The controversy boils down to a) people calling POC fans things like orcs and trolls (no, seriously) for expressing an opinion about how their culture is written, b) white writers whining about how it's so hard for them to write POC characters and how they're just not going to do it because they might be, gasp, criticized for it (it's called research and it's called not being afraid of being called out on being wrong) and c) Elizabeth Bear, who is a reasonably big-name author, first graciously accepting the criticism and then not telling her friends who call people things like orcs to shut up in her journal (elsewhere, whatever, not her job, but in her space, you know?) and then making a post that is basically like, oh, I was just being a nice person, I really didn't believe what I was saying.
This is a gross simplification, but it's some of what happened. There's been a lot of awesome posts about co-opting culture and taking it back, but there's also been crazy, crazy things said by professionals in the publishing industry and big-name authors in the scifi field. The original posts aren't that controversial, it's in Bear's comments that it gets bad and then sprawls out.
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Date: 2009-03-08 11:26 pm (UTC)This is a gross simplification, but it's some of what happened. There's been a lot of awesome posts about co-opting culture and taking it back, but there's also been crazy, crazy things said by professionals in the publishing industry and big-name authors in the scifi field. The original posts aren't that controversial, it's in Bear's comments that it gets bad and then sprawls out.