Anonymous Asked: How Do I Deal With This Racist White Friend?

So some of you readers have discovered my Tumblr Ask Box is available for Anonymous questions. I don't respond to every single one if they don't ask a question specifically, but I do try to answer questions as much as possible. 

Today I got this question:

Hi, I hope I'm not bothering, but I need advice, in regards to writing and race, and I hope it's alright to ask! My white friend and I are trying to write a steampunk novel and she's failing so bad at race issues. She's the white liberal - racism is bad people doing bad things (but always redeemable once they ~understand~!), racism is caused by stupid people, always look forward never address the past grievances, interracial marriage solves everything! It's so frustrating. 

I’m afraid of correcting her because I don’t want to hurt her feelings, and afraid that she’ll see be as ‘one of those poc’ and hate me. I’ve tried to get her to read your steampunk blog (which I love and thank for its existence!), but she…weird about it. I know that at this point our friendship is suspect, but she is someone I love dearly and I can’t help it. And I’ve put so much effort into this project, I don’t want to give up now. Is it at the point where I should let her be, or is there something I can do to approach this topic? Thank you so much, sorry for the length. Have a good day!

It is an unfortunate state of affairs when you have to ask people on the Internet for advice on how to deal with racists on such an intimate basis.  We all know people like this. Hell, I've been that colorblind liberal! How does one deal with that kind of person? I don't have all the answers, not having all the details, so here's my general tack on the situation:

Firstly, you have my deepest sympathies. This is where it’s clear that it’s the people closest to you who cannot be trusted sometimes.
Secondly, you need to ask yourself if you really need her input on this novel, or if there is someone else you can collaborate with without so many issues.
Thirdly, if the answer is, yes you need her, you need to ask yourself what your boundaries are: what can you continue to tolerate from her? What WILL you continue to tolerate from her?
Then lay out your boundaries. Sit down with her and have a firm talk about it. Tell her to read my blog and stop being weird about it, or else it will damage your trust level and raise your anxieties about this project.
Because as much as you are afraid of hurting your feelings? It’s also really clear that she’s continuously hurting yours. If you keep letting this continue, it will irrevocably destroy your friendship because you will feel constantly fatigued at having to deal with her racism.
You need to be honest with her about the fact that her racism, which is getting to the point where it’s just flagrant ignorance and dismissal of POC perspectives and no longer microaggressive, is hurting you, and you don’t want this friendship to die.
You don’t have to give up on this project; in fact, it sounds to me that the final result will be a lot stronger and more powerful without her racism tainting its process.
If she flounces, you will know where you ever stood in her esteem.
Good luck! There are other folk out there willing to help you along if you need it.

If you were one of those colorblind liberals in recent times, what made you think differently about POC's struggle? If you're a POC who has one of these friends, what did you do, or would have done differently?

"Friendly" Tech

So I was having a conversation on steampunk today on Tumblr, as it occasionally happens, because that is the kind of thing that happens on Tumblr, and then remembered a friend dropped a link to an article on BoingBoing which is really a link to another Tumblr post about Why Steampunk Is Good And Important. I'm not going to lie: I thought the essay itself was kind of inane and boring and didn't say anything that hasn't already been said, and even brackets off some really important concerns with all sorts of handwave-y stuff.  But I was really in a procrastinating mood, so I broke with my policy for a bit and read through the comments. Most of which are the regular run-of-the-mill critiques of steampunk (“it’s not really punk” “it’s just LARP” “it’s not a real movement”) but then I came across this gem of a comment from Scott Saunders of Dieselpunk Industries (which is pretty much an online archive of old movies and serials from that period dieselpunk looks at… pretty neat stuff):

He writes that steampunk “values our bounded selves” and “insistently re-makes technology as something friendly” under a (self?) portrait of a man wearing technology that augments his human sight and strength and carrying a very large handgun. The technology he makes up for his costume is focussed entirely on projecting strength and wielding power. It is not friendly, nor does it value the bounded human condition. It is quite the opposite.

And I want to have ALL THE “THIS!” GIFs attached to this comment because, well, THIS. There is so much talk about how steampunk makes technology friendly, or even how steampunk is a friendly subculture in the first place, that THIS is what gets missed in the conversation: the fact that if you actually pay any attention to the props people are carrying? Steampunk is not friendly, and reflects pretty much all the violence of the period it draws inspiration from, whether it’s outright, like the gun props, or the violence of colonialism implied in the costuming. 

One could read the prosthetic arm and oculars as aiding a disability (because, hey, violent times, you have to expect your eye and arm to get blown off, amirite?) but very often there is this gaping hole where conversations of disability should be—relegating this performance to little more than crip drag. 

And Scott Saunders is right: this is not friendly. This is not a vision of the past or present or future that encourages community. And while rayguns may no longer be the defining item of steampunk anymore that I can see, it’s still pretty prevalent because we haven’t latched onto anything else yet that shouts “steam era, and bad!”

Anyways, discuss if you please.

Functional?

My fabulous comrade Ay-Leen wrote an interesting piece called "Yes, I Did Stick A Gear On It" for Steampunk Canada and it harks back to a long-time debate over whether a prop needs to be functional before it can be truly called steampunk. Or something! 

Since my way of navigating steampunk has to do with words (and more words and conversations and discussions) and less performance, I've never really dipped my toe into that debate. It seems a little odd to me! Not all of us are capable of mastering the skills needed to create something functional. In fact, not all of us have the resources and tools needed for functional stuff!

It's not that I'm against the position, either! I fully believe that all my steampunk gear should be stuff I can wear on a regular, non-performative basis. (As an aside, I've started gardening, and considering agricultural forms of engaging with steampunk. Moniquill and Steampunk Emma Goldman had this very brief, interesting chat about how steampunk can use anachronistic tech to help people which is unfortunately frustrated when the focus instead turns to unthinkingly celebrating militarist aesthetics.) (This conversation of theirs was spurred by this Kickstarter Project of a ship that will sail from port to port selling local farmers' produce... a kind of floating farmer's market. It is a hark back to how food was distributed Back In The Day.) I think it's cool when stuff works, just as much as I appreciate the effort that goes into making something that needs no function beyond supporting the imaginative. 

Because I've never been invested in the debate, not being a Maker myself, I don't really know anybody who says "functional is the superior" to the weird extent that keeps being brought up in these debates. (Cory Gross was yelled off Brass Goggles because he didn't Make, period.) I know a lot of people who are in the camp of "non-functional is just as legit" but who are these people who purport that steampunk props must be functional or else it's a form of "glue a gear on it"? Do they have names? Surely they have to have been fairly big names in the past in order to have their opinions become entrenched so firmly into the discourse, but my Google skills... kind of fail me =( *wails "I'm a faaaaaiiilluuuuure" you know how it is* Are they a myth, a strawman? (THEY'RE REAL, RIGHT?)

I think there could be interesting questions to ask here. The folks on the "doesn't have to be!" side use imagination and props together; there is no tension going on there because there is a tacit understanding that the props are exactly that: props. By divorcing themselves from the necessity of functional items, the imagination interacts with the physical items for a particular purpose. 

But those on the side of "function!" are also doing interesting things with their interaction with physical technology too. Maybe I am looking in the wrong places, but surely this conversation is happening somewhere? I don't really feel like theorizing about something if there's already stuff out there.