So, I often fall behind on the blogosphere at large. I read the fatosphere feed first and foremost, because hell yeah. I head over to Shakesville as soon as I’m done with that. And then, depending on time, there are a number of places I visit.
So I’m a little late to discover the recent controversy about something Amanda of Pandagon wrote which then continued to blow up after Seal Press got involved.
Because I am late, I am reading the commentary of other people. HERE and HERE. I can’t find a response from Amanda and Brownfemipower has shut down, though hopefully not for good. There are some really good links in the posts I’ve linked.
Kate and I were talking about this last night (she’s actually who pointed me in the direction of the round up posts) and one of the things that came up is that while there are people of color addressing this as a serious issue, addressing the appropriation now and throughout history of ideas that originated with people of color with no credit given, there aren’t really any white bloggers commenting.
Coming late as I have, I don’t feel entirely comfortable saying one way or another what I think might have happened. I don’t think having some air-tight case on the matter, though, is necessary for me to say that YES, both throughout history and now, when people of color speak they are often disregarded. They are disregarded for their (totally justified) anger or because they do not speak in a way that is pleasing to those in power. And then the things they have spoken get recycled and spit out from a different, generally white, face and there is no credit given where it is due.
That SUCKS. There is not enough caps lock in the world to express how much it sucks. And we should all be angry about that.
I have problems with anger, my own and that of others. It’s an uncomfortable emotion and one to which I often do not feel entitled. But it is a valid and valuable emotion and one we all need to work to understand a little better.
None of this is particularly coherent because I am still trying to figure out what my place is in all of this – I don’t speak for anyone but myself, you know? But we should ALL be talking about this, trying to figure out how to support the bloggers who have been hurt by this sort of practice.
And trying to figure out how to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
Maybe a good place to start with this is the Carnival of Allies that The Angry Black Woman is holding. She describes it like this:
I call a Carnival. The Carnival of Allies. Where self-identified allies write to other people like themselves about why this or that oppression and prejudice is wrong. Why they are allies. Why the usual excuses are not good enough. I figure allies probably know full well all the many and various arguments people throw up to make prejudice and oppression okay. Things that someone on the other side of the fence may not hear. Address those things and more besides.
This is a Carnival covering all forms of oppression, all types of allies. I would love to see some of your voices there and not just talking about fat.
22 Comments
I’ve also been really, really behind… Kate mentioned this this morning and I didn’t even know what she was talking about. Shit.
It strikes me as such a bizarre situation but at the same time, I know it has happened and will keep on happening until everyone makes it clear that this sort of thing is unacceptable.
And, you know, I can almost understand how the situation might come about – it is easy to internalize ideas and then process them out without realizing the source. But, you know, you have to own that; when called on it, you own up to it and I just don’t see that happening in any way, shape, or form. I am seriously disappointed by Amanda’s nonresponse.
And I am angry on behalf of BFP, who has shut down her whole blog in response to this – the last thing we need is fewer people of color blogging! Quietly accepting the appropriation of ideas creates an atmosphere where she didn’t really have any other option, though.
Doesn’t Holly have something up at Feministe abouut this?
ARGH! I meant to link to thatas well – it was an open tab in my damn browser.
Like you, TR, I’m kind of late to this party. I probably didn’t pay as much attention to brownfemipower as I should have.
Liss did say that Shakesville was going to do a piece on it today, but I’m actually fairly shocked that Amanda herself has been so busy defending herself in comments threads that she hasn’t blogged about it herself. It does sound to me like the Alternet piece was not direct plagiarism of a speech, since according to the WAM program notes Amanda was giving a presentation at the exact same time as brownfemipower’s speech, and also the same piece had appeared on RH Reality Check a week earlier.
But appropriation…man, that’s just a huge, wriggling can of worms. There were probably some people who should have been credited and were not. They are justified at feeling marginalized and dismissed. I would be curious to know if Amanda was approached privately by people before this escalated into a blogwar; if I had made an error of omission like this and someone approached me privately, I’d be a lot more receptive to filing an addendum to a piece than if people just started blogging about what a huge flaming asshole Meowser is because she did x, y, and z. Digging in your heels in response to being flamed publicly is probably a fairly common response. I’m not sure I would react any more civilly.
Oh, wait, XtinaS, I DID link to that – it’s the second “HERE” link in the main body. Whew! I was worried I had forgotten it.
Meowser, I don’t know how it was initially approached. I DO think, though, that the Defensiveness of White Progressives is something we might just need to get the hell over. And I mean that as a community and as individuals. Because, yes, getting called on privilege – and I know BFP didn’t frame this as plagiarism though I’m not sure of the terminology – is super uncomfortable but defensiveness doesn’t move anyone anywhere. It just builds walls.
That’s a tall order, I know, but that defensiveness seems to come up in every single situation where people of color try to talk to white people about an oppression they have experienced and, damn, it’s just not helping, you know?
Honestly, I haven’t said anything on those threads because I haven’t known what to say… I really think that a lot of the rancor being thrown Amanda’s way has a lot to do with some previous incidents, and the fact that her publishers are apparently racially tone-deaf at best, as much as it has to do with this one article.
I’m not sure I would react any more civilly.
I hear you. I’m the queen of rage over here, but I was kind of appalled by some of the stuff she said in response and I’m giving her the benefit of the doubt as to the accusations. I can see how it would sound to folks who weren’t feeling as “charitable.”
The article AM wrote was for AlterNet, not Seal Press.
Seal Press is its own bundle of White feminist racist stupidity right now. Related, but not the same.
Kristen — Sorry for the confusion. I do actually realize that, but I should have been clearer that the Seal Press stuff was part of the “previous incidents” I was referring to. Not that they also published the article in question.
I’ve also been really, really behind
The thing is, none of the big feminist blogs covered it until Feministe yesterday. So if you don’t read any WOC blogs, you wouldn’t have heard of it.
And TR, as Kristen said you’re mixing up two incidents that happened in the same timeframe. The sealpress thing had nothing to do with Amanda.
Becky, I actually DO read blogs by women of color so not seeing it in the “big” feminist blogs isn’t an excuse for me.
As for the rest, I phrased it poorly and have clarified.
Oh, and if you’re looking for a response from Amanda, she hasn’t written one on Pandagon but she commented a lot on the Feministe thread.
BFP herself didn’t say Amanda had plagiarized her, but some of the other people posting on these threads and blogging about this have done so — one even said she sat in the same room while BFP gave her speech and copied BFP’s speech “almost word for word.” That’s going a bit overboard, I think, especially considering that Amanda was giving her own presentation at the exact same time of BFP’s speech. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. Plagiarism is an extraordinary claim; appropriation isn’t. Dude, I’ll acknowledge being an asshole from here to five Sundays from now, but being a deliberate thief? Them’s fighting words. I don’t care WHO says them.
And as for being a non-deliberate thief, I know that’s a difficult issue. I write songs. Anyone who’s ever written songs knows that every song you have ever heard in your life, and even some you haven’t heard but have influenced those you have heard and people they’ve heard, etc., etc., goes into your unconscious pipeline. If I play a song and someone says, “That melody is exactly the same as Song X,” then I am legally obligated, regardless of my intent (since plagiarism legally does not have to be deliberate if there is sufficient similarity between two pieces), either to change it sufficiently that the melody actually IS unique (if only by a little), or credit that person with the tune (as Brian Wilson did with Chuck Berry when he “unconsciously” pinched “Sweet Little Sixteen” for “Surfin’ USA”). But influence is much stickier to separate out when you’re not talking about actual plagiarism. How many songs sound like other songs, even a LOT like other songs? This is a derivative culture, always has been, so it’s easy to get confused over when it’s “okay” to pinch and when it isn’t. (Bruce Springsteen, for example, just won a Grammy award for a song that sounds almost EXACTLY like that of a one-hit wonder band from a quarter century ago that probably netted about $10 from their hit, and the silence about that from critics was absolutely deafening. I do not believe, however, that Springsteen did this on purpose; that melody and riff was probably just “in his pipeline.”)
But would I feel good about making money and getting attention on the back of someone else who was getting relatively little? Would I feel justified that I deserved it and they didn’t because I was so much more special and wonderful? No, no, and HELL NO. I’d want to blow my brains out if I thought I was hurting someone like that. But maybe some people, in guarding against feeling like they want to blow their brains out because they are so ashamed of themselves, have the opposite outward reaction.
Becky, do you think I didn’t read the thread? Telling various people to fuck off and ranting about their evil accusations does NOT count as an official Pandagon response. Sorry.
Meowser, there were a lot of things flung around, it seems, in the aftermath which is why I can’t really comment on the sequence of events. All I know if that the response from Amanda appears rather damning when it comes to how she appears to have responded to BFP herself. Her responses to everyone else haven’t spoken well of her either, unfortunately. I’m just vastly disappointed.
I’m just vastly disappointed.
You and me both, TR. I don’t want to give anyone the impression that I think Amanda is 100% in the clear here. I don’t. Just that being publicly roasted on a spit, even if you deserve it to some degree, might make anyone behave badly.
being publicly roasted on a spit, even if you deserve it to some degree, might make anyone behave badly.
Which works as an excuse right up until the fact that you write on the internet for a living. Then, you are responsible for turning your reptile brain defenso-bot behavior OFF.
Oh, and AM and Seal Press are for sure intertwined. They published her book, but not the specific article in question.
I’m gonna work on a piece for the Carnival. Having just written a book chapter about queer POC that owes a hell of a lot to the writing of POC (and which I hope to god still has more-than-sufficient acknowledgments and citations of the work we’re trying to expand on) after chopping 24 pages out of it due to SAGE’s chapter limitations), but also a chapter about white privilege, I feel like I should have something to say about being a white ally if I shut up and listen and think for a while.
Also, I don’t see where being called on your co-optation of others’ work in a way that screams “white privilege” is the same thing as being “roasted on a spit.” Why do these violent metaphors always come up when privileged people are having to be held accountable (against their will)? Guys saying something thick-headed about gender followed by the guilty-but-hey-I’m-joking “don’t shoot me!” Homophobic Oklahoma state rep complaining that having her words repeated back to her and to the public at large is like being “lynched.” Amanda Marcotte has been called on the carpet, and she deserved every ounce of discomfort that caused her.
Also, I don’t see where being called on your co-optation of others’ work in a way that screams “white privilege” is the same thing as being “roasted on a spit.”
If that was all she was accused of, then no, it wouldn’t be. But she was also accused of sitting in a room and deliberately copying someone’s work word for word. That’s not a minor charge. That is an extraordinary claim, without the extraordinary proof to back it up — in fact, one where compelling evidence actually exists that it did not, in fact, happen. Many of the charges leveled at Amanda are justified; that one is not.
I still don’t see being accused, even of craven plagarism, as equivalent to being violently physically assaulted.
Responses from Ms.Marcotte is at Feministe…I was willing to give her some benefit of the doubt before I read her me-me-me-my-profits comments;
http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2008/04/10/this-has-not-been-a-good-week-for-woman-of-color-blogging/
//# Amanda Marcotte says:
April 10th, 2008 at 9:41 pm – Edit
The larger picture is something I can only care about if the people who want to draw attention to it don’t put their need to tear up someone’s career to get some frustration first. Sorry. The only reason the “big picture” has come into this, it seems to me, is that it quickly became evident that accusing me of plagiarism wasn’t going to fly, because it’s an unprovable assertion. Then it became “appropriation”, which only makes sense if you think immigration is a topic not covered in the media or conferences. In all honesty, my views on this were mostly drawn from speakers I’ve seen at the NOW conference and the ACLU conference, but not BFP.
Holly, I understand your points. But seriously? Piggybacking this on a direct attack on my ability to make a living as a writer is distressing. This isn’t theoretical. People are trying to hurt me personally. Now, it didn’t work when right wingers did it, and it won’t work now, I’m sure. But I’m really disappointed to see the Bill Donohue smoke-there’s-fire thing going on here.//
Straight out of The Onion
How Can I Use Feminism To My Advantage?
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/33858
- MG, very disheartened
I think the article at Hathor by BC Narcissist Feminism is a really good take on this.
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