"Admit" is a bad word choice, and I'm going to revise that statement. But I do feel that Bear's more recent statements demonstrate that her previous apologies and expressions of contrition were made in bad faith. Here are a few points where I felt that the Cease Fire post undermined or downright contradicted things she had said before. It's not by any means a point by point refutation, but it demonstrates the reasons I have for feeling that the latter post calls into question the sincerity of the former.
You're pretty much right categorically and without exception, and I'm sorry to have mislead you for a moment into believing I think anything different. I will say that the book of mine you threw across the room is, in part, actually intended to address the point you make about it, but I obviously failed for you as a reader in doing so, and I'm sorry.
[...]
My intention really is not to earn brownie points. It is, hopefully, to do something about your pain and lack, and my own pain and lack, and the pain and lack of my friends and family and random strangers on the street.
I had tried to be a good cooperative white author, and listen to criticism from a person of color with open ears, and try to engage in a helpful dialogue of how to address one's own unconscious racism.
But you know, I was doomed from the moment I decided that I could try to do a little very basic education aimed at people who have never tried to write somebody not exactly like them, and maybe help writers avoid writing a few POC characters who were basically middle class white people with a coat of well-meaning shellac.
From the comments of "Real magic can never be made by offering up someone else's liver":
-matociquala
The way characters of color are generally treated in the media makes me crazy, too, and I can try to understand the frustration that arises from seeing yourself marginalized again and again.
in internet debates of this sort, at least against well-meaning white folk who really do want to help, the persons of color do have privilege. It is not systemic, like white privilege, and it is not as toxic as white privilege.
But it is perfectly capable of turning any internet debate on race into a slaughterhouse, because the white progressives will generally either back down from or react with defensive panic to any accusation of racism, which makes it a nuclear option and an I Win card.
From the comments of "Real magic can never be made by offering up someone else's liver":
-juliansinger
On the other hand, part of the point is that we're reading this book in the context of this culture, and that does, at times, bleed in. So if someone has taken more of their experience of this culture than you did, into the book, it merely means they took more of this culture in than you did, not that they read it wrong.
It's my fault because I accepted criticism of my book that I knew to be untrue, that I knew to be based on a shallow and partial reading (a reading of the first chapter of a 160,000-word novel), because I felt it was important to serve as an example of how to engage dialogue on unconscious institutional racism.
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Cease Fire--Part 1
Date: 2009-03-09 04:20 pm (UTC)From Real magic can never be made by offering up someone else's liver:
You're right.
You're pretty much right categorically and without exception, and I'm sorry to have mislead you for a moment into believing I think anything different. I will say that the book of mine you threw across the room is, in part, actually intended to address the point you make about it, but I obviously failed for you as a reader in doing so, and I'm sorry.
[...]
My intention really is not to earn brownie points. It is, hopefully, to do something about your pain and lack, and my own pain and lack, and the pain and lack of my friends and family and random strangers on the street.
From Cease Fire:
I had tried to be a good cooperative white author, and listen to criticism from a person of color with open ears, and try to engage in a helpful dialogue of how to address one's own unconscious racism.
But you know, I was doomed from the moment I decided that I could try to do a little very basic education aimed at people who have never tried to write somebody not exactly like them, and maybe help writers avoid writing a few POC characters who were basically middle class white people with a coat of well-meaning shellac.
From the comments of "Real magic can never be made by offering up someone else's liver":
-matociquala
The way characters of color are generally treated in the media makes me crazy, too, and I can try to understand the frustration that arises from seeing yourself marginalized again and again.
The problem's obvious. The solution's not.
From Cease Fire:
in internet debates of this sort, at least against well-meaning white folk who really do want to help, the persons of color do have privilege. It is not systemic, like white privilege, and it is not as toxic as white privilege.
But it is perfectly capable of turning any internet debate on race into a slaughterhouse, because the white progressives will generally either back down from or react with defensive panic to any accusation of racism, which makes it a nuclear option and an I Win card.
From the comments of "Real magic can never be made by offering up someone else's liver":
-juliansinger
On the other hand, part of the point is that we're reading this book in the context of this culture, and that does, at times, bleed in. So if someone has taken more of their experience of this culture than you did, into the book, it merely means they took more of this culture in than you did, not that they read it wrong.
-matociquala
You are correct.
From Cease Fire:
It's my fault because I accepted criticism of my book that I knew to be untrue, that I knew to be based on a shallow and partial reading (a reading of the first chapter of a 160,000-word novel), because I felt it was important to serve as an example of how to engage dialogue on unconscious institutional racism.