Myth, the Universe, and Everything

I started thinking about it a lot when there was the huge kafuffle back in January. (Rose Fox's Genreville (http://www.publishersweekly.com/blog/400000640/post/300039630.html) blog still has some good coverage up.) Down in Rose's comments, she addressed me in what I think is one of the best summations about multiculturalism in fiction:

The best response I've seen to that dilemma (and I don't recall now where I saw it, but it was in the most recent go-'round) is that when a white writer says "I'm stuck between getting criticism for writing only white people and criticism for writing imperfect people of color", it really means "I'm stuck between getting criticism for doing the wrong thing and getting criticism for doing the right thing imperfectly". The criticism is a red herring; the fear of criticism is a red herring. None of it excuses white writers from needing to do the best job we can of doing the right thing. If we fail--if our multi-culti casts end up full of tokens who speak in wretched eye dialect, if an ostensibly diverse group is full of people who all sound like they grew up in WASPy white enclaves and never talk about cultural history or experiencing discrimination, if we daringly put a black woman on the bridge of the Enterprise and then make her a telephone operator--then yes, we will get criticism, and we need to learn from it and then keep doing the right thing as well as we can.The best response I've seen to that dilemma (and I don't recall now where I saw it, but it was in the most recent go-'round) is that when a white writer says "I'm stuck between getting criticism for writing only white people and criticism for writing imperfect people of color", it really means "I'm stuck between getting criticism for doing the wrong thing and getting criticism for doing the right thing imperfectly". The criticism is a red herring; the fear of criticism is a red herring. None of it excuses white writers from needing to do the best job we can of doing the right thing. If we fail--if our multi-culti casts end up full of tokens who speak in wretched eye dialect, if an ostensibly diverse group is full of people who all sound like they grew up in WASPy white enclaves and never talk about cultural history or experiencing discrimination, if we daringly put a black woman on the bridge of the Enterprise and then make her a telephone operator--then yes, we will get criticism, and we need to learn from it and then keep doing the right thing as well as we can.