by Nisi Shawl
However, since routinized thinking permits shortcuts, it allows your conscious mind to be lazy. When the forebrain is lazy, its analytical skills shut down. So, when the reptile brain sends prejudiced, erroneous information to a lazy forebrain, the lazy forebrain agrees with the reptile brain’s assertion that, for example, all Muslims are terrorists.
Of course, it’s possible for the forebrain to agree with prejudiced, erroneous information out of honest ignorance. In later sections we’ll point out ways to overcome this problem.
Racism is not a permanent state. Sexism is not a permanent state. Neither is any other prejudice, phobia, or bigoted attitude.
To think something unpleasant, or to say or publish something thoughtless or uninformed, does not make you now and forever a racist, a sexist, a homophobe, or a garden-variety bigot.
Writing is considered speech. It gives you the opportunity to rewrite and revise. It gives you the opportunity to override the reptile brain and the lazy forebrain:
Your reptile brain and lazy forebrain.
And other people’s reptile brains and lazy forebrains.
When Cynthia creates secondary characters with her creative mind without the engagement of her critical mind, such characters usually turn out to be white. During the rewrite, she develops her secondary characters so that they are not all straight, middle-class, unreligious white adults remarkably similar to herself. The rewrite changes these characters enormously. It’s a never-ending process—but never-ending in the same sense that catching and fixing our spelling and grammar errors is never-ending. Though catching our unconsidered thoughts about ROAARS traits is more difficult., the problems created by such unconsidered thoughts are definitely fixable.
Making a racist or other mistake about a marked-ROAARS characteristic is not permanent. It’s not soul-staining. It’s not death.
It’s okay to make mistakes.
And remember, even if you achieved perfection in your every marked-ROAARS character, somebody would still complain about what you did. Reasonable people will reasonably disagree. That’s just a fact of life.
Cynthia’s remarks on the dread of being a racist were written from her white, liberal perspective. Obviously, however, racial prejudice is not just a question of white-versus-nonwhite. As a black woman, Nisi is capable of making erroneous race-based assumptions also. These assumptions can be about whites, about other blacks, or about members of yet other races; and though they don’t have the weight of white privilege and institutionalized racism behind them, they can have harmful effects.
And of course there are other forms of bigotry she’s susceptible to. Difference is not monolithic. Differing from the dominant paradigm in one aspect of ROAARS doesn’t make you an expert on those who differ from it in another.
3
The Unmarked State
We mentioned the unmarked state earlier, when talking about the differences each of us have from the dominant paradigm. This particular term, “the unmarked state,” is drawn from literary criticism. It denotes the state of possessing only those characteristics that are literally not remarkable. A character in the unmarked state has a certain transparency; he (and we use the pronoun advisedly) allows readers to read the action of the story without coloring it with his particularity.
Take the example of an author narrating the story of someone who accidentally falls into a river, manages to struggle across it, and climbs out on the other side alive. To tell this story in its “purest” form, the author must employ a protagonist in the unmarked state. Otherwise, she is telling the story not of “someone” who falls into a river and crosses it, but of “a pregnant woman” who falls into a river and crosses it, or of “an elderly paraplegic” who falls into a river and crosses it, or of “a Filipino” who falls into a river and crosses it, and so on and so forth. Each of these departures from the unmarked state allows readers to inflect the story with their own judgments, their own experiences and unfounded beliefs concerning people marked by whichever characteristics the author specifies.
And these characteristics must be mentioned to be present in the mind of the reader. They must be remarked upon. The unmarked state, by contrast, is the default setting for any character not otherwise described.
Take a moment to consider the unmarked state as it exists in our current literary landscape. What are its primary characteristics? How do they differ from the typical or average characteristics of citizens of this country? This culture? This world?
Discussing the unmarked state with Writing the Other students, Nisi and Cynthia have encountered some surprising answers to these questions, as well as answers that come as no surprise at all. Commonly, the unmarked state is revealed as white, male, heterosexual, single, young, and physically able. Other characteristics people have noted include possessing a mid-level income, childless, and human.
If you yourself are in most points congruent with the literary convention of the unmarked state—if, for example, you’re white and straight—your path through life will be smoothed in ways you can’t even see.
After all, you don’t notice the abuse you don’t experience.
If you’re a white adult in the United States, you can walk down the street holding hands with a white adult of the opposite sex, and your display of affection will not provoke passersby to insult you or assault you. And you know this. Whether or not you’re familiar with the phrases, you are enjoying “white privilege” and “straight privilege.”
However, if you’re a white man walking down the street hand-in-hand with a black woman, you know it’s possible some passersby will make insulting racial remarks to you and your wife, lover, or friend; it’s even possible someone may physically assault you. You’re no longer protected by white privilege, and you know this, even if you’ve never heard the term.
If you’re a white man walking down the street hand-in-hand with a white man, you are again at potential risk of verbal or physical assault; you’re no longer protected by “straight privilege,” and you know it.
Cynthia remembers a white man complaining to her that one of his Silicon Valley coworkers “got his job because he’s black.”
“I’m sure I don’t know,” replied Cynthia the temporary worker, who couldn’t tell a good engineer from a bad engineer, but had noticed that the minority hires were distinctly few at their corporate employer’s big campus. She couldn’t help wondering: Did the white engineer get his job because he was white?
Whites are so accustomed to enjoying white privilege they don’t notice they have it. Despite her exchange with the white engineer, Cynthia never thought to ask herself if she got her job because she’s white. Heterosexuals are also accustomed to enjoying “heterosexual privilege” and don’t notice they have it. Cynthia knows this because she keenly remembers every time she’s been discriminated against for being straight. If she adds these incidents to the times she’s been discriminated against for being white or American, she can count them on one hand. If she weren’t privileged as a white, heterosexual American, she’d have more incidents to remember. Many, many more.
Failure to notice our privileges is the cause of a lot of friction. How many times have your heard, read, or participated in an exchange like this:
“I’m white, but I’m not a racist. I’d never take advantage of my race.”
“You can’t help but take advantage of your race.”
“But I don’t!”
If you’re white, you do. But it’s easy to miss, perhaps even impossible to see.
Driving While White: A Cautionary Tale
For a year in the 1980s, Cynthia and her then-husband lived in Mountain View, a Bay Area city with large white, black, Asian, and Hispanic populations and a nearly full spectrum of socioeconomic classes. Cynthia and her husband lived just across the city-line from Los Altos, a white, affluent neighborhood.
The 280 freeway linked the Bay Area peninsula cities to San Francisco and San Jose. The 280 was on the far side of Los Altos, so
Cynthia and her husband, like many Mountain View residents, drove through Los Altos to get to it. Cynthia and her husband also drove through Los Altos every weekday to get to work. They quickly noticed a pattern.
Most people they saw driving in Los Altos were white. However, most of the drivers pulled over by Los Altos police were people of color. In the year she lived next door to Los Altos, Cynthia saw only two white drivers pulled over by Los Altos cops (one was being ticketed in a school zone; the other was a beautiful, young white woman). At this time, she hadn’t heard the terms “white privilege,” or “DWB” (Driving While Black). She didn’t need to know these terms to know she wasn’t likely to be stopped by cops in Los Altos, because she was white.
Whites who rarely drove through Los Altos could not see that they were benefiting from white privilege. Such drivers might have protested, with genuine sincerity, that they didn’t take advantage of their race. Even so, they benefited from white privilege. A benefit received unknowingly is no less a benefit for being unnoticed.
In contemporary mainstream fiction, straight white characters rarely notice that they enjoy the benefits of their unmarked state. This is reasonable, in the right fictional contexts.
However, when characters distinctly not in the unmarked state don’t notice an instance of privilege where they would reasonably notice it, this strikes a false note.
Wouldn’t it be strange to read a novel set in the pre-Civil War American South and discover that none of the black slave characters ever noticed that their white owners were free and they weren’t?
Imagine how strange it would be if black readers failed to notice that a novel had only one black character, who existed only to nobly suffer—or even die—so that the white hero might live. And yet, this description fits numerous novels and movies.
Minority readers notice. And so do some “majority” readers.
To keep this kind of mistake out of your work, use observation and research to learn who has privilege and who doesn’t, and when. In 2003, homosexual couples could not legally get married anywhere in Canada or the United States. As of this writing in 2005, gay couples and lesbian couples can legally marry in Canada and provisionally marry in Massachusetts.
You need to know who has privilege and who doesn’t, regardless of whether your characters are modern American blacks and whites, or ancient Roman citizens and slaves and barbarians, or different socio-economic classes of Alpha Centaurean gas-bag intelligences.
And remember that people change from marked to unmarked states, and vice-versa. People marry, divorce, become widowed. They’re hired and fired. They discover they’re gay or lesbian. They move to other neighborhoods, cities, countries. They change religions. They can change their sex with gender reassignment surgery. They can lose the use of their legs in a car accident. They can discover they belong to a different race than they thought. (Actress Carol Channing learned late in life that she is African-American.)
People, and by extension fictional representations of people, aren’t always aware of how they differ from the dominant paradigm. Varying situations can raise their awareness. For instance, women are not always conscious of their sexuality. If a woman is walking past a group of construction workers or strolling along Fraternity Row, a wolf-whistle may suddenly remind her that she’s a woman.
For some women, the act of walking past a construction site or fraternity house will make her aware of her sex even when no construction worker or fraternity member notices her existence.
Exercise 1
Pick a celebrity.
The celebrity can be an actor/actress, singer, designer, director, musician, talk-show host, politician, producer, or political pundit of any sex, race, gender, socioeconomic status, or political persuasion. Choose a celebrity you know something about. A famous but meaningless name will not help you in this exercise. Otherwise, it doesn’t matter whom you choose. There is no right or wrong choice.
Now, pretend you are your chosen celebrity, politician, or pundit. As this person, write a description of a person of a really different ROAARS.
This exercise should be timed. It should last four minutes.
Don’t sit and think about the exercise. Set your clock or egg timer, then immediately start the exercise. This exercise is “hothouse forcing”: it’s designed for writing, not thinking—designed for action.
There will be plenty of time to think about your exercise after you’ve completed it.
All done? Now, looking at what you’ve written, consider the following questions:
Was one of the characters you used closer to the unmarked state than the other? Which one—the celebrity whose viewpoint you wrote from, or the person described? In which respects did they resemble the unmarked state? In which ways did they differ from it?
How did what you wrote differ from your personal view of the character described?
Did you find yourself clinging to useful clichés? Abandoning them?
Remember, we’re interested in the process here. These exercises are about writing, not about producing a manuscript. After you’ve reflected on what you’ve experienced, it will be time to move on and learn more.
4
Parallax: Who is Looking at Whom?
Parallax is an astronomical concept that we’ve adapted to literary usage. The original idea can best be illustrated by performing a short, easy experiment.
Gaze at an object some distance away. If you’re indoors, look for something across the room from where you sit or stand: a picture on a wall, or a book on a shelf, perhaps. If you’re outside, choose an object in the middle distance: a tree, or a building not too far off, rather than a mountain, for instance. Hold one finger up so that it covers whatever it is you’re looking at. Now close your left eye. Open it again and close your right. Does your finger seem to shift in relation to the object you picked? That’s because of a shift in parallax. The slight change in the perspective from your left to your right eye results in an apparent change in the position of what you’re looking at. And the perceptual change is larger when you’re looking at something closer to your eyes—your finger—than something more distant—the picture or book in the background.
In terms of “Writing the Other,” slight shifts in your viewpoint characters’ positions vis-à-vis the unmarked state will change how they look at the world, at themselves, and at the concept of the unmarked state.
In fact, in addition to the dominant culture’s version of the unmarked state, each of us carries around our private take on what is “normal.” This definition adheres much more closely to our own specific characteristics.
Sometimes people apply this definition so inappropriately it’s almost funny.
When Nisi first came to Seattle, she hired a cab driver to take her around to all the places she was considering renting. The driver was a white male with long, slicked back hair. He looked like he weighed 80 to 100 pounds more than she did. A crucifix dangled from his rearview mirror. Over the course of the afternoon they spent together, he advised Nisi as to what parts of town she should avoid: the Central District, for instance, an historically black neighborhood. As for Capitol Hill, known for its unconventionally clothed and behaved inhabitants—“You don’t even want to know what they get up to around there,” the driver claimed, referring, probably, to the prevalence of same-sex couples.
Remember, Nisi is black, and has slept with other women. So why would this man expect her to be uncomfortable in these neighborhoods? Well, because he was uncomfortable there. Obviously Nisi was just like him, because she was a good person: she’d been polite to him, laughed at his jokes, and conformed in plenty of other ways to his expectations of how a good person acts. He had, in the words of linguist M. J. Hardman, conferred “honorary whiteness” on Nisi (personal communication).
Depending on their immediate context, your characters may perform similar mental acrobatics when thinking of those they come in contact with—or when thinking of themselves. They may identify with t
he dominant unmarked state though lacking its characteristics, or they may reject it—conditionally and partially, or without reserve. They may be conscious of privileges they lack or possess due to their ROAARS traits.
In the 1980s, Cynthia read a story in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. The title of it escapes her, but she will never forget the actual story. It may be the most astonishing work of fiction she’s ever read—although not for a good reason.
The flaw she finds so memorable is a flaw that illuminates parallax.
The story was set in Maine. The protagonist was a straight Maine lobsterman. His best friend was a gay male bed-and-breakfast owner who’d moved up to Maine from New York.
As she read, Cynthia spluttered with ever-increasing incredulity. Finally, she shouted aloud:
“A Maine lobsterman would never be best friends with a New Yorker!”
An Old Maine Joke
Colonel Vinal Moody died when he was ninety-seven. After the funeral, two fellahs buying buckshot and Budweiser at Gifford’s Corner Store paused to reminisce about the old man.
“Jesus God,” one fellah said, “I didn’t know the Colonel was from away.”
“Oh, ayuh,” the other said, “the Colonel was born in New Hampshire. And he was upwards of six months old ’fore he ever set foot in the state of Maine!”
What You See Depends on Where You Stand