stories matter

[rm]

And that's also why this thing now called RaceFail '09 is a very serious business.

yuki_onna has done a great piece here, and it speaks not just to why this all fucking matters but why stories matter at all.

http://yuki-onna.livejournal.com/450101.html

and a nod to coyotegoth for the tip.

Comments

[catvalente.livejournal.com]

Believe it or not I am twitchy about it too. Maybe it's a failure of mine, but I couldn't think of how else to pronoun a conversation about people who look and live like me being absent from stories.

[argentla.livejournal.com]

The privilege of dominant groups or cultures is to be able to say "we" with impunity, even when "we" is demonstrably false.

The problem with "we" is that it is an artificial construct. If "we" are divided from "they" (or "you") along racial lines, that division does not erase the separations of sex or class. If "we" is demarcated by sex, it does not negate class or race. However you draw those lines, it comes down in the end to the politics of exclusion; "we" draw strength from being distinct from "you," and somebody is always left standing in the cold, wondering where they fit.

It is a paradigm that seeks power by substituting one form of exclusion and marginalization for another, ensuring that no matter what struggles take place, someone always loses, and the shape of the existing order is perpetuated, even if its shading varies.

The master's tools will not dismantle the master's house. Or, if you prefer, the words of P.J. O'Rourke: "There's a whiff of the lynch mob or the lemming migration about any overlarge concentration of like-thinking individuals, no matter how virtuous their cause."