#313 - Please don't ignore me - I deserve to be a geek too!

[reileen]

Visit foc_u for more details.

In light of the most recent instance of RaceFail in fandom (now called MammothFail to distinguish it from RaceFail '09, which happened earlier this year), I thought I should, at least, step up and say that, o hai, i r fan of color.

However...I am also a Clueless Fan of Color.

I have lived a life in which my numerous other privileges - class and education being the most obvious ones, but there are probably others that I'm not aware of - have allowed me to live a fairly colorblind existence up until recently. It wasn't that I never thought of myself as not being Filipino-American; it's that I never, never experienced something that made me attach negative connotations to that identity, and in fact I view it primarily as a badge of pride, as a mark of ~*~specialness~*~ (sometimes to the point of exoticness, I fear). There's a lot of layers of colored sand that's being shifted around here in my experience of racial identity as a second-gen Filipino-American, but I don't have the words or energy (...or courage) to put them out there for others to read just yet. But in short, I have never consciously experienced anything (yet) that made me hate being different. Being Other.

But I know that many, many other fen of color don't have that same privilege. So this short entry, this posting of a shiny banner and a link to a helpful community, is for those fen who are being silenced, who are being made to fade into the background, who are being ignored.

***

In more mundane news, I have been sick since Friday and it doesn't look like things are getting better. Mommykins wants me to stay home tomorrow if my fever gets any worse (it was hovering around 100*F for the past few days, then I took it today and I was at, like 101.4*F or something).

-Reileen
what would you go wild for?

Comments

[elf]

Your post has been included in a linkspam roundup.

[spiralsheep.livejournal.com]

Hi! ::waves hello::

Thank you for this post.