Romance Writers of America implodes over handling of criticism of racism

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by leebase

[...] historical racial injustice [...]

But racial injustice isn't historical. It is an ongoing problem. As this kerfuffle in RWA shows.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

But racial injustice isn't historical. It is an ongoing problem. As this kerfuffle in RWA shows.

Wait a moment, Paul--are you calling this "kerfuffle" in RWA an example of racial injustice?

Hitch

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

You mentioned lynch mobs. In a discussion about racism. In a forum with many members from the USA, where lynch mobs have murdered black people within living memory.

Try searching for the full phrase "internet lynch mob". You'll find things like this:

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news...we-are-facing/

"internet lynch mob" is a common phrase online and it's not about killing people but about killing their livelihoods and making them, not their books, disappear. Usually over nebulous offenses.

Check the linked posts above, about the YS twitter storms.
Or the abundant reports of 1-star campaigns on Amazon and elsewhere.
It's rarely about the quality of the book.

It's about lack of civility and looking for gotchas and excuses to be offended over.
Being offended is, today, another way of bending the (traditional publishing) world to your will.
Or trying, anyway...

And

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

I suggest you look at the Wikipedia page listing victims of lynching in the USA, especially the 20th century section, and then consider that your knowledge of lynchings derived from fiction may not match reality.

You mean the page that lists lynchings for 1890 onward? I'm pretty sure that lynchings didn't start in 1890 in the US.

https://daily.jstor.org/the-untold-h...american-west/

One of the quotes it the article is of particular note -
"The “primacy of racial prejudice” as motivation for lynching was underlined by the ritualized torture of victims, who were shot, burned, and mutilated before and after hanging. Anglos were also victims of lynch mobs, of course, but without the ceremony and public spectacle."

Which is somewhat my point. An example is the case of William Longley.

https://spartacus-educational.com/WWlongley.htm

Longley was famous for being hanged twice. He was lynched as a horse thief, but as the vigilantes were riding out, one turned at shot at Longley. By chance, the shot hit the rope, weakening the rope enough that it broke, leaving Longley still alive. In 1875, Longley killed Wilson Anderson. He was captured, convicted and executed in 1878. The ironic part of this was that Longley was a racist, member of the KKK and was said to have killed 32 men, mostly black. Of course, like most western legends, little of it is documented.

Many say that Longley's lynching was a legend as was him killing 32 men. There is no way to prove it one way or the other. Many times the old legends of the west have to be taken with a grain of salt and it's left to the reader to decide what they want to believe and not.

What is certainly true is that vigilantes justice was quite common in the old west. It was, however, rarely documented other than being mentioned in passing by someone in a letter, or maybe a brief mention in one of the local papers.

Hum, well maybe my knowledge of history isn't actually derived from movies, but of my interest in history. I did minor in history after all.

No doubt that there was a upsurge of racially motivated lynchings from 1890 up through the 1930's and even beyond. It was a big problem and a national scandal during the early 1900's and was one of the reasons that Teddy Roosevelt became the first president to officially invite a black to dinner at the White House.

But the laser focus on black lynchings in the South during what was mostly a 60 year time period (as was documented in a recent report, lynchings were actually pretty wide spread in the US at that time as this interactive map shows -
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart...tes-180961877/) is very much a distortion of the history of lynchings in the US.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by FrustratedReader

Hollywood Westerns are totally sanitised. Zane Grey's westerns are fictional and far more accurate. Most US made Westerns were also quite racial. Maybe more obvious to people who are not White Americans.
Don't use fiction as a guide to anything, least of all Fiction on the Screen.

Fiction actually has an interesting insight into the morals of the time. I used it as an example, because I assumed, apparently accurately, that most here are not well versed in history of the old West. The American old west was quite an interesting place. Was it racist? Yes, but blacks were actually much more common than many think. For example, the first black lawman was Bass Reeves, one of Judge Parker's deputies. He was suppose to have been the inspiration for Clint Eastwood's character in Hang'em High. There were a lot of Black cowboys, as there were Hispanic cowboys and Indian cowboys.

[leebase]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

But racial injustice isn't historical. It is an ongoing problem. As this kerfuffle in RWA shows.

In the context I was speaking of LYNCHINGS....which, thank God, are NOT a current part of the racial problems in America.

Like killing people by crucifixion, lynchings existed long before a particular set of them came to by synonymous. Jesus was crucified and is pretty much what people are thinking of when the term is used today.

But...it's STILL quite common to use phrases like "he was being crucified on national television"....without it really being a reference to Jesus.

People are always borrowing from much more horrible events to paint a picture of "this is bad" to some other type of event.

The following is about "communication" not "politics".

An example are those who are calling the illegal immigrant detention centers "concentration camps". It's MEANT to be inflammatory. It's MEANT to harken back to the holocaust. It's COMPLETELY hyperbolic, but such is not unusual rhetoric.

And, there will always be pedants who complain about such uses. "How dare you use holocaust imagery for anything other than the holocaust." Put people do. All the time. In America, at least.

No one need fear they've made some unpardonable racial error by using they phrase "lynching" or "lynch mob". Clarence Thomas claimed he was suffering a public lynching during his Supreme Court confirmation hearing.

Rape is another horrible word that is used to describe things as being "really bad" that are actually nowhere near as really bad as actual rape.

[leebase]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Wait a moment, Paul--are you calling this "kerfuffle" in RWA an example of racial injustice?

Hitch

Nope. It's using the charge of "racial injustice" as a smear tactic against someone on the basis of a political difference that isn't about race at all.

[issybird]

I'd like to request again that people tone down their rhetoric and stay closer to the topic. It seems to me that some posts here are engaging in the same inflammatory tactics they're railing against.

[astrangerhere]

As a thought experiment:

Let's say that this is about the classic law school widget. Person A and Person B have made widgets in the past. The models they made might now be old, outdated and replaced with other, better widgets.

Person C makes statements about those old widgets. Among her concerns are that Person A, who made that original not-so-good and/or outdated widget is now in charge of overseeing the production of widgets end emplying those who make widgets. Person C is concerned about this and says so.

Person C gets in trouble. They have said something that WidgetCo is not comfortable with. Could be any number of reasons - could be that WidgetCo don't want to damage the sales of the current widgets. Simple reason. Could also be that they don't want someone they have put in a management position discredited as someone who makes bad widgets.

So the WidgetCo Administration tosses out their own rule book for how to handle employee complaints, bars Person C from ever being in a management role at WidgetCo and suspends Person C from WidgetCo activities. All outside of their standard way for handling employee issues.

For purposes of this experiment:

1. What the widget is doesn't matter.
2. What made the old widgets outdated and less good that the new ones is irrelevant.
3. What WidgetCo is as an organization doesn't matter.
4. First Amendment free speech still exists.

In my initial post, I mentioned that I would not want to work for anyone who treated their employees this way. I stand by that statement.

Feel free to ignore, but when looked at this way (especially the opinions about the widgets themselves), this issue for me was an employee/employer dispute that was handled in the worse way possible.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by astrangerhere

As a thought experiment:

Let's say that this is about the classic law school widget. Person A and Person B have made widgets in the past. The models they made might now be old, outdated and replaced with other, better widgets.

Person C makes statements about those old widgets. Among her concerns are that Person A, who made that original not-so-good and/or outdated widget is now in charge of overseeing the production of widgets end emplying those who make widgets. Person C is concerned about this and says so.

Person C gets in trouble. They have said something that WidgetCo is not comfortable with. Could be any number of reasons - could be that WidgetCo don't want to damage the sales of the current widgets. Simple reason. Could also be that they don't want someone they have put in a management position discredited as someone who makes bad widgets.

So the WidgetCo Administration tosses out their own rule book for how to handle employee complaints, bars Person C from ever being in a management role at WidgetCo and suspends Person C from WidgetCo activities. All outside of their standard way for handling employee issues.

For purposes of this experiment:

1. What the widget is doesn't matter.
2. What made the old widgets outdated and less good that the new ones is irrelevant.
3. What WidgetCo is as an organization doesn't matter.
4. First Amendment free speech still exists.

In my initial post, I mentioned that I would not want to work for anyone who treated their employees this way. I stand by that statement.

Feel free to ignore, but when looked at this way (especially the opinions about the widgets themselves), this issue for me was an employee/employer dispute that was handled in the worse way possible.

That is certainly one aspect to look at. One of the downsides of successfully demonizing someone is that process and procedure tend to go out the window as the company scrambles to avoid getting tarred by the mess. We saw it with the Red Scare back in the 50's, we see it now with accusations of racism. In an ideal world, it wouldn't happen.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by astrangerhere

As a thought experiment:

Let's say that this is about the classic law school widget. Person A and Person B have made widgets in the past. The models they made might now be old, outdated and replaced with other, better widgets.

Person C makes statements about those old widgets. Among her concerns are that Person A, who made that original not-so-good and/or outdated widget is now in charge of overseeing the production of widgets end emplying those who make widgets. Person C is concerned about this and says so.

Person C gets in trouble. They have said something that WidgetCo is not comfortable with. Could be any number of reasons - could be that WidgetCo don't want to damage the sales of the current widgets. Simple reason. Could also be that they don't want someone they have put in a management position discredited as someone who makes bad widgets.

So the WidgetCo Administration tosses out their own rule book for how to handle employee complaints, bars Person C from ever being in a management role at WidgetCo and suspends Person C from WidgetCo activities. All outside of their standard way for handling employee issues.

For purposes of this experiment:

1. What the widget is doesn't matter.
2. What made the old widgets outdated and less good that the new ones is irrelevant.
3. What WidgetCo is as an organization doesn't matter.
4. First Amendment free speech still exists.

In my initial post, I mentioned that I would not want to work for anyone who treated their employees this way. I stand by that statement.

Feel free to ignore, but when looked at this way (especially the opinions about the widgets themselves), this issue for me was an employee/employer dispute that was handled in the worse way possible.

In this case person C was not a random person unconnected with the company. Ms. Milan was the chair of the RWA ethics committee at that time and as such could be considered in a position of authority. Most companies would frown on executives going outside the company as a step in complaining about a employee never mind making it the first step.

Have you seen any evidence that Ms. Milan attempted to communicate with Ms. Davis about her concerns prior to the "fucking racist mess" tweet that kicked off this kerfluffle?

Though I will admit that conflating product improvements with claims of racism was worth a laugh.

[cfrizz]

Originally Posted by issybird

I'd like to request again that people tone down their rhetoric and stay closer to the topic. It seems to me that some posts here are engaging in the same inflammatory tactics they're railing against.

THANK YOU!!!!! For pointing out the obvious, I was going to do so in a far less tactful matter, but I don't want to get the thread closed.

I would suggest that those that don't care about this issue, or want to label it falsely as political correctness, find another thread. All you are doing is mucking up this one!

[cfrizz]

This is a case of the majority that is in power, doing whatever they can to stay in power and make sure things don't change for those in power. To that end they will do whatever is neccessary, including getting rid of anyone that dares to rock their precious boat.

From what I gather, a trade organization is not a corporation so traditional rules do not apply that would to a corporation.

One of their members who is a minority, who just happened to be on one of their many committees pointed out some ethnic stereo typing in an old book, which happened to be reissued in 2014 that she as a minority found offensive on social media.

I believe she is allowed to do this, since the rules that apply to corporations don't apply. The decent thing for the other author to do would have been to say Ok I'll take another look at it and see what I can do. Instead it escalates from there into a big mess with poor judgement being used on all sides.

But none of this negates the fact that the RWA has a long standing history of exclusion of minority writers in their committees, in books receiving recognition, etc. This is the important fact that is being ignored and should be addressed and rectified.

The ones in power aren't interested in addressing it, so as is the case in most instances, if you can bring it to the public's attention, and get non associated people to voice their opinions, things just might change!

[DuckieTigger]

Originally Posted by cfrizz

I believe she is allowed to do this, since the rules that apply to corporations don't apply. The decent thing for the other author to do would have been to say Ok I'll take another look at it and see what I can do. Instead it escalates from there into a big mess with poor judgement being used on all sides.

Absolutely not. The main reason for republishing old books is for them to be available as an ebook to preserve them from going out of print ever again. It is not a lazy way of an author to rake money in again without doing any of the real work of writing. A simple edit will do.

You don't like that it is exactly political correctness and the term doesn't do it justice? Then call it by the real name. It is the equivalent of fake news with the malicious intent of rewriting history to make yourself paint in a saintly and innocent light by today's standards.

Going forward, by that logic, you will edit every historical book in existence to remove all offending material. You will be no better than a holocaust denier. You will freewilly do the book burnings that did happen not too long ago. If they had the technology back then to simply edit an old version of politically offending books with a new and clean ebook version, they would have done so. Everything they didn't burn, but created new, was propaganda.

If we don't stop this political correctness crap, history will repeat itself.

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by cfrizz

One of their members who is a minority, who just happened to be on one of their many committees pointed out some ethnic stereo typing in an old book, which happened to be reissued in 2014 that she as a minority found offensive on social media.

"Pointing out" is a strange way to describe a tweet reading, in full, as follows:

And we’ve been talking about Sue Grimshaw?

Someone sent me a link to a book written by the other editor, Kathryn Lynn Davis, and is a fucking racist mess.

{n subsequent posts, Milan admitted "I didn’t finish the sample" and acknowledged her own writing wasn't the best:

I think a lot about my flaws as a person. I’m not the most tactful person. I do measure my language, but unfortunately, my measure goes up to 11. I have a temper. It shows.

Originally Posted by cfrizz

The decent thing for the other author to do would have been to say Ok I'll take another look at it and see what I can do.

I find this unreasonable.

Milan didn't write some superb negative review. She instead insulted a sample of a book after not even reading the whole sample (something it is to Milan's credit that she admitted).

The tweet used a hot-button insult word -- racism. And the insult came from an ethics committee member of the trade organization of Davis's own trade. This isn't what will result in a normal person becoming open to new ideas. What your post terms "the decent thing," given the circumstances, would defy human nature.

But what if Davis is so abnormal as to learn from being insulted by someone from the ethics committee? What could she then do?

This is not best-selling non-fiction where, just possibly, you can correct what you did in a second edition. When Charles Dickens was tactfully criticized, for his portrayal of Jews in Oliver Twist, by a friendly critic who read the whole book, Dickens's response was to change his portrayal of Jews in later books. This -- making future works better -- is the only reasonable fix when a novelist confronts a negative review he or she feels has great merit.

I don't expect Davis to go Dickensonian here because of what happens when you become a hate object on the internet (now the fate of both Davis and Milan), and also because Davis may not have actually created anything approaching a Chinese equivalent of Fagin. But if Davis did write a book that was unfair to the Chinese, and regrets it, we wouldn't yet know she hadn't done "the decent thing" because of the time required to write and publish better books.