A quick note—when I wrote the last post I had forgotten that Left Blogovia has proclaimed it Blog Against Racism day. This sort of thing actually gets up my nose, particularly since December First is still
World AIDS Day, which is something that has some actual off-line reality. Still, having mentioned stereotyping and the delicacy of working in fiction with characters known to an audience primarily through stereotype, I should probably make it more explicit that neither homophobia nor racism are things of the past. My comments about Jodie Dallas arise from my own timing, that Soap was one of the first Really Funny Shows I watched, and that (as I said) my own exposure to openly gay people happened in fiction. Sadly, this was pretty much true of African-Americans as well, although Chicanos (as we called them) and Native Americans were in the neighborhood. Growing up in the desert meant that even in my ignorance most of the stupid stereotypes about Native Americans never took simply because none of that was anything like anything I knew. Mostly, though, the idea that anything really general could be said about “Indians” was obviously preposterous, other than the generalization that Navajo and Apache kids really didn’t seem to like each other much at all.
Anyway, consider this my Blog Against Racism, just to say “Racism? I’m against it.” It’s a real issue, and affects us all in a variety of ways, and one of the most obvious ways that our insanely rich country exhibits its reliance on skin color rather than brain power or (Lord knows) moral agency is that we have forgotten about World Aids Day. You know? It’s hard not to see the slogan Keep the Promise as a rather pointed remark directed at Our Only President, and therefore to us.
chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek,
-Vardibidian.