Ok, so, first let me clarify a few things.

When I say "stand-in bigotry," I mean characters act in some way that resembles bigotry in the real world, but it's not factually applicable: they hate robots, magic users, aliens or or elves or something, because fiction. https://twitter.com/ElleOnWords/status/1201335447374487553

It's functionally racism, or at least it looks like it on the surface, but it doesn't engage with real world racism in any meaningful way except to use it as literary shorthand. A prop.

Also, keep in mind I say this USUALLY doesn't pan out. Sometimes, it does.

Sometimes.

But most of the time to falls short, for a number of reasons.

Usually this is done to demonstrate a few things. Maybe the story is examining what it means to have one's humanity denied. Maybe it's attempting to examine oppression. Usually, it's to drive some inherent conflict

for the protagonist(s) because they are a robot or magical or alien or someone they know is or they eventually meet someone they care about who is, and we get to my least favorite reason for doing this: racist redemption arcs, yada yada yada.

People literally make up some way people are oppressed usually via some visually distinguishable characteristic--though not real world oppressed because dealing with that is gross I guess--and expect that to be good enough. But that premise alone can't do the heavy lifting. Why?

BECAUSE RACISM ACTUALLY EXISTS!

So. Books or movies or TV shows or video games will use a form of coding--sometimes even racial--to say "hey, this thing happening in this fake world is just like what happens in the real world." People are mistreated. Maybe they have protests.

Maybe there are laws or old prejudices that make the world this way. Usually for "reasons": Robots literally are not human and should not have rights.

Magic is dangerous and needs to be controlled.

This race of aliens/beings was on the other side of some ancient war.

This is where shit has already started to go sideways because you are now attempting to make your racism or oppression logical. You are presenting a rationale for racism when actual racism is anything but.

This? This is a problem. Because racism is not logical. There is no real

"reason" for it to exist. There is no cut and dry "yep, that checks out" for the shit we deal with in the real world.

But for some reason, folk are hell bent on trying to make this a thing. Fuck if I know why, or care to really, but here we are.

And, as I said, it's a problem.

It's a problem fo many, many, MANY reasons, including the ones stated a move, but usually because that shorthand I was talking about is now extended to real world struggles.

Take Detroit: Become Human. Robots are coded as Black people with actual negro spirituals and shit.

Or Bright. Which I finally watched. And I love Will Smith, but....

.........

Orcs. That's...that's all I'm gonna say.

Then there's any number of books where magic exists and the people who use it are oppressed, held in camps, sold as slaves, second class citizens, if they're

seen as citizens at all, looking at you Dragon Age games, even though I freaking love you.

And all of this is usually done by writers or show runners or developers who have no fucking clue how real racism actually works. Or at least not on the level they're trying to...emulate?

Bring to mind? Evoke? There's a word I'm thinking of that I'm missing, or maybe I actually used it and my brain is just making me think I'm missing it. It does that sometimes.

ANYWAY!

Actual racism, at its core, is between people. There's no actual reason for it to exist save for people wanting to be horrible to one another for social, economic, or colonial reasons and it's better for them if they fabricate "reasons" because cognitive dissonance.

Look up Post Traumatic Slavery Syndrome on youtube. Dr. Joy DeGruy goes into detail how this dissonance was fundamental in how Black people were treated so whiteness could do these bad things and sleep at night.

I'm seriously glossing over some shit, like how they believed Black

people didn't feel pain the same way anyone else does, they're somehow able to tale much much more of it than anyone else--something that's carried over into the medical field FUCKING TODAY!--so they could be worked harder. Or Black women are inherently promiscuous in nature, to

the point where they can't be r*ped, it's just how they are.

ALSO CARRIED OVER TO TODAY.

These were literal laws in some cases.

Know what, folk are lazy, let me get a link.

There. Educate yourselves.

*huff*

Anyway, fake racism--because that's what it is--tends to be tangibly different from real world racism because it's usually against some form of being that actually different. From being magical, to literally not being human.

Real world racism is people being shitty to other people. Magical racism is people being shitty to (sometimes) people who are dangerously different, or not human, or not from here, or...

You connecting the dots yet? This...this is shit white supremacists and colonizers say.

In fiction, you literally make this bullshit TRUE if you're not careful.

Which (usually) people aren't. Because, like I said, they don't want to engage with real world bigotry and oppression, they just need a reason or a system for their characters to fight against arbitrarily.

Detroit: Become human actually pisses me off because they go through this whole thing of trying to debate whether the androids are human and deserving of personhood and decency and THAT IS NOT A DEBATE TO BE HAD IN THE REAL WORLD MY HUMANITY IS NOT UP FOR DEBATE.

But I digress.

I'm yelling a lot.

That's not going to stop.

Anyway, sometimes writers will engage with the bullshit in the text. Or on screen. They will meet it head on instead of hand waving or wand waving it away or trying ridiculous, clumsy at best, malicious at worst parallels between their world and ours.

Usually, they don't. Sometimes because they don't know how, because they never had to think about how, because publishing and gaming and entertainment and society as a whole are a mess. But then you point this out and...people act like you're the problem.

*sigh*

Anyway, the coding thing I mentioned can be intentional or not intentional, but it's there. And maybe the people creating these things don't intend for this to be the case, but--say it with me, now--intent doesn't matter.

That's why lots of non-white writers, particularly Black

ones, say things like YOU CAN'T WRITE IN A VACUUM. Racism based on skin color or whatever might not exist in your world, but it exists in this one, and you're drawing parallels to it without engaging with it this the shit hits the fan. Because you can't just pretend the things

aren't real. It gives off a very icky "I don't like all this icky politics and PC culture in my Hallmark movies" vibe.

You're taking this horrible, terrible thing and making it palatable in a way you prefer so you can then engage it on a level you're comfortable with.

There's a lot more to this, on many nuanced levels, but this is twitter so...yeah.

Main point: People very often just don't have the range for shit like this, and flub things horribly as a result.

So...maybe educate yourselves and try to flub it less, I guess?

I feel a headache coming on, and this was all typed in one sitting, somewhat hastily, and there are likely typos and grammatical errors throughout, and if that's your main take away or you feel led to "correct" any mistakes in my mentions, kindly go fuck yourself and good day.

No, I will NOT be answering questions.

No, I will NOT provide "clarity."

No, I will NOT listen to how you're attempting to do it and offer insight on how to do it "right."

Google is free, I am not, do your own homework, and please LISTEN to marginalized people.

Maybe I'll put all of that in a medium article or something.

*sigh*

Anyway, here's my PayPal if you feel so inclined after today's lesson.

http://paypal.me/ElleMac 

I honestly just want the nonsense in storytelling to stop, more than anything else.