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Puffing on the Bubble-Pipe
May. 14th, 2009 07:27 pmGood Faith
There was a time when I was a wee little one wherein I believed in the inherent goodness of every person. Then on the twenty-fourth hour of my existence I grew up. That's not to say that I lost my faith in living creatures, but rather I understood that if you give someone a shovel they will happily dig themselves right down to the utmost core of this twirling mud ball we call home.
There is a certain expectation that innate goodness will be recognized within the fandom community. And this immediate recognition will serve to be the only testimony required when navigating the -ism under discussion. This concept of innate goodness is roughly defined as the quality of being a nice person.
Now there are different sorts of niceness and the one referenced above nine times out of ten takes on a quality of passive-aggressiveness. People of Color are like tiny woodland creatures and if they could only sense the pureness of the author/writer/developer/creator we could all happily polish massah's house together. Anything less is self-serving and the insult of all insults: mean and angry.
Having witnessed RaceFail, PostSecretROFL , and MammothFail all within a few short months I am both amused and bemused at the shenanigans of derailing, defaming, lying, manipulating, moving, hiding, rewriting, erasing and other examples of ridiculousness that have transpired. But central to these shenanigans has been the professed goodness of the perpetrators. They are nice persons, driven to do such things by the mean PoC who have the nerve to craftily criticize them.
This notion of goodness is around 300-350 years old. It is a crafted colonial state built on the foundation of PoC as eternal Other. Goodness does not just spring from the ground, it has to be carefully structured and taught through science, history, and art. It goes unnoticed that PoC are never extended this expectation, this fundamental concept from which so much fervor and fire springs forth. This basic tenet of good faith is hampered from extending to those that ask: please put some pants back on.
For PoC to receive recognition of innate goodness is nigh unthinkable in an age where proof of –isms has sunk to he-that-smelt-it-dealt-it levels of insight. An author/writer/developer/creator already occupies the sphere of goodness. A PoC can only enter this space if they do not question the author/writer/developer/creator on an –ism issue. If the PoC does lay down a well-crafted argument it is automatically relegated to the mean and angry sphere which goodness can never enter. In this mindset it is the PoC and not the author/writer/developer/creator that has approached the issue from “bad faith.” This neat bit of logic keeps the author in a state of goodness no matter what slurs, insults, and demagoguery have transpired.
*puff-puff*
Maybe more on this later.
There was a time when I was a wee little one wherein I believed in the inherent goodness of every person. Then on the twenty-fourth hour of my existence I grew up. That's not to say that I lost my faith in living creatures, but rather I understood that if you give someone a shovel they will happily dig themselves right down to the utmost core of this twirling mud ball we call home.
There is a certain expectation that innate goodness will be recognized within the fandom community. And this immediate recognition will serve to be the only testimony required when navigating the -ism under discussion. This concept of innate goodness is roughly defined as the quality of being a nice person.
Now there are different sorts of niceness and the one referenced above nine times out of ten takes on a quality of passive-aggressiveness. People of Color are like tiny woodland creatures and if they could only sense the pureness of the author/writer/developer/creator we could all happily polish massah's house together. Anything less is self-serving and the insult of all insults: mean and angry.
Having witnessed RaceFail, PostSecretROFL , and MammothFail all within a few short months I am both amused and bemused at the shenanigans of derailing, defaming, lying, manipulating, moving, hiding, rewriting, erasing and other examples of ridiculousness that have transpired. But central to these shenanigans has been the professed goodness of the perpetrators. They are nice persons, driven to do such things by the mean PoC who have the nerve to craftily criticize them.
This notion of goodness is around 300-350 years old. It is a crafted colonial state built on the foundation of PoC as eternal Other. Goodness does not just spring from the ground, it has to be carefully structured and taught through science, history, and art. It goes unnoticed that PoC are never extended this expectation, this fundamental concept from which so much fervor and fire springs forth. This basic tenet of good faith is hampered from extending to those that ask: please put some pants back on.
For PoC to receive recognition of innate goodness is nigh unthinkable in an age where proof of –isms has sunk to he-that-smelt-it-dealt-it levels of insight. An author/writer/developer/creator already occupies the sphere of goodness. A PoC can only enter this space if they do not question the author/writer/developer/creator on an –ism issue. If the PoC does lay down a well-crafted argument it is automatically relegated to the mean and angry sphere which goodness can never enter. In this mindset it is the PoC and not the author/writer/developer/creator that has approached the issue from “bad faith.” This neat bit of logic keeps the author in a state of goodness no matter what slurs, insults, and demagoguery have transpired.
*puff-puff*
Maybe more on this later.