#you cannot gaslight yourself. at worst you can only perpetuate someone else's gaslighting. however you can lie to yourself just fine

[bitegore]

if you are going to say "gaslight yourself" i think you should consider instead saying "lie to yourself" because a) it is true and b) it is a phrase that sounds less buzzwordy so people will actually take you fucking seriously. i dont trust a motherfucker who can't put the Most Popular Internet Words down and you shouldn't either. say the thing the way it is

[untilourapathy]

Navigating a white space as a PoC

This comes after a 7 hour conversation with the lovely Anna @pukingpastilles. Bear in mind that this is drawn from our specific experiences and may not be universal. We hope it resonates with some of you.

Scrolling past this is an act of white privilege.

A lot of people either see race as irrelevant or that we talk about it too much in our ‘post-racial’ age. However, for us, it is our daily reality. We cannot choose to switch off our race, and thus cannot remove the burdens that accompany it. We do not have the ‘luxury’ of ignoring race. Until then, we’re going to keep talking about it. You may want to ‘skip the drama’ but it is a privilege for you to be able to scroll past this. It is our very lives that you are scrolling past. We are attempting to argue for our right to exist in this space. The topic of race is extremely underdiscussed in fandom discourse. Some people either see race as not relevant to fandom or something that they think they’ve sussed because they’re ‘open’, ‘liberal’ or have a PoC friend or something. That’s very different from actively educating yourself on issues that affect us beyond what you see in the news or from history. That’s good, but there’s more. Just because you’re socially liberal does not excuse you from perpetuating the cycle of racism. We have to fight to validly exist, and that is exhausting. Existing is exhausting.

Being a PoC in a predominantly white space is an act of protest as our very existence is politicised.

It can never be just a story of two people, not when we are so burdened. You are never just yourself, race comes first, and you are never not conscious of this. A PoC would be constantly hyperaware of their race because it informs how society treats them in every way. You are always self-conscious about things like not associating with too many people of your own race in case it comes off as threatening or exclusive or discriminatory. You subconsciously make adjustments to blend into the space as much as possible in fear of offending somebody, such as changing your accent or clothes. You feel a constant sense of double alienation. You occupy a liminal space. You are the hyphen in the Asian-American. We are marginalised, Othered. We are never granted full rights to exist independently of a Eurocentric standard.

Frank, outright racism does occur. And it sticks with you.

Whether or not you are easily hurt, it does stay with you subconsciously, and just reinforces this concept of your being lesser. It’s even worse when the target is someone you care about. You never forgot those moments. Moreover, microaggressions, ignorant comments, stereotyping and subtle prejudice can be just as bad. You have to work twice as hard to get recognised, and one thing do wrong completely discounts everything you’ve done. We are gaslighted, invalidated, discriminated against because of our genes…

You are seen as a representative of your entire race.

There have been incidents where I see a fellow person of my race on public transport, or in that room, and silently hope that they don’t do anything ‘embarrassing’ or ‘out of the ordinary’ because it would reflect badly on me. Watching the news, every time I see someone of my race do something awful, my heart drops not only due to what they did, because no matter what, their race is highlighted and I feel like this reflects on me. The onus is always on you, to conform, to fit in, to be as least foreign and Other as possible. However, your behaviour will never eradicate the fact that you will be judged. Or, you will be judged as ‘good for a ---‘. We must make a good impression to offset the automatic prejudice before they have met us.

Internalised racism has led us to believe we deserve our treatment.

Family can sometimes be the worst perpetuators of the cycle, as in their bid to give us a better life, they seek for us to fit in to a certain standard (especially with colourism). The effects of colonialism etc have shaped the way people view the white hegemony, and subconsciously we believe that we are lesser, less beautiful, less valid, less human. Furthermore, we’re grateful whenever an ally joins our cause, because we have got used to seeing our treatment as what we have to settle for. Even as adults, Anna and I still feel uncomfortable with our features because they do not fit the European standard of beauty, despite rationally knowing that it is just a subjective, culturally imposed standard. For example, we are keen to wear glasses because we feel so negatively about our eyes due to that ingrained internalised racism. By sole dint of having European features, the irrational part of me with that engrained white supremacy with never think of myself as pretty enough in comparison to white girls. You feel off-brand, broken and like something is wrong with you, even as a very small child. My friends still have to call me out for hating on my features too much. It makes for a very difficult relationship with your family, your sense of identity, home and how you see others of your own race. The onus is on us to accommodate white fragility.

That’s why representation is incredibly important.

Every time I read a fic with representation, no matter how small or how large the issues are explored, the twelve year old me within me tears up a little because for a little girl growing up assuming every character was white until disproven, I remember hunting library shelves for books with any PoC that weren’t stereotyped, reading those few books over and over again just so I could relate to somebody in the media I consumed. For all the little children, and for the children inside us all, please make an effort to reflect the way society is today. Your work makes a huge difference to us, our self-esteem, how we see ourselves. Every instance of representation is something that sticks with us forever. You will have made such a difference in people’s lives. If you’ve made a difference in mine, you must’ve for somebody else. Please. If your art or fic has helped someone deal with the implications of being PoC in a world of white hegemony, I personally think it’s worth the hate that you’ll inevitably get. Every fic or art that involves a PoC has been automatically politically charged, and there is a meaning and purpose behind it.

Often it’s said that a character is not PoC in canon, and thus shouldn’t be in fic.

Well, lots of the things that people do in fic isn’t canon. White fragility is real; a fic that removes every aspect of the character’s personality, or behaviour, or introduces A/B/O or sex pollen or talking hats or removing magic in the HP universe, for example, is seen as more acceptable than making a character PoC. Saying that a character can be turned into a wall or a pancake but not a PoC is to invalidate our experience as less than valid.

How should I write PoC in fic if I am not a PoC?

Perhaps see this comment I made on @gracerene09‘s post here. I am all here for the normalisation of PoC in fic. It doesn’t have to be tackled in depth in every fic. But due to the dearth of authentic representation in fandom, I think it has to be explored. However, please be diligent about how you explore racial issues if you do choose to. Race cannot just be switched out, you must deal with the implications – your heritage, culture, background, experience of the world all shifts. To lend authenticity to the experience you are trying to convey, please research eg please don’t fall into the trap of white saviourism, etc. Also, please don’t use epithets unless is it absolutely integral to the story. If we know the character’s name, there is no need to write: ‘‘Yes, please’, said the Indian man.’ If you are nervous about representing a PoC character without that experience, ask a few friends or try engage in discourse. It is better than remaining in ‘respectful’ silence, because then you are complicit in the greater systemic problem. To pretend race doesn’t matter is to say that we are all treated equally. The experience of being PoC is being hyperaware of your race constantly and that feeding into everything you do, regardless of how mundane, so there is no conceivable way that a PoC's character's every move in a world with white hegemony would not have been influenced by society's perception of their race. To pretend racism doesn’t exist is to dismiss societal racism and our everyday experiences. To be honest, racial issues are an inalienable part of the PoC experience, and thus I think they should be explored. 

HARRY POTTER SPECIFIC DISCOURSE

How would the race be treated in the wizarding world?

There is no canon on this, so this is all my personal conjecture. However, I believe that Petunia’s treatment of Harry could easily be understood as racist as well as prejudiced based on his magic, should you choose to see Harry as a PoC. Harry can be an anglicised name (from Hari, which means Lion in Sanskrit), or Harry could’ve just been named Harry. It’s totally possible for someone to be named Harry and be PoC. Blood purity was intended as an analogy of racism to begin with, and the stigma of being mixed race and that balance between two worlds is not incompatible with canon. Say Harry is desi – the Potters could have gained their wealth from the days of colonised South-East Asia. Also, to say that it is unrealistic for there to be PoC in the Wizarding World is a bit rich, considering as the Wizarding World defies gravity etc. Plus, looking at the census, the nineties had about an 8% ethnic minority population. I think the percentage of PoC characters in HP is less than 1%, although do tell me if I’ve done my maths wrong.

Blaise Zabini: Class, status and race in the upper echelons of the Wizarding World

Blaise Zabini is at a very interesting intersection between various social constructs. He’s chummy with the upper class and the Sacred 28, and grew up in the Wizarding world. He is wealthy, thanks to his mother, and is very posh. However, as a black man, in my eyes he is almost certainly Othered. This is just my personal interpretation, but I think Blaise would have to emphasise his poshness to validate his place in the Pureblood bubble, and yet he would always be subconsciously othered, one’s Otherness can never be erased by looks, class, status, wealth or intelligence. Although race would not be the primary optic that people are discriminated against, I think that it still would be one of those open secrets that blood purity could sometimes be conflated with. I think that is why being both elite and PoC is such an interesting intersection to occupy. In a manner of speaking, I see Blaise to be akin to Othello – accepted because he has his merits but his entire character and experience is so heavily tinged by being black in a white space. This would be especially if the Pureblood set is meant to parallel aristocracy. I doubt the Draco, for example, would say anything intentionally racist to Blaise, but he seems to more the exception to the rule. This social mobility may be because he is a ‘foreigner’ from Italy, and thus his race is ‘excused’ because I very much doubt a PoC family could rise to such extreme heights in medieval England like the Malfoys. Say racism didn’t exist, in an extremely hypothetical scenario, being the minority would still affect you in power dynamics.

Hermione Granger as a Muggleborn PoC

Should you see Hermione as a PoC, she would then be doubly discriminated against. I would believe it to be inconceivable for there to be two parallel societies, of which there is interaction and immigration, existing in the same space where race would not matter in one where it would in the other. Blood purity does not matter in the Muggle World because they do not know of magic. This is not the case with race. Especially given Britain’s empire, it would take lots of worldbuilding for one to believe that the Muggle community at one point owned 25% of the globe but the Wizarding World was a happy little content republic. The twin lenses of blood purity and race is something that cannot be ignored, and that intersection has deep impacts upon a character’s identity. Hermione would be forced to go above and beyond to justify her existence (hence her fear of being expelled) and then would be called out for not fitting in by trying too hard. Being dismissed for the smallest of things is very real because as a PoC, everything is your fault. As a PoC, this behaviour would be normalised for her because she, even at 11, would be so used to accommodating to fit Eurocentric notions.

Cho Chang

This lazy orientalisation naming is another example of JKR being a white feminist. No PoC couple in the 80s would have wanted to draw further attention to their child’s race. To better integrate to make their life easier for their child, they would have not chosen Cho as an extra obstacle for her, I don’t think.

Colourblind casting

Adding onto above, I don’t think we can give JKR credit for being a progressive, intersectional feminist in the books if she retroactively showed love for black Hermione. I love that she did that and could be one now, but a lot of HP does not show due diligence in portraying characters of colour. The thing about a white character being casted as another race is that usually, that is fine because their race is incidental, and was not a defining aspect of their character or experience because white people in white spaces do not face the same institutionalised discrimination. When a PoC character is played by a white person, it complicates matters as their experience as a PoC in a white space is integral to their experience of the world.

by @untilourapathy