Apropos of LRT about Irish Americans performing white supremacy... so, let's talk a little about THE CITY WE BECAME. I've seen a few reviewers comment on the Woman in White, and leap to the conclusion that she's my way of saying all white people are evil.

I don't normally like to explain my books. What readers get from my writing is dependent on my storytelling skill, IMO. But it's also dependent on what readers bring to the story, and I'm well aware that a lot of readers think black people hate white people, period full stop.

I mean, some probably do? 40+ million people are going to have a lot of different feelings. My own experience has been that black folks can't afford and don't have time to hate white people. It's hard enough getting by in this racist world. Hate is a privilege.

But a lot of folks also think racism is merely "hatred." They don't get that it's actually a complex system of psychological and socialpolitical structures which make mere hatred irrelevant. You don't have to hate PoC to be racist. You don't have to do anything. This is America.

And one of the effects of American racism is that it eats white people. That is: it swallows the cultural uniqueness that lighter-skinned ethnic groups have when they come here. Language, cuisine, all of it ends up subsumed into a kind of amorphous morass of "just white."

This doesn't just happen, note. The pressure is there, but the group doesn't have to give in. I rec'd HOW THE IRISH BECAME WHITE because it shows how Irish Americans resisted whiteness' attempt to swallow them... at first. Then specific leaders in that community made a choice.

(Seriously, y'all, follow @Limerick1914. He is an Irish-in-Ireland historian who's tried to suss out why Irish Americans do so many things that are antithetical to sourceland "fuck colonialism," etc., mores. Choices were made, and are being perpetuated.)

So back to THE CITY WE BECAME. The Woman in White's nature is amorphous. Homogenizing. Like gentrification -- but one of the things that makes gentrification grotesque is that it homogenizes away subcultural, often ethnic and non-white racial, uniqueness. Seeee what I did thar?

So, not "white people are evil," but "whiteness is an artificial construct that, for the sake of power or the illusion thereof, devours all the creative and cultural variety that makes people so interesting." White people included.

'Course, whiteness resists any calling-out of its artificiality. This is why you get white supremacists yelling "It's ok to be white!" as if anybody said it wasn't. Reframing examination of the effect of (white) identity politics as "just hate" makes the examiner easy to dismiss.

And some ppl are always going to approach the work of black writers *expecting* hate, for that reason. But for the rest of y'all, it's up to you to decide how well I accomplished what I set out to do with the Woman in White. Intent doesn't make up for execution, after all.

OK, that's it. Talk amongst yourselves. Coffee time. (Yes, I know, got a late start today.)