It's Not Easy Being Green: A Mission to Shrink my Carbon Footprint

rachelmanija

The other day I had a conversation which reminded me of the enormous differences between the world I live in, and the world most men I know do. In particular, there are several statements which I have heard frequently and which I never want to hear again.

While white supremacy does not require any rational basis for its moral authority, the notion of white suffering is, and has always been, a stated reason for white violence and disciplinary actions against non-whites. In my experience with Southwest Airlines, I was punished for not simply taking what a white man gave me. A gesture that again is associated not with Asianness but with Blackness, I apparently caused this man to suffer by not keeping quiet when his leg pressed against mine. Instead, I was assaulted and threatened by him, laughed at by a young white woman, chastised and disciplined by an older white woman, and then forced to listen to another white man next to me basically try to say he was helping me out. My situation, along with those that mirror it, shows that in the end white moral authority or appeals to it are the only politically recognized truths. The way in which the notion of white suffering informs contemporary white moral discourse therefore requires a looking backward into the souls of white folk that Du Bois interrogated over 85 years ago.

shewhohashope

Yes, the author is claiming that an academic argument against cultural supremacy and imperialism is merely a passionate charge, where a defence of it on the basis of fondness for the subordinated culture is exhaustive intellectual work. Underneath this defense of orientalism lies the idea that knowledge and its acquisition are apolitical, and more than that, that seeking knowledge is inherently noble. This is not the case. Knowledge and scientific enquiry were often used as tools to aid colonial oppression, and in themselves were an expression of that oppression. The need to learn about another culture, to be accepted into it with open arms, while simultaneously devaluing it, is an expression of entitlement. This can be seen clearly in the anger many privileged groups express when not allowed to be a part of a marginalised culture that they find interesting, while also accepting their escape from the parts that they find troublesome as also being in their rights.

janni

Mostly, though, I found myself thinking about the fact that the author strikes me as looking for "Jewish fantasy" in the wrong place: in the trappings of the worldbuilding. I've only written two clearly Jewish stories (one dealing with Hanukkah and issues around violence/nonviolence; the other dealing with Passover and vampires). But of course all my stories are Jewish. It informs my worldview. I don't construct narratives quite the same way a Christian, or a Muslim, or a Tohono O'Odham writer. All our worldviews inform our work, and this is non-trivial.

One example, just because it's still fresh in mind right now: in the draft I just turned in, which is now sitting on my editor's desk, I went around with issues of forgiveness--I have characters who played a direct role in the War that destroyed their world, and who are still living with what they've done almost 20 years later, and those characters also are speaking up a little bit more in this book than in the first book I wrote set in that world.