I have seen it suggested that white people should not write POC quite a few times.
I have been thinking more about this and wanted to address this particular point, because I think it's part of the "fear" issue. And I don't want to dismiss it as nonexistent. Because this opinion is, I think, out there, as is the opinion that dominant-cultured people should include marginalized characters but not write from their POV, or similar--there's a whole range of answers to this problem, because there are a range of people involved with individual feelings and perspectives.
An intelligent friend pointed out to me the other day, as I was twirling about this myself, that there is no monolithic Correct Answer to Appropriation. People are going to have differing opinions on the response. Because it *is* complicated--the history of Western civilization parasitizing other cultures makes it so, and marginalized voices wanting to have their voices unobstructed, untrodden--and unspoken-for, by varying measures--is a totally legitimate response, I think. I mean, it is a reality that white writers who write *about* the experience of others have historically been given more attention than people writing from their *own* experience, and that is something that needs to change. The question of how is one with a few different answers, and that's--yanno, that's a reflection of human variance in a real issue.
And yet--the extreme flip side of it is that dominant-cultured people only write about the dominant culture. Personally--right now, my opinion is I don't think this helps. I mean, it's fine in isolation, this book or that book -- but in a wave of creative works, in a long view of how stories create culture, diversity is necessary, I think. Because representation
is important. Someone seeing themselves in a story as a hero, as a three-dimensional person--this can mean everything to a life. This can legitimize personhood that is otherwise minimized and belittled, or caricatured or exoticized. This can also broaden the perspective of humanity for dominant-cultured readers, to blur over that "other" line, to learn to see heroes who look different as heroes and not as tokens or one-offs. This, too, is essential, I think.
But that's just my opinion, and I fully accept that I might be wrong--maybe I
shouldn't write in diverse POVs; maybe I
shouldn't include any direct experience that could be better told by another voice. That, too, I consider a legitimate answer to the question of how to approach this, even if right now I lean the other way. I waver over this line quite a lot, actually, and I could be convinced someday that my current approach is more harmful than not. Because, yanno, my voice is not important here. Others are. That's the truth--but that's just how I feel personally. I don't know if I could extend that to others.
And, again, I also accept that fuck-ups happen. I've fucked up a lot in the past. Hell, my username was a fuckup. It's right there, undermining this whole post, because I didn't even think about stuff like appropriation back in 2011. I can't guarantee I'm going to have the right answers for any of this. What I *can* do, I think, is try to do better. Try to keep learning, be open to the idea that I can screw up, get readers, and if someone says "hey this is harmful," fix it.
The point is, I think the answers to the issue of appropriation can be complicated, and it can vary. So I understand worries about approach to the issue. But what doesn't hold water for me is dismissing the issue entirely, or complaining that you're at a disadvantage because you're white and publishers might prefer diverse voices. I don't really buy it, but even if it were true, you know what? If the publisher chooses diverse voices over mine, good. It's about time. Kids don't have to grow up as ignorant as I did. Their worlds can be so wide, so inclusive; their minds could be so open right from the start. Why not?
And again, when PoC say, for example, that cultural appropriation hurts them--that it trivializes things that are important to them, that it steals the chance for them to speak for themselves, that it makes caricatures and archetypes out of real people, that it promulgates stereotypes that make them feel restricted as human beings--why is it considered a legitimate response to say "no it doesn't" or "you're too sensitive" or "you're censoring me"? I don't understand it. Confusion over how to approach an issue doesn't have to be transmuted into an "oh yeah well to hell with you," does it?
Can we at least agree that it's a real issue, one that negatively impacts real people, rather than dismissing it as "political correctness"? And if not, why not?