this quote surprised me…in that, I’m surprised that you took it out and highlighted it.  I don’t think there’s anything bigoted about that comment.  It’s fair.  It’s outside my comfort zone, so I won’t read it.  There’s lots of stuff I don’t want to read about because it’s outside my comfort zone…like children being abused.  I managed to get through one book that had that theme and promised never again.  Why is that any thing less than fair?  Readers have a right to pick and choose what they want to read based on whatever criteria.  Now, if someone wants to BAN that book, that I’d have a problem with.

Some people have a problem with man-man sex.  Doesn’t mean they hate gays or bisexuals or that they are right-wing conservatives.  It only means they don’t enjoy reading about man-man sex.  Don’t they have a right to pick what they want to read based on what they are comfortable with?

I, personally, would probably buy and read the book just to see how Stuart handled it.  Sort of bothers me that a book is being decried by some and praised by others before anyone has even read it.

All I can think is: Anyone else out there watching Rescue Me?

Dear God.  Someone actually admitted to “[getting] past” same-sex encounters because “the men in question were not human”?! 

Talk about your fucked-up priorities.  Guess someone’s gonna have to revise his/her moral compass to point at “one man, one woman, both human, unless they’re not, and if it’s hot.”  Hey, it even almost rhymes.  Now I just need to find something that rhymes with “bestiality” or “necrophilia.”

I will say, though, that some of the emphasis on the whole “He has absolute control over his body!” and “He’s a machine, emotionless and always in control!” aspects lead me to believe that the experiences were unpleasant, especially because detachment is a fairly common defensive mechanism for coping with trauma—or so my fiction would have me believe, anyway, and FICTION WOULDN’T LIE, WOULD IT?

And this is a fair inference, Candy, IMO.  I am generally not a Stuart fan, but I really, really liked Black Ice—in fact, it was the first Stuart book I read where I felt she actually gave a nuanced portrayal of her usually (IMO) asshole heroes and Wonder Bread heroines.  And in Black Ice, Bastien can have sex with anyone, too (although no mention of men), and I got the impression he could experience physical pleasure but not be emotionally involved with any of the women he had sex with.  So I’m hoping that she does the same for Jensen, although I certainly think the other is possible, as well.  Also, re. speculation about Cold As Ice, LFL’s original question, which started the whole discussion, included another question about the potential appeal of bisexual heroes in general, so a lot of the conversation is related to that more general issue, as well.

I see your point, Candy, but I really don’t think that’s what people mean when they say it.  I know people who consider reading about hetereosexual sex to be “outside of their comfort zone” and yet, that doesn’t mean they have anything against man-woman sex.  They just choose not to read about it in print.

You’re totally right that my example didn’t illustrate my point.  I had to pick something since there is very little that is outside my comfort zone, LOL!  If done well, I’ll read just about anything.  Except dumb heroines.  Okay, THAT’S outside my comfort zone.  Does that make me a bigot against stupid women?  And if it does…is that wrong?

And for the record, I also hate asshole heroes.  I usually can’t stand them long enough to watch them get reformed.  I don’t mean Alpha heroes.

Saying something violates your comfort zone places a sort of moral judgment on the enterprise.

This is something I have to really think about for a while.  While I agree with the majority of your broader points, Candy, I’m torn about this one.  Romance, after all, is fantasy literature, and all of our erotic fantasies differ.  I am not into S/M erotica, but that’s because it doesn’t appeal to me as an erotic fantasy.  Consequently, my visceral response to reading it as a fantasy is one in which I can feel uncomfortable, depending on how intense the scene is.  But I really don’t think I have any moral problem with people who practice S/M—it just doesn’t work for me as an erotic fantasy.  So is that the same thing as people who feel uncomfortable with m/m or f/f sex in a romantic fantasy?  I don’t know.  Maybe it comes down to what the nature of “the problem” is, or what someone really means when they say something is “outside their comfort zone” or not romantic to them. 

This to me is similar to the virgin heroine question.  I understand that there are readers who enjoy the fantasy of the virgin heroine for a number of reasons—the fantasy of a personal do-over of the first time, for example—that IMO don’t necessitate a moral condemnation of sexually experienced heroines. OTOH, I think that having the Romance genre persistently align virgin heroines with virtuous heroines is a moral judgment.  So maybe I feel the same way about readers who don’t appreciate gay Romance as a romantic fantasy—that they can feel that way without morally condemning homosexuality, but as long as the genre seems to villainize homosexuality, there is a moral condemnation of such.  I don’t know—like I said, I have to think more about it.  Very interesting issue, Candy.

I have to agree with Robin on this - for me, the issue comes down to the appeal of the fantasy.  The genre of romance is about entering a world of make-believe that suits one’s own sexual and/or romantic tastes. As examples, I do not enjoy inspirational romances because I cannot relate to intensely spiritual characters and I do not find them sexually/romantically intriguing.  Neither do I enjoy stories featuring S & M sexual encounters because I do not, personally, find those practices sexy.  Tried it.  Didn’t care for it at all.  Would not like to read more. 

Thus I can understand if a woman finds a bisexual hero off-putting, if the idea of homosexual encounters is so distasteful, curious or unromantic according to her own personal standards of eroticism or romance.  For such a woman, a bisexual hero would be outside of her comfort zone with regard to fiction, but she might not necessarily have a problem accepting bisexuals and gays in real life.  This could apply to heroes of other nationalities, too.  Maybe a woman does not find a black man or an American Indian attractive.  That does not necessarily mean she is prejudiced against other races in daily reality.

I know a LOT of people and have a factual understanding of many of my friends’ sexual preferences (heteros too!), but I do not need to read in extensive detail about aspects of their sex life.  For some people, I might want to know more.  For others… nope.  Fiction allows us to pick and choose our turn-ons, but I do not think it necessarily means real-life bigotry. 

Personally, I find the whole issue of rampant womanizing (or, um, the equivalent with other men, too - manizing?) more of a turn-off than anything.  I do not care who the hero slept with before, man or woman, but too many past sexual partners only makes me think of disease (I read mostly historicals - syphilis, anyone?) and future philandering.  For me - not sexy.

Can you think of an example of a violation of a comfort zone that doesn’t involve negative moral judgment of some sort? Even those who don’t want to read explicit heterosexual sex scenes because they’re outside their comfort zone do this because they believe that sort of writing is morally offensive, or even that reading that sort of thing constitutes psychological infidelity, even if they don’t think there’s something wrong per se with heterosexual sex in real life.

What about if someone says that watching operations being carried out in television dramas is ‘outside their comfort zone’ or watching footage of women giving birth is ‘outside their comfort zone’. It’s unlikely that a decision of this sort is going to be made on moral grounds.

Some readers of romance find it outside their comfort zone if the hero and heroine kiss/have sex in the morning before they’ve had a chance to brush their teeth and have a shower. It makes them go ‘ick!’. That could, just possibly be due to some idea about ‘cleanliness being next to godliness’ but I really doubt it. And as a lot of readers on the AAR threads said, they wouldn’t like to think about their parents having sex, their children having sex, ugly people having sex…. All those combinations would be ‘outside their comfort zones’ not because they consider it immoral for their parents/children/ugly people to have sex, but because they don’t want to visualise it. I don’t think that this sort of objection is due to concerns about ‘psychological infidelity’ either. It’s a combination of aesthetics and a feeling that some activities are private.

One of the things that bothered me the most was the whole this is going to demean/end the romance genre.  Well if you don’t want to read it then don’t but stop trying to prevent others from reading them. 

Also the whole homosexuality is a sin/going to burn in hell, and anyone who doesn’t mind reading about it is a degenerate pervert who after reading the book is going to go out and rape an animal and a child.  Funny how often homosexuality/beastiality and pedophilia all pop up together.

I would rather read a good story about characters who really love each other, if the characters really touch me I don’t care what gender they are.  Love is love between consenting adults/vamps/werewolves etc.  So does werewolf/shapechangers shagging equate with bestiality?

Good job Candy.

Sorry, watching two men kiss or reading about it grosses me out. Thinking about 2 men having sex?  I really don’t want to go there.

Just because *some* people think it’s ok to portray gay sex or bi sex in a book doesn’t make the rest of us homophobes or unenlightened or Christian fundamentalists or what have you because we DON’T want to read about it.

If Anne Stuart wants to get this book out there, lovely. Let her do it. But people have a right to their own opinions on this topic. If someone is skeeved out by it, they are allowed to be skeeved out.

And why do we have to feel badly about it?

I love this site, but sometimes the politics on here detract from my enjoyment of the main focus of this blog: Smart Bitches Who Love Trashy Novels.

Can you think of an example of a violation of a comfort zone that doesn’t involve negative moral judgment of some sort?

How about fisting?  Don’t wanna do it, don’t wanna read about doing it.  Not a moral judgement, just doesn’t seem pleasurable to me.

Are we having a semantical argument here?

“Outside my comfort zone” may or may not equal “not to my taste”, IMO. I can see how they might be used interchangeably in casual or heated conversation. Since we don’t know exactly how the original poster meant it, it’s hard to make a call on it now (or it is for me).

I am inclined to go with Candy’s take on it though, seeing as it was pulled from a discussion about the very idea of a bi hero being NOT OK. I think the original poster meant that “outside her comfort zone” meant it was morally outside what she could accept, not that it was simply not to her taste.

Shit-tons of stuff are not to my taste: from Inspirational to Hardcore S&M. But I don’t find them “outside my comfort zone”. I just find them boring and “outside my interest zone”. You can put anal sex in there too. Love Morgan Hawke’s stories, am pretty much bored shitless by her sex scenes . . . but they’re not “outside my comfort zone”. I just read up until the butt-fucking starts and then I skim ahead.

Either way my hat is off to Candy for getting as far as she did in these posts. I tried, but had to cut myself off before I had a melt down.

I’m reminded of a film called Stage Beauty about a Shakespearean actor set during the time of Charles II when only men were allowed on stage so they played male and female roles.  The main character studied women and would turn on his more feminine qualities at will.  Otherwise, he was very much a man.  He had a few homosexual encounters during the film but in the end he was with a woman.  It was no less romantic to me because I’d watched him passionately kissing a man.  Love is love, wherever you find it.

Taste or comfort zone, Candy, my point was that what a woman chooses to read and what she believes about the basic rights of human beings may differ.  That said, the notion of limiting what people can read, write and publish is as disgusting as limiting what consenting adults may enjoy behind closed doors.  I am all for the idea of expanding a genre that has been confined within certain stagnating stereotypes for too many years.  That one bi character from a mainstream author will ruin the entire genre is just silly.

Excellent post, Laura.  Dead on.  You put into words what I couldn’t, so thanks.

Fascinating discussion.

Morgan Hawke, eh?  Hmmmm….  ;)

Then, Candy, I guess I just don’t see what the issue is. You like it, you read it. I don’t like it, I don’t read it. If someone wants to get all Christian fundamentalist on your ass about it…ignore it. Let ‘em say what they want. And I guess the same should go for me…

Just realize that I didn’t find either of the comments you linked to particuarly offensive or unenlightened. They were just expressing an opinion in a pretty intelligent way.

Harlequin is known for heterosexual romances. And this Anne Stuart book may just cross the line for many of their readers. *That* is what I think these people were commenting on. Give the readers what they want, not what you think may be titillating or “of the moment.”  I think it might just end up upsetting some people to find this book in their mailbox, that’s all.

I guess I don’t quite get the brouhaha. If I’m not interested in a particular fetish / concept / characteristic in a book, I just don’t buy it. For instance…

I’ve never read a book by Laurell K Hamilton, Kim Harrison, or MaryJanice Davidson. Why? Because I think the vampire shit is just played out. I think it was played out in early Anne Rice heyday. Then again, I was slightly ahead of the curve because I was a poser vampire-goth-geek wannabe back in college, and I moved on. That’s just my opinion, no reflection on people who enjoy undead action. I wouldn’t say it’s outside my comfort zone; it’s just not my thing.

A hero who doesn’t mind cock now and then wouldn’t bother me. Good writing, good story, strong characters, and you’ve got me. I’ll give a lot of rope if those conditions are met. Just..y’know, let ‘em be alive.

And while I don’t hold a negative moral judgment against S/M as a whole, I’ll have to examine my attitudes towards those who choose to engage in, say, intense genital torture, or those who do things like bifurcate their penis. I’d certainly be lying if I didn’t say that I think people who engage in the more extreme ends of S/M aren’t, well, kind of a little bit nuts. And I’m well aware that probably makes me a judgmental asshole to those people.

As someone who practices, say, intense genital torture, who has cut her partner with a razor to the extent that it scarred, who both play-pierces her partner and has had her partner’s dangly bits more permanently pierced with a beautiful lorum that he’s never taking out, I’d have to say that, yes, you’re being a judgmental asshole.

There’s a saying in the BDSM world:  never say never because the kink gods will get you.  Never say, “Ew, I could never do that,” because the next party, that’s what everyone will see you doing. You have to go with “My kink is not your kink,” and leave it at that.  I don’t do scat or golden showers, but can at least see the appeal of GS.  I do blood play, but I’ve seen much more extreme blood play and can see the appeal.

Very very very few people go to the far extremes, but everyone’s extremes are different.  I’ve never seen a bifurcated penis (thank the lord), but I’ve seen the most enormous Prince Albert that just about made me barf—but I was young back then;  today I’d probably ask to touch it.  ;)  I’ve seen scrotal infusions and blood cupping and intense caning.  But I’ve also seen some of the most intensely loving relationships and met some of the most self-confident people (in the good way not the asshole way), the most helpful, friendly, generous, giving people in the scene.

And, yes, while some people in the scene are completely fucked up, most aren’t.  It’s my firm belief that we’re just wired differently—just like gay people.  Only our activism is 50-100 years behind gay activism, mostly because most kinky people don’t believe that what they DO is actually who they ARE.  While most of my BDSM colleagues wouldn’t agree with me, for me at least, BDSM is as genetic a thing as being gay is.  Not something I can help, not something I can stop, and if I want to enjoy my sex life, not something I can avoid.  And for someone—anyone, even completely open-minded liberals—to say, “Ew, that’s sick,” is the same, for me, as someone saying the same thing about what it is that gays do and who it is that gays ARE.

And if it’s true that being kinky—seriously, completely, can’t get aroused without hurting someone kinky—is a genetic thing, why is it any different from being gay, as long as you’re playing with a consenting, serious, can’t get aroused without being hurt partner?

Still love you, Candy, but yes, you’re being judgmental.  Know that there are people out there who brand you, with your little bits of rope play, as bad as me, with my pierced partner and my closet full of impact toys.

I’d certainly be lying if I didn’t say that I think people who engage in the more extreme ends of S/M aren’t, well, kind of a little bit nuts. And I’m well aware that probably makes me a judgmental asshole to those people.

Well, I’ve yet to me anyone who’s not judgmental—we’re human and we make judgments about things (shit, just wait until you get to law school :)).  Certainly we differentiate among different kinds of judgments, like “I don’t like white chocolate (which isn’t even chocolate, by the way)” isn’t the equivalent of “I don’t like the idea that gay people have sex” or “I don’t want black people in my school.” 

For me the difficulty in pushing the “comfort zone” argument into the moral judgment camp is that, as several people have pointed out, things can be uncomfortable for various reasons.  The unfamliar, for example, often makes people uncomfortable.  Perceived pain often makes people uncomfortable.  The list goes on. 

I don’t know where I’m going with this except to say that I’d rather someone say that gay sex in Romance is outside their comfort zone than to say that it doesn’t belong in Romance.  It’s like with erotica—I don’t think everyone who finds erotica uncomfortable is a prude, and I’m certainly not going to try to argue that person out of their personal taste.  But if someone tells me that they think erotica CAN’T be romantic or part of Romance (within its definitional guidelines), then I’ll argue with them, because I think THAT’s often a moral judgment (although I’d entertain the possibility that it isn’t always).

And I totally appreciate what you’re saying about the irony of people trying to say that the fact that you enjoy reading gay sex is perverted or whatever, but for the most part, I don’t think those who are reasonable in their comments that gay Romance is not to their taste are the ones trying to make you feel bad that you find it to be to yours.

Okay I started reading those threads over there, what the hell does this even mean:

If one believes that judging is wrong, remember not to judge those that judge. Some think it is ok to judge. And that is up to them.

Don’t judge the people judging other people because you believe it’s wrong, but WE believe it’s okay, therefore our judgment is okay and yours is not. Is that an accurate extrapolation? Hooray double-standard!

I am inclined to go with Candy’s take on it though, seeing as it was pulled from a discussion about the very idea of a bi hero being NOT OK. I think the original poster meant that “outside her comfort zone” meant it was morally outside what she could accept, not that it was simply not to her taste.

I agree that this is a valid distinction, and that context counts.  But still, as long as it’s someone’s personal moral judgment (since mine, though opposite, is certainly a moral judgment, too—i.e. that there is nothing wrong or unnatural about gay sex in or out of Romance), I’m not sure it’s mine to condemn.  Sure, if that person starts telling me how I’m perverse and how they don’t think gay Romance is possible, then I’m gonna argue with them and defend my position.  But I’ve met enough people who aren’t judgmental about homosexuality but who are personally selfish and socially apathetic jerks in other ways, that I’m not ready to take out everyone who is personally morally opposed to homosexuality.  I may not like their position, but then again, they won’t like mine, either.  As long as I’m not force-feeding them gay Romance and they’re not trying to get it banned from the RWA, I’m okay.

Shit-tons of stuff are not to my taste: from Inspirational to Hardcore S&M. But I don’t find them “outside my comfort zone”. I just find them boring and “outside my interest zone”.

This is very well put, pretty much my feelings exactly.

Hi everyone, I’m brand new to posting, but I thought I’d weigh in anyway.

I have to say that I was initially as up-in-arms as Candy about this issue. I definetly have a hot-button in this area. Robin, I thought your most recent post was made an excellent point about not condemning some else just for stating their moral opinion. You’re right that I don’t like that opinion and that they don’t like mine. That is something I will think more about.

Kardis, the problem with what you said:  “I thought your most recent post was made an excellent point about not condemning some else just for stating their moral opinion,” is that is, as Candy stated, this were a discussion about inter-racial romances, anyone who said it was outside their comfort zone would be denounced—rightly—as a racist and anyone rational would dismiss their arguments.  For someone who believes that homosexuality is NOT a choice, but a genetic imperative, the logical extension is that it’s EXACTLY THE SAME as inter-racial relationships and therefore NOT a moral issue at all, ever, in any universe.  So it’s not just “they can have their moral opinion and I’ll have mine.”  One of you HAS to be wrong, and wrong, in this case, equals immoral.

But then, I think I’m a little more hardline on things like this, because I’m in the sexual minority so very few people think is moral.

And Candy, there are laws against BDSM.  And they’re mostly Domestic Violence laws, which are a Good Thing, but make my life a bit more difficult. 

And re: BDSM romances?  You should check out Joey Hill.

Oh gods, and my sign-in thingy is “service78”.  Very apropos.

Wow, I waded through six pages of that stuff over on RT, and now I feel queasy, kind of like I ate a whole sleeve of Oreos. Except I didn’t get any cookies with this queasy feeling.

Roseread, in the interest of brevity in my previous post I think I may have oversimplified my views. I don’t like the arguments that people are making about “comfort zones”. I agree with Candy, what I was mainly trying to express in my post is that Robin’s comment made me think about this from a different perspective. Sometimes I feel like I *personally* get so caught up gnashing my teeth, but her comment made me take a (half) step back. I felt for me that it was a valuable insight. That’s all I’m trying to say. I tend to take a pretty strong stance as well in these issues as well.  :-)

Any one aware of any romances where the heroine has had same sex relationships before she meets the hero? From Kinsey to more contemporary sexoligists, the research indicates sexual relationships between women who idenfify as heterosexual are not uncommon. Yet the current romantic trend is to write about m/m sex and romance. I would be great one day for the romance genre to fully embrace the idea that some people are attracted to the person not the gender.

I just wanted to give a thumbs up to Candy for her points on bisexuality. It’s annoying when people think that just because you’re bi, you can’t be monogamous or that you think cheating is ok because it’s with the same sex. I’ve been in a monogamous hetero relationship for over nine years and my bisexuality has never caused any issues.

I just love you. As usual.

That’s sexologists - why do I lose my capacity to spell on the internet?

celeste wrote: I’ve read a few books where the guy had same sex encounters in the past (usually not by his choice), and it takes the heroine’s almighty vagina to make him right again. Ugh.
Diana Gabaldon did this. Then again, she’s pretty adamant that she is not a romance author. Latidah.

WHAT “one-man one-woman rule”?  Did Scarlett O’ Hara and Amber St. Clair miss the meeting? 

Somebody’s trying to rewrite history, I think.

I can’t remember titles right now, but it seems to me I read some romances from the 80s where there was lots of globe-hopping, sort of sweeping adventure stories, and the heroine would sometimes sleep around a bit before she settled down with Mr. Hero. They were a bit campy, quite like the covers of Ms. Brandewyne below but they sure weren’t one man - one woman, only.

And what about all the historicals that open with a man fondling his mistress (or some hooker) on the boobies just so us readers don’t miss the fact that he’s a dangerous womanizing rogue?

“as Candy stated, this were a discussion about inter-racial romances, anyone who said it was outside their comfort zone would be denounced—rightly—as a racist and anyone rational would dismiss their arguments.”

Why does it have to come down to such a powerful label being given?  Maybe such a person is racist and maybe they’re not.  Maybe their background is one of tremendous racial homogenity and they are really unfamiliar with much racial diversity.  What about non-wite readers who won’t read interracial Romance?

I’m still waiting to find the person who is completely free of some form of prejudice against any category, group, organization, individual, etc., because I’ve yet to locate one (myself included).  I am very uncomfortable reading many Native American - Anglo Romances, because I think so many of the Romances themselves are pretty racially insensitive.  But beyond that, I just don’t think most people fit so easily in and out of categories—something you seem to suggest yourself in explaining your own sexuality. 

Now, if someone says that they don’t think interracial Romance should be part of Romance, I’ll argue very strongly against that position.  But really and truly, the vast majority of people I know and observe harbor any number of fears and anxieties and suspicions about a range of “othernesses,” many born of unfamiliarity. It doesn’t, IMO, make them an “ist” of a certain variety, especially if they are not actively campaigning against other groups or victimizing said people or loudly proclaiming the inferiority, perversion, etc. of such people.

“Why does it have to come down to such a powerful label being given?  Maybe such a person is racist and maybe they’re not.”

Totally, 100%, absolutely bunk.  There’s nothing especially ‘powerful’ about the label if you come from magic-non-reality Ignoranceland—if the lable is taken as powerful than the person who said the stupid shit obviously should have known better.  If you don’t want to be labled racist… don’t be racist.  If you don’t want to be called a homophobe… then don’t be homophobic.

But, don’t run around pretending that theres some sort of “get to be hateful for free” card based on your upbringing.  I wouldn’t let a person kick me in the knee, because they came Knee Kicking Country.  I’d tell them knee-kicking makes you an asshole.  They can either change thier knee-kicking accordingly, or choose to willfully be an asshole.

I agree with Veronica.  Own your freakin’ labels, folks.

If somebody calls me a bitch, my first response is, “Thank the fuck outta you.”

I can be a bitch at times.

If you’re a bigot either change or own it, all y’all bigots! 

Americans particularly stroke out being called racist, because so damn many of y’all are. 

Yep, I said the ‘R’word.  If the shoe fits . . .

Totally, 100%, absolutely bunk.  There’s nothing especially ‘powerful’ about the label if you come from magic-non-reality Ignoranceland—if the lable is taken as powerful than the person who said the stupid shit obviously should have known better.  If you don’t want to be labled racist… don’t be racist.  If you don’t want to be called a homophobe… then don’t be homophobic.

One of the things I get most frustrated with in W. is his absolute certainty that there is a right and a wrong way to look at things—a black and white reality, so to speak.  The Axis of Evil, Islamofashism, stem cell research, Plan B, choice, Christianity.  That kind of absolutist certainty, regardless of the political ideology and party behind it, frightens me a little.

Burning a cross is a racist act; racially segregating schools is racist; proclaiming that Blacks are inherently lazy or that the Chinese are inherently industrious (a la African American political scientist Thomas Sowell) is racist.  You want to throw in all Romance readers who don’t like interracial Romance?  Really?  Wow.

Americans particularly stroke out being called racist, because so damn many of y’all are.

Wow again.  This statement feels sort of racist to me, and I’m actually way less comfortable referring to something/someone as racist than I am being called racist.

Robin,

I respect your feelings, but hear this.

Most black people would have no problem at all with my statement.

Americans particularly stroke out being called racist, because so damn many of y’all are.

While I don’t speak it out loud because it’s taboo, I define racist as being treated or solid evidence of being regarded differently from a like white person solely because I’m black.

Late and short but my two cents (that’s Mexican, by the way):

The problem I have with rigid moral compasses at any spot in the spectrum is that most of those holding them want to make everyone else follow the path of that one compass.

This.. proselytizing, if you will, would be a trivial matter if some of those same rigid moral compass holders weren’t actively trying to regulate everyone else’s morality and behaviour.

(Can’t resist! spam foiler: came69)

While I don’t speak it out loud because it’s taboo, I define racist as being treated or solid evidence of being regarded differently from a like white person solely because I’m black.

I see what you’re saying here, Monica.  I guess that for me there’s a difference between racialism and racism.  To me, anyway, what you’re talking about here is racialism, which is the phenomenon of identifying or believing in differences among races.  And I do believe that America is an incredibly racialist country.  While racialism can become racism, I don’t think it’s the same thing (and I don’t think it’s a “soft” form of racism, either).  Racism to me is hatred, discrimination, or a belief of inferiority or superiority singularly based on race, and while I think everyone has prejudices and holds certain group stereotypes (many of which huddle around circumstantial differences like race, culture, religion, language, etc.), I think the proportion of true racists is smaller than what you’ve represented.  For me it’s the difference between segregating AA Romance, and portraying African American Romance characters as subhuman (i.e. stupid or violent or even hyper-sexualized).

I want to add that I feel the same way about gender issues; I get nervous when people start calling various men misogynist, because, really, I don’t think most men hate women (they fear us! ;)).  I think misogyny is a really strong word, and while I think that both genders have a tendency to essentialize each other, I think person to person discrimination is less of a problem than passive acceptance of patriarchal social values we don’t challenge persistently enough.  And perhaps it’s the same with race.

Respectfully, Robin,

Why is romance segregated?  What is the message?  You say it’s racialism. 

Bear with me. 

What if a romance writer writes a romance and the majority of romance readers refuse to read her romance or don’t get the opportunity to read it solely because of her race?

What if her romance is treated differently than the other romances, to the point of being put on a separate shelf, even though the content of her romance stories are no different from the others? 

What is this telling her about her worth as a writer—and as a person—compared with the other writers whose books get regarded the same as the other romances?

Isn’t the message that she’s inherently different, somehow subhuman and naturally inferior writer if her romance can’t be treated the same as the others?

How is this less harmful than a book portraying African American Romance characters as subhuman (i.e. stupid or violent or even hyper-sexualized).

She might say it’s more harmful because it affects her life, her hopes, dreams, and her potential.

There is no difference between racialism and racism.  It’s just different semantics for the same thing.

I’m sidestepping the most recent branching of the conversation, but I wanted to respond to something Keziah said a bit up-thread:

Any one aware of any romances where the heroine has had same sex relationships before she meets the hero?

I don’t actually read romance (fantasy novelist and reader here, but I find it interesting to read about the trials and tribulations of other genres), so I can’t answer that question.  But I know that in fanfiction, m/m is astronomically more common than f/f, and the majority of it is written by women.  There’s plenty of speculation about why that is the case, but I suspect whatever the causes are, they’d apply to romance, as well, since the majority of the authors (as I understand it) are, again, women.

Or, to put it another way, as long as the majority of writers and readers of romance are straight women, they’re more likely to find m/m action hot than f/f.  For whatever reasons that may be.  I live ten minutes’ walk from the Kinsey Institute, but getting into their library requires permission from God, so it’s not a question I’ve ever tried to research. :-)

Monica has a point. I’m in a mixed-race marriage myself, and the novel my agent is currently shopping around is an interracial romance. She loves the book, but when I first signed on with her, she gently suggested I might want to make my hero Italian or something else because it might make it a tougher sell. I did all the other revisions she asked for but I didn’t change my hero’s race.

We’ll see how NYC feels about it because it’s a great story otherwise.

Oh, and since somebody mentioned this up-thread, too—

—the linking of homosexuality with pedophilia, bestiality, and various other kinks/perversions (depending on your point of view) probably happens because of boundaries.  That is to say, some people view homosexuality as lying on the other side of the boundary of Moral Behavior, and once you cross that line, everything goes.  Things fall apart, the center cannot hold, cats and dogs living together, etc.  It isn’t rational; those behaviors don’t actually correlate.  But they’re all (for such speakers) in the territory where there are no longer any boundaries.

(It’s also my amateur opinion on why men are more likely to be bothered by m/m sex than f/f.  In the sense that men penetrate, and women are penetrated, m/m sex violates their bodily integrity and breaks the boundary of their self, which isn’t supposed to happen to them.  If I had the spare time to read up on sexuality, I might know whether I’m totally wrong about that or not—but I only have time to wear so many hats.  Alas.)

After reading the six pages on the RT forum, I think the thing that bothered me the most was the knee-jerk reaction. If they had actually examined the book in question, there are no graphic m/m scenes. The hero isn’t currently sleeping with guys for fun, although if he were, more power to him.

The character is not a sociopath or a budding serial killer; he’s more like a spy or an undercover narc officer. He does whatever he has to get to get the job done. I don’t think Stuart really delves his enjoyment of m/m sex, although hopefully she won’t go down the Schone road and make it traumatic. It’s part of the backstory; that’s all.

And yet to have so many people flipping out, saying it’s gross, unnatural, immoral, aberrant—that blows my mind.  It’s not even a story element, for Christ’s sake!

So why all the freaking out over it?

What if a romance writer writes a romance and the majority of romance readers refuse to read her romance or don’t get the opportunity to read it solely because of her race?

Isn’t the message that she’s inherently different, somehow subhuman and naturally inferior writer if her romance can’t be treated the same as the others?

Well, I think there are some assumptions and conclusions here that are arguable.

First off, in terms of the shelving issue, does that really occur because bookstores and readers consider African American Romance to be inferior, or does it happen because, as in my Borders, for example, African American history and Chicano history and Native American history and culture and general literature categories are shelved separately?  And is that related to the fact that African American Studies has its own department on most college campuses, a separation actually insisted upon by many African American scholars who prefer the prominence of the separate title?  That is, not because African American Studies is viewed as inferior, but because it’s seen as requiring a certain insulated protection?  Gay/lesbian literature is shelved separately, too, and several of my gay friends have expressed the fact that they are more comfortable with that, because they can find it easily and don’t feel uncomfortable browsing the shelves with other customers.  I am actually against segregating Romance on the shelves, but I’ve heard from African American readers that they prefer having a separate place to go where they know they can access AA Romance.  I’ve heard booksellers say they shelve separately because of so many reader requests for AA Romance.  Some of it, I think, is intended as a sort of literary affirmative action, not as the denigration of Romance.

As to AA writers being treated differently, can you elaborate on that?  When this topic comes up on boards, I see so many requests from non-AA readers that they are open to read AA Romance but have just not actively sought it out.  Is this so different from readers who don’t seek out books that take place outside of England?  I don’t know the answer to this question—I’m asking for an opinion about it.  Does the fact that white Romance readers aren’t actively seeking out AA Romance mean that AA Romance authors aren’t being read, SOLELY because of their race?  How many AA authors actually write AA Romance?  How do AA authors who write white Romance figure into this in terms of being judged solely on their race (as opposed to the race of their characters).

Also, what about AA readers?  The long-time friend who started me reading Romance, who has read Romance since she was a teen, doesn’t read AA Romance, even though she’s an academic who heads the African American Studies program on her campus and works specifically on issues of race and culture.  Where would she fit into this equation?

Can you give me some examples of how AA Romance authors are treated in such a way that they are being told that they aren’t worthwhile as writers, examples that are distinct, for example, from white Romance authors who can’t sell manuscripts that take place in France or Belgium, or WWI Germany, or 15th century Spain?  I think it would be easier for me to accept your conclusions if I had a stronger grasp on your premises.

And yet to have so many people flipping out, saying it’s gross, unnatural, immoral, aberrant—that blows my mind.  It’s not even a story element, for Christ’s sake! So why all the freaking out over it?

Might it be because the administration changes at the national level in RWA left these sad and frightened bigots feeling as disenfranchised as they believe gay and lesbian people should be?  And there’s nothing angrier than a thwarted bully?

On the interracial thread: I must admit that when I first started looking around in online romance sites, the idea that there was a separate category for ‘interracial romance’ just trounced my ‘comfort zone.’  Or, to be frank, it pissed me off.  For godsake, Kirk kissed Uhura over 30 years ago.  Our race is Human.  (Except for those pesky vampires and were-beasts.)

Speaking of which, I find it passing strange that gay-lesbian stories are often lumped under ‘exotic’ in many chat lists—with the aliens, vampires, and other non-human creatures.

Candy, kudos to you.  “Outside my comfort zone” is a soft-core condemnation by someone who hasn’t even got the guts to honestly acknowledge a prejudice.  If you don’t like it, don’t read it.  What sane consenting adults do together is their own business and no one else’s.

But we’re getting into the free-speech zone again, I think—the “how dare you tell me I might be wrong?”  Since when is literature about any subject supposed to be restricted to a “comfort zone?”  Dickens made many wealthy Victorians uncomfortable by his realistic portrayal of what happened to the helpless in poorhouses and orphanages—should he have been censored because he threatened their “comfort zone?”  Or how about Solzhenytsen?  Martin Luther King?  Any random feminist? Environmentalists?  How about the person who yells “fire” in a theatre because the place really is on fire? 

Insular ignorance is “comfortable” to people who are threatened by the idea that their way is not the only way.  Recognizing that gay and lesbian love is a legitimate form of human expression may be uncomfortable in the short run, but growing up is frequently a terribly uncomfortable experience.

But the alternative is to remain a perpetual adolescent, with ignorant and immature opinions—and we have far too much evidence of what can happen to a country that’s run by people who are stuck in that state.

The whole homo(bi)sexualality thing linked to beastality/pedo behavior just has to come up every fuckin’ time!! Like a man that would stick his cock up another man would inherently stick it in any hole around. Dick is well-named.

And why is this an issue now?? Emma Holly has a bisexual hero in Beyond Seduction how many years ago? Seems to me the genre is still kickin’

The gay/bisexual prejudice is just a new twist to an old thing.  Prejudice and hatred of an other unites people. 

Gay people are doing something different from most, so are an easy target for hatred. 

Gay folks will have arrived when Harlequin starts a line of gay romances. 

However, while books featuring gay sex are segregated in some places, and places like my hometown in Kansas refuse to carry any gay books books (or books by black authors for that matter), books by gay people that aren’t about sex and coupling don’t seem to be separated.  We haven’t come to that yet.  Truman Capote was gay, but his book In Cold Blood was shelved with the true crime like any other author’s book. 

Robin, we’ll have to agree to disagree.  You think blacks have little beef when it comes to racism, even when we’re segregated from the mainstream. Many white Americans share your views that prevasive racism is a made-up construct.  Something blacks say just to have fun and piss them off, I guess.

Candy, you are amazing.

Thank you for posting about the stereotypes attached to bisexuality, which few ever question. 

In the bisexual world, the polyamorous types are the exception, really.  And those that are doing the orgy circuit are most often young, which is true for heterosexuals as well.  When bisexuals get older, we settle down into traditional (though sometimes gay) monogamous relationships like anyone else.

I’m not disputing that AA Romance may be separated in a lot of bookstores. But certainly not in all. In my husband’s store Romance is shelved alphabetically, period. I don’t think it would have occurred to him or any of the staff to do otherwise. But his store is small and independent, and isn’t a yardstick for the industry.

I don’t know if he carries gay Romance. I’ll have to ask.

Just because I can, I’ll add that at his upcoming event in Oct, I’ll be signing with Dennis Lehane, Michelle Monkou and George Pelecanos. So that’s a couple of Irish types, a black woman and . . . is that Greek? Not sure. But it’s a pretty diverse lineup.

It never fails to amaze me how people have no problem reading about sex with what is essentially a corpse (vampire romances) but they will totally wig out over a little implied homosexual or bisexual action.

Whooohooo, Michelle gets to sign with Nora, Lehane and Pelecanos?!  I’d be tickled for the opportunity to chat with my heroes.

I’m trying to puzzle out the ‘bisexual partners are more likely to be unfaithful’ argument. Several people in the AAR discussion have suggested that they find Happily-Ever-After to be much less likely with a bisexual man as the hero. It doesn’t make sense to me. Why is a bisexual man more likely to be unfaithful than one of those Toxic Alpha Man-Hos that Romance seems to be littered with?

I don’t think that anyone making the argument that the HEA is less likely with a bisexual hero could back it up with logic. To me that seems an argument based on their prejudice or plain ignorance. I know that someone (probably Candy) already provided a study showing that just because someone is bisexual has nothing to do with them being able to have a monogamous relationship.

Perhaps (staying on the “personal preference” rather than the “morality/exclusionary” side of the issue) we just gravitate toward romance novels that elaborate on our own fantasies and reflect/validate our own realities. I know I’m much more likely to pick up a book that has an older pairing, rather than a twenty-something couple. I’m more likely to stick with a book in which the hero is more of the academic type than a cop or a cowboy (in fact, I am definitely NOT into cowboys or SEALS, etc).

Bisexuality is irrelevant to me, as long as the novel I’m reading presents a plausible romance that I can releate to. Race is irrelevant, as long as it meets the same criterion.

What I *really* want, and what I almost never find, are books that reflect my own reality, with a middle-aged heroine finding her middle-aged hero. Don’t give me that 35=midlife crap, give me a woman over 50 who’s still looking for passion and commitment. We’re invisible, but we exist. Limiting romance novel characters to the young, slender, and beautiful says to me that I’m not a candidate for a HEA myself, and reinforces the myth that sex/love/passion are the province of the young.

Talk about a slap in the face to an entire generation!

I was wondering when you were gonna post on this. 

Very well done.

Wow, a lot to comment on today.

Megan said:

It never fails to amaze me how people have no problem reading about sex with what is essentially a corpse (vampire romances) but they will totally wig out over a little implied homosexual or bisexual action.

You said it. No matter what mythos people come up with, I never get past the “But he’s dead” in my own mind, followed quickly by “Ewwwwww.” In my world, vampires don’t get to have sex; they drink blood. Maybe they experience intense pleasure through feeding, but actual physical sex doesn’t fly for me.

SandyW said:

Why is a bisexual man more likely to be unfaithful than one of those Toxic Alpha Man-Hos that Romance seems to be littered with?

First, the idea that a bisexual hero is more likely to be unfaithful is ridiculous. It doesn’t mean someone is indiscriminate. To me, it’s an indicator that someone is extremely enlightened and is able to be attacted to a person, not just their naughty bits. And that’s a convention that I thought was yummy when I was like 18 and fresh to romance. Now that I’m older, I find that particular formula revolting. I mean, we have a man-ho who fucks his way through the world because he’s emotionally damaged, unable to love a woman, and then, here comes our heroine, who will cure him magically the first time he sticks his penis in her magical vagina. Well, shit, if the woman’s hoo-hoo is really that special, she should be on display at the Holy See with petitioners lined up to touch it for its healing properties!

Finally, Nancy said:

Limiting romance novel characters to the young, slender, and beautiful says to me that I’m not a candidate for a HEA myself, and reinforces the myth that sex/love/passion are the province of the young.

I agree and would recommend Black Rose from Nora Robert’s In the Garden trilogy. In fact, this book blew both Blue Dahlia and Red Lily out of the water, not that they were bad, but Black Rose was ground-breaking. I like challenging the stereotype that a woman has to slowly become matronly and non-sexual as she ages. Great book.

And could a bitch please fix my Italic faux pas below, please?

Robin, we’ll have to agree to disagree.  You think blacks have little beef when it comes to racism, even when we’re segregated from the mainstream. Many white Americans share your views that prevasive racism is a made-up construct.  Something blacks say just to have fun and piss them off, I guess.

I’m not sure exactly how much we disagree on, Monica.  You threw out an extremely strong statement:

What if a romance writer writes a romance and the majority of romance readers refuse to read her romance or don’t get the opportunity to read it solely because of her race?

Isn’t the message that she’s inherently different, somehow subhuman and naturally inferior writer if her romance can’t be treated the same as the others?

I asked for clarification and specification.  Telling me a situation is racist and expecting me to simply agree is different from giving me your definition of racist behavior and then providing examples that have led you to that conclusion so I can see for myself how you’ve reached it.  I feel that because I’m not ready to simply agree to something just because you’ve told me it’s so (i.e. that AA writers are being treated as inferior, not that inferior treatment doesn’t indicate racism), now I’m one of “those” white people who just doesn’t get it.  Which feels sort of essentialist to me in its own way. 

You don’t really know what I think about the situation of AA authors in Romance,  because I haven’t yet drawn a final conclusion, although I will endure the implications of your comment because it would be disingenuous of me to simply say, yeah, you’re right, AA authors and AA Romance is the object of racism in the industry and in the Romance reading community.  I’m stil working my way through the analysis.  And it would take too long for me to explain all of the things I believe about racism and race in America more generally.  I have a lot of thoughts on that, some of which involve the “R” word, and some of which don’t.

Someone below, Lia, I think, brought up the word prejudice, and I just have to say that I wish that word would make a comeback in our vocabulary.  I think she had the right of it when she said that not wanting to read outside one’s comfort zone was a form of prejudice, because after all, the damn word means what it says—to pre-judge—and certainly, this is what readers are doing in these circumstances, IMO (the question beyond is whether people should be condemned for, or forced to face or overcome their prejudices, which is, IMO, a slightly different discussion).  What I don’t think is that prejudice is necessarily the same thing as racism, and while you imply that Americans (particularly us white folks) need to wake up and get comfortable with the “R” word, I think the “R” word has become so overexposed that its use actually discourages people from attending to the differentiations and the prejudices and the stereotypes and the inequities you want us to see.

I live in one of the most liberal counties in the country and in the most liberal state in the US, and am considered to be very liberal in my political and social views.  I work in an extremely liberal academic setting and go to one of the most leftie law schools in America.  Even here I see the burnout and the backlash, and it’s frustrating because the area in which I work—on equity issues in higher education—has become a battleground.  Why?  Because the more conservative politicians and pundits have been able to capitalize on people’s frustration with what they believe to be unfair advantages given to “minorities” (and what I think has been both political sides’ unfair and inaccurate generalizations about race in America) such that these people are ready to listen eagerly to diatribes on “political correctness” and the like.  A number of years ago, when we had a proposition on the ballot to deprive illegal immigrants of public services, one of the major voting blocs of support came from Chicano/Latino voters.  Same with the state proposition to ban affirmative action in public institutions; although the percentage was smaller, a significant number of non-whites voted for that proposition. So now we’re not only fighting for real equity issues, but we’re also battling these broad generalizations from both sides of the political aisle, which, in some ways, are more difficult to contend with and overcome.

My vision is admittedly circumscribed by my own experiences both professionally and personally, as well as the work I’ve done on race and the development of the American national identity (my dissertation work was on Indian captivity narratives and the social constructions of race and culture), and that research (much of it primary) continually surprised me with its nuances and complexities, especially the confusion around what constitutes race and what constitutes culture and how unstable both categories really are (I highly recommend Theodore Allen’s two-volume work, The Invention of the White Race, for anyone who is interested in this stuff).  So between all that and what I see as an overuse and overapplication of the term “racism” to dynamics that may or may not be out and out racism, I am hesitant in using it liberally, so to speak.  If that makes me one of those white people who doesn’t get it in your eyes, then I’ll have to live with that, because no matter how smart I think you are Monica—and I do think you’re extremely smart—I’m not ready to agree with you just to avoid being called the “R” word.

I’m not calling you a racist.  It’s too charged a word to bandy.  But that’s all it is, a word. 

I don’t see why I have to defend that segregation is dehumanizing and degrading.  The fact that historically segregation is a bad thing seems to be a given.

Why do societies segregate?  By the act of setting apart, the set apart are demeaned and made inferior. 

Apartheid, the Untouchable caste in India, Jews under Nazism, blacks in the U.S. pre-Civil Rights Act. 

The only writers of romance and other popular fiction segregated by race are black authors. 

You can defend the hows and whys we are set apart, but it doesn’t change the reality of the many ways, small and big, that we are segregated.

I’m going to speculate that shelf-segregation is actually a marketing ploy. I think publishers intend to appeal to racial solidarity: black women will buy this book so we’ll put all romance novels written by black authors together in hopes that they will hit the same target audience.

However, that thinking is paltry because it seems to carry the assumption that a white soccer mom from New Hampshire won’t read the same book as a black PR specialist from Miami. They’re limiting their audience when a good book is a good book. Romance should be slotted with romance.

Publishers were so astounded when they realized that black people actually read books in the early nineties, they flooded the market with black-authored books.  Black romances were allowed in numbers in 1994—before that if you wanted to write romance you had to pass for white.

What’s telling is instead of adding black authors to their existing lines and imprints, they made separate categories just for books by black authors.

The black book niche is thriving around 15 years later.  Black folks read a lot.  Many blacks are grateful to be published at all and to have characters in books that look like them, so they’re not complaining.  We remember well when we couldn’t be published at all or read a genre book with black characters. 

But a bitch like me reminds folks that segregation is segregation and segregation is bad, no matter the economics.

Ana said: Romance should be slotted with romance.

I agree. Every other writer I’ve talked to about this agrees, but I don’t know if this opinion is in any way universal in the romance-writing community.

Why, then, do so many bookstores do it? Are they just guessing that AA romance readers want the books to be shelved in the AA section, or is their decision based on market research? If the latter is the case and a store decided anyway to shelve AA romance novels exclusively in romance, would that hurt sales?

I don’t know the answer to that. The good thing about most of the bookstores I frequent here in Atlanta is that AA romances are shelved in romance as well as the AA section.

Monica said: “The only writers of romance and other popular fiction segregated by race are black authors.”

I’m sure you’ve seen this, but it’s not necessarily done in all bookstores; I didn’t see a separate shelf the last time I was in B&N (admittedly, I may have missed it, as I’m not in there often, but a black romance shelf was not present, unless it was tucked in the children’s section), nor is the practice present where I normally shop - online. I regularly get referrals to black writers (including Monica) on Amazon (and I may get even more than I know, because a writer is just a writer, and unless I have reason to know her/his race,there’s no way to tell.)

I’m not privy to the secrets of the publishing business, but since the primary motivation has to be profit, perhaps the initial reason for black romance being labeled was to let the large numbers of potential black readers see the books, in a “hey, here we are” kind of way. It was a marketing move to establish a customer base, nothing more or less.

That being said, now that the market is established and the presence of black writers is a given, the time is long past to fold ‘em all back into the mix.

Is there any place, do you think, for ethnic labels on literature? Good writing is good writing, I’d say, but I also see the worth of recognizing different ethnicities in order to appreciate different points of view,  different senses of the world. (Coming at it from an academic viewpoint, however, rather than as a recreational reader. In this sense, the divisions are certainly not to infer inferiority but to explore how universal themes are expressed through different filters - surely the aim of Black or Women’s or Latino or Asian Studies, etc., departments)
***
Unless you’re saying, Monica, that one of the reasons black writers are shelved apart is to help white readers avoid black characters, rather than to help black readers find black characters. I do get the impression that you are. And then do you see this in all genres, or just romance? If that’s the case, it would lead into some observations about gender-based attitudes, wouldn’t it?

Just throwing out some thoughts, because, as I said, I don’t see any such segregation in my shopping online, and haven’t noticed it in my rare visits to brick and mortar stores. (And yeah, I’m just a dumpy middle-aged white woman, but I do realize that my whiteness may blind me to the more subtle realities.)

I’m going to speculate that shelf-segregation is actually a marketing ploy. I think publishers intend to appeal to racial solidarity: black women will buy this book so we’ll put all romance novels written by black authors together in hopes that they will hit the same target audience.

This may be the case, Ana; I’d actually like some more publisher or bookseller feedback on this issue.  Where I live, in California, EVERY cultural/racial/religious group has their own literature or history or culture section.  There’s Asian American literature, African American literature, Native American literature, Chicano literature, etc.  Same for history.  At our colleges and universities, there are Asian American Studies and Asian Studies programs, Chicano Studies, African American Studies, Jewish Studies, Islamic Studies, Native American Studies, etc.  Many of the scholars in these fields prefer to separate designation because they feel it gives them academic legitimacy, while others feel there would be more legitimacy to be integrated into a larger discipline.  We have a Cross-Cultural Center on our campus that has long been the object of contention, since it’s largely a place for “minority” students to hang out and sponsor programs.  Some people feel it’s reverse racism to have the center, while others feel it balkanizes the campus and promotes divisions among groups, and others feel it’s necessary to build cultural pride and a sense if representative identity among certain groups of students. 

I don’t see why I have to defend that segregation is dehumanizing and degrading.  The fact that historically segregation is a bad thing seems to be a given.

You don’t have to defend anything, Monica.  But as I said above in my response to Ana, where I live and work, there are numerous instances of “segregation” that are actually insisted upon by non-whites as positive rather than negative. 

The only writers of romance and other popular fiction segregated by race are black authors.

As I said, this is very much NOT the case where I live. Everyone gets their own shelf space here.

I don’t know what the cultural and racial diversity is like in Kansas, but in CA, our diversity has created a double pull.  For example, bilingual education has been nixed on the theory that non-English speaking children need to be “integrated” into English speaking classes (the so-called immersion theory).  But much language theory indicates that it does not matter so much which language a child has as a primary language, as long as they have a strong enough grasp on that language to be able to transfer the general language skills over to a second language (i.e. when you move them too early, they don’t master either language).  Some people think that immersing non-English speakers in English speaking classes is racist, and some people think that keeping them in bilingual classes (which are segregated, generally on the basis of race or culture, because there is MAJOR debate here as to whether Chicano and Latino folks are white or a separate race) is a form of racist segregation.

As I said, this is very much NOT the case where I live. Everyone gets their own shelf space here.

Really?  I had no idea.  There’s not much diversity in Kansas, although we’re getting a lot more Mexicans.  I can understand separating the books in Spanish from the English ones. 

I could see the opportunity for marketing. 

But how do they figure it out?  Are the publishers designating author race in their publisher sales catalogues for other types of people than the way they do for black authors?

Do they put Jennifer Weiner and Lee Goldberg in the Jewish Studies section, and Dirty Girls in a Hispanic section?  Do they put Tess Garritsen, Jade Lee, Marjorie Liu and Amy Tan together in the Asian section?

Do they double shelf them (put them in two categories)?  So Julie Leto goes into both into the Hispanic and romance section? 

What about the darker skinned East Indians?  Where do they go?  Do they have a separate section?  It seems as if they should.  Lots of East Indians that buy books.

Well, in romance, we now know that very few are permitted to engage in “indiscriminate and unethical sluttiness.”

Basically, that privilege is confined to straight males. Because they can be “redeemed” if they fall in love.

Straight females aren’t generally permitted this latitude within the genre.

And now we see that bisexual or gay people aren’t allowed to have “too much” sex, either, lest readers find their promiscuous “gay lifestyle” upsetting.

Sleeping around is just a straight male privilege. Got that, everyone?

You know, Candy, I’d agree with you, but I believe that some Magic Hoo-Hoos are more powerful than others. (And I don’t mean their owners have done a lot of Kegel exercises.)

Like, if you REALLY need redemption, there’s nothing like that virgin’s blood. That’ll do it every time.

You can’t just be sticking it into a Magic Hoo-Hoo that’s been well-used. The magic wears off a little after a certain number of uses. It’s just a very thin coating, apparently. (Even if it’s only been used by someone’s husband; thus, importance of the virgin widow.)

I just don’t get this obsession with comfort-zone friendly fiction.

A well-told story SHOULD make you think, fire your emotions, push your boundaries, open up new facets of awareness.

How can a reader be truly engaged if that tension isn’t there, if emotions aren’t being stoked? How can you care about the consequences to characters who are never truly challenged?

None of the “comfort zone” comments make any sense to me at all.

Yeah, I DO know what you mean.  One of the best flings of my life was with an admittedly promiscuous man who was 99.9% gay but once in a while, for some inexplicable (even to him) reason, got a hankerin’ for female companionship of the intimate kind.  It was a wonderful two months, full of champagne and laughter and lovely sex and devoid of expections, demands, and dishonesty. 

Would that all my relationships with straight men could’ve been that enjoyable!

In part as a paean to that old liaison, the male “love interest” in my upcoming novel from Samhain has had homosexual relationships.  However, since the book isn’t strictly a romance, I suppose I have a better chance of getting away with such a blemish on his past.  (I wish you could hear the tone of that last sentence lest you think I feel relieved.)

Candy said:

And to briefly wade into the stormy waters of racism vs. racialism, and prejudice and bigotry in general: I can appreciate the differences Robin is trying to point out. My parents are deeply prejudiced against dark-skinned people, and the Very Tall Husband’s parents are prejudiced against gays (they’re hardcore, devout Catholics, so this is not too surprising). However, their behavior towards the individuals they’re prejudiced against has generally been good. They treat them with courtesy and consideration, though my parents sometimes use epithets in private conversation that make me cringe. Is this the best way to operate? Not in my opinion—I do wish they’d change their minds and attitudes. But there are degrees and variations on prejudiced behavior, and we need to recognize that.

What? Their behaviour towards dark-skinned and gay people has ‘generally been good’; they deign to say good afternoon; smile; touch them with a handshake; share workspace – this means they’re ‘less’ prejudiced or not racist?

I never knew racism was behaviour – racism is belief. You don’t have to spit in my dark-skinned face to be a racist. You don’t have to have a banner. Third parties don’t need to declare you racist to make it official. So, your parents ‘sometimes use epithets’ in private conversation and this somehow makes a difference? How is this possible? The differences I see between people who keep their ‘prejudiced’ thoughts to themselves and those who shout it out are manners, decorum and most importantly – the ability to cover their ass. Your parents know the repercussions of stating their problems with dark skinned people in polite society but this no way no how makes them less prejudiced or able to avail themselves of a more palatable degree of prejudiced behaviour.

Robin (I think) said:

there are numerous instances of “segregation” that are actually insisted upon by non-whites as positive rather than negative.

My 14 year old cousin and her friends wanted to buy skin-lightening cream to be ‘prettier’. It’s unfortunately a booming business in the Caribbean amongst blacks and Indians, these creams – in both adults and teenagers. They don’t want to change the status quo - they want to reach over to the white side of it. They’ve been brainwashed by media and larger society. Non-white people who ‘insist’ upon books being segregated are really insisting on it staying segregated because they’ve grown accustomed to the status quo. If they started off integrated and then there was a push to segregate they’d be up in arms. No, I can’t prove it – just taking a wild wild wild guess.

I’m sorry for continuing along the ‘racist’ branch when this discussion is supposed to be about some narrow-minded people who post at AAR. I got sidetracked with the narrow-minded people posting here.

I lost my post so in a long nutshell:

Candy, no need to waste time being bothered at my inability to see the gradations. I understand them just fine. My life as an Afro-Caribbean woman in London involves constant navigation through these gradated minefields of racism. I have a problem when talk of gradation is used to bring the element of ‘acceptability’ of the lesser forms of prejudice/racism into the discussion and this is what I inferred from several posters here.

Personally, I would rather prejudice laid bare than having to suffer the pinpricks of gradated prejudice to the ilk of ‘you’re pretty smart you know, for a…you’re smart.’ - and suffer it with a smile.

Your comment upset me because I was reminded of my white S.African roommate who told me her parents still felt very uncomfortable sharing restaurants etc with black people but she would just give them time to come to terms with it on their own and wanted them to take it slow so it wasn’t too ‘sressful’ for them. This is not what you said but I was reminded of it.

I don’t know your parents, of course not. You introduced them as an example of prejudice though deep, as differentiated from other violent forms and I commented on it. I’m ‘assuming’ things as much as every other poster here is because none of us knows the other. That your parents are Malaysian don’t change my views and I certainly did not intend disrespect but since it appears I have, I apologise.

Dalia

(First of all, apologies if the italics don’t work; I’m used to LiveJournal, where the

< and >

keys denote the coding, but some blogs use the [ and ] keys. Ack, technology.)

Marie Brennan said upthread:

But I know that in fanfiction, m/m is astronomically more common than f/f, and the majority of it is written by women.  There’s plenty of speculation about why that is the case, but I suspect whatever the causes are, they’d apply to romance, as well, since the majority of the authors (as I understand it) are, again, women.

Or, to put it another way, as long as the majority of writers and readers of romance are straight women, they’re more likely to find m/m action hot than f/f.  For whatever reasons that may be.

Speaking as a reader and writer of m/m fanfiction, for me the equation goes like this: I am attracted to men. I am not attracted to women. Therefore, a m/m sex scene is hotter to me than a f/f one.

Because yes, m/m slash is exponentially more available than is f/f slash, to the point where I think we’re close to “slash” being the default term for m/m pairings and using “femmeslash” or “femslash” to denote f/f pairings. (As opposed to the historical usage of “slash”—yes, fanfiction has a history!—which denoted any same-sex pairing, whether m/m or f/f.) And I think it’s because the majority of fanfiction writers are women, and (dare I say it?) most of them are straight.

Which brings me to the Romance portion of the discussion. I’m new to the Romance genre, and really just bopping around, trying to figure out what (and whom) I like. But I do know for sure that a male bisexual or gay character would induce me to give a book a chance, because I’m already inclined that way from my decade of activity in m/m slash.

All of which is to say, those people who are trying to narrow the definition of Romance, or influence the market to discourage publishers from releasing Romances with bisexual or gay characters, should tread carefully, because in my case (and probably those of a number of other readers), they’re actually *driving* us to read those books. *writes down Stuart’s name in ‘books to read’ notebook*

I really don’t understand why anyone is bothering to point out the graduations prejudice, ‘cept to maybe assauge their own concious or feel better about their relatives.  If you say and think hateful shit about gays, you’re a homophobe.  If you beat gays you’re a violent homophobe.  If you say and think hateful shit about blacks, you’re a racist.  If you drag black men behind trucks you’re a violent racist. But, the existence of one bolsters the other, and neither is guiltless.  Why the desperate clawing for a blameless space to enshrine hatred and bigotry?

I don’t get it.  What is the ‘shades of hate’ stchick supposed to prove?

Woo hoo!  This is like when LFL and I were compared to KKK members for defending the forced seduction scenes in Gaffney’s To Have and To Hold on AAR. 

Non-white people who ‘insist’ upon books being segregated are really insisting on it staying segregated because they’ve grown accustomed to the status quo. If they started off integrated and then there was a push to segregate they’d be up in arms. No, I can’t prove it – just taking a wild wild wild guess.

My life and my work would be so much easier if things were this simple.  I don’t know how much you know about the rise of ethnic studies departments in US universities, there has been a tremendous amount of scholarship on both sides of the discipline segregation line, including much cogent and sophisticated work in support of separate academic programs for particular national/cultural/religious/racial identity groups.  Some of the arguments forwarded have to do with respecting the individual integrity of certain histories, raising social and political consciousness (i.e. changing the status quo), and, perhaps most materially, ensuring adequate departmental funding and FTE appointments (that is, dedicated faculty positions, which much be fought over in a large integrated department).  Whether or not I agree or disagree with any of these arguments is, IMO, irrelevant to the larger point, which is that some of the scholars who want dedicated departments actually believe that such a structure is a path to greater social and political capital for “minority” groups (I hate this term, especially because in CA, for example, Chicanos are statistically a majority but politically a minority).

Not that long ago, we had a discussion here about the merging of morality and politics on the far Right.  How is designating anything that falls short of some sweeping absolutist standard of racism one may personally define from the Left any different?  Because we know racism is wrong?  Of course it is; that’s not at issue.  What’s at issue for me is the flattening out a lot of complex intersections of identity and race and culture and religion and politics and class and gender, etc. and deciding that anyone who doesn’t recognize these obvious black and white differences is “narrow-minded” or racist or (fill in the blank with the derogatory adjective of your choice).  No one here is trying to defend hate crime; I’m not even trying to defend people who don’t want to read interracial Romance.  I’m simply saying that I’m not ready to condemn all those folks as racists.  If that makes me racist, then I think the campaign for social and political equity across line of circumstantial difference in America is in way more trouble than I did before this discussion.  On the most basic level, I don’t think calling those people racist is going to do one thing to eradicate racist beliefs and behaviors.  In fact, I think it’s going to facilitate the exact opposite of creating any greater understanding across lines of difference.

Veronica said: Why the desperate clawing for a blameless space to enshrine hatred and bigotry?

Oy. I don’t read Candy’s comments that way. At ALL. My relatives are Southern whites, and I have similar issues with them. Not for ONE MINUTE do I excuse their bigotry. They are my family, however, and the best I can do is influence them by example and argue with them outright when it’ll do the most good. I’ve been beating my head against this particular wall for a few decades now, and the jury’s still out on whether I’ve made one bit of difference.

If you think Candy is enshrining or excusing bigotry, I think you’ve seriously misread her comments.

Robin, I have yet to call you racist so I hope your comparison to a situation when you yourself were compared to KKK members is not drawn from something I wrote.

I know absolutely nothing about the rise of ethnic studies in US universities. The support for separate academic programs for particular groups - is this like an ‘Hispanic-American History’ class for Latin-Americans (though I’m assuming anyone is eligible to attend but the focus would be on Latin-Americans) or is this like a Macro-economic class for Latin Americans?

Focusing on black or gay romance novel segregation: I think it’s dangerous to use ‘non-whites agree with it’ or ‘booksellers say its best marketed that way’ as reasons for keeping it as such, no matter how intelligently worded or argued these reasons are. They always seem to be reactive statements to the existence of novel segregation when I just can’t get past why they were separated in the first place. Romance is romance is romance.

It’s possible to love someone without subscribing to their views.

You can also ruin family relations by telling people exactly what you think of their bullshit ideas. I’ve done exactly that, and I haven’t changed anyone’s mind. Arguably, I’ve done the right thing and stood up for my principles, but it’s lonely at Christmas sometimes.

SandyW said: “I’m trying to puzzle out the ‘bisexual partners are more likely to be unfaithful’ argument.”

I can totally understand this and (for me) it had nothing to do with whether or not bisexual men are promiscuous. Hypothetically, I think I’d be very aware that there was something my partner wanted (or would want or HAS wanted) that I simply could not give him. I’m not just talking twigs and berries here. If it were that simple you could just say to your gay friend, “Honey, just marry me and I’ll wear a strap-on and we’ll live happily ever after!”

I’m sure I’d have this fear that he was unfulfilled and missing that type of intimacy with another man (assuming this is a monogamous relationship). THAT’S where the fear of cheating comes in. And if you do start to feel insecure or worried, there’s no comfort in the fact that he’s just out playing hot, sweaty basketball with his buddies! *snort*

If there is intimacy missing in your relationship with your straight guy, you can at least feel confident that you have a chance to work back to that. But if it’s a whole different need he’s experiencing. . . Well, shit. Of course, I’m not bisexual. Am I wrong in assuming, for some at least, that these relationships (m/m, m/f) might be very different?

Candy said:

I’m not quite sure how you’re perceiving that any of us here are arguing that racism is acceptable. We’re arguing for a more nuanced take on the issue of prejudice.

For me, nuances and gradations - though real - are the stuff of nightmares. I see many rolling hills and slippery slopes whenever there are discussions about *forms* of prejudice. This isn’t the first conversation I’ve had on the subject and in my experience, for every person who clearly differentiates between acceptance of prejudice/racism and understanding of its different forms - there are at least three who conflate the two.

But how do they figure it out?  Are the publishers designating author race in their publisher sales catalogues for other types of people than the way they do for black authors?

Do they double shelf them (put them in two categories)?  So Julie Leto goes into both into the Hispanic and romance section?

I have no clue, actually, how these differentiations are made, only that they do not seem to be consistent on any rubric you might design (actually, a lot of stuff is double shelved, but even then there’s no real rhyme or reason, IMO).  All I know is that it’s often exhausting trying to find a book, and the specification of certain specific shelf space seems to proceed along the lines of population and presence in a particular area of the state.  In one part of the state, for example, you might find some shelf space dedicated to Persian studies, but not in other areas of the state.  I was going through the Native American history section at my local Borders not long ago, and I found everything from fiction by Native American authors (that didn’t necessarily even FEATURE any Native American characters) to incredibly backward ass history purportedly about Native American peoples to captivity narratives written by white people who were at war with Native American nations—it was mind boggling. 

One of the interesting things coming from a CA university is that the literature in higher ed that comes out of the Eastern US often refers to the “race issue” as specifically black and white.  But for us, it’s not that way at all.  Right this minute, actually, the most explosive division is between Muslim Arabs and Israeli Jews, and so now, for example, you’re starting to see Judaic Studies and Islamic Studies departments popping up on campuses and the interesting infusion of religious differences into identity politics that for a long time seemed to coaslesce primarily around race.  After 9/11, that changed.  Now there are some further conflations of religion and politics (i.e. to protest against Israel is to be anti-semitic) to complicate things even more. 

Race issues for us run on a series of axes, Chicano-Anglo, Chicano-African American, Arab-Israeli, Chinese-Vietnamese, etc.  Regardless of what the US Census might say, our state still very much treats Chicano and Latino identities as racial rather than simply cultural.  Then there are the fine distinctions among Asian groups that very much come into play.  Are those racial or national?  Depends on who you ask, of course, because even the designation “Asian” (and East Indian studies is often folded into Asian Studies on university campuses) is under fire for being too reductionist.

Victoria said:

But if it’s a whole different need he’s experiencing. . .

This is how it works for me. I did the usual f/f experimenting in college, and it was okay, but I really like the cock. I like a real one, too—not one that someone has strapped on or is using on me manually. In general, I like big, tall bulky, substantial men. I’ve never seen a woman in real life as big as I like my men. Those are physical attributes I like.

However.

I do have it in my character to be attracted to people, not just their build or their body parts. In fact, I’ve
never been attracted to someone purely based on looks. I can admire someone and think (very detachedly) that they’re attractive but I never start putting myself together with them sexually until we’ve achieved emotional intimacy, I’m attracted to their mind, their ideas, their way of thinking, sense of humor. I’ve been attracted to women a couple of times because I got to know them. I’ve followed up on that once.

Does that make me bisexual? I dunno. Probably, at least in theory. But it doesn’t mean that if I’m in a healthy, happy, fulfilling hetero relationship that I’m going to need to go chase some pussy now and then. If I start yearning after a woman, it’s because my relationship is lacking, not my partner’s gender.

Monica, you said:

There is no difference between racialism and racism.

which I find interesting and I wonder if I disagree with you only because we are on opposite sides of a racial divide.  I believe there is a difference between the two.  In my mind, the distinction is similar to what Robin noted (identifying differences, etc.), though I have an additional nuance attached to it whereby racialism includes a kind of pride and promotion of a race.  What comes to mind for me is a friend whose family is Croatian.  Similar to how some people see all Asians as the same and can’t distinguish between the large variety of differences in culture that are lumped together under such a large umbrella, to me there were no differences between one Yugoslovian and another until I came to know this person.  I came to see it as a kind of racialism that her family, two generations on as citizens of the U.S., still strongly identify themselves as and take great pride in being Croatian.  Having this pride in being Croatian is, to me, a far cry from racism and having attitudes or taking actions with the purpose of doing harm to or with an intent of keeping down those of other races.

In other words, I believe it’s perfectly possible to be proud of being Italian without being an asshole to someone who’s Irish for no other reason than the fact that she or he is Irish.

This leads me to something else you said:

Many white Americans share your views that prevasive racism is a made-up construct.

I’m not here to argue that this isn’t true.  I’m perfectly sure it is true.  But I am here to say that we have yet to reach a level of openness in communications among/between races which makes me believe that certain actions by one person of one race aren’t misinterpreted by another person of another race.  For example, some years ago I attended a seminar wherein the lecturer gave us some statistics about how long people feel comfortable in a business setting engaging in small talk before they got down to business.  Not surprisingly, there was a divide of some minutes between people raised in northern states vs. those raised in southern states.  What did surprise me - and I don’t believe this makes me a racist, only ignorant of certain nuances of culture - was the large difference between what white, Asian, Latino and black people felt comfortable with.  This was an eye opener for me because it made me realize that while I would be perfectly comfortable at the number of minutes that had passed between the shaking of hands and the discussion of business, there would be others distinctly uncomfortable - if not insulted.  For those from cultures that require a longer period of chit chat (and a deeper delving into personal matters, such as discussion about one’s children), there would be a feeling of insult that they didn’t have the opportunity to ease into business.  Thus, completely unknowingly, those more comfortable with a brief opening segment give off the impression not only of rudeness, but also a hint that they are racist.  It’s my belief that there are innumerable things such as this that occur that have one race calling racism while another is pushed back on its heels feeling blindsided. 

Again, I’m not attempting to say that racism doesn’t exist, only that each of us is apt to interpret certain actions and words through the lenses and filters of our own experiences.  Perception is reality, sure, but my reality isn’t necessarily someone else’s reality.  I believe the discussion about segregation of books illustrates that point well enough.  If one is hopeful of walking into a bookstore and finding a whole section of books devoted exactly to their interest - say sci fi - it’s a good thing: they can go right to that section and delve in knowing (from their point of view) there’s no wheat to separate from the chaff.  If one is instead looking at it from the point of view of sci fi is as good as every other kind of literature, it’s as legitimate as anything by Proust or Shakespeare and the authors of the genre should be shelved right in there with them, they are more apt to see it as an insult that sci fi has its own section. 

That segregation of sci fi can be seen as either elevating or denigrating the genre, depending on one’s point of view.  And sometimes the most innocent of actions can be interpreted to have had the most vile of motivations when in fact no such motivation existed.

So while I’m sure that racism is alive and

well

hell in America, I’m also sure that if we were more capable at communicating with one another with true honesty, what is seen as deliberately insulting behavior in some cases is merely an ignorance of the codes for conduct of someone else’s reality.

If I start yearning after a woman, it’s because my relationship is lacking, not my partner’s gender.

I totally understand. But I’m talking fear here, not necessarily reality. I think a lot of women worry about whether or not this man they’re in love with will cheat on them. This may have to do with self-esteem issues or just past experience,  but I think many women would find it exhausting to have to worry about other men being a “threat” to their relationship too. Again, I’m talking average, everyday anxiety in an average relationship with all the problems that come with it.

Yeah, I understand your point, Victoria.

However…

If the relationship is damaged to the point where a woman is really worried about cheating or thinks it may already be going on, honestly the bi/hetero question isn’t the issue to tackle. And if the woman is just unable to trust fully, unable to believe this man loves her and her alone, then the problem isn’t whether her man is bi; it lies within herself.

I know absolutely nothing about the rise of ethnic studies in US universities. The support for separate academic programs for particular groups - is this like an ‘Hispanic-American History’ class for Latin-Americans (though I’m assuming anyone is eligible to attend but the focus would be on Latin-Americans) or is this like a Macro-economic class for Latin Americans?

This is like whole programs devoted to the study of a particular culture, race, group of cultures, etc.—from history to literature to religion to philosophy, etc.  They have served different purposes over the years, from carving out a space for dedicated ethnic studies (i.e. no “token” classes in big departments) to functioning as recruitment tools for minority graduate students, to providing a place for students of particular backgrounds to study their own culture or race (and for students who don’t come from those backgrounds to get a strong background).  Differentiation, in the minds of some of the scholars who have built these departments, is power, whether or not I agree with that position.

Focusing on black or gay romance novel segregation: I think it’s dangerous to use ‘non-whites agree with it’ or ‘booksellers say its best marketed that way’ as reasons for keeping it as such, no matter how intelligently worded or argued these reasons are. They always seem to be reactive statements to the existence of novel segregation when I just can’t get past why they were separated in the first place. Romance is romance is romance.

I agree.  But there are two issues here, as I see them.  First there is the issue of readers who don’t want to read non-white or interracial Romance.  The second issue is the issue that Monica brought up, which is the segregation of African American Romance on bookstore shelves and the subordination of AA Romance authors.  In the first case (that of readers), I’m not convinced that every reader who doesn’t want their escapist fantasy to be non-white (especially if the reader is white) is racist.  As to the second, since I don’t know enough about what Monica is asserting—that is, why do bookstores separate different books and how are AA authors treated as inferior—I’m not ready to render a judgment there, either.  I’m not denying that Monica feels that way, and because I know she’s a smart woman, I certainly am not going to discount her view.  But while I agree that treating someone as inferior solely on the basis of race is racism, no one has given me specific examples of how and where that’s happening so I can say, oh, yes, absolutely.  And furthermore, the fact that I am white, IMO, makes it such that if I don’t see a certain situation as motivated by racism (as opposed to some dumb ass marketing thing or ignorance or something else), I wonder if my opinion will be seen as invalid because of MY race.  Personally, I think there are a lot of white people who are terribly afraid of being viewed as racist and who will go out of their way to make these grand gestures to prevent such a thing from happening.  Me, I’m an almost lawyer and a long-time academic who’d rather be called racist than casually accuse someone else of it.  Because in my experience, the accusation creates hostility and division resistance to change.

racialism includes a kind of pride and promotion of a race

Thanks for pointing this out, fiveandfour; I had in mind Malcom X when I posted about racialism originally, but I don’t think I mentioned that certain separatist philosophies and movements qualified, as well.

Many white Americans share your views that prevasive racism is a made-up construct.

I don’t think I addressed this quote of Monica’s.  I don’t think racism is made up, but I do think race is an artificial construct.  That is, I believe that beyond circumstantial differences including skin color, culture, language, religion, etc., the notion of essentialized racial categories is a socially invented construct.  It doesn’t make it any less socially powerful, but it’s not monolithic or independently stable.

Candy: If you can find a quote somewhere in these comments in which anyone tries to paint racism as blameless, or in which someone tries to argue that hatred and bigotry are GOOD things, I’d like you to find it.

I don’t know that anyone has tried to say it’s a GOOD thing, but so far people have argued that it’s blameless for:

1.) old people
2.) Catholics
3.) book publishers
4.) White Southerners
5.) People that were “raised” to be bigots

For the record, I’m white.  I have Southern, old, racist and homophobic family members, and you know what?  Those people are Racist and Homophobic.

Period.

They are not physically prevented from letting go of hate.  They hold on to it, claw at it, and are proud of it in a few cases.  They are not, “Racist, but…”

As, in:  “Racist, but old.” Or, “Homophobic, but not aggresive.” And, they are certainly not, “Racist, but good people, in spite of it because I love them and want you to know that they wouldn’t hurt you.”  They are simply racist.  They may be nice to puppies, and donate to the red cross, and love thier grandkids.  But, they are also simply racist.

Until we stop making these excuses, and adding bullshit qualifiers to ease discomfort with admitting that we and our families aren’t perfect and have irrational biases and hateful streaks, then no one is going to really let go of bigotry.  It’ll just continue to hurt people.  And, for what?  So you can feel more comfortable about your origins?  That’s more important that being honest and a part of the solution, instead of being an apologist?

I want you to know that I really loved your entry, and I wrote about it over in my little blog in glowing terms.  And, I don’t think you’re a bad person, Candy.  But, I do totally see a lot in this thread that’s pretty sad, and evidence of just how far we have to go.

but so far people have argued that it’s blameless for:

“Blameless”? Really? And “argued” it, no less?

Victoria said: “I’m talking fear here, not necessarily reality. I think a lot of women worry about whether or not this man they’re in love with will cheat on them. This may have to do with self-esteem issues or just past experience, but I think many women would find it exhausting to have to worry about other men being a “threat” to their relationship too.”

And I look at it from the other side: If my male SO was to turn to another woman, it would be worse than having a male rival. My thinking would run this way: cheating with a woman tells me there’s something wrong with me as a woman. I’ve failed the relationship. But cheating with a man means my SO is looking for something I couldn’t have given him, so it wouldn’t reflect on me at all.

Either situation would be painful, of course. But I wouldn’t feel so personally rejected if SO took up with another male.

“I see many rolling hills and slippery slopes whenever there are discussions about *forms* of prejudice.” (Dalia)

Like the “slippery slope” described by Jan Butler in her diatribe against gay romance, in which RWA’s inclusion of gay romance would lead inexorably to cultural decay, the oppression of True Moral Americans, and pedophilia? Once you start talking in absolutes, you’ve limited the discussion to, well, to something that is not discussion, but speechifying.

I’d rather have conversations and learn.

Veronica, I don’t think you’re hearing what’s being said.

You said: Until we stop making these excuses, and adding bullshit qualifiers to ease discomfort with admitting that we and our families aren’t perfect and have irrational biases and hateful streaks, then no one is going to really let go of bigotry.  It’ll just continue to hurt people.  And, for what?  So you can feel more comfortable about your origins?  That’s more important that being honest and a part of the solution, instead of being an apologist?

In what way did anyone express that they were COMFORTABLE with their relatives being this way?

Let me be clear:

I find it incredibly hurtful and fucking REPREHENSIBLE that I am related to people with these beliefs.

Does that mean that I cut them off and never speak to them again?

Tried that. Accomplished nothing.

The best chance they have of getting past these racist, fucked-up beliefs is if someone they trust engages them, talks honestly with them, and occasionally kicks them in the ass.

Is it comfortable? Fuck no. But I owe it to myself and to them to at least fucking try. And if I only see the ugly racist part of them and nothing else, my job is a lot harder. There is a decent human being in there somewhere, and that’s the part I want to reach.

Morality has been highjacked by certain segments of society who use this word to browbeat the rest of us.  To them, as an athiest I can’t have any morals.  To me, as an athiest I chose my moral code very carefully, acquiring it not from a book or orginazation but from within myself, from experience, from observation.  It is fine to express ones discomfort with a choice someone else has made but judging is not okay.  That book so many “moral” people claim to have read clearly states “judge not lest ye be judged”.  It also says “ye who has not sinned may cast the first stone” and “love thy neighbor as thyself”.

Grr…I meant to say I find it repugnant, not reprehensible, that I’m related to bigots. My vocabulary gets shot to hell when I get a rant on, sometimes.

Uh-oh, Thera.  We went from bisexuality and sex issues to racism and race issues. Now you have opened the door to a religious debate…. this has been a fairly complex couple of days!

lovelysalome said: this has been a fairly complex couple of days!

Yeah, I could use me some mindless mantitty cover snark right about now. Where’s Fabio when we need him?

;-)

“If I try to introduce context and explanations, it’s because I believe it’s useful to see WHY people believe what they do as well as WHAT they believe.”

And, I think that’s pandering to bigots, and them giving them (yet another) a platform for spreading hate.  What are these reasons for bigotry and prejudice other than ignorance and hatefulness?  Really, what is it other than that?  Ignorance and hatefulness borne of religion? Ignorance and hatefulness born out of… well ignorance and hatefulness?  At what point does “seeing why” become, “giving audience to another diatribe of full misinformation, another sermon full of judgment against my fellow man and woman, and another speech I’ve heard before about giving into my basest urges to feel superior to others for the most arbitrary of reasons?”

It’s not like I’m some foot soldier pushing for Black Nationalism and Lesbian separatism here.  I’m just asking why when it comes to bigotry calling a spade a spade is “too powerful” and “too simplistic.”  Because, if it’s too powerful then “nice” people won’t call bigotry out when it’s bigotry.  And, if it’s “too simplistic,” then anyone that likes to think they are realistic will give up, because the problem is too complicated to ever be solved. Which is to say.. I think it’s defeatist to give up on calling bigotry what is is, for fear of the power it might have or the simplicity of the solution.

I don’t want to give in to implied defeatism; I really want to believe society can change.  I’m sorry my earnestness and hope ran over your intentions in a way that upset you.  I thought I was being clear, not obnoxious.  Shit happens.  I apologize.

“Yeah, I could use me some mindless mantitty cover snark right about now. Where’s Fabio when we need him?”

Ditto that.

lovelysalome—You forgot POLITICS.

We could combine formats, race politics etc. How’s about a quick comparison between the right’s portrayal of Sharpton as a chauffer and the left’s portrayal of Lieberman in blackface?

I’m in bitch mode and it’s showing up in my blog enough as it is. I want credit for being quiet. Gimme a goddamn gold star.

I just kind of get tired of the implication that I’m ready to fall for anything because I’m more open minded.  I had a boss once who would never come out and tell me she thought I was stupid for standing up for the rights of all people, not just those certain moralists consider worthy.  She’s just the sort of person I wouldn’t want on my jury.

I think trying to understand why bigots think and behave the way they do actually helps me come up with ways to talk them out of it. If they don’t feel like I’m listening to them and making an effort to understand their point of view, they’re much less inclined to listen to ME. And when I react badly to something they do that’s bigoted, they’re much more likely to give a shit and be willing to change their behavior if we’re on speaking terms to start with.

“I think trying to understand why bigots think and behave the way they do actually helps me come up with ways to talk them out of it.”

Exactly. Understanding causes and reasons leads to finding ways to communicate and counteract. And then, to ways to prevent. Otherwise, we’re just standing on opposite sides of the river, throwing rocks. Or worse.

The biggest problem is usually getting the other side to listen to *you.* But once connection is made, and true communication begins, it’s impossible not to see the other party as anything but an individual and human, no matter how mistaken you think them.

Veronica: if at any point you see me hesitating to admit that my parents or my parents-in-law are prejudiced—sometimes even bigoted assholes in their behavior—you let me know, mmmmkay?

Candy, I think she’s actually referring more to my refusal to call readers who don’t want to read interracial Romance or booksellers/publishers who shelve AA Romance on separate shelves racist. 

I understood what you said just fine, although I may not be the person you want on your side right now.  I’m all for “calling a spade a spade, too” once, of course, we’ve decided what, exactly, a spade is.  Is it a woman who won’t read Romance with forced seduction? Is she a bigot?  How about a man who won’t read Romance?  Is he a misogynist?  How about an AA reader who won’t read white Romance?  Racist? 

I can see Veronica’s idealism in her comments because I used to hold some of the same views.  And I think that sort of take no prisoners idealistic fire serves an important purpose—up to a point. 

One of the things I have to do on a daily basis in my job is try to negotiate across very divisive lines of difference, and I’m learning more and more every day what works and what doesn’t.  Sometimes provocation works and sometimes it doesn’t.  And while I’m referring to no one in particular here, I think there is a point where people can become more invested in being right in their judgments than in working toward reconcillation and resolution—and I think this happens both with the so-called bigots and with those who hate bigotry and would call others out as such.  I can only speak for myself, but as I’ve gotten older, I’ve become more interested in reconcilliation than righteous anger, even thought it was so much easier to be in that idealistically angry place.

Answer me this.  As one of the few black chicks speaking, I’m curious.

Why do folks have snake on a muthafuckin’ plane when they’re called racist?

Why is it worse to be called racist than to be racist?

I’m not being facetious here, I’m genuinely curious.

There is no such thing as race.  I agree with Robin there.

There is such a thing as having pride in your culture, traditions and background.

Everybody has background and traditions.  There is no one monolithic “white” cultural more, nor is there a black one. 

Some “white people” are proud their ancestors landed on Plymouth Rock, others are proud they survived the potato famine, and still others are proud oof their Greek or Italian roots.  I can be proud that my forbears made it out of the southern states and settled in Kansas as self-sufficient pioneers.  I don’t see how that relates to treating people differently because of their so-called race. 

That’s racism, no matter how it’s softened or what gradiations you explore of it. 

As a black woman, let me tell you this.  Every single blessed time I’ve been treated differently because of my race, no matter how the person perceived it—fostering my racial pride, getting down with the black chick, making it easier for me, whatever—it was still a slap in the face. 

I’m sure my math teacher thought he was being kind when he gave the test I made 100% on a B+ instead of an A.  The white boy next to me made 100% and made an A.  When I asked him how I could not miss a single question and still make a B+, he told me he graded on the Bell curve.  When I still complained, he got frustrated and said he was only trying to make it easier for me.  If I was good at math because the “others” would be even meaner to me.  (Ohmigod, the horror of the way white boys treated the only black girl in the school.  I would homeschool my daughter before I’d let her endure it). 

This is a true story.  I would bet my next advance that this man thought he was doing me a favor if didn’t compete with the white boys and make them angry by being smarter than tham.  I’m sure this nice family man didn’t think of himself as racist at all. 

But he was. 

For the record, I’m white.  I have Southern, old, racist and homophobic family members, and you know what?  Those people are Racist and Homophobic.

Amen.  To those that are the receiving end, there is no other word for it. 

Robin said, On the most basic level, I don’t think calling those people racist is going to do one thing to eradicate racist beliefs and behaviors.

People are afraid to hear it because they don’t want to look into a mirror and see their true face. 

To themselves, their family and friends they may look fine.  Their racism is excusable. 

But to the “other” it isn’t.  The “other” can see the ugliness. 

I think that’s where the discomfort comes into play when race is discussed. 

Racism can be changed, it’s a living entity.  I’ve seen it change when white people have gotten to know me and came into my house.  It’s like a lightbulb, “She’s just like me.”  Enough of those lightbulbs light and spread and racism will eventually wither away.

It seems to me that if you’re gonna call somebody a racist, they’d damn well better be a racist. It’s a powerful word, and throwing it around minimizes the power of that word. “She’s a racist because she won’t read AA romances.” *cue nationwide eye roll* (And, no I’m not quoting anyone here. I never actually saw anyone say that and I’m too lazy to check it out.)

Nobody addresses WHY it’s such a powerful word, to whites.

It’s not that powerful to me.  In fact, it’s rather common. 

I wouldn’t dare to call somebody the R word for not reading romance by black people.

But would I be anti-Semitic if I said I wouldn’t read any romances by Jews?

If you were Jewish, would you not want to ask me why I made the statement?

Then what if I said, “It’s too much trouble to read Jew romance.  I don’t know what Jew writers are any good.  I read one once and it sucked.  I don’t relate to Jew romances.  No, I won’t bother to read Jew romance, you Jew romance writer. And don’t you DARE call me anti-Semitic.  You Jews always do that, pull the Anti-Semitic card.  I don’t have to read Jew romances if I don’t want to.  So there.”

That’s how those people who won’t read AA romance come off to me.  But are they racist?  Of course they aren’t/

That’s a bad example.

That’s a religious issue, not a racial one. People can’t decide to become Asian, whereas anyone can covert to Judaism if they put time and effort into it.

I have something of a unique perspective on prejudice, given that I live in Mexico, and I am, unquestionably, a minority here. It’s been an interesting and eye-opening experience.

But would I be anti-Semitic if I said I wouldn’t read any romances by Jews?

But is that what you’d hear if I said, “Eh, I don’t really read Jewish romance.”? Because that’s very different from “I wouldn’t read any romances by Jews.”

I don’t read Greek Tycoon romances either and I don’t have anything against Greeks. I’d certainly read something more up my alley (historical, etc.) if it was written by a Greek author Okay, Greek-American, because I don’t know how that shit translates.

As to the racist question. . . There’s no fucking defense against it, is there? That’s why I’d bristle at it. What the fuck are you supposed to say to that? “No, I’m not! I’m NOT a racist!”

But what if you are a racist?  Not to yourself or to your buddies, but to the “other?”  How would you really know?

Wouldn’t a better response be, “Why do you say that?” and listen. 

Really listen.  They will tell you.  It would be an opportunity for dialogue and enlightenment if you could put yourself into the other person’s skin. 

It’s different to not have come across any AA romances (there are fairly pervasive, but still), than to say, “I don’t read AA romance.” 

I was talking about the folks who say, “I don’t read AA romance.” 

You’d be surprised how mamy say this.  There are lots of excuses, endless excuses, but you could hand them an AA romance of their favorite type, and they wouldn’t read it. But they would read an unknown nonblack author. 

I’ve heard from authors who couldn’t give their books away to whites at conventions and conferences.  They just don’t want to read them.  But they read the new and unknown white authors.  If you were a black romance writer, how would this make you feel.

I wasn’t going to get all personal but I changed my mind. Being treated differently because of your race is fucking painful, whatever the reason, even if people have good intentions. Hell, especially if they have good intentions.

Saturday, I was invented to my sister in law’s baby shower. It was hosted at a gorgeous party room; that’s very common, renting a salon, which is then catered and decorated by professionals. I dressed nicely and I brought a great gift, something my little boy loved as a baby. A Johnny Jump-Up.

I got there, the valet parked my car, and I went inside. Gave the customary, half-hug and cheek kiss to everyone, even people I didn’t know. My sister in law was glowing. My mother in law (o mi suegra) led me to a table. It was totally empty.

At the table next to me, there were three empty chairs. Now why couldn’t I sit there? Why didn’t I get to pick my own seat? Why? Because those women didn’t speak any English, and I am not given credit for being smart enough to make my way in the conversation. In fact, I do pretty damn well in Spanish, considering I’ve only been here a year. I had a great conversation with a taxi driver yesterday about politics, the election, and the various candidates. But he was willing to talk to me.

So there I sat by myself, hands folded, face burning. I don’t know when I’ve ever felt so humiliated, singled-out and embarrassed. They eventually dragged a poor woman over to sit with me, who spoke a little English, and that was even worse. She made her escape as soon as she could, went to another table. Another humiliation.

I don’t need special treatment. I just want to be treated like anyone else. I left as soon as I could and went home and just cried. I haven’t written everything that happened or maybe even given a true sign how bad it was. They had good intentions. They wanted to make allowances for the stupid American woman who isn’t fluent in Spanish yet. Somehow that doesn’t make me feel any better.

If you were a black romance writer, how would this make you feel.

Hell, I’m sure it feels shitty. But that doesn’t make the non-buyer a racist, regardless of how it makes you feel. Your feeling does not define the motivation.

People say to me all the time, “I don’t read historicals.” What does that make them?

Between work and a deadline and getting kids back to college and a close family member coming out of the closet and a lately very cranky spousal unit and the line I write for biting the Big One and wrangling with Wells Fargo over college loans and paying bills and writing thank you notes and having the flu and taking care of RWA board business and reading one-hundred-thirty-two comments at Smart Bitches….*sucks in huge breath*....I’d just die to read ANY romance.  Gimme black, white, black/white, man/man, woman/woman, man/woman, man, woman, God, dead guys, wolf guys, funny people, long ago people, in the future people, right now people, three doors down people, superheroes…dayam, I need a reading fix.

*whimpers, followed by long whiiiine*

I’m totally intimidated, by the way - there’s lotsa smart people here in BitchLand.  Taxes?  I’m your girl.  The day Candy gets somethin’ goin’ about the tax implications of family limited partnerships or Hope Credits, I’m there baby.

Otherwise, I’m in the cheap seats, watching the ball bop back and forth.

And wishing I had freakin’ time to read a book.  Although at the rate these comments are piling up, maybe I did have time?

Ana, there is really no such thing as race. 
Scientifically, the concept of race is being debunked. 

People have classified Jews as a race when they wanted to denigrate them and treat them as a despised minority.  This is not the case in the U.S. today. 

In WW2, Jews were certainly considered a race and killed because of it.

People say to me all the time, “I don’t read historicals.” What does that make them?

It makes them a person that doesn’t like historicals.

However if they say, “I don’t read historicals by Jews,” it makes them an anti-Semite.

Ana, I’m sorry.  I don’t know you from Adam, but I’m so sorry.  Having been humiliated before - whether racial or gender related, humiliation is humiliation - I empathize and think it’s amazingly kind of you to say they ‘meant well’.

Monica - I wish things were different.  I admire you for stepping up to the plate and saying how you really feel.

Actually, Ana, you said they had ‘good intentions’, not that they ‘meant well’.  My bad for misquoting you.

Shit, I’m tired….

Stef, you got the gist of it right and that’s what counts.

At the moment, it’s a bit hard to feel kindly disposed toward them, though. Their good intentions made me feel like shit. I’m just white-trash, right? Uneducated, come from Kentucky hill folk, and I can’t learn a civilized language to save my life.

Actually, I do come from hill people, but I put myself through college, studied literature, and got my degree. I speak Spanish conversationally, just have a hard time remembering verb tenses mainly, and I need people to be patient with me. I need people willing to try, not put me at a table by myself.

PS I do hate wearing shoes, so maybe my in-laws have a point about me, huh? If only their son hadn’t married down…

Ana, I feel for you. 

But you lift your chin and don’t let anybody get you down.  That’s the worst thing, when they get you to believe something is wrong, that you’re different and flawed somehow.

Don’t ever let people do that to you.  Fight back and say no.  You’re intelligent and sensitive, I can tell by your writing. 

You can sit anywhere, go anywhere and do anything.  But you already know that, don’t you? (((hugs)))

Yo, Monica, you up for a road trip?  Where, exactly, are you in Mexico, Ana?  I’m thinkin’ Monica and I need to come down and meet the in-laws.  Should we arrive bare-foot?  They’ll loooove my hick accent - and my great grasp of espanol.  “Donde es el bano?”  or, “Hey, yo!  Pass me a fumar with that Corona!”

Sadly, I was at one time very close to fluent - but alas, I lost it.  You know, the best revenge is doing well - so learn your Spanish and kick some ass, girlfriend.

Hee. Thank you. *hugs to both Stef and Monica* You two almost made me cry.

I’m in Mexico City, northern suburb called Naucalpan. It’s gorgeous here, my troubles aside, and I’ll host anyone who wants a free vacation. You supply the airfare though. My husband won’t let me pay to import bitches unless he gets to watch me sleep with them. We’re about a three hour drive from Acapulco. Nice beaches there.

I was talking about the folks who say, “I don’t read AA romance.”

You’d be surprised how mamy say this.  There are lots of excuses, endless excuses, but you could hand them an AA romance of their favorite type, and they wouldn’t read it.

Btw, I agree with you that it’s racist to say, “I won’t read a book by a black author.” Clearly, that has nothing to do with the subject matter and everything to do with the author and the color of her skin.

Monica, do you consider AA romance a subgenre within romance? I mean a romance with a black h/h, nothing to do with who wrote it. I know you don’t think it should be shelved separately, but most subgenres aren’t, after all. I have no idea what would define a genuine subgenre, so I’m curious what you think as a writer.

(My apologies if my writing in the first person makes this more difficult to read)

Without making apologies for anyone’s bigotry—be it behavior or thinking—I just wonder: how often an attack on the person is effective in ridding him/her off his/her bigotry?

In my experience, rarely if ever.

Once the other perceives my statement as an attack on his/her essence as a person, what motivation does s/he have to listen to a word I say?

None, really.

His/her behaviour or thinking may (in my perception) de-humanize me, or at least reduce me to something less than s/he. But when my response brands him or her as something less than a decent human being, how can I expect him or her to behave decently?

Could it be that a less agressive approach would be more effective, statisticaly speaking? Such as instead of saying “You are a racist,” saying “That statement/opinion is racist, and this is why/how.” Please notice that the latter, while as true as the first, pertains the behavior/belief rather than the person holding it, and it’s therefore a bit less likely to be taken as a personal attack.

Will this more diplomatic approach effect instant and dramatic change in society at large?

Hell no.

But I believe it has a damn sight better chance of effecting some change than alienating everyone who isn’t on par with my exalted and oh-so-pure-never-ever-prejudiced-in-any-way position does.

Monica, do you consider AA romance a subgenre within romance? I mean a
romance with a black h/h, nothing to do with who wrote it. I know you don’t
think it should be shelved separately, but most subgenres aren’t, after
all. I have no idea what would define a genuine subgenre, so I’m curious
what you think as a writer.

I think a sub-genre should be defined by the content of the story, not the race of the characters.  So, no, I don’t think AA romance is a valid sub-genre. 

Defining a sub-genre by author’s race is ridicuous. 

I say author’s race because notice that white author’s romance with black characters aren’t treated like black romance.  They are categorized with the white romance sub-genres and treated accordingly. 

The content in black romance isn’t basically different from any contemporary romance as far as the plot.  There may be some minor nuances in characterization, but most whites are astounded with how similar black romance is to white-authored romance, rather than how different. 
 
But the black romance sub-genre works, as wrong as it may be.  Whites (for whatever reasons) won’t buy it.  Harlequin has tested mixing black romances in with their other lines.  They won’t sell.  So romances by black authors need to be separate and easily accessible to black women.  Our black readers solely support us black authors.  When you think of how many of us there are, that’s a lot of reading.  And most black romance readers read white romance too. 

Bless the black romance reader.

Good god.  I go out for an evening, and come back to my e-mail telling me there’s been 51 new comments.  Pardon me while I wade upthread for the one I really needed to respond to.

Regarding asking why people hold certain beliefs:
And, I think that’s pandering to bigots, and them giving them (yet another) a platform for spreading hate.  What are these reasons for bigotry and prejudice other than ignorance and hatefulness?

I hit on a good phrasing in one of my anthropology seminars, during a discussion of cultural relativism and how to explain to people that no, it doesn’t translate to “everything’s okay.”  In short, an explanation is not the same thing as an excuse.

Somebody abuses their kids because they were abused as a child?  That explains the abuse; it doesn’t excuse it.  But we need to look for those reasons, those answers to the “why?” question, because otherwise we can’t do a damn thing to change the situation—we’d be fumbling blind.  It is NOT enough to say “ignorance and hatefulness” are the cause, because we need to know why that person became ignorant and hateful, and what the nuances (yes, nuances) of their ignorance and hatefulness are.  Then we’ll know the weak points we can use to chip away at their bigotry, and how to (hopefully) prevent another generation from growing up the same way.  Writing off the situation without asking why leaves us no option but to shout at each other, and that rarely has any good effect.

That’s my view as an anthropologist, coming from the field of study which pretty much dedicates itself to asking “why” about any human behavior that wanders within pouncing range.

In closing, amen to all this discussion—it’s a ridiculous flood of comments, but man, it gives me hope that y’all have the passion to discuss this so thoughtfully.  (And all because of some errant cock . . . .)

I think there’s an unclosed italics tag in the comment upthread of mine, so I’m experimenting to see if throwing a random close italics tag into this comment will put a stop to it.

Hey, I’ll make a plea too for a bitch to fix my italics. 

Ana, you’re a kind soul and you’ll do okay. 

azteclady, I agree that directly calling people racist is counterproductive.  But the problem is when people are so defensive about it, there can be no dialogue at all. 

Most people don’t go to the extreme of “I hate black people.”  It’s more subtle such as “I don’t relate to black people,” or “They are different from me, too different and dangerous to be in close contact with.”

But if these people who might want to be decent are so defensive about their racism, how are they ever going to be open to communicate with the other, understand the other and thus change? 

I don’t think getting the victims of racism never to say racist or racism is the answer. 

I think it’s getting the majority to accept the possibility they may be racist, but the world isn’t going to blow up in flames if they admit the possibility, communicate with a reasonable black person, and try to understand where they’re coming from. 

Note I said reasonable black people. Don’t run to chat about how racist you are to your black co-worker who can’t stand you anyway.  [chortle!]

I have to agree, Monica.  One of my best writing buddies is black.  We always room together at National - although she didn’t make it this year - and man, oh man, have we gotten down and dirty, talking about racism, particularly in romance, but also about how she handles it in her daily life.  She’s married to a white guy, which opens her up to a whole other group of People Who Don’t Like That - including a lot of black people.  She gets it from all sides.  She’s got a major attitude, and sometimes can get in my face, at which point I tell her to lose the damn chip on her shoulder.

I remember her getting upset because someone at the conference was rude to her, ignored her.  She called her a ‘racist bitch’.  I said, yeah, I’m sure there are some of those here - but you got that chick all wrong.  She’s just a bitch, no matter what color you are.  Later, I proved the point and we had a good laugh about it.

I’m not saying everyone should go out and find a black friend, so they can ‘get it’.  I’m just saying that it’s interesting, and okay, humbling, to get the perspective from somebody who walks the walk.  I get frustrated because I honestly don’t know how to change it, or what I can do about it.

But the black romance sub-genre works, as wrong as it may be.  Whites (for whatever reasons) won’t buy it.  Harlequin has tested mixing black romances in with their other lines.

This is why I asked. I think publishers and/or booksellers now market it as a subgenre, so many readers see it as a subgenre. And then it just becomes more easily pushed aside by white readers. “I don’t read that.”

But you’ve definitely made me think about this. It’s actually very easy for me to say, “I don’t read AA romances,” because I think of AA romance as contemporary and I don’t read straight contemp. But I have to wonder if I would say that even if I did read contemp. And would it be racist? I don’t think so. But then you’d never see me saying no to anyone handing me a free book to try out a new author, and that’s the damned truth. Racist or not, that’s just crazy.

I think I may go look up an AA historical. I know they must be out there. (I am seeing a cover in my head from a few years ago. Maybe a western.)

Somebody expressing a strong distaste for bisexual heroes on an romance-related Internet forum is miles away from, say, the people who attacked Matthew Shepard, though they’re probably the same people who voted for the constitutional amendments blocking gay marriage.

Actually, I don’t think they’re miles away.  I think they’re down the street, peeking discreetly through lace curtains while their thuggish younger generation murders gay kids.  These hatemongers who suck up the homophobic spew in church and ‘righteously’ vote against human equality are the ones who have created the atmosphere in which the violent reactionary ‘soldiers’ believe it’s all right to kill people because they’re different.  They’re the ones who defend the closet cases arrested for murdering guys who come on to them and try to justify it because the poor little psycho was in a ‘panic’ over being propositioned - as though “no thanks” wasn’t the more appropriate response.  The hypocrites are every bit as vicious as the violent; they’re just more cowardly and less honest.

SandyW said: “I’m trying to puzzle out the ‘bisexual partners are more likely to be unfaithful’ argument.”

In this day and age, there is a higher risk that a husband who’s on the ‘down low’ and unfaithful with another man may bring home AIDS.  The reason for the bi worry may be in part that a lot of men who identify as heterosexual don’t “count” m/m sex if they personally aren’t penetrated.  Denial?  You betcha.  But it still comes down to whether your partner will honor the marriage vow.  If that’s not the case, it doesn’t matter if he’s got a hankering for men, women, or St Bernards.

My favorite response to this is in one of Lois McMasters Bujold’s books.  Her character’s husband is a bisexual (space) naval officer who’s got a serious kink for military lovers… he’s had affairs with men (forbidden in his sexist, homophobic society), but when he meets Cordelia he lucks out, because she’s a Woman!  And a Captain!  An enemy tries to poison his marriage by telling Cordelia that her husband used to fuck men, and she just says, “He was bisexual.  Now he’s monogamous.”

And that is exactly how it can be when you have the right partner.  It isn’t about the plumbing.  I am bisexual; now I’m monogamous.  My partner is a friend of many years and a better lover than anyone of the other gender has ever been, for me.  Our minds and hearts fit, and the bodies go along.  Neither of us ever enjoyed the ‘thrill’ of the chase, and we’re old enough to appreciate what we have…but we both still enjoy looking, and we read m/f, m/m, and f/f.  When you can allow your partner’s imagination to run free, there’s a lot to be said for monogamy, no matter what the physical arrangements are.  Let not the marriage of true minds admit impediments, and all that.

But ... I can only speak for myself. Every relationship is different, and a lot of people are petrified of uncertainty, so they want One Rule, One True God, and all that.  I don’t.  “An it harm none, do as ye will.”

I think I may go look up an AA historical. I know they must be out there. (I am seeing a cover in my head from a few years ago. Maybe a western.)

Try Beverly Jenkins’ new one.  Civil War era AA.  Love the snarkable cover!

Black historcal romance authors

Beverly Jenkins. 
Francis Ray.  I think Francis’ book had white characters though.
Shirley Hailstock wrote one. 
Patrica Vaughn.
I used to love Frank Yerby as a kid. Anita Richmond Bunkley.
Bella McFarland is African and wrote a Nubian historical romance.  If you put your hands on it, let me know. 
AlTonya Renee Washington wrote one.  I’d like to see that one too. 
J. Marie Darden wrote a couple.
There are probably more. 

The problem is these books simply don’t sell.  They aren’t marketed to black readers and whites won’t.  Beverly Jenkins has hung in there though.  But she’s now writing contemp romantic suspense.

I always hesitate before jumping into any racism discussion.  Why?  Because I’m white and I live in Texas, a state where you’ll get thumped with a bible or two if you stand still more than a split second.  So I’ll just have to say I’m not a racist, and y’all will just sort of have to trust me on that.

I read all the comments, and two just really jumped out at me.  First, from Monica:
“Many blacks are grateful to be published at all and to have characters in books that look like them” [emphasis mine]

And later down the thread:
“It’s different to not have come across any AA romances (there are fairly pervasive, but still), than to say, “I don’t read AA romance.”

Why can’t it be as simple as this—I’m a white chick, and I like reading about people who look like me?  Also brought up by someone whose comment I can’t find, she wanted more romances about over-50 women who are still passionate, vibrant and looking for their HEA.  They want characters who look like them.  That’s my take on the, “I don’t read AA romances” schtick.

NOW.  Please don’t tune out yet.  That’s totally different from saying “I would never read anything from an AA author.”  And I think these two very different views have been equated, probably just because blog comments are written quickly and off the cuff. 

Personally, unless you’re La Nora with your pic splashed on the back cover, I don’t know what color you are.  I honest to God don’t understand how someone can find this out, maybe because I’ve never put this much effort into researching authors.  “Ooh, the latest were-crawfish saga looks great, but let me research the author first and find out if she’s a WASP”—this is effort, and I’m lazy.  Just give me a fucking book.

I’m not saying that no one ever boycotts AA authors.  I’m totally aware that this happens.  (I live in Texas, y’all, a few hours from Vider, and once accompanied a black guy friend to Vider to pay a traffic ticket because he was afraid he’d go down there and not come back.  And I think he had cause for concern, which is why the 3 of us went too!)  So yes, I know that [pick your word of choice, my head aches from the word discussion, interesting as it was] is alive and kicking.

I just want to point out this distinction.  “I don’t read romances where the characters don’t look like me” is different from “I won’t read anything written by an author who doesn’t look like me.”

Reading is my fantasy time.  I want to be in my fantasies.  I don’t think that wanting a role in my own down-time is racist.  However, I DO think that ignoring an author because of his/her color, gender, shoe preference, or favorite underwear style is wrong, immoral, etc.

By the way, since this has turned into such an interesting and open discussion, can I ask a question?  Both I and a good friend of mine have just published interracial vampire romances, both with AA heroes and white heroines—mine released today, and hers released last week.  (Oh yeah, and they’re dead.  Hot, hot men, but dead.  Sorry ‘bout that.)  Both our covers feature really hot black men on the covers, tho hers is better cuz she didn’t get Poser… but I digress. 

Mine’s an ebook and won’t see print, hers will in a few months, but I assumed that both would be placed in the AA romance section because of the covers.  I have no experience with print in general and AA romance shelving in particular, but is this an accurate assumption?  I sort of got the impression that the shelving had to do with who’s pictured on the cover and portrayed in the story rather than who penned the story.  I really can’t see our interracial vamp romances sitting on the shelf beside the Harlequins.

Kendra’s hero is a former Nubian slave, so his history informs much, much, much of his character—mine is ancient, powerful, has always been the master of his domain, and really never had to deal with anyone calling him crap because he’d fry them, so I fully admit his conflict actually has nothing whatsoever to do with his color.  (It’s actually more to do with the whole ‘dead’ thing.)

So, anyway.  It’s 1am and I don’t know how much sense this is making.  I guess it boils down to, would these books be in the AA Romance section because of the protagonist, or would they be beside the Harlequins since both the authors are white? Is the amount of AA culture in the romance the deciding factor?  (We’re ignoring for the moment that mine is a 16k short and hers is an 80k novel, with lots more room for deep character examination, introspection and backstory.)  So Kendra’s would go in the AA section, because her hero spent more time in modern AA culture than mine did, and mine would go by the Harlequins?  Maybe I’m hopelessly naive, but I honestly didn’t realize that the color of the AUTHOR had to do with the separation of the sections, and now I have all these other questions running through my sleepy noggin.

Monica, Lia, Robin, Veronica, others ‘in the know’—what’s your take?  And do you think that a white author can accurately portray an AA character?  Like, maybe if they weren’t an undead vampire?  I mean, I certainly don’t know how it feels to be a black woman, but I don’t know how it feels to be a vampire either.

And do you think that a white author can accurately portray an AA character?

I hope so, as I’ve written one and my agent is shopping the book around as of this week. The hero in the novel is based loosely on someone I knew in real life, someone I loved. It’s not the same man, obviously, but I drew from him in creating Ash and I think he feels real. Other people may disagree.

Yeah, and all that…but is the book any good? A good plot with interesting characters, or just controversial drivel?

I think where your book is classified is dependent first on if you write for a black line.  Then it’s automatic.  But most black lines will only publish black authors.  Most black authors are published by black lines that are distinguished from white ones. 

If you’re not, where ever the bookseller throws your book is often where they go.  They do go a lot by what’s on the cover. 

It also matters how known you are.  If you’re known as a white author, even if you write a black hero, you’ll go in with the majority books, even if you have blacks on the cover (Suzanne Brockmann).  If you’re not known, they will probably assume you’re black with blacks on the cover and you may get thrown in with the black books.

Why not a white girl on the cover?

How it feels to be a black women

I think a white woman can accurately portray a black woman if she’s imaginative enough.  I’ve written many white characters. 

The strongest thread that connects is the experience of being black in America—how other people treat us differently because we are black.

There are all sorts of black women with all sorts of upbringings and socioeconomic backgrounds.  Class would have a strong influence.  Whether she was light or dark, raised around blacks or whites would have an influence.  The black accent is borne out of isolation.  So the underclass women who grew up in the inner city and has little exposure to whites will be very different from a woman with a Condi Rice sort of upbringing who went to a black university and traveled abroad.  She will even sound different. 

There’s the hair which is the main physical difference since our natural texture isn’t considered acceptable.  Straightening it is an incredible hassle and usually burns it off short unless you take extreme care and spend lots of money.  It takes a women of conviction to take a stand and wear it natural (yeah, I do).  We tan, but seldom burn. I think that’s it on physical differences.  We don’t wrinkle up nearly as much but tend to be a bit fatter. 

Most US blacks cultural heritage is rooted in slavery and the south.  Soul food is simply southern food.  We’ve established other institutions such as the church and the Greek system if the whites didn’t allow us in theirs. 

That’s about it, really, other than the experience of being a minority.  If your character is middle-class and lives and works among whites, you have to think about how’d you feel if your boss, all your coworders and peers were black, and everywhere you went?  If everywhere most of the people you had to interact with were black.

Blacks more often have white friends than vice-versa because there are more white people around.

That’s about it.  Otherwise, it depends on the character you write.

Well, I think it’s gonna be Beverly Jenkins! Not only does it seem she’s the Queen of AA historicals, but the sex between the h/h is so good that bouquets of flowers spring from their loins while they’re doing it. Awesome!

I have kept my mouth shut and my fingers still while I have monitored this debate but I have a story to tell and a question to ask so please bear with me.

My grandma is in her 80’s.  She is a lovely woman who has never had a rude thing to say to or about anyone as long as I have known her.  She is a religious woman and reads her bible and believes what it says. 

My cousin, Jen, is a lesbian.  She came out to the family 9 or 10 years ago.  She has a son from a previous, heterosexual relationship and a daughter that she has had with her wife Alli.  Alli also has a child from a previous relationship and son she has had with Jen. Both women have given birth to a child since they got together if that needs to be clarified.  Grandma has supported Jen.  She has defended her to other family members.  She gives all four children in this family the same love and attention.  She has loaned them money.  She has been the same Grandma to Jen she has always been and the same Grandma she is to her heterosexual grandchildren.  But she is also heartbroken.  If she spends too much time dwelling on the subject she starts crying.  She knows Jen is a good person, but she truly believes in her heart that Jen is committing a mortal sin.  This does not come from a place of hate or a desire to consider herself morally superior.  She WANTS to be okay with it she just can’t, because her strong faith won’t allow her to be okay with it.  She does not believe anyone has the right to judge Jen but God, but she feels she knows what that judgement will be because she thinks God has made his feelings on the subject pretty clear.

My question is, how okay does a person have to be with homosexuality or anything else another person does in order to be an “okay person” or achieve this sense of enlightenment that we seem to be striving for here?  Is it really not enough to just live and let live if you can’t find it within yourself support a cause wholeheartedly?

Why can’t it be as simple as this—I’m a white chick, and I like reading about people who look like me?

I don’t think it can be this simple, because how many romance heroines really look like you? I don’t want to be rude about your appearance, or make any assumptions, but unless you’ve got the face and figure of a beauty-pageant winner, it’s not very likely that you’ll look like most romance heroines. Yes, I know there are some plumper heroines, and some heroines with less than perfect features, but there are still rather a lot who are room-stoppingly beautiful.

It seems to me that it’s more likely that some people read these heroines because they aspire to look like them than because they already do look like them.

Also brought up by someone whose comment I can’t find, she wanted more romances about over-50 women who are still passionate, vibrant and looking for their HEA.  They want characters who look like them.  That’s my take on the, “I don’t read AA romances” schtick.

Ah, now this I think is a somewhat different issue. It’s not just about appearances, it’s about the character’s social context, the sort of problems she’s likely to face etc.

I managed to find a couple of romances with black characters in them in my library (I’m in the UK, in an area with few black people, and the library doesn’t have that large a romance section anyway, so I was quite agreeably surprised to even find a couple). What came across to me (from my tiny sample of 2 novels) was that there’s a different setting. The characters (or their mothers) went to church. That was unusual compared to what I normally read. There were other things that were unusual for me too, for example, the economic hardships some of the characters were facing. Even in the one where the heroine was a high-flyer, other family members weren’t all doing as well for themselves. Given that I’m used to reading Regency historicals, this is a bit different. The colours and fabrics they chose to decorate their homes was also a bit different. But I also find contemporaries set in the US with white characters very different from what I’m used to. There are the small towns (and the way people behave there seem really strange to me), the guns, the lack of a free, universal health service, different cultural mores, and different ideas about interior decoration.

It’s taking a bit of adjustment for me to read contemporary romances with white Americans in them. I’m never really sure what’s a cliché and what’s an accurate representation of life in the US. And, of course, what might be a reality of life for some people would be a huge luxury for others, regardless of race.

So I can see how some people might not want to have to adjust to learning about a new setting (or a perceived new setting), or a different type of challenge faced by the characters. There are lots of romance readers who read for ‘comfort’ i.e. they want what they’re used to. And if someone’s looking for comfort, they’re not going to seek out a new setting, whether that be a historical one (e.g. 18th-century France, medieval Italy, ancient Greece) or a contemporary that’s set in a milieu they’re not used to or among people whose particular issues they’re not used to (whether that be heroines over 40 or people who have to live in a racist society).

Now, clearly, all romances with black characters are not going to be the same, but they probably are going to be a bit different from the run-of-the-mill regency era romance. I’ve also read Monica’s Love’s Potion, and that was a paranormal romance with black characters. Because the setting was magical, and the whole world had to be built by the author (rather than her being able to make the assumption that I’d know about the particular powers that a djinn has) it was easier for me to get into that book than the contemporary non-paranormal romances with AA characters. Or it could just be that Monica’s books are more fun.

Anyway, what I’m saying is that to read books one has to adjust to the culture portrayed in that book, and the particular issues that the characters face, and it may not simply be racism which puts people off reading a setting that they’re not used to, though it may often be.

What’s going on with the heroes with bandy legs, though? To me, that makes me think of someone who’s been riding a horse for too long, and now walks a funny way, but in the AA romances, it seems like this is a very attractive feature for a hero to have. Quite how bandy legged are these heroes? Or does it mean something slightly different from the sort of bandiness I’m thinking of?

I’ve just thought of another issue - in romance I get the feeling that some readers like to identify with the heroine, or feel they have something in common with her. So some authors have the heroine say something which they think will resonate with the reader’s experience (e.g. her hair frizzed in the damp, she found it hard to find a pair of shoes to match her handbag, she couldn’t resist another Crispie Cream). But this doesn’t work on a reader who couldn’t care less about her hair being frizzy (or whose hair is always frizzy, as mine is), doesn’t match her clothing to her accessories and has never seen a Crispie Cream. Instead of bringing me closer to the heroine, these details make me feel more distanced from her. And I wonder if some readers who usually feel comfortable with a white heroine who has the same background to them (or a background they aspire to) feel all lost and left out when they read about a heroine who’s discussing hair straightening, admiring her brown clothes (in romances with white heroines, brown is usually seen as a boring colour) etc.

Thanks for the answers!  By the way, Monica, the answer to your question:

Why not a white girl on the cover?

is very simple.  Because I’d rather look at a gorgeous man than a gorgeous woman!  And I’m not alone—two of my publishers monitor such things, and they say that having a lone woman, or even a couple with the woman dominating the picture, on the cover means the book will sell LESS than a lone man or couple with the man dominating the picture.

Call me shallow, but I’d rather see a hottie mchunky hero than a pretty woman any old time.

And thanks to this discussion, I had a dream about participating in a lesbian threesome last night.  LOL!

I don’t think it can be this simple, because how many romance heroines really look like you? I don’t want to be rude about your appearance, or make any assumptions, but unless you’ve got the face and figure of a beauty-pageant winner, it’s not very likely that you’ll look like most romance heroines.

Actually, this isn’t what I meant at all.  In my comment, I pointed out Monica’s observation that AA readers were thrilled to find romances with characters who looked like them because they were AA, not because they looked exactly like those characters.  Actually I have won beauty pagents years ago (tho alas, the figure isn’t what it once was after 2 kids!), that wasn’t my point.  What I understood from Monica’s observation is, it’s comforting to read about people who share the same general appearance. 

This is a sweeping generalization, but I would also assume that (using myself as an example again) white readers can identify with the life experiences of white characters in general, and other skin tones/cultures likewise.  I probably am treated about the same as any other white chick when I go into WalMart or the doctor’s office or apply for a job.  So the culture of white romances is something I’m familiar with, I understand, and makes it easy for me to pick up a book and just tune out of the world for a few hours when I need to let the ol’ brain veg.

I’m not always in the mood for brain candy, though.  When I want a deeper read, I’ll pick up a longer romance, one with characters who don’t share my general life experiences.  Reading about a white woman’s experience in Mexico on this thread is a great example—yes, she’s the same color as me, but that’s not an experience I’ve had.  Same with romances rooted in a culture other than the caucasian.  Reading those is a chance to learn as well as be entertained.

Being more familiar with the white culture in books doesn’t make me prejudiced, it just means I was raised in a mostly-white area. That’s *my* culture, and I think being comfortable in it sometimes gets equated with thinking it’s superior to any other culture.  It’s not—no culture, IMO, is inherently better than any other—but it’s mine and I know the rules there.  Doesn’t mean I don’t want to know the rules in others, which is why I read some of everything.

(Added that bit because looking at my 1am comment there, it looks like I said that *I* won’t ever read AA romance or any other where the characters aren’t white, and that wasn’t my intention.  Another clumsy way of using myself as an example, brought on by sleepiness.)

This is a sweeping generalization, but I would also assume that (using myself as an example again) white readers can identify with the life experiences of white characters in general, and other skin tones/cultures likewise.  I probably am treated about the same as any other white chick when I go into WalMart or the doctor’s office or apply for a job.

Okay, I see what you’re getting at. You think of white people as having a particular culture, so the skincolour of the heroine and hero gives you an indication of their cultural background. It’s interesting that you say that, because it suggests that you maybe come from somewhere which is pretty homogeneous, or at very least that there are lots of other people with both similar skincolour and similar cultural backgrounds living near you. Is that the case? 

Because of where I live and my own background, I’ve always been very aware of class/religious/national differences and the fact that these occur among people who look ‘white’. So I’d always separate out skin-colour and culture. Italians are ‘white’, Spaniards are ‘white’, Irish are ‘white’ etc, ‘white’ people can be rich, poor, Christian, aetheist, agnostic, bisexual (to get back on topic very briefly), middle class, working class etc etc. I suppose my experience of life is that skin-colour isn’t a good indicator of a common cultural background (and neither is nationality, for that matter, since there are so many other variables which contribute to make up one’s ‘culture’).

the culture of white romances is something I’m familiar with, I understand, and makes it easy for me to pick up a book and just tune out of the world for a few hours when I need to let the ol’ brain veg.

That sort of preference was what I was trying to explain/understand in my last post. I think people do often choose a book which has a familiar setting because it requires less work, and so a preference for a particular kind of romance (be that Regency historicals or contemporaries in a particular series line) is not necessarily due to racism (though in some cases this may be a factor in the reader’s decision-making).

Okay, I see what you’re getting at. You think of white people as having a particular culture, so the skincolour of the heroine and hero gives you an indication of their cultural background.

No, actually, that’s not what I said at all.  I said that I can identify with how they are treated and that many “white” people have similar experiences. 

One thing that sort of bugs me is the assumption that whites DON’T have any particular culture.  When I fill in school forms for my kids, there’s spots to check for African American, Hispanic, Native American, Pacific Islander, Asian American… and white.  All those distinctions of Italian Americans and Irish Americans and Czech Americans Jewish and Greek and Muslim and so on and so on and so on… no one ever gives a THOUGHT to making those distinctions.  The official assumption I take from forms like these are, if you’re not some shade of brown, you’re all the same.  And to be honest, that ticks me off.

However, that wasn’t the point of my comment.  To be honest, I don’t really enjoy reading books where any character of any flavor spends a ton of time in retrospection about how this, that, or the other has affected them.  (Which is why I can’t read Anne Rice—her vampires are WAY too introspective and melancholy for me!)  No, the point is, the books I read show the characters moving through a world which is, while fictional, pretty much the same as this world the rest of us inhabit.  I can understand how they are able to deal with this world because the checker at WalMart can’t tell by looking if I’m Czech or Italian or Jewish or whatever.  She sees a white chick, and that’s how I’m treated.

Does that make sense?  Actually, I live outside of Austin, which is one of the most liberal cities I’ve ever been in.  Gays, lesbians, interracial couples, and distinct cultures of all flavors blend together with a minimum of eyebrow-raising or judgementalism.  (Is judgementalism a word?)  So I really wasn’t raised in a very homogenious area.  Actually, where I live, I am very much a minority.

One last comment.  A person who frequently interviews authors and features their books labels her self as a romance blog.  She’s pissed because I used her as an example in something I was wondering about—should a black author link to romance blogs that exclude them?

She posted a while back on another blog that was attacking me for daring to mention race that she wouldn’t read AA romances.  She wrote it in black and white, very concrete, and I remembered.  That’s why I referred to her. 

All she did was get mad, and someof her peers too.  But it’s as if she thought I was out to hurt her personally by alluding that she was the R word. 

But I was only trying to communicate a point.  Sometimes race is raised as an attempt to communicate, not attack. 

But it seems that the ones who are most defensive about race, ALWAYS look at a black person bringing up race as a heinous personal attack. 

And sometimes saying the R word or alluding to it isn’t an attack on them, but a reality for us.

Amy,  I see what you’re saying.

The official assumption I take from forms like these are, if you’re not some shade of brown, you’re all the same.  And to be honest, that ticks me off.

It ticks me off too.  White is the norm and everything else is different and must be categorized.  But white people are different from each other too. 

I also see how it’s easy to think romances by black people would deal with racism or other depressing issues or have a different tone.  Most of them don’t though.  They really aren’t that different and you could relate.  We operate in the same culture and go to the same Wal-Mart, even live in the same neighborhoods.  There’s probably not that much difference in the details of your life from a black women of a similar socio-economic background in the same circumstances.

I’m a bit confused now. On the one hand you think differences between white people should get more recognition, because you say that

One thing that sort of bugs me is the assumption that whites DON’T have any particular culture.  When I fill in school forms for my kids, there’s spots to check for African American, Hispanic, Native American, Pacific Islander, Asian American… and white.  All those distinctions of Italian Americans and Irish Americans and Czech Americans Jewish and Greek and Muslim and so on and so on and so on… no one ever gives a THOUGHT to making those distinctions.  The official assumption I take from forms like these are, if you’re not some shade of brown, you’re all the same.  And to be honest, that ticks me off.

But at other times you say something like:

Being more familiar with the white culture in books doesn’t make me prejudiced, it just means I was raised in a mostly-white area. That’s *my* culture

Maybe I’m misreading/misunderstanding, but that seems to imply that there is only one sort of white culture.

Maybe what you’re saying in the second quotation is that you haven’t experienced racism against you? Is that what you’re meaning when you mention your culture in the second quotation?  Because you say that

the point is, the books I read show the characters moving through a world which is, while fictional, pretty much the same as this world the rest of us inhabit.  I can understand how they are able to deal with this world because the checker at WalMart can’t tell by looking if I’m Czech or Italian or Jewish or whatever.  She sees a white chick, and that’s how I’m treated.

Sorry, I probably sound really silly. I’m just confused and not understanding you, but is it that when you’re choosing romance if the heroine would be treated as ‘a white chick’ at Walmart then that, to you, makes her feel similar to you? Is that what you mean by ‘culture’ in that context?

But it seems that the ones who are most defensive about race, ALWAYS look at a black person bringing up race as a heinous personal attack.  And sometimes saying the R word or alluding to it isn’t an attack on them, but a reality for us.

But, Monica, calling someone a racist IS an attack. Saying, “What you said comes off as racist and this is why it feels that way to me,” is a conversation. Saying, “YOU’RE A RACIST BECAUSE,” isn’t gonna start anything but a fight. It’s pretty on par with, “You’re a BITCH because. . .” Oh, yeah, let’s have that heart-to-heart conversation now.

Does saying anything about another race make someone a racist? Are YOU a racist for calling out a white person?

dl snarkily said of Amy E’s AA vampire tale:

Yeah, and all that…but is the book any good? A good plot with interesting characters, or just controversial drivel?

I wondered the same thing IN MY HEAD but c’mon - what’s an author gonna say about her own book?  “You got me.  It’s drivel.  I just threw in a black stud to get noticed.”  Even if it was true, who would admit that??

I wasn’t actually sure what book dl was talking about, to be honest.

In my hardcover for ‘07, the hero’s best friend is a black guy. More, their dynamic and emotional connection is that of brothers—and the bf’s family IS the hero’s emotional family.

I’ve written black characters before, but haven’t written a southern black family, of which some members are key to the story. And did worry and have some concerns over the family bbq scene while writing it that I was getting the tone right, the rhythm of speech, the interplay.

or just controversial drivel?

I didn’t get the question at all, frankly. Was there something controversial about it? Because it’s interracial? Or—Jesus—any indication that it was drivel?

Just wanted to comment on something I read through out.

It’s possible to love someone without subscribing to their views.

Very true. My husband is homophobic. Not in a blatant hate way, but he’s uncomfortable with anything male and homosexual. It’s like, personally, he’s against gay marriage, but he wouldn’t vote against it because he feels they should have the right. It drives me nuts sometimes, but I still love him.

In fact, I’ve
never been attracted to someone purely based on looks. I can admire someone and think (very detachedly) that they’re attractive but I never start putting myself together with them sexually until we’ve achieved emotional intimacy, I’m attracted to their mind, their ideas, their way of thinking, sense of humor.

That’s how it is for me. I find both men and women attractive, equally actually, but I don’t find myself thinking of them sexually unless there is more there.

Being treated differently because of your race is fucking painful, whatever the reason, even if people have good intentions.

Will everyone hate me if I say that it doesn’t often bother me? I grew up with it and now, basically, unless it’s blatant, it doesn’t even register.

It was kind of weird when I first moved down to Arkansas to be with my husband. It was a very rural area with small towns. The town we lived in had a population of 69. Everywhere we went, people stared. I mean really stared ... like they would stop what they were doing to watch us walk by. It was trippy, but no one was mean or purposely rude.

I’m just white-trash, right? Uneducated, come from Kentucky hill folk, and I can’t learn a civilized language to save my life.

I’m in Mexico City, northern suburb called Naucalpan.

Two issues here. 1) That first quote makes makes me wonder if you have some issue that you may be projecting into the situation. It just seems that maybe you’ve had people look down on you because of where you come from and you see that in their treatment of you whether that is the case or not. I mean, have they said anything about your upbringing or education? 2) Chilangos have a reputation for being snobby towards anyone not from Mexico City. So says my aunt, who is married to a Chilango.

And on the in-law track ... several of my in-laws actually asked my husband if he was sure I had my green card when he first intorduced me to them. My husband told them he didn’t think someone from Chicago needed a green card to visit Arkansas. When we got home he went on a tear about how his family was bunch of ignorant hicks. I think he was more upset about the whole thing than I was.

I’ve just thought of another issue - in romance I get the feeling that some readers like to identify with the heroine, or feel they have something in common with her.

That whole thing strikes me as kind of funny. Maybe because I’m Mexican American and have very little in common with the pale, creamy skinned heroines that run rampant through the books I read. I love historicals, paranormals, and mysteies. Most of the heroines are some flavor of white and the rest are either black or some ethnicity other than hispanic. There are very few hispanic heroines out there ... not that I’d gravitate toward them if there were. It’s all about the story for me, not about seeing myself in the story.

Anyhow ... thanks again to Candy for pointing out that we’re not all indiscriminate hobags. ;)

I understand the concerns about writing black characters. 

I couldn’t write a southern black family BBQ scene either without trepidation.

I was raised by a biracial single mother who was raised by a white women who never really has had a clue about being “black.”  Thank God my hair wasn’t too kinky for her to handle or I’d have gone to school looking like Buckwheat. 

Could I pull off a Greek or an Irish Catholic family?  I’d have to do research and make up a lot.  My philosophy so far has been families and people are so different and weird I can get away with making stuff up. 

But I’m wrong sometimes and might be about that. 

I’d make it up the black southern BBQ (watching Tyler Perry’s DVDs would help) and I know I’d get over because I’m black.

It bugs me that white folks have to walk on eggs about stuff like this. 

I get it.  It’s stupid we have to be on so on guard about race. 

I didn’t like it when Brockmann was jumped on because Alyssa was supposedly “too white.”  There are black women like Alyssa.  Were they saying all black women are supposed to be alike?  I guess I should speak up in defense in debates like that, but I do tend to bow out of confrontations with folks, um, who actually read my books.  Not good, I know.

You know, there are AA characters in my books, but I’d hesitate for a long ass time before I’d write AA point of view. And I grew up in a very racially mixed area. I’ve been to black family reunions in very, very small Arkansas towns where I was definitely the only white person wearing a family t-shirt. But I’ve heard so many times over the years that someone like me could never understand what it’s like to be a black woman in America.  And I’m positive that’s true.

So could I write an AA h/h? Probably. But I’d be pretty damn worried about getting something wrong and feeling like I should never have tried it. Then again, I don’t know what it’s like to be a man and I don’t worry about them.

I wasn’t actually sure what book dl was talking about, to be honest.

Now that I look at it - yeah, the book in question is ambiguous.  Quality is SUCH an issue to consider for publication, purchases, reviews, etc.  But I thought dl’s tone sounded belittling, as if an unknown/unpublished author has to qualify the quality of her work before offering an element of it for discussion.  No one is going to jump on La Nora’s BBQ reference like that.

Admit it, Roberts - you’re just doing that black thang to be controversial!  ;-)

of course you (and I mean any of you, not just Monica)could write about a Greek family or a Russian family or a black family or a WASP family.

You wouldn’t be writing a generic family—it would be YOUR invention, YOUR people. If the traditions are slightly off—well, maybe granny got it wrong from her mom. You’d know where it all came from because it would be YOUR FAMN DAMILY. YOURS.

I never got a gold star so I had to say something at last.

I mean what is it with all the generic shit here? “EVERYONE WHO DOES THIS IS THAT” ?? Tchah. It’s a huge universe of Individuals and no experience is going to come off sounding Just Like another.

Go watch Rashomon. Although really, I think that’s a matter of people lying to look good.

Okay, talk to my husband about his parents and then talk to his brother about his parents (same parents). The two couples they describe aren’t even from the same planet, much less the same race. 

No more with the Generic, dudes!

Robin wrote: One of the interesting things coming from a CA university is that the literature in higher ed that comes out of the Eastern US often refers to the “race issue” as specifically black and white.

Monica wrote: Most people don’t go to the extreme of “I hate black people.” It’s more subtle such as “I don’t relate to black people,” or “They are different from me, too different and dangerous to be in close contact with.”

Maybe I come at this all sideways (as Robin does) cause where I’m from racial tension and racism in general is NOT a black/white issue. We have Asian on Asian on Latino on Latino on black on black on white gang was and racial tension (the Hmong and the Laotians hate each other; Norteños and Sureños hate each other; black Muslims are currently attacking Middle Eastern Muslims; many blacks in Southern California have it in for Koreans; The Aryan Nation [as seen in American History X] hates pretty much everybody; the list goes on and on). It’s just far more complicated out here than “white folks just don’t get it”.

Currently, I happen to live in a largely black area (Oakland, CA). I get called “white bitch” and “white devil” on a pretty regular basis just walking down the street. I get threatened by armed twelve year-old black girls at the BART station (purely because I’m white, they aren’t messing with any of the 30-something black women getting off the same train). Is this racism? Is it opportunism? Is it both? I sure happen to think so.

It’s not that people of other races are “too different” for me to relate to. It’s that the subgenre that most minority writers choose is something I don’t like. I do no choose to read urban/contemporary fiction for pleasure, regardless of the race of the author. Sometimes race/culture can be an issue, though. At Nationals I got a book called No More Playas. I swear it took me a few minutes to figure out that what the title meant. Where I live a “p-l-a-y-a” is a dry lake bed (like the famous one that Burning Man takes place on). Why on earth was I handed a book called “no more dry lake beds” with a hot black guy on the cover? Total cultural dissonance. I have the same problem with books by a lot of white folks (I just don’t “get” Laurell K. Hamilton’s books; Culturally they’re just SOOOO foreign; I don’t grok the whole Mid-Western thing).

I mostly read historicals (its all about ESCAPISM) and I’ll read anybody out there who writes a good historical (Beverly Jenkins ROCKS!). If more non-white authors were writing historicals, I’d be reading them. But historicals seem to be overwhelmingly written by white authors (regardless of setting or the race/culture of the characters).

Harriet Tubman, Freedom Train romances? Bring ‘em on! Samurai romances? Oh please, oh please, oh please! I just heard that someone sold romance set in ancient Rome. I’m drooling already . . .

sorry candy and sarah…

Monica there is no reason to have a long memory on the ‘net.  Cuz it is still here.  No need to try and decode what I said cuz it is

here FROM A YEAR AGO! 

And I still think you are a bully, a whiner and need to get over yourself. 

I still think I don’t have to do shit because you are trying to make me.  And I won’t get into explaining why I didn’t say what you give me credit for cuz it is in black and white.

Good luck using me to replace your feud with LLB cuz hon I am not even close to being as popular, concerned or as nice as LLB.  Hope it sells you a book but I won’t be buying it.

and here’s something not entirely relevant but shows what a diversity of experience one person gets in the world: I could write confidently about a Southern Black Baptist minister’s family. Why?

Until I went to school, and actually until I was a preteen, I spent more time with a Southern Baptist Minister’s wife than I did with my own mother (who worked more than full time). I went to at least 50 funerals at the Baptist church over those years. I went to south carolina with the family. I spent a whole bunch of nights in her house.

I probably know that culture—from a kid’s point of view—better than a northern black person who’s never been south.

Do I know the racial tensions etc? No. But I know the food, one family’s traditions, the fly-paper black with flies, the back of the brush used on miscreant’s bottoms (including mine), how we weed the garden patch, the horrible mattress with visible springs to sleep around, the church services. . .the terror of being caught doing something evil by a minister’s wife!

About Monica and harping on a theme:

Did I miss the news and racism suddenly came to an end in the last year?

She does rather go on about it, but then again, someone should.

and yes, I contradicted myself

“every family is different”
and then
“I can write about this kind of family” (implying that there is a “kind” after all)

But what I meant was we all can write about any kind of family AFTER you do the basic research. Heh. That’s it.

I mean you wouldn’t want that devout Muslim mother serving her kids bacon and eggs. Well, maybe she would if she had just come from another country, doesn’t know the language and thought all pork products were labeled with a picture of a pig.

Next time give me the goddamn gold star.

You can shut up now Kate  :lol:

My question is, how okay does a person have to be with homosexuality or anything else another person does in order to be an “okay person” or achieve this sense of enlightenment that we seem to be striving for here?  Is it really not enough to just live and let live if you can’t find it within yourself support a cause wholeheartedly?

I was determined to stay out of any further discussion on this topic, but of course I can’t and just want to comment on this, IMO, very important question.

KariBelle, I think your grandma sounds like a good woman who is caught between her own nature as a loving woman and her religious beliefs, which she views as authoritative.  That she can live in both realities must be a really difficult think, IMO. 

Reading everyone’s comments here makes me realize that not everyone views the “isms” the same way.  I’ll use racism here, but I think it’s the same for misogyny, homophobia, and other ism like labels.  Monica can use the term racism, for example, and not have it be a monumental thing.  A couple of other posters have indicated that racism is either a belief or a behvaior or both.  I believe it’s a pattern of beliefs and behaviors, not one single incident or belief or behavior.  In the same way that each of us has our own experience of race and culture—depending in part on where we live, who we’ve grown up with, our ethnic background, the diversity of our formative communities, etc.—we each have our own views on what constitutes discrimination and bigotry and prejudice.

I know I’m late to this discussion but all this talk about Stuart’s next book makes me want to read it as it sounds interesting to me. I read with an open mind.

But to judge a book’s worth before anyone has even read it seems rather silly and jumping the gun to me. But then, it’s not the first time this has happened online. I find this practice rather silly and amusing to judge a book based on *one* aspect of the novel in this case, the hero has slept with men in his past. Who the f. cares? It’s fiction. Outside your confort zone, don’t read it.

Oy, my head is spinning.  I’d say I am looking foreward to reading Stuart’s book because it reminds me of LaFemme Nikita, the series; use sex as a weapon.

Oh and if anyone’s interested I am working on a Forever Knight (The Vampire Cop TV Series) Fanfic with my own original characters thrown in that contains, so far m/f, m/f/m, and f/f pairings.  :)

~Admit it, Roberts - you’re just doing that black thang to be controversial!~

You betcha. I drink controversy for breakfast. Wait, that’s Diet Pepsi.

Never mind.

BTW, there were a terrific series of books a few years back set in ancient Rome, with strong romance elements. I just can’t think of the author—have to go see if I can find the books. Hero was the ancient Roman version of a P.I., and she was the daughter of a high-ranking aristocrat.

Nora

there were a terrific series of books a few years back set in ancient Rome, with strong romance elements. I just can’t think of the author—have to go see if I can find the books. Hero was the ancient Roman version of a P.I., and she was the daughter of a high-ranking aristocrat.

The books about Falco, by Lindsey Davis. Her website’s here.

It bugs me that white folks have to walk on eggs about stuff like this.

I get it.  It’s stupid we have to be on so on guard about race. 

Although you used these phrases in a different context, they sum up nicely, IMO, the answer to your question about why people get all wonky over the “R” word. 

It is, IMO, the burnt out feeling people (I hesitate to say only white people, because in CA it’s across the board) have over feeling so self-conscious about doing and saying and having the “right” views on race.  I’m NOT, BTW, defending this, simply pointing out that I think the Right’s ability to co-opt the term “political correctness” and get otherwise politically liberal people to grab onto that phrase like some moral lifeline has to do with the overuse of the “R” word from the Left. 

Now I realize that there is a fine line between racial consciousness—that is, being conscientious enough to recognize unconscious racism and racialism and to change one’s thoughts and behaviors—and an oversensitivity to race, and for each of us this line may be placed a little differently.  Unfortunately, I think sometimes people who get lumped into the racist category become completely unnerved and insecure or defensive because they feel—rightly or wrongly—that there’s some standard they can’t or don’t want to live up to.  And then they either become hyper-self-conscious or certain that everyone else is just too sensitive to race.  And then you’ve got the very problem on your hands that you were trying to solve in the first place.

As I’ve read through the entirety of your comments here, though, I think I’m understanding that you’re approach to the “R” word is more pragmatically resigned than, say, mine is.  I get the sense that you feel you can use it in a way that really is, from your POV, non-accusatory.  Because I think you use racism like I tend to use sexism sometimes.  When some guy tells a joke I think is at the expense of women, I will casually say, “that is so sexist!” and it doesn’t feel like an accusation, even though the dude in question will be like sputtering a defensive, disbelieving reply.  To me it’s like saying, “wow, you just made a comment that’s totally discriminatory against women” and not feeling like I’ve just condemned that person to the 9th circle of hell. 

So now what I realize is that I have to be more careful about how I use that particular ism, because when I use it, if I’m not really, really serious about it, I’m going to make the recipient of that word feel he has to be more careful around me.  And for the most part, at least in my case, I don’t think the actual guy is sexist, just the comment (and FWIW, I make sexist comments all the time and believe that most of us, women and men alike, tend to create stupid stereotypes about ourselves and each other).  But if I don’t want that guy to get all “wonky” and IMO unnecessarily uncomfortable, I’ve maybe gotta find a better way to express that thought. 

Do men get as upset at the word sexist as others do about the word racist (and in my state, Black people are NOT okay with that word, at least not what I’ve witnessed)?  I don’t know.  But I think culturally it’s much more loaded now, and I don’t agree with you that people who get all wonky over the word do so because they’re racist.  Somtimes they do so because they already feel like they’re walking on eggshells, and that appellation is the kind of thing that can push them over the wrong sort of line.  But I do think I understand better your own experience and your different take on using the word and defining racism in general.

PHEW.

Thank you, lovelysalome. I owe you—and such a nice star it is, too.

Sybil, you’re a real nice person there. Talk about true colors.  And you’re right about about being no Laurie Gold. 

kate r, I get tired of it myself, but I bring it up because nobody else is going to and nothing else affects my writing career more. 

I notice folks tend to harp on things that affect them.  How much have I read about reviews for instance, from both sides? 

If those people got treated the way Sybil and her like treat me, what would happen?

Reading comments here re: wanting both the elements of cultural familiarity (and realism in the details depicted of that culture) and fantasy in romance books has me wondering something.  That is, how much does the knowledge of the hero and/or heroine’s financial status play in how much we can relax into a story?  I mean, if it’s a Regency historical, it’s pretty much a given that it’s set at the highest level of society as respects wealth.  I think this serves a couple of purposes: the first being that whole fantasy element where we want the dream version of life, the other being that it allows the story to ignore everyday worries like food and shelter so the story can focus on the emotional side of things. 

But taking it a little outside of Regency historicals, it occurs to me that, in certain situations, if the main characters are to be financially secure, it feels to me that they have to be white.  [I’m ignoring reality here where there can be wealth regardless of race.  But then again, how many non-whites run the world’s largest companies?  How many are on the Forbes richest lists?  Statistically speaking, not a lot of Latinos or Asians or blacks represented there, no?]

It’s interesting how these things can fold back in on themselves…the details in a story that I’d consider both real and fantastical at the same time - the ideas and settings that are necessary and “comfortable” to me - can back me into a certain kind of story without me even realizing it.  (Sorry, I just brought this back to “comfort zones” again.)  I do seek out things outside of my reality (or, more truthfully, the fantasy version of my reality) because I find it fascinating to learn things about other cultures.  But when I want that pure fantasy element that’s not a “fantasy” book, I want to know these people are financially secure and it seems I have this idea in my mind that I never realized was there that in order to get that element of financial security I’m gonna have to pick up a book about whites. 

I’m sure I’ve just displayed more kinds of ignorance there about AA romances than a person should admit to, but I hope there’s some truth in there too about what can motivate people without them even realizing it.

And finally, Monica your comment about your hair and Buckwheat gave me such a laugh - not just for the image itself, but because one of the funniest things ever was watching my mother - the kind of person one thinks of if the phrase “white bread white” comes up - doing her damndest to conquer the hair of my sister’s childhood best friend.  She was the only black person my mom ever had any kind of intimacy with and she went with my family on a lot of trips and vacations.  Anyway, each morning saw the use of at least a half of a bottle of Johnson & Johnson’s spray on detangler accompanied by that expression of face that says “If I could, I’d be making up swear words that would embarass a sailor right now, but there are children present so I have to keep my mouth shut.”

Madd said:

Chilangos have a reputation for being snobby towards anyone not from Mexico City. So says my aunt, who is married to a Chilango.

This may very well be true. There’s also a certain amount of evidence to indicate that my trouble here is class-related. I’m from lower middle class people and his family has money. However, when you’re set apart from everyone else and you’re the only person of your race in the room, the only person being treated like that, it’s hard not to react.

Well, I’ve enjoyed this intelligent discussion. I’ve been out of college for a while, and there’s not a lot of time in my every day life where I get this kind of give and take. I do get to say, “Because I said so!” a lot at home though, and that’s something.

Robin said,
”(snip) racial consciousness—that is, being conscientious enough to recognize unconscious racism and racialism and to change one’s thoughts and behaviors (snip”

I prefer “self-awareness.” A lot of people who are good and decent people overall also happen to hold unexamined prejudiced views and values.

Very often these otherwise decent folks do not act on those unexamined values, but instead react with kindness, compassion and generosity to other people’s plights.

I like to think that these people would be open to a conversation*** about those unexamined values, their true feelings about them, and whether their actions and words reflect what they’ve always thought they believe.

Often, what one thinks one believes has very little to do with what one’s actions proclaim.

Slightly unrelated: up thread someone qualified someone else’s comment as “ignorant.” If I understood the context correctly, the commenter meant “ill-informed,” or even “close mindded,” rather than true ignorance.

I think that people are rarely ignorant by choice (all too often time and re$ource$ limit one’s ability to broaden one’s horizons). Either way, it might behoove those of us who feel that prejudice is much too common for our peace of mind to gently educate the willfully ignorant, and to try to ease (or sllllllooowwwwwlllly pry, depending) open the thinking of the close-minded.



***As opposed to a diatribe—honey and flies, and all that jazz. (hope that makes sense)