What a wonderful post. Perhaps you have also been following the horrors here on LJ related to race in SF/F writing? This post speaks volumes about the heart of the matter.
As it happens, I am also "red" (Cherokee) and "pass for white". I've never made an issue of my race. I grew up Damn Poor, and all my friends were also Damn Poor, which meant we didn't have to worry over race (and we were quite a mixture of colors) because we were all excluded due to economic status. I've always thought there was no real benefit, no "white privilege" if you are so poor that people dismiss you even though you can "pass". :)
I agree completely with what you've said here about writing. It's the story that matters. If a reader is so busy noticing my technique, vocabulary, or the way I'm "deconstructing genre tropes" I have totally failed. Writing should be as transparent as possible. Or as my favorite beta-reader says, "Shut up and tell the damn story." (Every writer should be so lucky as to have a reader who will say that.) Nice to come across another writer who feels the same way.
Yeah, a lot of writer friends of mine got sucked into it. A lot of people on my Reading List got sucked into it. People everywhere got hurt over it. You can't "walk a mile in someone else's moccasins" if you're not allowed to even look at the moccasins.
I like your beta-reader. If you're a writer, the story eats everything. The writer doesn't owe the reader anything but a story rendered as well as possible. What the reader takes from the story isn't entirely in the writer's control, no more than parents are in control of how people like/dislike their grown offspring.
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As it happens, I am also "red" (Cherokee) and "pass for white". I've never made an issue of my race. I grew up Damn Poor, and all my friends were also Damn Poor, which meant we didn't have to worry over race (and we were quite a mixture of colors) because we were all excluded due to economic status. I've always thought there was no real benefit, no "white privilege" if you are so poor that people dismiss you even though you can "pass". :)
I agree completely with what you've said here about writing. It's the story that matters. If a reader is so busy noticing my technique, vocabulary, or the way I'm "deconstructing genre tropes" I have totally failed. Writing should be as transparent as possible. Or as my favorite beta-reader says, "Shut up and tell the damn story." (Every writer should be so lucky as to have a reader who will say that.) Nice to come across another writer who feels the same way.
(no subject)
I like your beta-reader. If you're a writer, the story eats everything. The writer doesn't owe the reader anything but a story rendered as well as possible. What the reader takes from the story isn't entirely in the writer's control, no more than parents are in control of how people like/dislike their grown offspring.