Report from Planet Midnight by Nalo Hopkinson Read Free Book Online

ignorance that members of the dominant community bring to the discourse about race and its real-life effects. The discussion is everywhere in the literature, but some of the people in this community can be so adamant about being blind to it, and so determined to derail, belittle, obstruct, and silence those of us for whom it can literally affect the quality of our lives!
    I’ve known for quite some time now that I’d end up on this podium, speaking on race in the fantastic. That was challenging enough, being a person of colour addressing a mostly white crowd in North America on the issue of race in anything. I was already anxious and exercised about the whole thing. But then, white people in this community instigated the disturbance in the Force that we’re now calling RaceFail ‘09, and what was already loaded became outright trigger-happy.
    I know that some of you already have your backs up because I just said that white people instigated it. So be it. I’m not going to get into defending that statement. I’m up here presumably because somebody in this organisation thinks I know what I’m talking about. My point is that writing this speech has been no doddle. I’ve been composing it in my mind for over a year now, through apprehension and anxiety. When it came down to the actual writing of it, I had to take frequent rage breaks.
    In the course of RaceFail ‘09, I have heard white people in the community who are angry at the anger displayed by people of colour in the community; people who say that we don’t deserve to be listened to if we can’t be polite. I couldn’t figure out why this statement felt wrongheaded to me, until I read a post by my colleague, writer Nora Jemisin, on RaceFail. She pointed out that discussions of race in this community have been happening, politely, for decades. And though there has been change, it has been minimal. When we people of colour started to blow up, suddenly there were more of you paying attention. That’s the thing. I’ve said that when you step on my foot once or twice, I might politely ask you to get off it. But by the thousandth time you do it, the excuse of “I didn’t see you there” starts to sound a hell of a lot like, “I don’t care enough about you to pay attention.”
    The vehement response of people of colour to RaceFail got more people paying attention, both white and of colour. It showed us people of colour that we do have a certain strength of numbers, that there are more of us than the one or two visibly of colour people you’ll usually see at a convention. People of colour in this community have started publishing ventures together as a result of RaceFail. Some white people in the community began addressing the issue and began creating forums for discussion. Some of them held fast, even when they came under attack from all sides. A small handful of them had the guts to examine their own statements and actions, perceive where they had been racist, and admit it. Without saying that they were now afraid to go to conventions because of angry brown people (in my experience, the wrath of the white majorityis much more dangerous), without name-calling, baiting, or (black!)listing, and without deleting their whole blog right after posting an apology on it.
    Some of you will recognise yourselves or friends of yours, or, hell, friends of mine in the actions I’m describing. It doesn’t necessarily mean that I hate these people. Believe it or not, my default is towards friendliness. People make mistakes. People say things they haven’t thought through. People do things they later regret. People hurt other people. People propagate systemic inequities because they don’t understand or care how the system works. I know that I do all those things. I’m learning that it’s what you do after you make the mistake that counts. The people who took their courage into their own hands and apologised probably discovered that they didn’t die from it. In fact, maybe