Bpdnanaseharuka - I Deleted But Remade

One of the stupidest things ppl respond with is "instead of complaining about your character of color's lack of popularity why don't you make stuff for them instead?"

It’s a horribly shitty thing to say because I only got to the point of pointing out racism in fandom because I’d noticed it for years. I have spent YEARS in fandom. My contributions to this blog are from personal experience. I didn’t write mod R’s super popular post but that’s just because I’m not great at distilling my observations down like she is but I agree wholeheartedly.

I started out in white fandoms almost a decade ago because back then the shows I liked had been predominantly white. You know the type, they had a recurring character who was a WoC and several poc villains and I thought wow great representation! But I was young and dumb and hadn’t finished college yet. As time went on I noticed how my new fave Ugly Betty was still featuring a lot of abuse towards its woc lead. It relied heavily on the white savior trope weekly (Daniel would save the day with money for her family problems) Wilhelmina another woc was the villain (she ended up having a great arc but did they have to pit the woc against each other so much for so long?). I was afraid to join the fandom because occasionally there were problems with the show I couldn’t articulate. (Why did Betty only date white men? Why weren’t there more poc in the office? Why did it have to be called ugly betty in the first place?).

Eventually I became more involved in fandom and this process I’d gone through with Ugly Betty started repeating itself with different shows. I started noticing that stanning for my faves wasn’t easy because fandom was incredibly typical in its preferences. I started reading meta and noticing horrible patterns. I’d already been a feminist but being a feminist in fandom and seeing all the shitty ways fans belittled MoC reminded me of the shitty treatment my father gets just because he’s a brown immigrant. Seeing ppl constantly cry for equal rights and mysteriously only stan for white cis het men made me realize that intersectionality was missing in fandom.

White ppl forget that a poc growing up in the States don’t automatically get when something is racist. Because here colorblindness ideology keeps our own white friends treating us like tokens and using us as “proof” against their racism. So in fandom when all the love goes to white cis het males we’re expected to ignore the fact that our characters of color are not loved the same way (and instead are villified needlessly). Or when we talk about it you respond with things like, “well then make stuff for them” (maybe I did and fandom can’t wait to tear it apart because a PoC can’t possibly be “that awesome”) “my preferences don’t make me racist” (discounting whole races because you don’t think they’re beautiful IS RACIST) “I like villains they’re more interesting” (simple q & a: why are they all white villains who get complex stories? Your media is fucking racist).

To the ppl who feel the need to defend themselves as not racist: stop acting like you know a damn fucking thing about racism, if you’re white you will never truly understand.

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bpdnanaseharuka

9 months ago