Racing Turtles

Still thinking about how both She-ra and The Broken Earth went ‘there are these mystical crystals that certain people can bond with and draw power from that are actually the remnants of a dead civilization’s attempt to siphon power from the core of the world, a plan that was foiled when the people they created to use that tool rebelled, and someone with enough understanding of these crystals’ purpose can use them to hack the planet’ but went in WILDLY different directions tonally

After the Stone Sky.. another beginning of a relationship

Based on the Broken Earth Trilogy by N. K. Jemisin

hey writers if you want to make a metaphor for racism, please maybe remember that racism is literally based on nothing. Africans weren’t enslaved en masse because the Robo-Musa threatened to destroy the world, they were enslaved because it was economically rewarding and politically convenient. If at any point your allegory for racism includes “so <oppressed group> did this major catastrophe and” then you have not only missed the point but you are literally reinforcing the ideas that racism have let racism self-perpetuate (that e.g. black people are naturally dangerous and violent and must be contained or begrudgingly accepted by the Nice White People)

Just a personal note on this, ‘cause I’ve had some folks ask me how orogenes in the Broken Earth trilogy can be an allegory for oppressed groups, given that orogenes actually are dangerous.

I was completely aware of the Unfortunate Implications of orogenes as black people/Jewish people/closeted queer people/neuroatypical people and having Special Powers. That was the point, actually. At the time I was early in THE FIFTH SEASON, I was watching Ferguson unfold, and listening to Darren Wilson’s bullshit about how Mike Brown seemed superhuman (or subhuman) to him.  And the whole time I kept thinking, “So-the-fuck-what if he was a demon? He was still an unarmed 18 year old whom you shot 10 times while he was running away.” From that to stories of doctors assuming black people aren’t capable of feeling pain to the same degree as white people – I was just done with it.  Fucking done.

Because it should not matter if we are big, or dark-skinned, or wearing “villain clothing” like hoodies, or whatever. All that shit’s just an excuse anyway; racist white people are scared of us when we’re small and light-skinned and wearing business suits.  The problem isn’t us. The problem is chickenshit white people and the imaginary monsters they carry around inside them.

And over the course of the Broken Earth trilogy I poked at this notion. The society of the Stillness could at any point choose to accommodate orogenes in a way that is safe for all… but it chooses not to. Orogene parents have no trouble raising orogene kids. Orogenes in communities police each other the same way non-orogenes do – because at the end of the day, they’re all people. Even if some of those people are extraordinary, they can live together if there is respect.

Black people are extraordinary in so many ways. Not superhuman, obvs – but we aren’t white, which is what this society insists upon calling “normal.” We will never be white, and that’s fine. We will never be “ordinary” in the eyes of racists – and we shouldn’t have to pretend otherwise. We shouldn’t have to stoop if we’re naturally tall, or speak softly if we’re naturally deep-voiced, just so that small-minded people will be less afraid in our presence.  Our children shouldn’t have to think and act as if they’re older than they are, just because white people misjudge their ages. The problem isn’t us. And a good, diverse society, one that actually accommodates and respects all of its members, should be able to handle both the ordinary and extraordinary with no trouble.

So: I agree with the OP; don’t reinforce racist notions in your worldbuilding. Or if you do, make sure you interrogate the fuck out of them, and make it clear that the problem is still racists, not race.

i’d like to make a minor addition: racism might be based on nothing, but fundamentally, under all the bullshit excuses, dehumanizing a minority group is often socially and economically advantageous for the majority. that’s why they started doing it.

like, white people don’t hate black people because of skin color. the color is just an excuse for why it was okay to enslave a bunch of people and then violently coerce labor from them for centuries. white people today still materially benefit from dehumanizing and subordinating black people, and would lose those benefits if black people were treated as their equals. you can’t just say ‘skin color is a stupid thing to discriminate against’ and leave it at that. you missed the point. color isn’t the point. discrimination is the point.

like, you can’t wake up someone who is pretending to sleep. and you can’t resolve racism without acknowledging how profitable racism actually is for racists to perpetuate.

you know what i’m gonna reblog this again with an addition to my addition which is that i’m jewish and you know what antisemitism allows? the shameless extraction of land, labor, and capital from jews. that’s why it’s so important to me to clarify this in discussions of racism and center where the fucking money is going. like, you know what happened when spain kicked all the sephardim out? the church and the royalty kept all their fucking money. you know what happened to all the shit they took off the ashkenazim during the holocaust? well, we know. the catholic church still has our shit. sweden has our shit. germany and austria and poland has our shit. our land, our businesses, our art, our holy scriptures. every expulsion of jews in history, the people kicking the jews out called us parasites and then kept all of our shit.

and also, you know what happens to people that have to hide who they are on threat of death or expulsion or conversion? they can’t organize. they can’t effectively protest or work together to protect themselves and their labor and their property. hell, after long enough they stop even seeing their own people as their own people and align themselves voluntarily with the interests of the majority. there’s a truly horrifying number of rich, racist, republican jews who cheerfully signed on for the nakedly fascist shitshow of the trump organization, many of them direct descendants of holocaust survivors. because of course, again, racism pays off.

the stories of jewish diasporas and the african diasporas aren’t the same, obviously, they’re not even parallel, but they rhyme in a lot of key phrases once you’re paying attention.

edit: just want to clarify that OP did make this point succinctly at the start, and i don’t wanna talk over nk goddamn jemisin on the subject of antiblackness, i just feel really passionate about expanding on how racists very much do benefit from racism! and that white people who naively overlook that issue don’t end up writing any stories about racism worth reading.

hey writers if you want to make a metaphor for racism, please maybe remember that racism is literally based on nothing. Africans weren’t enslaved en masse because the Robo-Musa threatened to destroy the world, they were enslaved because it was economically rewarding and politically convenient. If at any point your allegory for racism includes “so <oppressed group> did this major catastrophe and” then you have not only missed the point but you are literally reinforcing the ideas that racism have let racism self-perpetuate (that e.g. black people are naturally dangerous and violent and must be contained or begrudgingly accepted by the Nice White People)

Just a personal note on this, ‘cause I’ve had some folks ask me how orogenes in the Broken Earth trilogy can be an allegory for oppressed groups, given that orogenes actually are dangerous.

I was completely aware of the Unfortunate Implications of orogenes as black people/Jewish people/closeted queer people/neuroatypical people and having Special Powers. That was the point, actually. At the time I was early in THE FIFTH SEASON, I was watching Ferguson unfold, and listening to Darren Wilson’s bullshit about how Mike Brown seemed superhuman (or subhuman) to him.  And the whole time I kept thinking, “So-the-fuck-what if he was a demon? He was still an unarmed 18 year old whom you shot 10 times while he was running away.” From that to stories of doctors assuming black people aren’t capable of feeling pain to the same degree as white people – I was just done with it.  Fucking done.

Because it should not matter if we are big, or dark-skinned, or wearing “villain clothing” like hoodies, or whatever. All that shit’s just an excuse anyway; racist white people are scared of us when we’re small and light-skinned and wearing business suits.  The problem isn’t us. The problem is chickenshit white people and the imaginary monsters they carry around inside them.

And over the course of the Broken Earth trilogy I poked at this notion. The society of the Stillness could at any point choose to accommodate orogenes in a way that is safe for all… but it chooses not to. Orogene parents have no trouble raising orogene kids. Orogenes in communities police each other the same way non-orogenes do – because at the end of the day, they’re all people. Even if some of those people are extraordinary, they can live together if there is respect.

Black people are extraordinary in so many ways. Not superhuman, obvs – but we aren’t white, which is what this society insists upon calling “normal.” We will never be white, and that’s fine. We will never be “ordinary” in the eyes of racists – and we shouldn’t have to pretend otherwise. We shouldn’t have to stoop if we’re naturally tall, or speak softly if we’re naturally deep-voiced, just so that small-minded people will be less afraid in our presence.  Our children shouldn’t have to think and act as if they’re older than they are, just because white people misjudge their ages. The problem isn’t us. And a good, diverse society, one that actually accommodates and respects all of its members, should be able to handle both the ordinary and extraordinary with no trouble.

So: I agree with the OP; don’t reinforce racist notions in your worldbuilding. Or if you do, make sure you interrogate the fuck out of them, and make it clear that the problem is still racists, not race.