Response to PSK
Mar. 19th, 2009 07:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sunnyskywalkerSince PSK is now screening comments on his entry The Fetish of Diversity, I've reposted my response here. I have to thank ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sodzilla for this; I read that entry and figured it wasn't worth trying to get through to him, but when she got banned for a relatively mild comment after he'd already proven he really only cared about his comfort and what we could do for him, I decided I ought to try anyway. I hate confrontation, but I also hate being a coward, so in the face of someone maybe saying something a little bit mean to me, so. I speak up. I don't know whether it'll make a difference to him, but at least I tried, and other people can look and think about it. (Well, they could if he weren't screening comments. Hence my reposting here.)
You've got the point of diversity backward. It isn't to provide you with a variety of viewpoints (though that is a nice fringe benefit). It is not about you. It is about other people being excluded from [arena of your choice].
Yes, diversity includes Italians and Mormons and that guy from Appalachia; I don't know where you get the impression that it doesn't. However, if (in a hypothetical situation) you look around and see straight white Christian Italian and Mormon and Appalachian men, but no women or poc (or women poc)? And you don't wonder whether maybe there' a reason you aren't seeing them besides "maybe they just didn't feel like showing up, all at once, for some inexplicable reason"? Then there's a problem.
You might hear about women and poc and gays more than that Random White Mormon Guy in discussions of diversity. This doesn't mean Random White Mormon Guy doesn't have different experiences from Random White Protestant Guy. However, he probably doesn't get pulled over more often than Random White Protestant Guy while driving equally well as RWPG, or get turned down for home loans despite having as good or better qualifications (income, credit score, etc.) than RWPG. Random White Mormon Guy probably isn't at a much higher risk for being sexually assaulted as RWPG (and having the legal system until quite recently think it was probably his fault, or not a crime if his wife did it), and he probably isn't paid less than Random White Protestant Guy for doing the same job.
This is not to say he never gets "encouraged" to stay out of (housing, jobs Random White Protestant Guys want, comics conventions, science fiction and fantasy, and on and on). I'm sure he does, and that needs to stop too. But groups that have experienced massive injustice tend to yell louder about it, and that's why you hear about it more. Especially when they are very large groups, like women (around 50% of the population) and poc (also a large number, and also about 50% female). When you are talking about over half of the entire population being excluded from an awful lot of arenas you take for granted, it's a joke to say that including Random White Mormon Guy means that you've checked that box and don't have to worry whether you're excluding anyone else.
So calling diversity a fetish is really, really insulting. You are saying that there is no reason to care whether [given arena] includes any of the vast array of people who are not, say, middle-class straight white able-bodied neurotypical Protestant suburban-dwelling men (the "normal" in the US, despite it not being all that normal), other than to provide some interesting "spice" to your experiences. Again, it is not about you. It is not about collecting them all. It is about equity. If you look around and see only that guy I just mentioned? That is not what you would see if all other kinds of people weren't being told to shut up and go away. Those people outnumber that guy. So when someone says, "Hey, I don't see much diversity here," they're not saying, "Gee, it would be more interesting for me with some other kinds of people." They're saying, "What did someone do to keep out everyone else?"
sodzilla for this; I read that entry and figured it wasn't worth trying to get through to him, but when she got banned for a relatively mild comment after he'd already proven he really only cared about his comfort and what we could do for him, I decided I ought to try anyway. I hate confrontation, but I also hate being a coward, so in the face of someone maybe saying something a little bit mean to me, so. I speak up. I don't know whether it'll make a difference to him, but at least I tried, and other people can look and think about it. (Well, they could if he weren't screening comments. Hence my reposting here.) You've got the point of diversity backward. It isn't to provide you with a variety of viewpoints (though that is a nice fringe benefit). It is not about you. It is about other people being excluded from [arena of your choice].
Yes, diversity includes Italians and Mormons and that guy from Appalachia; I don't know where you get the impression that it doesn't. However, if (in a hypothetical situation) you look around and see straight white Christian Italian and Mormon and Appalachian men, but no women or poc (or women poc)? And you don't wonder whether maybe there' a reason you aren't seeing them besides "maybe they just didn't feel like showing up, all at once, for some inexplicable reason"? Then there's a problem.
You might hear about women and poc and gays more than that Random White Mormon Guy in discussions of diversity. This doesn't mean Random White Mormon Guy doesn't have different experiences from Random White Protestant Guy. However, he probably doesn't get pulled over more often than Random White Protestant Guy while driving equally well as RWPG, or get turned down for home loans despite having as good or better qualifications (income, credit score, etc.) than RWPG. Random White Mormon Guy probably isn't at a much higher risk for being sexually assaulted as RWPG (and having the legal system until quite recently think it was probably his fault, or not a crime if his wife did it), and he probably isn't paid less than Random White Protestant Guy for doing the same job.
This is not to say he never gets "encouraged" to stay out of (housing, jobs Random White Protestant Guys want, comics conventions, science fiction and fantasy, and on and on). I'm sure he does, and that needs to stop too. But groups that have experienced massive injustice tend to yell louder about it, and that's why you hear about it more. Especially when they are very large groups, like women (around 50% of the population) and poc (also a large number, and also about 50% female). When you are talking about over half of the entire population being excluded from an awful lot of arenas you take for granted, it's a joke to say that including Random White Mormon Guy means that you've checked that box and don't have to worry whether you're excluding anyone else.
So calling diversity a fetish is really, really insulting. You are saying that there is no reason to care whether [given arena] includes any of the vast array of people who are not, say, middle-class straight white able-bodied neurotypical Protestant suburban-dwelling men (the "normal" in the US, despite it not being all that normal), other than to provide some interesting "spice" to your experiences. Again, it is not about you. It is not about collecting them all. It is about equity. If you look around and see only that guy I just mentioned? That is not what you would see if all other kinds of people weren't being told to shut up and go away. Those people outnumber that guy. So when someone says, "Hey, I don't see much diversity here," they're not saying, "Gee, it would be more interesting for me with some other kinds of people." They're saying, "What did someone do to keep out everyone else?"
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(no subject)
Date: 2009-03-20 10:56 pm (UTC)That really is what I came away with from all his talking - the idea that if you can only fit in enough different types of White Guy, the fact that Black Woman is left out in the cold doesn't matter, somehow. Which is offensive on so many different levels.