The Guardian reports on a new study which has found that
The world of speculative fiction publishing is plagued by "structural, institutional, personal, universal" racism, according to a new report that found less than 2% of more than 2,000 SF stories published last year were by black writers.
The report, published by the magazine Fireside Fiction, states that just 38 of the 2,039 stories published in 63 magazines in 2015 were by black writers. With the bulk of the industry based in the US, more than half of all speculative fiction publications the report considered did not publish a single original story by a black author. "The probability that it is random chance that only 1.96% of published writers are black in a country where 13.2% of the population is black is 0.00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000321%," says the report.
The editor of Fireside Fiction goes on to say...
"Fiction, we have a problem. We all know this. We do. We don't need numbers to see that, like everywhere in our society, marginalisation of black people is still a huge problem in publishing ... The entire system is built to benefit whiteness – and to ignore that is to bury your head in the flaming garbage heap of history."
(Score: 5, Insightful) by lgw on Friday August 12 2016, @09:19PM
Can we please keep the "SJW Friday" stories on contained within the green site? This place is bettor off without them.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 12 2016, @09:33PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msL-XFs3Ggs [youtube.com]
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 12 2016, @09:42PM
Somehow, this nonsense needs to die.
I'm thinking maybe... posting links to KKK web sites? We could do that for every story like this one. If a story like this gets posted, we dedicate the comments to promoting the KKK.
Don't want to promote the KKK? Great, don't post stories like this.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 12 2016, @09:54PM
GAY. NIGGERS. It's sci-fi and it's sexist. Strangely not racist though. Dr Ildo turns white when he's chosen as the Gay Ambassador to Earth, and his black crewmates all accept him as a white man.
(Score: 5, Informative) by n1 on Friday August 12 2016, @10:48PM
Throwing the term SJW around at every opportunity is no better than the people who will find racism, sexism or other form of discrimination in anything and everything.
Be constructive, explain why the methodology is flawed, how the results are poorly interpreted or misrepresented. There's lots to talk about, and that can and will include dismissing the summary/article/study outright as a load of crap. But please, show your work and don't just get annoyed, dismissing any potential for constructive commentary when a headline or summary happens to push your buttons.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Francis on Friday August 12 2016, @10:52PM
Arguing with the SJW types just gives them credibility. It's kind of like arguing with the climate change deniers or anti-vaxxers, they haven't got a leg to stand on to begin with, so why give them validation by arguing like they have a valid point?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by n1 on Friday August 12 2016, @11:53PM
If they don't have a valid point, explain why. Take the high ground, let your side of the discussion stand in internet history as a reasoned one. Why dive in looking to argue and be confrontational? Discuss and share your perspective to the people who are new to the debate and/or have not formed an opinion on the story or issue yet.
Calling people stupid does nothing to stop them being stupid.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 13 2016, @12:16AM
A trillion flies in the country and none got an original story published? Must be a conspiration! Or as absurd as TFA argument may be none submitted any.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Francis on Saturday August 13 2016, @01:02AM
I take it you're not familiar with the "Gish Gallop." You can argue with those people, but you'll get nowhere and they'll just come up with more insane reasons why they're right.
Calling them stupid doesn't prevent them from being stupid, but calling them out for is more realistic than spending large amounts of time addressing the same tired talking points. And let's be honest, people who believe in things like "rape culture" and the police hunting blacks are too stupid to be reasoned with. The reality is far more nuanced than what those folks are capable of comprehending no matter how small you make the words and how patient you are.
But, really, calling them SJWs is more a matter of labeling for other people so they don't have to get sucked in than a serious attempt at changing their opinions.
The big problem is that since most of them aren't actually trolls, it's not as simple as just ignoring them. They'll keep saying the same nonsense until they get their way because they aren't doing it to piss people off.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 13 2016, @09:04AM
Except the "SJW" label is applied to anyone who disagrees with an irrational and delusional person, so it is useful in identifying somebody you can't debate with because they didn't reach their position rationally, its just that its the person saying "SJW" rather than the person being called that that is the one you shouldn't waste time with.
(Score: 1) by Francis on Saturday August 13 2016, @05:59PM
I see what you did there.
No, generally speaking that's not how the SJW label is used. Perhaps if you've drunk the SJW flavor-aid that might be how it appears. But, most of the time when I've seen it used it's very clear which party has a point and it's rarely, if ever the SJWs. Mostly because they're pushing to kill any debate and bullying people that disagree into submission.
From a more objective point of view, the SJWs are extremely harmful and the sooner we can end the scourge the sooner we can get on to dealing with actual real problems.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 13 2016, @06:09PM
I see what you did there.
Um, obviously you did not. You are Francis.
No, generally speaking that's not how the SJW label is used
Actually, generally speaking, it is. And specifically, you are, and I will not discuss it with you any more, you SJW-Thrower, you!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 13 2016, @07:53PM
This why arguing with SJWs is a waste of time. They're too ignorant to realize when they've been beat.
OTOH, khallow is retarded.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 13 2016, @07:24PM
See? Perfect example. I disagreed with you and you immediately called me an SJW. QED.
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 13 2016, @07:50PM
Reread your own post. You got called out with good cause.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 13 2016, @05:13AM
Except, there is no arguing with these kinds of people.
They call you a bigot if you go against the LGBT status quo, even if you're a homosexual.
They call you a misogynist if you dare say a videogame's plot being changed to accommodate female characters and genders (even though the agreed-upon lore told of agendered/funghi-type critters).
They talk about affirmative action in IT but how about affirmative action in maid services?
They condone doxing for 'problematic' people, yet certain protected individuals that the status quo likes are subject to supernorma-protection.
They go as far as to publicly laugh on TV at a guy's penis being cut off and thrown in a garbage disposal, yet if a bunch of guys did that? The show would be immediately canceled.
SJWs can't fathom that they're hypocritical mysandrists. That men are discriminated against and raped just like women are.
They have a twisted world-view that is supported by very loud echo-chambers like Tumblr and similar 'safe-spaces' with chodes of conduct.
To have a discussion with the more extremists ones (which are DRAWN to any discussion) requires you to yell 'ad hominem' louder than they yell at you.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 13 2016, @09:42AM
Take just any self-publishing site. There are lots: http://www.smashwords.com/ [smashwords.com] ; http://fictionpress.com [fictionpress.com] ; http://fanfiction.net [fanfiction.net] ; http://archiveofourown.org [archiveofourown.org] ; etc. etc. etc. Gather statistics there; compare to same at wherever you want (magazines, in this case).
If this is NOT done - the "study" is stupidity at best, fraud at worst.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by jmorris on Friday August 12 2016, @11:20PM
Too many people nuke these arguments, the rebuttals are so obvious. Doesn't matter, these people aren't thinking so reasoning can't influence them.
For example, these are instant argument enders in any rational debate. Watch the hate that flows though.
The most obvious is to ask for the evidence the publication rate varies with the racial mix of submissions. There is of course no such evidence presented. It is impossible to publish that which is not submitted. One could ask why elite NY women (the majority of the editors of mainstream publishers) are being so racist. This is of course simply not done of course. One could ask HOW a race conscious filter could work on submissions sent in text format. Do publishers make prospective authors fill out some sort of questionnaire where race is asked? Why?
One could ask if it is even a problem. Is it evidence of racism if every possible field and subfield of human endeavor isn't populated with a demographic makeup exactly like the United States in 2016? SciFi authors don't just come from the U.S. so why should it? But to directly hammer the real question, why should even U.S. submissions exactly mirror the demographics? Isn't the whole point of diversity that we should be different? That we aren't all exact copies that all think and behave exactly alike?
Finally, it is time for crimethink. Consider what Democrats have done to blacks in America. The shocking miseducation, the illiteracy, the corrosive culture that sees striving for an education as 'acting white.' Consider the hundreds of SAT points of 'affirmative action' required to get any semblance of balance in college admissions. Is it any wonder that few blacks are writing books at all, and especially so in a subgenre that generally requires above average knowledge of fairly exotic subjects?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bob_super on Friday August 12 2016, @11:48PM
> Isn't the whole point of diversity that we should be different?
There's a clear racist bias in the fact most electronics sold in the US are now built by Chinese people.
Are manufacturers racists against white, or are whites just incompetent at building electronics?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 13 2016, @06:07AM
> The most obvious is to ask for the evidence the publication rate varies with the racial mix of submissions.
> There is of course no such evidence presented. It is impossible to publish that which is not submitted.
Your failure to understand statistics is not proof of anything except your own innumeracy. Or perhaps illiteracy? Because that precise point was addressed in the article. In fact, half the article was dedicated to explaining how they were able to compensate by analyzing best case and worst case scenarios. Pretty weak sauce that you got a +4 informative for such an utter math fail on a site with a userbase that likes to think of itself as well informed and analytical.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 13 2016, @10:22AM
To adjust for the methodological flaws, as well as the fact that we don’t have access to submission-rate data concerning race and ethnicity either overall or by individual magazine, we used binomial distributions. The purpose of this was to find the probability that such numbers could be random — the chances that numbers like that could exist without biases in play (which could extend to biases that are literary in nature, such as story structure), systemic problems, and/or structural gaps. In the first binomial distribution we ran the data assuming that submission rates of black authors are equal to the proportion of the black population in the United States, which was 13.2% in 2015 (according to Census projections).
Translation: to adjust for the fact that we don't have facts we made shit up so that we could publish crap.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 13 2016, @06:49PM
Your failure to understand that the social sciences barely qualify as science has been noted.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by IndigoFreak on Friday August 12 2016, @11:25PM
The methodology is flawed since they do not know the submission rates of black authors. It could be that magazines are racist, or it could be that no black authors are submitting stories. There could be other causes as well. But since we do not have any other data than how many black authors they found, which they don't even really have good numbers for themselves, they have to speculate. They didn't even use other types of literature as a baseline, as in, how many black authors publish non-fiction.
Also just reading the article it becomes clear that the author is in social justice, with a phrase like, "which is the most charitable to whiteness as possible." The entire study then becomes questionable since the author is biased. They saw a pattern and then went looking to confirm it. They then just looked at white / not white, ignoring any other type of nationality/race. I didn't read anywhere where they defined what makes a person white or black. Is someone who is Arab white? Asian? Mexican? Canadian?
This has agenda and confirmation bias written all over it, and that's once you get past the stench of poor methodology and incomplete data.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by n1 on Friday August 12 2016, @11:45PM
Thank you, that's what I wanted to see. It doesn't take much to explain why this article is a pile of useless shit and has a much better chance of educating and informing someone than reading "SJW blah blah blah".
(Score: 1) by Francis on Saturday August 13 2016, @01:07AM
It could be, but this is more likely indicative of a combination of the systemic racism in the school system that runs out black folks that are less likely to be able to write coherently than other groups. Or it could be a matter of black folks just not being interested in the genre with the same frequency as other groups.
Either way, until those are controlled for, we can't even begin to consider whether the publishers and or readers are racist. My suspicion is that the readers don't know and the publishers only care about the work.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Reziac on Saturday August 13 2016, @02:24AM
In my experience, it's lack of interest. At LASFS (Los Angeles area SF club open to whomever walks in the door) blacks are a rarity. I can only think of two that were semi-regular when I was attending, and one of those was Steve Barnes. Back when I was going to L.A. area SF cons regularly, I can only think of a handful of black regulars there, too. It's not that anyone cares if you're black, white, green, or plaid. It's that they just don't show up.
But TFA is typical of the SJW mindset: take a demographic that's just how people fall out when left to their own desires, and if the numbers don't reflect your particular crusade, wave the demographic around as evidence of -ism against 'em.
We get the same thing here in the northern tier states: There are hardly any blacks living there, so it must be because we hate them and want to keep them out! (More likely it's that they had better sense than to move to somewhere with so much winter and so few jobs...)
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by cubancigar11 on Saturday August 13 2016, @03:42AM
Calling them SJW gives them more attention and that is what they want. People writing articles like this are not some stupid-brigade, they are working systematically and it is a fallacy to think they give 2 hoots about whatever subject they are writing about, instead all they want is attention so that they become part of the social discourse; and over time someone who calls him/herself "progressive" may chose them for funding of progressive politics that runs on division and victimization.
If you see a single SJW, whether writing blog for gawker or trolling on twitter - I challenge you to check their driving force. Advertently all of them report to some kind of authority who is getting funded from some place. I will refrain from taking any names. *cough*clinton*cough*
The reason is simple - it works. It polarizes, it tires people who argue with them and when repeated enough times, it becomes true [youtube.com]. This can also mean faulty statistics (most sociology/psychology research/surveys lack enough data points and deliberately don't control many variables).
The reason progressives find it more attractive than other politicians is because of their belief in equal outcome instead of equal opportunities, the latter being "systematic" oppression/privilege.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Saturday August 13 2016, @04:13AM
Oh yes, this whole "study" is really just virtue-signalling and truth-creation, exactly as you say. Sorry I already spent all today's mod points. :)
I can't usually be arsed to argue with these people, being a waste of breath, but as has been pointed out -- you're not going to change their minds, but you might change the minds of the as-yet-undecided.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday August 13 2016, @02:53PM
I'll be at Worldcon next weekend, I'll have to see how much of the crowd is black. I'm betting it will be as white as a Trump rally.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Saturday August 13 2016, @03:28PM
I'll be very surprised if it shows more than odd dots of color, yeah. The awards audience last year was pretty much all old white folks.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Wednesday August 24 2016, @03:50PM
Yep, old white nerds. I saw more blacks at my hotel than at the convention, and three times as many Asians (mostly Japanese). I doubt there was a dozen among the two thousand people there.
It isn't that science fiction doesn't like black people, it's that black people don't like science fiction.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Wednesday August 24 2016, @04:10PM
Just as we suspected... LASFS has a significant "over-representation" of Japanese and Chinese regulars as well, probably 10 times the population ratio (tho mostly as fans, relatively few as writers).
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Wednesday August 24 2016, @09:21PM
I was actually surprised that there weren't more Asians, and considering the huge crowd the near nonexistent blacks was equally surprising. I didn't expect it to look like a NWA concert, but I didn't expect it to look like a Trump rally, either.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Wednesday August 24 2016, @09:47PM
I think that's a matter of age... literary fandom is trending toward retirement age and above. Asian fans tend to be younger, thus probably more likely to go to a ComicCon, DragonCon, or some other large event with lots of contemporary excitement, rather than to an extremely insular little convention that focuses on the written word, even if it does call itself Worldcon... which is big compared to other locally-run SF cons, but microscopic and ancient compared to the commercial conventions.
https://accordingtohoyt.com/2015/04/10/the-graying-of-fandom-sanford-begley/ [accordingtohoyt.com]
http://file770.com/?page_id=6781 [file770.com]
(I have a few comments in the chains there as well)
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 13 2016, @02:39AM
My suspicion is that the readers don't know
And my suspicion is that Francis doesn't know. . . . But again that hasn't stopped the sharing of wild speculations by an Anti-social Injustice Quibbler!!!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 13 2016, @03:02AM
My suspicion is that Khallow is still butthurt for being called out.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 13 2016, @04:32AM
My suspicion is that Khallow is still butthurt for being called out.
Wow! Totally amazing! My suspicion was that butthurt is khallow! But then, I also suspected that the Might Buzztard was a sockpuppet for jmorris. But I don't now, so now my suspicion is that I am Francis!
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday August 13 2016, @06:32AM
Uzzard and J-Mo can't be the same person. I suspect Mr. Morris is actually mentally ill, whereas The Shitey Uzzard is just an asshole who peaked in junior high; lots of that kind around. There are enough differences in their diction, sentence length, etc. that if they ARE the same person we're dealing with a well-trained method actor.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 4, Informative) by Reziac on Saturday August 13 2016, @02:14AM
Same argument as "OMG science fiction publishing is sexist".
Rebuttal from Tor-UK's lead editor (who happens to be a woman):
http://www.torbooks.co.uk/blog/2013/07/10/sexism-in-genre-publishing-a-publishers-perspective [torbooks.co.uk]
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 13 2016, @06:16AM
> The entire study then becomes questionable since the author is biased.
Oh please. Its a basic first pass analysis intended for popular consumption.
How convenient that people you disagree with must meet the highest possible standard of rigorous scientific inquiry. It sure is nice to have the status quo agree with you, isn't it. Don't need to prove anything in that case.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 13 2016, @08:59AM
This is not a first analysis that will be followed up, it is a politically motivated piece that states raw numbers with no context or analysis, asserts bias and then wanders off hoping to have left a given impression on its audience.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Sunday August 14 2016, @12:13AM
Extreme claims require extreme evidence. 76 zeros to the immediate right of a decimal point is almost certainly utter bullshit.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 3, Insightful) by mcgrew on Saturday August 13 2016, @02:50PM
Exactly what I was going to post. How many black SF writers are there? I'm guessing very few. Plus, how can I tell what race any given author is? Charles Finlay doesn't know I'm white.
Magazines like his (F&SF) get a thousand submissions per month, and publish only half a dozen every two months.
I'd like to know why the hell this got posted in the first place? Submitter is a black SF author who can't get published? I smell sour grapes.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Wednesday August 24 2016, @09:55PM
TFA has been getting press all over the place. I'd guess it's not only virtue signalling, but mostly meant to draw attention to a micropress that no one knew existed before they got attention for running this piece.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 13 2016, @05:57AM
> Throwing the term SJW around at every opportunity is no better than the people who will find racism, sexism or other form of discrimination in anything and everything.
Funny how accusations of being an SJW are soooo much more common than cases of the later.
Why is that?
Oh yeah, because "SJW" is a term invented to shut down criticism rather than address it. Just like feminazi, race traitor, self-hating jew, cuck, rino, tree-hugger and virtue signaling.
The entire reason lgw even posted was to tell people to shut up, that he does not want to even see anyone talk about this issue. And his post was the first damn post on the story. Its funny how the people most likely to complain about political correctness being some sort of force for censorship are also the very first to deploy their caricatured version of political correctness for exactly that purpose. I guess funny isn't the right word. Utterly predictable is more like it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 13 2016, @09:12AM
I've never once actually seen an example of the latter. Every time I've been presented with "evidence" that such people exist all I get pointed to is an example of somebody disagreeing with a person who just so happens to be calling them an SJW.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 13 2016, @06:53PM
Oh yeah, because "SJW" is a term invented to shut down criticism rather than address it. Just like feminazi, race traitor, self-hating jew, cuck, rino, tree-hugger and virtue signaling.
Misuses of the terms "racist", "sexist", "misogynist", etc. are much the same. The stupidity is coming from both camps.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 12 2016, @11:18PM
(Score: 1) by Francis on Saturday August 13 2016, @01:13AM
Perhaps, but in this day and age anybody can self-publish and self-promote. Sure, they might not get into any of the big magazines, but if there are a considerable number of black sci-fi authors writing quality books, they have options now that didn't in the past.
Most likely, the reason for the disproportional amount of works being published is that there are a disproportional number being written. There's many different ways in which they could address the problem themselves from self-publishing on Smashwords and Kindle to creating their own web zines featuring the content.
These sorts of articles just tend to reinforce the idea that blacks can't do anything to help themselves. In this case, if there is a problem causing them to be underrepresented, it almost certainly happens before the point where there's a manuscript in the hands of publishing agents and publishers.
(Score: 3, Funny) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday August 13 2016, @02:00AM
They're not outdated though. Check any con. Wear shades though or you'll go snow blind.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 13 2016, @07:43AM
Its true and it isn't. I've read some bigotied scifi.
The proper term is "Sad Puppy Science Fiction". The best cartoon representation is that space ranger guy in Futurama. Big muscles, little brains, lots of explosions, some of them sexual, all pure fantasy. Nazi fantasy.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 13 2016, @09:14AM
So Robert Heinlein's stuff.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday August 13 2016, @12:15AM
Just out of curiosity, how do you access SoylentNews? Do you use the main page, or an RSS feed? Do you have to click on the "SJW" article?
Oy, fleg [soylentnews.org]! We're going to have to censor your content!
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by fleg on Saturday August 13 2016, @02:23AM
>We're going to have to censor your content!
"Come and see the violence inherent in the system! Help, help, I'm being repressed!" ;)
i hoped the article would generate some interesting comments.
there's been some drivel but also quite a lot of reasonable, civilised debate.
the lentils did well.
now, lets see how the phoning home vibrator article goes down
(or, up?)
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 12 2016, @09:20PM
(Score: 3, Funny) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday August 12 2016, @09:45PM
It kinda is. White Men Can't Jump after all...
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 12 2016, @10:20PM
Are you implying that Black Men Can't Write? oO
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Francis on Friday August 12 2016, @10:49PM
Black people represent about 13% of the population at large in the US and so them only being published 2% of the time in one genre isn't necessarily unreasonable.
The assertion that this is by design makes some assumptions that aren't valid. Blacks are significantly less likely to graduate high school than other groups. They're significantly less likely to graduate college than other groups are. Black men in particular die much younger than other groups do. They're more likely to be in jail and when they are convicted they spend more time behind bars. So it's probably not the result of systematic racism in the publishing world that makes them underrepresented in this particular niche.
And that's before you even take into consideration taste. There's no reason to believe that black people have the same tastes as other groups do. No doubt part of the under-representation comes from them just not being exposed to as much sci-fi as other groups are.
That's not to say that there can't be any racism in the publishing world, but realistically publishers pretty much just care about whether or not an author is going to sell well enough to turn a profit. In most cases the reader doesn't even know what color the author is unless there's a picture or the author is particularly well-known.
As I've noted, the racism that's likely related to this mostly has nothing to do with the actual publishing world as there's a disproportionately small group of blacks that are in a position to publish in the first place. It's probably not that much different from screenwriting where the roles being written for them aren't good enough to garner nominations for the Oscars.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Saturday August 13 2016, @12:12AM
That it's racism by the SF publishers is quite questionable. There have been many popular black authors, that I only found out were black years after first encountering their works.
OTOH, I find it quite believable that fewer black people leave school with the ability to write well. This isn't to say that they don't have the capability, but rather that it was, for various reasons, not developed during their schooling. E,g, people who are hungry have a hard time concentrating on spelling. And when classrooms are being disrupted, everyone in the class has a hard time learning. Etc.
There are multiple levels of racism present, some are in the school funding levels, some are in the selection of teachers, some are in the impoverished society, and some are in the parents of the students. There are also economic constraints that translate into poorer learning. A huge proportion of black male parents are imprisoned, whether justly or not, and this means that black children tend to grow up with one parent who is extremely stressed by working two or three part-time jobs with no benefits and often more than 8 hours per average day, but unpredictably. This makes it difficult to encourage children to study.
So if you want to talk about structural racism, yes, it's present, but I don't think that the racism is present among the SF publishers who often have never seen the author and have no idea what his/her race is. Sexism, however, is a bit prevalent, though not excessively so. Various genres tend to attract different sexes to different degrees. Fantasy has more female authors than does traditional science fiction, even though it often has the same publishers. Were I to talk about romance novels I'd need to be guessing, as I'm largely ignorant there, but one may guess that women are more common as authors. Because of pen names this is not easy to tell. In science fiction Andrew North was popular during the late 1940's and early 1950's...and eventually segued into Andre Norton. This still is not easily recognizable as a feminine name, and is probably still a pen name. C.L.Moore was a popular author during the 1940's, and few people knew that the C. stood for Catherine. The publishers did, and didn't discriminate on that basis, but may have insisted on the ambiguous name.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday August 13 2016, @01:53AM
"In most cases the reader doesn't even know what color the author is"
Color, age, sex, sexual persuasion, or anything else. Some things can be discerned about an author, maybe. Or, more accurately, an author can lead you to believe certain things about him/her. One of the all time greats in Sci-Fi is Andre Norton. Andre doesn't sound like a feminine name to me - I always presumed that it was a guy. Didn't really think about it, I just made the presumption.
One thing I've never seen, is a story preface, intro, or review that discussed the race of the author. I most certainly don't go looking for stories by white, or male, or Chinese, or Black authors. The last thing on my mind is the appearance of the author. It's possible that if the author were to personally narrate the story to me, then his race, age, ethnicity, sex, or whatever might influence me. But, black and white pages of text? Obviously, the story has to stand on it's own merits.
Today, with the internet, it's so much easier to do a search on an author's bio. Three words, in this instance "Andre Norton biography", makes it obvious that Andre isn't a dude. What shocks ME about Andre, is that she is from Cleveland, Ohio. Who'da thunk that anyone from CLEVELAND could be smart enough to write not just ONE BOOK, but MANY?!?!?!
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Sunday August 14 2016, @12:25AM
I think I need some new sort of moderation option for "entire comment was excellent and then I got to the last line and suddenly a crappy joke derailed it." I keep running into them :)
So um...good points, I guess.
P.S: The "three words" you're referring to is plugging "Andre Norton biography" into a search engine?
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday August 14 2016, @04:18AM
Yeah, those were the search terms - "andre norton biography". I plugged a few other authors in, and got some minor surprises - I leave it to you to find your own surprises if you care to.
All the authors, however, are human. I did not uncover any artificial intelligences writing top selling science fiction.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Saturday August 13 2016, @02:35AM
And it's not like publishers have a checkbox for race on the submission form. Fact is they don't KNOW the race of the submitter, unless it's under some obviously ethnic name... which might be a pen name; there's no way to know that up front, either. (Someone pointed out that adding an accent to your surname, to make it look exotic, improves your submission's chance of being accepted. In the current climate, an obviously-ethnic name would be an advantage.)
The ONLY time I've ever seen anything like a racial criterion was when someone did a special collection for PoC or LGBT or some such group (excluding anyone not of the correct checkbox... hmmm.)
Larry Correia fisks it:
http://monsterhunternation.com/2016/08/08/fisking-the-latest-diversity-in-sci-fi-freak-out/ [monsterhunternation.com]
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by AthanasiusKircher on Saturday August 13 2016, @12:16AM
It kinda is. White Men Can't Jump after all...
The funny thing is -- professional basketball used to be dominated by Jews, particularly short ones with good balance. Seriously. [thesocietypages.org]
According to the New York Post in the 1930s, "the game places a premium on an alert, scheming mind, flashy trickiness, artful dodging and general smart aleckness," or, in other words, a bunch of stereotypes about Jews. Short Jews had "God-given better balance and speed." The gameplay was far different from today, given the size and abilities of players.
Think about that the next time you hear someone talk about why African-Americans dominate sport X because of "natural athletic ability." There are all sorts of cultural stereotypes that often play into what we think of as "natural ability," particularly once you separate people into categories like race or ethnicity. In previous generations, those were strong enough to convince people that a short Jewish guy was obviously the ideal basketball player. (And, as an intriguing historical sidenote, the early Jewish contingent is likely one of the reasons for the earlier widespread acceptance of Blacks in professional basketball. Jews had to fight to be accepted into mainstream society in the early 20th century, and their victories were used as precedent to integrate African-Americans into the sport early on.)
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday August 12 2016, @11:05PM
There you have it [wikipedia.org]
Seem over 65% players are black, with whites hovering around 20%.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 12 2016, @11:34PM
> that the NBA is plagued by "structural, institutional, personal, universal" racism. Against white people.
Here's the thing about being middle-class in America: you have practically all career options open to you. But when you are a member of the underclass your choices are limited. If you aren't one of the few with the right combination of circumstances and talent you are lucky to get a minimum wage job. Having a good career is basically a lottery. So you end up with a lot of people from the underclass competing for the few high paying careers available to them. And they compete like all out fuck because they don't have anywhere else to go. The middle-class people do have other places to go where the competition is not so fierce so they do what any rational person would — they go where life is easier for them.
The reason you see a lot of minorities dominating pro sports (and music) is not because those fields are biased against white people, its because everything else is biased against minorities. Its the same reason nursing and teaching are dominated by women while doctors and school principals are chiefly men - those fields aren't biased against men, they just aren't biased against women so women end up crowded into the fields where they have a decent chance.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 12 2016, @11:48PM
Same thing with jews in hollywood. The reason jews are over represented in hollywood is not a jewish conspiracy - its the result of anti-semitism that kept them out of practically all other industries. Same thing with jewish lawyers - for centuries most lawyers represented landed gentry and jews were excluded from that WASP dominated work. But corporate law was a fresh new field that really took off in the early to mid 1900s and without an established culture to keep them out jews were able to find plenty of work in the field. The average WASP lawyers could stick with the old firms where they had less competition.
FYI I am jewish and I have family that are hollywood lawyers so double whammy!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 12 2016, @11:51PM
So the professions you say are not biased against men but have lot more women in them, do I understand right when you say it's because women are better in those fields than men ? One gender better than the other ? No favoritism? And all white men are rich and they would not dream to became a basketball player, because making millions from "panem et circenses" is too humiliating ? Speaking about music, today media is pandering to lower denominator and race has nothing to do with it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 13 2016, @12:06AM
> do I understand right when you say it's because women are better in those fields than men ?
You do not.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday August 13 2016, @02:07AM
Bullshit. Learn one in-demand skill and you will rarely be out of work that pays well above minimum wage. Learn two and you never will. Or spend three years serving your country and your college is largely paid for. I know, you might also have to *gasp* work to pick up anything the GI Bill doesn't. I despair at the unfairness of it all.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 13 2016, @02:23AM
Ahhh, the warming self-comfort of strident ignorance.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday August 13 2016, @02:40AM
You know what hurts black people more than anything? You. You told them they could never get ahead in life. And for every single person who believes you, it is absolutely true. And it is absolutely your fault.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 13 2016, @03:35AM
Nah, I'm pretty sure what hurts black people more than anything is the massive overwhelming poverty.
Stuff like red lining and Jim Crow, you know the stuff you would have learned about in history class if you had paid attention.
When the median black household wealth is less than 8% of the median white household [pewresearch.org] and all of that is tied up in a depreciating asset (family car) that's a barrier that takes herculean strength to lift your own bootstraps over.
But you keep right on telling yourself that the real problem isn't racism, its the people who talk about racism. After all, he who smelt it dealt it!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 13 2016, @08:58AM
I just hate it that the Mighty Buzz is a racist and will never amount to anything. I mean, it is such a waste! The boy can code, they say, but such issues with people talking him down. He might as well just join the military and suck off the Federal government teat for the rest of his natural days. Not his fault. It is all those anti-racists that have put him in this situation. If only the South had won the Civil War, and liberated Oklahoma from the Five Nations!
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday August 13 2016, @10:28AM
Oh, you mean things that don't exist any more? Yeah, those totally have an effect on everyday life.
No, it does not. It takes a lot of missed sleep, a lot of ramen noodles, and a moderate amount of learning. That's tedious but not herculean. Absolutely anyone with a fully functional body and an IQ over 80 can do it.
I'll grant you it does help if you have at least a tiny bit of wisdom though. Like for example how every last car in front of the local low income housing is much nicer than mine and over half have huge ass aftermarket rims with ultra low profile tires. That's not hyperbole or even slight exaggeration. That, my cowardly friend, is what a toxic culture will do for you, teach you to put what should be savings into trivial bullshit because image maters more than getting to eat this month.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Entropy on Saturday August 13 2016, @09:59AM
Or they are just better at sports..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 12 2016, @11:38PM
Yes, there is at least evidence of institutional racism against Asians:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvaM0pMj-8o [youtube.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 13 2016, @03:25AM
In the NBA there is just one team with a majority black owner (Michael Jordan).
The coaches are about 60% white.
Support staff like lawyers, marketing, etc, are even more white.
But the NBA is racist against white people.
Yeah...
And don't even start with the NFL which is all white majority owners except for one desi guy and 90% white coaches and managers.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bob_super on Friday August 12 2016, @09:22PM
How many black people do write SF?
What's the white_written/white_published ratio, compared to the black_written/black_published ratio?
One step further: Getting published is excessively about knowing the right person/channel. Tends to be that poorer people don't have those channels. Tends to be that backs are poorer. Question:
What's the non_black_as_statistically_poor_as_blacks_writing_SF publishing ratio?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Friday August 12 2016, @11:42PM
Its going to be savaged as an argument when the IQ stats come out.
For obvious political reasons, it can't be talked about directly, but the best I can find is a SFWA article
http://www.sfwa.org/2014/01/reads-science-fiction/ [sfwa.org]
A majority of Sci Fi readers make more than $80,000.
The only real question is how many standard deviations above normal are into sci fi, not the absolute number.
Then very uncomfortable (from the progressive POV) questions start getting asked. Hmm so we have a hobby essentially staffed by IQ 120+ people, and its all whites and asians, why what does that imply about...
If your question was a weirdly phrased request for "lets try and list some" a black guy named Delany wrote some story with a long name about helix something or other that won plenty of awards in the 60s about a crazy (ish) thief who worked in a test tube meat factory/farm and his interesting adventures. Its solid. You just have to realize that due to IQ variations there IS world class sci fi written by black folk but its going to be very rare and in a field that's basically entirely white/asian. That's just how the bell curve is...
The article makes the hilarious assumption that sci fi is IQ independent just because hollywood action flicks suck.
Another way of looking at it is the article is like claiming there's a deep seated wide spread conspiracy to keep bookstores out of poor black areas. Occams razor and all that.
(Score: 3, Informative) by bob_super on Saturday August 13 2016, @12:12AM
I'm not sure how you went from my unquestionable "blacks are more poor" basis for argument to IQ, which is an imperfect and biased notion (indeed biased against poor people).
(Score: 2, Informative) by AthanasiusKircher on Saturday August 13 2016, @12:44AM
You just have to realize that due to IQ variations there IS world class sci fi written by black folk but its going to be very rare and in a field that's basically entirely white/asian. That's just how the bell curve is...
I don't know anything about the correlation of IQ to sci-fi readership or authorship.
But I do know that the "bell curve" as supposedly skewed for race is controversial and likely entirely bogus. In the U.S. we're talking about a ~15-point gap between whites and blacks. Some studies [wikipedia.org] have indicated that this entire gap can be explained by factoring in socioeconomic status and parental IQ. Studies of adoption from lower-class to middle-class families experience a 12-18 point gain in relative IQ. The poor health and nutrition [wikipedia.org] experienced by greater numbers of blacks compared to whites also can explain a lot: iodine deficiency alone (a frequent problem in poor African Americans) causes a fall of 12 points on average. Blacks receive worse medical care on average, and some studies indicate that many inner-city black communities lead to worse conditions even than for poor whites. And we haven't even gotten to social differences in education availability, etc. yet. Actual adoption studies [wikipedia.org] where black children are brought up by white parents are inconclusive (and obviously suffer limitations because black children in dominant white communities may still suffer bias in education, etc.), with some showing a small persistent IQ effect and others showing no statistical difference between races.
And none of these even gets into possible bias in the structure of IQ tests, various potential limitations of IQ tests and whether they truly test "general intelligence" and all that.
I'm not trying to say there's absolutely NO racial differences in IQ. The research is inconclusive. But if there is a genetic racial effect, it seems to be much smaller than effects created by socioeconomic effects, differences in family structure, differences in health and nutrition, etc. Maybe if you factor out all of those things in some idealized scenario, you might still end up with an IQ differential of a few points at most. Maybe.
But that's hardly enough to explain the disparity with sci-fi interests. That, my friend, is most certainly primarily cultural. It's NOT "just how the bell curve is."
(Score: 2) by VLM on Sunday August 14 2016, @11:47AM
But if there is a genetic racial effect ... most certainly primarily cultural
I don't think we technically disagree on the major issue of black authors of sci fi. You went into a list of non-genetic reasons a cultural subgroup might have lower measured IQ for non-genetic reasons. I went in a different direction, given that we're talking about behavior the cause doesn't matter much anyway.
An interesting thought experiment is coincidentally IQ and income strongly correlate, and at least theoretically its possible that sci fi fandom correlates with income not IQ, in which case a logical outcome would be pro NBA athletes would tend to be rabid sci fi fans, which seems unlikely.
(Score: 1) by jIyajbe on Saturday August 13 2016, @01:36AM
How many black people do write SF?
If we assume that the the percentage of black authors is significantly[Definition Needed] less than the percentage of non-black authors, my question would be, why?
NOTE: For the record, I know of no credible evidence that blacks are, on average, either less intelligent, or less creative, than non-blacks.
"Don't blame the log for the fire." --Andrew Ratshin
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday August 13 2016, @03:18PM
Getting published is excessively about knowing the right person/channel.
I can tell you from personal experience that assumption isn't true. I received a personalized rejection from none other than Charles C. Finlay, editor in chief of F&SF. The story I posted in my journal today almost got published there; Mr. Finlay's email was very encouraging.
And almost all rejections are form letters. Now, editors themselves will admit that a bad James Patterson story has a better chance of being published than a good mcgrew story, but Patterson's name sells books.
Every submission gets read and considered. If they like it, they'll print it. Sometimes a submission will sit in a slush pile for months; Tor still has a story I submitted last December; they stopped taking submissions in January saying they just had too many and get enough from editors of other magazines.
One more thing: If you want to be a professional writer, your odds of making a living at it are about the same as making a living as a musician, actor, or sports player. Payment of a nickle per word is the lower limit for a magazine being a pro market, most pay under a dime a word. At 5¢ per word you would have to sell a thousand word story every single week to earn a thousand bucks a month. At magazines like Analog or F&SF they pay 8¢.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 12 2016, @09:24PM
Black actor plays insane black man who writes science fiction!
http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Benny_Russell [wikia.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 12 2016, @09:24PM
You lots are idiots of the Idiocracy. SMH.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 12 2016, @10:50PM
Well, shit. You had to say that. Now they don't feel safe here. What kind of a monster does something like that?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 12 2016, @11:37PM
No Millenials ? Great, they can run and hide behind their mother's skirt and complain about not enough black people in heavy metal bands.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 13 2016, @03:15AM
You owe me a fresh can of beer and a new keyboard! The beer I was drinking seems to have escaped from my nose at high velocity and soaked my keyboard.
I'm so ashamed I'm a millennial by a day and a few hours. I got hit with the brainwashing while they were still perfecting it, but the school of hard knocks helped me shake it off. People 5-10 years younger than me are absolutely unbelievable.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 12 2016, @09:27PM
I want to see a study of how many black musicians sing about money.
I want to see a study of how many country musicians sing about trucks.
I want to see a study of how many female musicians sing about breakups.
Fuck your ism. Every genre is biased.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 13 2016, @02:28AM
I want to see a study of how many Slashdot/SN posters rant about SJWs.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 13 2016, @09:28AM
Whats certain is that the ratio of SJW ranters to non-SJW ranters increases over time, because the SJW ranters work hard to create echo chambers wherever they go, using proof by repeated assertion and other sophistry, which drives away the non-SJW ranters who generally avoid echo chambers since they like debating, only to find delusional nutjobs working hard to ruin the place by making tribalism and irrationality ubiquitous and by being hostile towards rationality and differing opinions.
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Saturday August 13 2016, @10:01PM
Whats certain is that the ratio of SJW ranters to non-SJW ranters increases over time
Maybe in other places, but here the non-SJW (or anti-SJW) ranters have the edge. They are often the first post, they are certainly the more ranting of posters, and their arguments, such as they are, simply reflect that they are unable to imagine that others have not had the same choices, opportunities or upbringing they have had. Usually, in any story of this sort, one has to wade below their rants before being able to read any intelligent discussions of the topic in hand.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Snotnose on Friday August 12 2016, @09:33PM
What color is Alastair Reynolds? Kevin J Anderson? Blake Crouch? Peter Hamilton? Don't know, don't care. Write a good story and I'll read it, I don't care what color you are.
Some 20 years ago I read a story by John Barnes. About halfway through it the author made clear the protagonist was black. On the cover he was white. That turned into a real WTF moment when I found out Barnes himself was black. If I was Mr Barnes I'd be pretty pissed off at someone.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 12 2016, @09:37PM
If only there were some kind of tradition of including photographs of authors on dust jackets. Won't someone please think of the racists who need to know which books not to read.
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Friday August 12 2016, @10:06PM
I don't recall seeing pictures of any of the authors I mentioned. Books with the author plastered on the back tend to have titles like A is for Asshole, and The Jailhouse Lawyer. Mass market crap I don't waste time reading.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday August 13 2016, @03:36PM
You very obviously have read very few hardcover books, then. Books with sleeve wraps almost always have a photo of the author.
As to "is science fiction racist", nearly all of America was racist in 1956, when Future Science Fiction published Fred Pohl's Day of the Boomer Dukes. [mcgrewbooks.com] It takes place in Harlem and concerns a Mexican gang, a black gang, a black cop, a white reporter, and time travelers from thousands of years in the future, one of whom is a black woman (Pohl did an excellent job of dialect in that story).
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday August 13 2016, @02:06AM
In my experience, that "tradition" only applies to well established authors. Isaac Asimov's photo appears on a hell of a lot of books - after he was established as a master in the field. His photo sold books, because he was well known. When he first started writing, his photo meant nothing to anyone - his stories had to be good stories, or no one would read them. If his first story or six sucked, no one would have gone back to read stories seven through ten.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Friday August 12 2016, @11:54PM
About halfway through it the author made clear the protagonist was black. On the cover he was white. That turned into a real WTF moment
Was the pix from a movie?
"The Martian" in book form did some good although maybe a little stereotypical character development with a village people cast (in that casting the village people didn't help tell the story, although it was very SJW to make extremely certain everyone in the book was non-white). It was, aside from that, a good book and I enjoyed it.
The movie took the village people theme and re-rolled the dice and everyone asian suddenly became black and everyone black became white.
Admittedly I haven't bothered watching the movie yet (my experience is if I like a book, the movie will suck)
Anyway my ramble means maybe the author had nothing to do with it, PR just took stills from the movie and slapped them on the cover. So in the book, Picard was an old white male, and in the new movie she's a lesbian black woman (of course...), and when the new edition of the book comes out with the movie captain on the cover, its going to confuse the hell out of people.
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Saturday August 13 2016, @01:49AM
The Martian was an OK movie, nowhere near as good as the book. The book is prolly one of the best 3 books I've read in my life (yeah, including the Hobbit and LoTR trilogy). Seriously, if you haven't read The Martian yet, and you enjoy reading, read this book. The movie is skippable.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Saturday August 13 2016, @02:06AM
Realized I didn't answer your question. AFAIK the book I was talking about was never made into a movie. It was written maybe 30 years ago, the protagonist was good at martial arts. Outside of the book said he was black, the cover said he was white, and the author turned out to be black, that's all I remember of the book. If I saw the cover I'd remember it and, nope, google/wikipedia give lots of dead links, warnings about going to bad sites, and no pictures of book covers.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday August 13 2016, @03:29PM
No, actually it was a very good movie. It's just that the book was so damned GOOD. I wish I'd seen the movie first, but I'd read the book when it was first published.
Interestingly, Mr. Wier couldn't get a publisher, or even an agent! After trying to get it traditionally published for a year he put it on Amazon as a $2 e-book, where it shot to the top of their best-seller list. When that happened, the publisher went to HIM and offered a six figure advance.
And a couple of years later the movie studio hired the wrong scriptwriter and the wrong director; there was as much hilarity in the book as seriousness, while the movie had very little humor at all. But what would you expect from the guy who made Blade Runner?
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 12 2016, @11:58PM
If you are reading Kevin J Anderson after he parasitized Dune ...
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Saturday August 13 2016, @01:46AM
Kevin's original stuff is good. Haven't bothered reading his Superman stuff.
Hmm, according to Wikipedia Kev is:
A) White
B) I've only read his 7 suns series, everything else he wrote is the kind of stuff I avoid.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 12 2016, @09:35PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 12 2016, @09:52PM
shhhhh stop making sense. You know that is not allowed once the word 'racism' is used.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 12 2016, @09:55PM
Eh, this seems to be riffing on the Academy Awards controversy. While pure chance has that at least a few worthy people were denied, jumping from that to institutionalized racism seems to be a stretch.
Have to admit this new McCarthism is proving to be the gift that keeps on giving. Is there no area of society that hasn't been infiltrated by by secret racist?
(Score: 2) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Friday August 12 2016, @10:54PM
The obvious counter to that is "check your privilege".
That is to say, the theory goes that people are racist (or sexist) without even realizing it.
The sad part is that it makes it hard to have a conversation about it.
People get defensive, when the people pointing out sexist or racist things may simply be pointing weird things out in case they are part of some overall pattern (ie: as a talking point).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 13 2016, @09:36PM
The difficulty is racism/sexism has many different shades and no one has made a direct link between racism and discriminatory behavior. Certainly it happens, but even for a majority of cases, it's assumed, not proven.
People get defensive (and rightfully so) when assume motives for any behavior. If a particular behavior is problematic, it should be for all races, not just blacks.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 12 2016, @09:52PM
...we don’t have access to submission-rate data concerning race and ethnicity either overall or by individual magazine...
So you have no real data to justify any conclusion about racism, but you'll proceed anyway.
In the first binomial distribution we ran the data assuming that submission rates of black authors are equal to the proportion of the black population in the United States, which was 13.2% in 2015
Using similar thinking, you would assume that 50% of applicants for nursing jobs are male and therefore the lack of male nurses is due to discrimination against men.
we created a second binomial distribution assuming that the submission rates of black authors are actually equal to the sample average of 1.9%. Under this assumption, which is the most charitable to whiteness as possible, some magazines still have a very unlikely proportion of black authors represented in the sample.
This is not the most charitable assumption possible -- it is a neutral assumption. Is it really "charitable" to assume that people aren't racist? It could be that only 1% of of submissions are by blacks but 1.9% of published articles are by blacks because of affirmative action (aka racism against whites) by publishers. Is that not possible? Let's analyze this silliness anyway. They conclude that there is racism because for some publishers the number of publications by blacks is substantially below the average of 1.9%. Does that not imply that there is an equal amount of racism against whites (all those publishers publishing more than 1.9% by blacks)? Here is a crazy idea: What if the percentage of submissions by blacks actually varies from publication to publication? Publishers could be completely color blind and you would still see variation in the percentages if there was variation in the submissions.
Now the question: Why the hell would a publisher even know the author's race? Are authors submitting their works in person?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 12 2016, @11:01PM
You're asking for proper statistical analysis from these yokels when half the pre-publication articles that I review lay out statistical analysis strategies straight outta Imagination Land. Optimist.
(Score: 4, Funny) by tangomargarine on Friday August 12 2016, @10:00PM
"The probability that it is random chance that only 1.96% of published writers are black in a country where 13.2% of the population is black is 0.00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000321%," says the report.
There is no way in hell they arrived at it by correctly using math.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 12 2016, @10:05PM
Writers Cannot Do Math [tvtropes.org]
(Score: 1) by kurenai.tsubasa on Saturday August 13 2016, @12:29AM
3.21E-76 (on the Excel sheet, didn't actually try counting the zeros). 63 magazines reviewed. 1.9% average publishing rate for stories written by black authors across all 63 magazines. It's as though somebody found the binomdist function in Google Docs without knowing WTF they were doing and remembered something about multiplying probabilities from high school. It's just soooo strange. I'm sure I'm just demonstrating my own lack of extensive knowledge about statistics here because I'm a racist!
(It's been a very long time, but isn't a binomial distribution itself a completely inappropriate tool to use for what they're trying to demonstrate?)
Let's give them credit. They did at least publish their data. 1.9% is the only figure I think we can do anything useful with and, as others have suggested, compare to the demographic breakdown of authors submitting stories to the 63 magazines studied.
I can say from experience that one cannot even get parity with general population demographics by offering free healthcare services to black people. I see that as an evidence of institutional, generational racism and a deep seated suspicion of whites bearing gifts in black communities. Leveling a charge of racism against healthcare services for this phenomenon is pointless and counterproductive. It builds walls. I'd expect SJWs to at least try to be more thoughtful about these problems than Donald Trump.
Donald Trump: privileged white upper-class twit with too much time on his hands going full right wing retard who wants to build a wall and make them pay for it.
SJWs: privileged white upper-class twits with too much time on their hands going full left wing retard who want to build a wall and make them pay for it.
This is not the path towards diversity. But what does a racist like me know.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Saturday August 13 2016, @02:41AM
Saying there are 63 magazines is extremely charitable to start with. There are probably only about 20 that are pro-paying markets.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 1) by kurenai.tsubasa on Saturday August 13 2016, @03:38AM
This is a good point. There were some magazines that had published a whopping single digit number of short stories. One thing somebody who wants to demonstrate racism in a credible way would need to do is get the standard deviation of number of stories published and eliminate at least the 1st quartile and high/low outliers I'd think in order to try to eliminate magazines that are too new or essentially vanity. That would probably move the 1.9% number down further. Granted, it's a poor proxy when you're correct that we really need to know which magazines are pro-paying as part of this whole determination.
Hadn't even considered that. (If I ever express ambition to be a professional statistician, run for the hills!)
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Saturday August 13 2016, @03:54AM
And other than a very few, mostly no one knows these online wannabe-rags exist. I came across one with a page counter up... and far as I saw, no page had exceeded 50 hits (most of which were probably crawlers).
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 12 2016, @10:04PM
Blacks have enough of a problem blending into society already. Being a geek writer would only add to that, to be frank.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 12 2016, @10:11PM
Being able to read and write makes you and Uncle Tom.
*duck*
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 12 2016, @10:16PM
Fetty Wap can read and write with only one good eye.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 13 2016, @03:44AM
Or Frederick Douglass…. Fucking self-taught.
Fast forward 8 score years and yeah, it's sad but true that academic achievement makes one an oreo cookie.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 12 2016, @10:12PM
I don't know what decade you're thinking of, but here in the 2010s, it's geeky white men who have a problem integrating into society. Try being a white man looking for work and being rejected time after time by women, indians, and black men hiring women, indians, and black men.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 12 2016, @11:02PM
Where's the -1 Inconvenient Truth mod?
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 13 2016, @12:10AM
Right next to the "welcome to finally competing on an even playing field" mod.
"When you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 13 2016, @12:30AM
Women hiring Women, Indians hiring Indians, Blacks hiring Blacks. You call that equality? It's a racial caste system. You can try to find White Men who hire White Men but you won't find any because the White Men got laid off and there's no one left to hire White Men.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 13 2016, @12:39AM
When the tech field is still overwhelmingly white male, [vox.com] you are just a whiner who can't accept his own inadequacies.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 13 2016, @12:47AM
You're the overconfident elitist who's next to get laid off.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 13 2016, @12:55AM
> You're the overconfident elitist who's next to get laid off.
I recognized my own weaknesses a long time ago and capitalized on my strengths by becoming an independent contractor. I don't get laid off, I fire clients.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 13 2016, @01:15AM
That's so funny. You already got laid off, and now you're self-unemployed with delusions of power.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 13 2016, @01:21AM
That's right, keep wallowing in your self-pity.
Even if I were delusional, your claim about not catching a break because you are a white male is not supported by the data.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 13 2016, @02:49AM
and there's no one left to hire White Men.
Balderdash, my young neophite! Just check out your local Craig's List! Look for ads specifying "Men seeking men", and then filter for whiteyness. Of course, the jobs are usually temporary, often just a "one-off", and you have to specify whether you are top or bottom. Good luck with your future employment!
(Score: 1) by kurenai.tsubasa on Saturday August 13 2016, @02:57AM
Sometimes there is reverse -ism. This is totally off topic, but I could not imagine being a man trying to find a girlfriend. Being a woman trying to find a boyfriend is utterly a walk in the park (of course, finding Mr. Right is not guaranteed especially after the sieve of “the talk”). To completely fess up, I've been told I'm a 6 or 7 ish out of 10 by a guy I trust as a friend and could be a solid 7 if I got back into shape and really toned certain muscle groups. (There is no chance i'd bulk up since my testosterone level doesn't even register on labwork.)
Most guys will crawl all over me if they think they have a chance of getting in my panties, which I honestly think is flattering. I was also once championed by a white knight. Again, the white knight type reveals himself as not some virtuous protector of womankind, but a guy who thinks women are damsels in distress, prizes to be won.
It's a complete day vs. night between when I'm pretending to be a boy and when I'm myself. People in general just treat me better as a woman, but of course being openly trans on the internet means that I'll be seen as a man in a dress who uses super SJW powers to intimidate people into gendering me female. It's just something that happens IRL completely spontaneously, and it's at least 50% body language (one of the things I'm unsuccessfully trying to impress on a newer transitioner I know who isn't nearly as lucky with appearance as I am). I'm certain that a lot of people who only know me as a boy suspect I'm a female to male type.
But I'm a big asshole sexist racist when I'm a boy, and I don't recall ever making those things parameters of the emulation. I would accept that my boy personality has developed a “Hofstadter-Moebius loop.”
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 13 2016, @03:09AM
People in general just treat me better as a woman
A Few Notes on the Culture [vavatch.co.uk]
(Score: 1) by kurenai.tsubasa on Saturday August 13 2016, @04:00AM
Speaking of science fiction! I'll read in more detail later. It sounds intriguing while not directly invoking Atlantis.
But, if we assume all other things being equal, we can observe this in the ratio of m2f type transgenders and f2m type transgenders.
I'm not going to pretend all things are equal, but it's interesting to consider now that we seem to have a profusion of m2f types (one trans woman recently complained to me that among people near the age of 20 it's almost a popular thing to declare that one is genderfluid or female, and I've seen for myself that many of these people cannot possibly be suffering gender dysphoria as I know it) and f2m types remain invisible (erased even) and few and far between (but not unrepresented in bathroom drama).
Just be careful of buying into the feminist theory of socially constructed gender and/or sexuality. I'm not going to discount the possibility of one day having psychotectic therapy or the idea that gender is irrelevant once the spirit leaves these meatbags (the brain being an organ like the heart or a toe that rots and disappears).
At any rate, thanks for the link!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 13 2016, @03:44AM
> Most guys will crawl all over me if they think they have a chance of getting in my panties, which I honestly think is flattering.
Yes, it is flattering that what men find most valuable about you is what is in your pants. The same thing that 50% of the entire world has in their pants too.
(Score: 1) by kurenai.tsubasa on Saturday August 13 2016, @04:15AM
Well, I speak from a position of initial insecurity about passing or ever finding love (at least the carnal kind). Men who only value what's in my pants don't get far, whether they're looking for vagoo or sausage. I just find it flattering how many people take me for a cisfemale at first. Somebody looking for sausage will only know to suspect me if they know what to look for. And really that works out better anyhow. The last thing I want to do is deceive somebody.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 13 2016, @04:24AM
So, the take away from what you wrote is that your opinion on the issue has no applicability to the topic at hand.
In other words, cool story bro!
(Score: 1) by kurenai.tsubasa on Saturday August 13 2016, @06:00AM
This is totally off topic
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 13 2016, @09:42AM
No. "Reverse racism" is the most fucking retarded thing I have ever heard. Racism is racism, being towards the group that still has its supremacy codified into law does not make it "reverse", its still fucking racism. What "reverse racism" really means is "How DARE you disrespect your master, you filthy nigger".
(Score: -1, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 12 2016, @10:07PM
The problem is that blacks never developed the wheel, never developed written language, never developed houses more than one story tall made out of anything but mud and thatched roofs. They never developed anything that uses metal. They never built bridges, never wove cloth.
The island of Madagascar, just a short 500km trip from Africa at its nearest point, was first colonized by Polynesians who travelled by boat from many thousands of miles away (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Madagascar). Africans never developed the boat; they never imagined what could possibly be on the other side of the seas. They never developed the means to carry anything except on their heads.
Today, just thirty years after the end of imperialism in Africa, we have watched entire nations fall back to the neolithic era. Check out this post by a Belgian couple who decided to drive across the DRC, which was a first-world nation just fifty years ago: http://www.expeditionportal.com/forum/threads/50799-Democratic-Republic-of-Congo-Lubumbashi-to-Kinshasa [expeditionportal.com] . Infrastructure rots, bridges collapse, roads deteriorate, and people starve. You see the same pattern all over the world: Haiti, Detroit, Baltimore, Washington DC, the Southern US states with large Black populations. When there are a population of Blacks or when Blacks are allowed to be in charge, the income rate, literacy rate, and life expectancy fall; the crime rate increases and society falls into decay. This, despite billions of dollars of aid thrown away by first world nations in these cities and countries every year. They cannot feed themselves and starve, so we throw billions in food at them; then the population explodes for a generation until they can no longer feed themselves again; so we throw more food at them and the cycle continues. Except now there may be enough of an anti-science backlash against GMO's that we will soon hit peak African population explosion.
There is a reason that there are no blacks in higher math, programming, science fiction writing, or anything creative that requires higher-order thinking. Show me one and I'll show you an an outlier who is purposely propped up **because** he is the outlier.
You wanted to know why blacks do not contribute to SciFi, that is your answer. Fill my newsfeed with garbage and I'll give you an honest response. Mod me as troll, I don't give a fuck, because deep down you know I'm right.
(Score: 3, Touché) by LoRdTAW on Saturday August 13 2016, @12:20AM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_metallurgy_in_Africa [wikipedia.org]
https://www.prm.ox.ac.uk/metalworking.html [ox.ac.uk]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Kush [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Zimbabwe [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carthage [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Aksum [wikipedia.org]
Took longer to copy pasta the fuckin links than actual searching.
I look at it like this: Civilizations rose and fell all around the planet for thousands of years. There is a lot of reasons and debate why some failed and why some still flourish. The Europeans and the Asians happened to come out ahead of the lot. Why are Africans always in a mess? Because of a lot of muddling by the more advanced Europeans. Especially former slave nations. I wager that if the Africans were not colonized, commodified, ostracized, traded/sold, and exploited for precious metals and gemstones, then they might not be the mess they are now.
Maybe I'm wrong. Who knows. But getting fucked with for hundreds of years by more advanced civilizations could not have helped.
(Score: 1) by Demena on Saturday August 13 2016, @01:01AM
I question the 'more advanced'. More powerful, certainly. Advanced, not so much.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 13 2016, @01:12AM
Maybe I'm wrong. Who knows.
Most likely you are.
Blaming one one group of people for current state of another is counter productive and only keeps "victims" down. Everyone has their shot at making something. Not everyone has the same advantages or faces the same challenges, but it doesn't mean you are condemned to live out your life in crap because you were born somewhere or another. Your actions matter now, not what happened 50 or 500 years ago.
Playing victim is how you die of alcohol poisoning or drug abuse. Go out there and do something productive and make a positive change and stop dwelling on how badly treated your ancestors were. Victimizing yourself is nothing but a self-fulfilling prophecy. Positive thinking is how Europe got past 2000 years of wars and finally have a EU. Let's just hope the self proclaimed "victims" don't fuck it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 13 2016, @01:27AM
Unless LordTAW is african, nobody is "playing victim" here.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 13 2016, @01:34AM
Sure, it was all somebody else's fault. Find me a nation that never suffered from war, famine, or plague. Africa was still getting colonialized as late as the 1800's. By this time we have surgery, microbiology, the printing press, steam trains, calculus and skyscrapers. Some areas of Africa still hadn't figured out agriculture yet. We're talking Flintstones level Stone age. Yeah, if only we darn Caucasians hadn't shown up, they were just about to turn it all around and perfect cold fusion.
(Score: 2) by jdavidb on Friday August 12 2016, @10:08PM
like everywhere in our society, marginalisation of black people is still a huge problem in publishing
Wow, this is like saying everybody is guilty. Can the problem be identified and discussed without being disrespectful and judgmental towards huge classes of people?
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 12 2016, @10:31PM
Nope. That's how religion works. Everyone's a sinner. Beg for forgiveness, sinner.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Friday August 12 2016, @11:59PM
There's some pretty interesting political theory in the alt-right along the lines of progressive SJW stuff is malignant puritanism. Its pretty interesting to learn about. It seems a provably useful predictive model, better than the progressives own narrative you get from their owned sources.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Saturday August 13 2016, @02:43AM
"malignant puritanism" ... polite term for a cult. I like it.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 13 2016, @02:52AM
"malignant puritanism" ... polite term for a cult. I like it.
Well, at least it is not Mormon.
(Score: 2) by jdavidb on Saturday August 13 2016, @03:56PM
There's some pretty interesting political theory in the alt-right along the lines of progressive SJW stuff is malignant puritanism
You might enjoy reading Murray Rothbard's analysis of Hillary Clinton and her Methodism [lewrockwell.com].
For reference purposes, Rothbard was an atheist Jew and wasn't right wing.
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday August 13 2016, @03:41PM
Everyone IS a sinner, even the Pope, but nobody has to beg for forgiveness. Forgiveness was granted to everyone two thousand years ago. To be forgiven you only have to accept that forgiveness.
And that's just my religion, Christianity. The Hindus and Buddhists have no forgiveness in their religions, they have reincarnation and karma.
And what about Satanists?
Foolish atheists.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by jdavidb on Saturday August 13 2016, @04:01PM
The Jewish perspective on forgiveness [beingjewish.com] is interesting reading.
FWIW, I'm a Christian.
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Wednesday August 24 2016, @03:46PM
Interesting, especially considering that Jesus was Jewish and said "none are good, save God Himself". I don't know where the "born into sin" idea comes from, except that sinners beget sinners and Adam was a sinner. If there's a bible passage that says we are born sinners, I must have missed it somehow.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by jdavidb on Wednesday August 24 2016, @04:31PM
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 13 2016, @12:25AM
> Wow, this is like saying everybody is guilty.
No its not. Your choice to take offense at an accurate description of the black experience is nothing more than your choice.
(Score: 2) by jdavidb on Saturday August 13 2016, @03:53PM
I am all for an accurate description of the black experience. It is possible to describe problems without being disrespectful to everyone who is white.
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 3, Insightful) by wonkey_monkey on Friday August 12 2016, @10:17PM
"The probability that it is random chance that only 1.96% of published writers are black in a country where 13.2% of the population is black is 0.00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000321%," says the report.
Okay, that's some maths, well done. Did you calculate the probability that it's actually down to racism and not (at least partially) some other factor? A cultural one, perhaps?
I don't see anyone going without sleep until exactly 86.8% of hip-hop perfomers are non-black...
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 12 2016, @11:23PM
Since most afro-americans are barely literate, how could they write science fiction. It requires both literacy and an understanding of science (beyond how to convert crack from the solid to the gaseous phase).
(Score: 2, Informative) by kurenai.tsubasa on Friday August 12 2016, @10:47PM
The world of speculative fiction publishing is plagued by "structural, institutional, personal, universal" racism, according to a new report that found less than 2% of more than 2,000 SF stories published last year
Ok, I can help out here! If developing my Shawneece Dempsy time traveler character will help, I can find the time!
were by black writers.
Oh.
Even if being trans black were a thing, I have it on Jessica Williams' authority that darkening one's skin and claiming to be black is even worse than being a bathroom rapist with a woman suit.
Sorry, niggers are on their own here. I can't force anybody to be a programmer, and I can't force anybody to write sci-fi. First it was a Gadsden flag, but that was revealed to just be an inflammatory interpretation of events based on chilling effect. If the Misogynerd Narrative has officially metastasized into sci-fi, I guess I'm going to have to report that now I'm a racist in addition to a sexist.
Yep, I'm just a nasty old racist and sexist who enjoys the work of Idris Elba, Lucy Lawless, Avery Brooks, Gal Gadot, and Morgan Freeman.
How is Fireside Fiction doing with diversity? Are Brian White, Galen Dara, Pablo Defendini, Robert S. Davis, or Cecily Kane black? I see some black women in Dara's work, but is she just one of those worthless impostors pretending to be black? How many novels by black authors has Fireside published? Have they really only published five fucking books by two different authors? Are Minerva Zimmerman or Andrea Phillips black?
According to their numbers, Fireside has published a whopping 3 stories by black authors. Percentage-wise, they're only outdone seeming by publications with even fewer stories under their belt.
And where did the zeros come from? This part of their work isn't shown, but did they literally just multiply all those binomial P tests together as independent events? I'm no statistician, but unless I don't know a single thing about statistics, that's pretty fucking dishonest.
But whatever. I'm just racist. I just hate black people and don't think they should write speculative fiction. Obviously. Just look at my skin color! It's racist colored!
(Score: 3, Funny) by GungnirSniper on Friday August 12 2016, @10:51PM
Ethanol, is that you?
Tips for better submissions to help our site grow. [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 12 2016, @10:56PM
Blame Ethanol. Eth is the only troll.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 13 2016, @12:12AM
there's a little captain^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hethanol in all of us
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Saturday August 13 2016, @02:49AM
I'm gonna out myself and admit I changed him from 0 troll to 1 informative. I fail to see the troll in what he wrote. He used the N word, which somehow got to be worse than fuck or cunt in today's society, but other than that he pretty much says what I think.
You wanna get published? Write good stories. You ain't gonna get your face plastered on the back of your books until you've proven you can write. I'm guessing that after 3-4 good stories you can admit you're a woman (Andre Norton, Judith Merritt, James Tiptree Jr et al) or black (John Barnes). Who knows, someday a Muslim might write an interesting story.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 13 2016, @03:39AM
> He used the N word, which somehow got to be worse than fuck or cunt in today's society,
If you don't know how it got to be worse than fuck or cunt then you really need a history lesson. And that's being charitable.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 13 2016, @03:50AM
One day "bitch" will be more offensive than "nigger" and on that day the feminists will achieve victory.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 13 2016, @04:26AM
> One day "bitch" will be more offensive than "nigger" and on that day the feminists will achieve victory.
Because black people are currently just so damn victorious.
Winning!!!!!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 13 2016, @04:58AM
Vote Obama '08
Change We Need
Yes We Can!
(Score: 1) by kurenai.tsubasa on Saturday August 13 2016, @04:36AM
The only problem with that is that the term bitch lacks the associations that nigger has with hereditary, race-based slavery. There is sex slavery (and amazingly every TERF I look into for whatever reason is a heroine against it), but it's nowhere near anything like slavery in the antebellum American South in terms of prevalence, stereotypes, Biblical references, cultural destruction, really a lot of shit. I was being intentionally inflammatory to illustrate my newfound racism.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 13 2016, @05:07AM
Shut up, bitch. Get back in the kitchen and cook my dinner. No wife of mine is getting a job outside this house. You'd better be ready to perform your wifely duties tonight or you'll be getting another beating.
Intentionally inflammatory, you say.
(Score: 1) by kurenai.tsubasa on Saturday August 13 2016, @06:16AM
It does disappoint me when I overhear a cisfemale who is deferring to such an opinion on the part of “her man.”
It makes me somewhat angry. Well, quite angry. I bottle it up. It becomes mental illness.
“It is a man's world, not because it should be, but because we let them have it.”
Please Goddess or God or whatever quantum cosmic force, let tomorrow be the day I am freed from this curse. Please let me understand why I have been cursed so, in order that I may learn from it. I am not afraid of leaving this body behind. If I were to unexpectedly leave this body behind to rot and disappear, my life insurance would make sure the ones I care about would be secure. I would be able to move on without lingering.
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference. Living one day at a time; Enjoying one moment at a time; Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace; Taking, as He did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it; Trusting that He will make all things right if I surrender to His Will; That I may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with Him Forever in the next. Amen.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 13 2016, @06:19AM
wooooooosh!
(Score: 1) by kurenai.tsubasa on Saturday August 13 2016, @06:27AM
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference. Living one day at a time; Enjoying one moment at a time; Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace; Taking, as He did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it; Trusting that He will make all things right if I surrender to His Will; That I may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with Him Forever in the next. Amen.
Fuck you. WTF are you smoking? Are you daft or delusional or some shit?! A faith figure?! That's a good one! Go to hell, you piece of shit.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday August 13 2016, @03:56PM
WTF are you smoking?
That was the Alcoholic's Prayer (a friend of mine clued me in to it). So he's probably a reformed alcoholic, and likely smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 13 2016, @09:52AM
Correct. The term associated with the hereditary, gender-based slavery is "wife". "Traditional" marriage was literally a property contract [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday August 13 2016, @03:52PM
He used the N word, which somehow got to be worse than fuck or cunt in today's society
It IS far, far worse thab "fuck" or "cunt". During slavery, "nigger" didn't mean "black person", it meant "slave". Free blacks weren't known as "niggers", only the slaves were.
Slaves were NOT CONSIDERED HUMAN. They were considered farm animals, like horses or dogs. Just like you have house dogs and yard dogs, they had house niggers and yard niggers. A rich southerner would go to the auction and buy a bull and a cow, a pig maybe, and a few slaves.
Call a person a nigger and you're calling him sub-human. That is FAR worse than "fuck" or "cunt". So just stop it. NOW.
PS- I learned that history lesson from a black friend when I was in the Air Force and asked him why that word was so offensive, when I have no problem at all with being called a "Mick" and Kawalski told more pollock jokes than anyone else I ever knew.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 13 2016, @04:26PM
but blacks call each other that all the time
(Score: 2) by GungnirSniper on Friday August 12 2016, @10:47PM
Just as men and women prefer different things, so do can different races and ethnicities prefer different things on some sort of genetic or biological level. At some point in the distant past each group had a small nucleus, and likely some of the associated qualities we know today in modern groups could be found in those ancient people.
Could this be why in the most general of terms, some groups and cultures prefer to follow rules, or prefer dancing and music, or living in the cold?
Tips for better submissions to help our site grow. [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 12 2016, @11:00PM
Which cultures prefer to pretend to follow rules and lie about breaking rules? Alllllllll of them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 13 2016, @12:03AM
> Just as men and women prefer different things, so do can different races and ethnicities prefer different things on some sort of genetic or biological level.
So false on all levels. Biological determinism is the modern phrenology.
Humans, above all other animals, have supremely plastic brains. Our ability to shape our intelligence, our preferences, our skills to fit the environment is the most powerful tool that humans have. If someone can lose 90% of their brain and still live a relatively normal life, [sciencealert.com] then the socialization of a healthy brain for something as minor as liking science fiction stories is more than just easy, its inconsequential.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 13 2016, @10:00AM
>If someone can lose 90% of their brain and still live a relatively normal life...
...he still doesn't write fiction, or program computers, or study nuclear physics, or invent stuff. Which is precisely the point you miss. Is it deliberate, or not enough % of brain left to understand the matter? :)
(Score: 1) by boxfetish on Saturday August 13 2016, @01:27AM
to me would be what percentage of black authors who submit stories get published, and how does that compare to authors of other backgrounds?
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday August 13 2016, @02:22AM
I'm sixty years old. I guess I was about 11 or 12 when I discovered Sci-Fi. So, I've been reading Sci-Fi for almost fifty years. Used to be, I had to go to the library, or a book store, to get my books. No internet back then, no computers, nothing like that. Everything was printed on dead tree tissue.
I simply do not recall seeing a lot of black people in the science fiction areas of the libraries, or the book stores. In fact, I don't recall seeing any. It's possible that my memory is faulty. Maybe i was surrounded by black poeple purchasing Sci-Fi books, and my white privilege prevented me from seeing them. Or, something crazy.
So, if black people aren't reading science fiction, one has to wonder if black people are writing science fiction. And, if they aren't writing it, how in hell can we expect their stories to be accepted?
Then again - pen names. I read female authors many times, without knowing they were females. I wonder how many stories I've read that were written by black people, who didn't announce their blackness?
Even if I blindly accepted that black writers are blocked in Sci-Fi, I think that I would naturally ask, "Where are black writers accepted?" The study is limited to one genre. Are blacks prevented from publishing nation wide? Do black people write stories about anything? If I were interested in reading stories by black authors, then I would go searching for their stories within those genres in which they are accepted.
But, searching out black authors would be racist, wouldn't it? I'm no more likely to search for a black author, than I am to search for a white author. Or a gay author. Or a libertarian author. Oh - wait - DAMN YOU HEINLEIN!!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 13 2016, @02:57AM
I simply do not recall
Yeah, Runnerway, that happens when you get into your sixties.
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Saturday August 13 2016, @03:02AM
I simply do not recall seeing a lot of black people in the science fiction areas of the libraries, or the book stores. In fact, I don't recall seeing any. It's possible that my memory is faulty. Maybe i was surrounded by black poeple purchasing Sci-Fi books, and my white privilege prevented me from seeing them. Or, something crazy.
I'm 58. I simply do not recall seeing a lot of black people anywhere I went, including libraries, book stores, school, or my neighborhood.
I was 10. Teacher (Mr Barnes, oddly enough given my earlier posts) told us a black kid would be joining us. Couple days later a black kid joined us. Me, being friendly, said something along the lines of "hey nigger, what's up?". He caught me after school and beat the ever loving shit out of me. I had no idea why, both my parents and church called black people niggers.
In boy scouts I met his parents. They were pretty awesome. By then I'd learned nigger was not a term of endearment.
Fast forward some 40 years, my parents helped found a church that had a black pastor. That pastor presided over mom's funeral.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 13 2016, @03:29AM
LINCOLN: What a charming negress. Oh, forgive me, my dear. I know in my time some used that term as a description of property.
UHURA: But why should I object to that term, sir? You see, in our century we've learned not to fear words.
That was 47 years ago, and we've learned nothing yet. Obsession with racism is only impeding progress.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday August 13 2016, @04:04PM
You've forgotten how segregated it was back then; I was five when I saw my first plack person, and embarrassed my mother by remarking how good the guy's tan was. But I, too, haunted the libraries and never saw any black people in them. I still visit the library, we have an excellent one here. There are still few blacks who go there.
How many black scientists are there? I know of only one. There were certainly few blacks in college at SIU in the late '70s. Something like only 1% of Americans are illiterate, but 96% are aliterate. Only 3% of us read regularly, and I suspect that since love of reading is passed down from generation to generation and slaves weren't permitted to learn to read or write, that may have something to do with it.
I know from experience that not one single magazine editor cares what race I am, only how well I can spin a good yarn.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday August 13 2016, @07:09PM
Well - you make a point. But I must point out that there was segregation, and then there was segregation. Little black children being brought to white schools with police escorts? (Or, in Little Rock, National Guard escort) It's something we all read about. It was something in the news, which didn't affect us little kids in the north. Today, I work with a black man, two years younger than myself, who lived it. We have compared notes, and he's tried to help me to understand the atmosphere in the South. And, I've explained to him that in my home town, all of that was almost meaningless nonsense to children who sat side-by-side in class already. Then again - I wasn't a black kid, so maybe it was less meaningless to some of my classmates.
Your second paragraph is full of good points too. Sometimes I forget where my roots in reading lie. The woman wasn't especially intelligent, but my mother did read to us children. By age five I was as literate as most third graders, and the early start served me well. By fifth grade, when my classmates were struggling to understand words in books, trying to grasp the meaning of sentences, I was already off and running. Yeah, love of reading begins at home, and no amount of schooling seems to replace those earliest days, sitting in Mother's lap, listening to her read.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Wednesday August 24 2016, @03:41PM
I just got back from Worldcon Sunday (will post a writeup soon) and there were more black people in my hotel than in the teeming throngs at the convention. Seriously, in thousands of people I saw only half a dozen black people. Of the two black people I met there one was Dr. Epps, an engineer who will be at the ISS two years from now, and an unnamed actor. There were three times as many Asians than blacks.
It almost looked like a Trump rally, except it was nerds rather than rednecks. It's obvious that few black people read or watch science fiction.
I didn't even have kindergarden, let alone preschool, but by second grade I freaked out a teacher and principal during a rainy recess, when I was reading in the library and a teacher asked me what I was doing. "Reading," I answered.
She said "You can't read that!"
"Why not?" I asked, thinking there must be some stupid school rule.
"Because you can't!" I finally understood that she thought the book was too difficult for me.
"Yes, I can!" I said.
"Read it out loud," she said smugly, so I did. She took me to the principal's office to show him or her (I don't remember) this second grader who was reading an eighth grade book. I didn't understand what the fuss was about.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday August 24 2016, @06:48PM
LOL - almost the same scenario for me, but at a freind's house. I just decided to ride to Danny's house on the school bus, instead of riding home on my own bus. That caused a bit of a fuss with the parents, of course - one house has to many kids, the other house is missing a kid. Second grade kids aren't supposed to just pick and choose which bus they are going to ride!
But, Danny's big brother was in 7th grade. His science book had a cool-looking cover, so I grabbed it, and started browsing through it. Their mother caught me, and told me the same thing you were told - "You can't read that!" "Oh yes I can!" and proceeded to read a couple pages to her.
Everyone except the baby stopped what they were doing to listen to the smart-assed little second grader reading, and mostly understanding, the 7th grade science book.
When my parents arrived to pick me up, I overheard the first of those "Oh my God, he's a GENIUS!" conversations. Phhhttt - you don't need to be a genius to read a few grades over your grade level.
(Score: 2) by Entropy on Saturday August 13 2016, @04:33AM
Clearly the only solution, because it must be racism when black people are not represented by their demographic % in any field, anywhere. Just like pro sports are racism because they have more black people than their demographic %, right? Or are black people simply better at sports..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 13 2016, @07:25AM
That’s not what “racism” means.