On Finding Diversity

[omorka]

On the one hand, I teach at a school that has no majority population. Our kids are roughly 30% African-American (including a non-trivial number of first- and second-generation immigrants from West Africa), 30% Hispanic (with a plurality but not a majority hailing from Mexico within the previous three generations), 20% Asian (including, but not limited to, Chinese, Vietnamese, Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Korean, and Indonesian), and 10% white (including a small but significant Eastern European recent-immigrant group). Even my group - the math nerds - is far from homogenous; as I mentioned to my group at the Aggie tournament, in a sea of white folks, we were a small island of South Asians, East Asians, and Hispanics.

On the second hand, I attend a church that deliberately attempts to be a home to liberal Christians, liberal Jews, liberal Muslims, true Unitarians, generic theists, religious humanists, agnostic spiritual seekers, humanist atheists, nontheists, Buddhists, and NeoPagans. The co-ministers work very hard to make sure that all of these ideas are supported in their own turns from the pulpit, and that smaller groups within the larger congregations tend to each of these needs. They also work very hard at making sure these different ideas bump up against each other, rub shoulders, scrape a few rough edges, and get a chance to, if not cross-fertilize, at least stay in motion instead of getting stagnant.

So I look around my RL friends group, and what, pray tell, do I see?

1) A very, very bleached group. Off the top of my head, there's but a single person of African heritage, and one or two Asians. No Hispanics at all. Now, I recognize that a lot of my interests, like Celtic music, are statistically unlikely to have too many African-American fans, but given that we're anime geeks, you'd think there would be more Asians around. In contrast, I can count the number of former students I'm still in contact with who are white on the fingers of half a hand.

2) A culturally fairly homogenous group. No one in the group that I can think of is more than two steps removed from me in social class. I can't think of anyone who speaks something other than English as their home language. There are some Libertarians in the group, but few if any social conservatives. And, while we're certainly not religiously homogenous, I have very few friends who are both monotheistic and devout. Those that I can think of are uniformly on the liberal wing of their denomination.

This is embarrassing. Clearly we need to find some new people to be in this social group. Maybe once I leave the school, I really should start inviting my graduates to things. (I can think of a couple I'd like to convert to gamerhood - shouldn't be too hard, as they're hard-core videogamers and anime fans already . . .)

Comments

[starcat-jewel.livejournal.com]

A few comments on this:

1) You are absolutely right about the whiteness of fandom (and gamerdom). It's actually gotten quite a bit better in the 30 or so years that I've been going to cons; now you do see a sprinkling of non-white faces, and several of them are even on concoms. I see this as at least partly a chicken-and-egg situation; people of color are going to see the same thing you see and be put off by it, unless we make some special efforts to bring them in and make them welcome. Inviting your students and former students would be a good first step, but the trick is going to be building the numbers up until we reach "critical mass" -- the point at which people of color will not see themselves as having little or no opportunity to socialize with those of their own subcultures. Non-whites in fandom today are in a very similar position to women in fandom in the 1970s, but without the automatic social advantage of being a "desirable" minority whose attention would be fought over.

2) I doubt that you're going to be able to do much about the economic-class distribution. Fen, by and large, are living on the lower end of the level where it's possible to go to a con; much poorer, and you simply can't afford it. And the continuing marginalization of fandom means that (again, by and large) people from higher economic classes don't want anything to do with it, with the exception of those who are professionals in the field. To them, we're freaks and weirdos. Liberal, hippie freaks and weirdos. Leading to my next point...

3) The lack of conservative political views is IMO a self-sustaining situation. Very little SF/fantasy is written from a conservative POV, and when it is, that side is often the "villain". This, in turn, both draws people who are already of the liberal mindset and shapes the views of those who come to it younger. The Libertarian blip is almost entirely the result of Heinlein's explosive popularity, and is continued by younger authors who have been influenced by him (such as Allen Steele). People who are politically conservative, if they try to interact with fandom, are going to find themselves in very much the same position that most of us do outside of fandom -- "uncomfortable and despised", to paraphrase John Adams.

And frankly, I'm of two minds about that. On the one hand, I agree that diversity of views is a good thing. On the other... I doubt I'm the only person on your flist who sees fandom as something of a haven, one of the few public places where it's really okay to be liberal. There would have to be a really strong advantage to make me want to give that up.

4) The church issue is probably a continuation of this. We don't get people from conservative religious factions because we don't get conservatives, period. And conservative churches are far more likely to believe that science fiction is "the literature of Satan", and to equate gaming with Satanism proper.

5) I don't know enough about anime-fandom to offer anything useful, but... is it possible that Asians see white anime-fen in the same way that Native Americans see pagan "members of the Wanabi tribe"?

[moontyger.livejournal.com]

And frankly, I'm of two minds about that. On the one hand, I agree that diversity of views is a good thing. On the other... I doubt I'm the only person on your flist who sees fandom as something of a haven, one of the few public places where it's really okay to be liberal. There would have to be a really strong advantage to make me want to give that up.

I have to agree. As an example I'd point to one of the blogs I try to read that has made a point of allowing conservatives to freely comment (even though the blog itself is anything but conservative in most aspects). They have generally been so confrontational and unpleasant that I don't read the comments anymore and as best I can tell, most of the original frequent commenters have been driven off, too. I don't want that in my social group!

[omorka.livejournal.com]

Responding to #5 first - the only otaku that I know of who have ever expressed anything like that sentiment are, specifically, the Japanese otaku. And there's part of what the underlying issue is. Asians, at least, are very aware of their own differences; for my Vietnamese kids, Japanese culture can be even less accessible than WASP culture is. At one point we had a discussion about the relationships between the Viet, Chinese, Filipino, and Korean kids in our school. I brought up the differences between Italian, Irish, Anglo, German, and Ashkenazic Jewish cultures, and my kids were blown away - they had never thought to see any of us as anything other than "white."

Which lands me back at #1. While I hadn't been specifically thinking of fandom per se - I had honestly been thinking more of the musical and Pagan subcultures when I wrote this - the question of "how do we make this more attractive to members of other ethnicities?" applies to all of them. And one thing that has occurred to me is that members of groups who are still acculturating may be more likely to be interested in joining alternative subcultures than people who have found "their" subculture already. In this particular case, getting my hip-hop kids to come to a con is likely to be a lost cause, but some of the children of recent African immigrants who have not found their place in the world - not "ghetto" enough for the hip-hop crowd, too American for their parents' crowd, too dark to blend in - might find a subculture that welcomes freaks and geeks much to their liking. A lot of the anime and videogamer crowd at the school is second-generation Asian and Hispanic kids who find themselves in similar "transitional" states. Is "geek" an identity that can be made comfortable for them?

The local Pagan scene was nearly all-white when I discovered it, with a few Hispanics. Now, while they're still quite rare, there are a few people of color of several different origins at CMA these days. Ditto for Owlcon; I played one game with a native Hawai'ian Islander. Clearly we're at least not doing something wrong anymore. My question is, now what can we specifically do right?

[starcat-jewel.livejournal.com]

And one thing that has occurred to me is that members of groups who are still acculturating may be more likely to be interested in joining alternative subcultures than people who have found "their" subculture already.

An excellent point. I don't think it's coincidental that most of us "aging fen" got into the culture in our teens and 20s -- it's relatively rare for someone over 30 to arrive in fandom on his or her own. When I was experimenting with online personals after my divorce, and specifically saying that one of the things I hoped to find was a companion who would travel to cons with me, even guys who expressed an interest in SF turned out not to be that interested -- or else I was just too weird for them by virtue of being fannish to begin with.

Fandom has always been a haven for young people who are having trouble fitting in elsewhere. Extending this metaphor to those of other ethnic subcultures (as long as they have at least the potential to share fannish interests) is probably one of the best things we could do to promote diversity within our subculture.

[pinesandmaples]

Fandom has always been a haven for young people who are having trouble fitting in elsewhere. Extending this metaphor to those of other ethnic subcultures (as long as they have at least the potential to share fannish interests) is probably one of the best things we could do to promote diversity within our subculture.

Thing is, most Asian kids ALREADY fit somewhere else. Case in point: My partner is half-Filipino. He was raised by a Pinoy father and grandparents. The kid knows of every Filipino and Filipina in the city limits of Philadelphia, by virtue of his family. They connect. Within a week of someone getting off the boat, they have connections and outlets and are finding more of their own kind. And that is where they settle. Their own kind. That is his fit: the Pinoy community here in Philly.
I'm having to learn how to integrate into that as a white girl, but it's easier for me than most because I'm not overly interested in stealing their culture and making it my own.

Very few, if any, Asian folk NEED fandom as an outlet. White folks seem to NEED fandom.

As another aside, as I meet more Asians and they learn I'm part of an Asian family (the boy's family), they open up and share that fandom annoys the bloody shit out of them because it sure does look like white people are taking Asian culture and assuming it. Yes, that's a really trite observation and rather closed minded; but it does seem to be true to an extent. Think about how fandom treats Asian culture in general, and about how they glorify Japanese culture above all. It doesn't really feel good for a Filipina or a kid from Vietnam to be either half-worshipped while they have culture stolen out from under them OR be discarded because the white kids are only interested in people from Japan.

Opening up fandom to more Asians is a hard experience, and you have to find people who are heavily Westernized to begin with anyway.

[redneckgaijin.livejournal.com]

(1) I was born in 1974- that makes me a member of the first generation born into a world where, "Stick to your own kind, boy," was no longer acceptable. I hope my children's generation will be one where that attitude is no longer comprehensible. Prior generations, however, regarded associations across social and racial lines as making the line-crosser of lower social status than -either- group involved. That attitude, conscious or subconscious, is dying out, and good riddance.

(3) Jim Baen tends to attract conservatives, in no small part due to David Weber. Weber regards Clarence Thomas as the greatest Supreme Court jurist of all time. Eric Flint could also be called conservative. H. Beam Piper was either conservative or libertarian, depending on your point of view. Any liberal trend in fandom is not due to the -nonexistence- of conservatives, but because fandom is in no small part focused on those who seek higher education and mental stimulus.

(4) Fundamentalist religions demand conformity above all. Fandom does not conform; therefore fandom is evil and to be avoided.

(5) Some Japanese are amused, some bewildered, and some offended by American otaku. I can't speak to how the Chinese feel about Hong Kong movie fans, and at present no other Asian country has a significant influence on fandom in America. (Well, except possibly Bollywood, but I think Bollywood fandom is not imitative so much as it is "lookit the freaks, Martha, lookit the freaks.")

(And I would love to see a Bollywood movie mocking Americans. "Lookit the fat whiteys, Ganesh, lookit the fat whiteys.")

[bassfingers.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's kind of weird for me as an artist being a white middle-classed male. Classmates and teachers can incorporate their class, ethnicity or gender into their art, and that is an "identity" I don't have the option of using in my pieces.

[omorka.livejournal.com]

One of the issues for me here is that "white" isn't an identity. It's a label that was invented specifically to get immigrants - mostly Southern and Eastern Europeans - to give up their ethnicities. Unfortunately, it worked. Not that ethnic conflict is somehow superior to racial conflict - just ask any random European - but the artificial construct itself irks me.

[redneckgaijin.livejournal.com]

"Unfortunately, it worked."

I don't see it as unfortunate. In fact, I see it as a good thing. I see it as a step on the road to a future where ethnicity and race makes as much difference as left- or right-handedness and preferred make of auto, if not less. It's a step towards harmony.

Also, it should be pointed out that "black" is a similar construct. How many flavors of sub-Saharan Africans are there, again?

[quantumduck.livejournal.com]

I've often drawn on my Scandanavian heritage, and I seem to recall you being in some sort of ethnic music band of some sort a few years back. . .

[bassfingers.livejournal.com]

Ah, but it wasn't even my ethnicity, necessarily. That would be like saying I could draw on feminism because I played in a chick band.

[quantumduck.livejournal.com]

You could draw on feminism because you played in a chick band.

Feminists like terms such as 'chick band', right?

[wileras.livejournal.com]

Well, I was still hoping to start that L5R campaign after Adam gets back into town. If there were some students that you felt would want to play, that would be ok with me. If that means waiting til the school year is over that would be ok too.

[quantumduck.livejournal.com]

As a youngster I related to Black culture thorugh the writing of Harlem Renn. authors and Motown music. Rap was my music as much as rock was. It wasn't until Gangsta rap that I stopped listening to the Hip Hop chart toppers (which is also when I looked around and moticed I didn;t know any black folk anymore.) I blame HSPVA, which was pretty milk toast racially when I was there. For a while it bothered me that the art scene and geek scenes were oddly bleached. I found this distasteful, but I'm an upper middle class white guy. The fact that my parents raised me on government powdered milk and food stamps doesn't seem to matter when I've got an iPod clipped to my side and expensive boots on. heck, I married a white girl, and she's not even Jewish!

When we lived in South Central we met a lot of Buppies who were the first or second generation in their familys to move out of poverty. There really IS a strong middle class Balck culture in L.A., and it doesn't feel like faux white culture at all. Unfortunately I couldn't really relate to them. I find both Baptists' and Muslims' theology pretty offensive, and I don't like sports. That left me little to talk about with most of the minorities I'd meet around the neighborhood. Luckily their children played video games and watched sci-fi television.

Video games are played by people of all races. I suspect many minority students are spending time in fantasy and science fiction settings that share much with your interests. I know you don't play twitch games, but so many video games draw on the same themes as anime. I had long discusions about Metroid, Megaman, and Final Fantasy with latino and black youth a few years back. Now we live in a more integrated area (read: less exclusively black and latino). We see more Seek, Eastern European, and Pacific cultures (Japanese, Thai, etc.) now. The local game store has quite the collection of older anime titles, many directly from China or Japan.

Yet even here, if I walk into a comic shop I basically only see white people. More worrisome: the version of geek culture that the Asians I know seem to be into has nothing in common with doemstic white geekery. I wonder what can be done. A large part of modern hip-hop has been deeply influenced by anime and video games, but there seems to be little cross polination despite this. I really want someone to make a great sci-fi action flick with an all black cast. For a while it seemed like it might happen, but now movies are back to race films for each monority. Worse yet, my race is stuck with crap like "Dukes of Hazzard- The Movie". I'd trade a dozen "Bad Boys" for that one!

[bassfingers.livejournal.com]

Wynn had his devotion to James Brown's music, as well as his early descriptions of being the white guy who showed up at the Buddhist temple. I recall his stories about both and wonder how much, if any, of that placing himself in a "stranger in a strange land" situation was based in him trying to find his identity as a gay son of an episcopal family.

[altamira16.livejournal.com]

I consider myself a generation 1.5er. I tend to be friends with a lot of other generation 1.5ers. Basically, we were either the first generation born in the US or moved to the US at a very young age. I was a little strange in that I was born in the US, but I lived with my grandparents in Iran for several years. Either way, English was not our first language. While we speak some of our first language, most of us speak it poorly. We have lost our first language. We had to attend a bunch of social functions with people from a culture that we couldn't quite relate to. Our relationships with our parents were tough. Imagine being a regular teenager relating to your parents. Now imagine being a teenager with parents whose own experiences as a teen were based on a different culture completely. Though there are some with very mellow parents, I find them more the exception than the rule.

There are a lot of expectations of this group. You will go and be a doctor or an engineer-- something that guarantees your financial independence. By the time you get there, you question if it is what you really wanted to do or what your parents wanted you to do. You will have a decent life. Your parents will tell you horror stories about how you had it so much better than them.

Though I did hang out with the SCA crowd a bit. I was drawn to the few Filipinos I knew who were also generation 1.5. I was then drawn to other people who had been or were going to graduate school-- people with whom I had things in common.

[redneckgaijin.livejournal.com]

Human nature is to seek out the familiar and the comfortable. The strange is suspect; the awkward or uncomfortable is to be avoided. My experience with fans and fandom in general is that it attracts those for whom the familiar is -uncomfortable-, those who abandon one social setting for another. None of this is, in and of itself, a bad thing.

The bad thing is that human beings, seeking security, erect walls between one another to define the "safe" people as opposed to "unsafe." Where differences do not exist, differences will be created. To an uncertain extent, this may be why whites trend towards fandom and other subcultures or countercultures in the US, and minorities do not. In smaller groups there is less room for division.

There's also the factor that the societal group "in power" has greater confidence to allow divisions and subcultures. Minority groups, feeling threatened by larger groups, have a stronger inclination to avoid leaving their group for the uncertainty of social groups dominated by others.

As has been pointed out, fandom requires a certain minimal level of income. I have lived all my life at (or below) the minimum; I couldn't sustain my little bit of fandom without my efforts to wring profit out of it. History has left three particular minority groups- African-Americans, Hispanics, and native Americans- poorer in general than other groups. Although that's correcting itself gradually, these groups are handicapped from seeking out media-based social groups such as fandom.

I think the only thing that will help here is time. In my lifetime the American comics industry has gone from virtually all-white to racial mixes close to that of the general population. The associated fandom is following suit at a slower pace.

One other aspect: there are a lot of white fans who, having found a place where they belong after being ostracised from their original social groups, are suspicious of and hostile to newcomers. -This- can be helped, but only on a person-by-person basis.