Lit Ignorance is Bias: The Diversity Manifesto

Diversity Score: 0

 

Speaking of Diversity Scores, I think SOLO is doing pretty good based on the trailer, right? People of color, women, non-humans, droids, etc.

--Adm. Nick

 

Also lots of OT species milling about.

 

How many? I just spotted Twi-leks and our Wookiee friend.

--Adm. Nick

 

Well, comparably a lot. There appears to be a Gotal behind Lando, here.

 

Have we ever seen a Gotal with four eyes, though?

Actually, we've had Aqualish with two eyes and others with four, so it wouldn't be too much of a stretch. And diversity within an alien species is actually really neat to see – it helps to chip away at the SF tendency to present alien species as one-dimensional monocultures.

 

Speaking of Solo and diversity:

Donald Glover Has Always Been Ten Steps Ahead
(Esquire.com)

'Though his parents raised him as a Jehovah’s Witness—a faith that has strict prohibitions on pop culture—Glover says Star Wars occupied a rare space in his home. It was important enough that his dad took him out of school to see the prequels.

He remembers biting the lightsaber off his Darth Vader action figure when he was a kid, but recalls his blue-caped Lando Calrissian figurine even more intensely. ... In the original trilogy, Lando goes from a fiercely independent smuggler trying to avoid the Empire’s scrutiny to a genuine hero who saves Princess Leia, Han Solo, C-3P0, Chewbacca, Luke Skywalker, and R2-D2. “I had a doll that I slept with—the only black doll in the store—that my mom bought for me. And my dad bought me Lando,” Glover said.'

(The A.V. Club summed that article up as: 'There are plenty of reasons to be excited for his take on the role made famous by Billy Dee Williams, but none warm the heart as much as the image of a childhood Glover fixing the cape of his Lando action figure, which, as the article notes, was one of the few black toys a child could find in a toy store at the time.')

 

Ah, somehow I melded 4 eyed Aqualish with Gotal in my brain. Ugh. Okay, so it's not a thing.

 

Weren't you the one who pointed out a Gran on Twitter?

 

It subsequently turned out that it's probably not actually a Gran, just another dang Ottegan-type.

 

Ottegan type as in an Ottegan, or as in a species-that's-basically-another-existing-species?

 

More the latter - pretty obviously inspired by the Gran, but with like six eyes or something.

 

I was told it wasn't a Gran...

--Adm. Nick

 

Hey check out the Wikipedia page for Daniel José Older, author of the upcoming Han and Lando book.

"Older has been critical of works that fail to include racial diversity. While he admires The Hunger Games series of novels, he was disappointed in the casting of the film series based on them, writing that the "whitewashing of Katniss was a tremendously unimaginative and useless act."[2] Older has also been critical of "the popular surge of YA dystopias that followed in the wake of the HG trilogy,"[2] calling it "wildly undiverse."[2] He attributes this lack of diversity to a "phenomenal lack of imagination"[1] on the part of the authors, and a laziness, he feels, designed to keep some people out of the picture, saying: "To be able to figure out all these quirky things about what you imagine the future will be like, and not somehow have any folks of color doing anything heroic or worthwhile in it, what happened?"[1]"

"In August 2014, Older started a petition to change the World Fantasy Award statuette from a bust of H. P. Lovecraft to one of African-American author Octavia Butler.[3] ... Older later told The Guardian newspaper by email, "If fantasy as a genre truly wants to embrace all of its fans, and I believe it does, we can't keep lionising a man who used literature as a weapon against entire races. Writers of color have always had to struggle with the question of how to love a genre that seems so intent on proving it doesn't love us back. We raised our voices collectively, en masse, and the World Fantasy folks heard us. Today, fantasy is a better, more inclusive, and stronger genre because of it." [5]"

 

On that note, I'm particularly pleased that he chose to use Sana.

 

I don't know much about H.P. Lovecraft aside from some of the basics of the mythology around Cthulu, so can anyone explain how he used literature as a weapon against entire races? This is the first I've ever heard that Lovecraft was racist (although given when he lived, I am not surprised).

 

Well in his letters to Ron E Howard of Conan, one of his stories the most feared thing in the universe is an old black woman. Nothing so blatant as Jack London's "Unparalleled Invasion" . But in one after the fall of mankind the Chinese take over the United States and it is treated as an horrible horror.

 

Real question, can someone explain the whitewashing of Katniss thing? Never read those books, just seen the films.

 

iirc in the books she was written as looking Mediterranean. Still 'white' by American standards but hardly the pale-skinned brunette that seems to be Hollywood default.

As a side note, for all the talk of blondes being 'generic' it's pale skinned brunettes which are truly inescapable. And pale skinned redheads it we're talking scifi/fantasy. This may be controversial, but in Star Wars as far as I can tell blonde women might be nearly as underrepresented as POC. There's what, Evaan, Guri (a stereotypical fembot belonging to a pervy date-rape lizard), Tahiri (not great representation either given the whole Ben thing), and the semi-blonde semi-brunette Iella Wessiri? Contrast with a million brunettes, redheads, black hair, and uh, tentacleheads?

Edit: Oh wait, Satine too I guess. Anyway just to be clear this isn't a hill I intend to die on, I'm not claiming 'blondes are oppressed!!!' or anything. It's just something that strikes me as odd.

 

It depends on your age, Mary Jane Watson/Parker was designed because a red head was "Sexiest woman in the world" in some magazine, There was also a well known red haired green eyes actress in the 60's as well. I don't recall wither of their names.

The Blonde fetish stems from Marilyn Monroe. In comics form the 60 blondes always have a mole on there cheek.

 

I think that she was described as olive-skinned in the books?

Can I take this opportunity to ask what "olive-skinned" is supposed to mean? Is that a reference to green olives (WTF?), black olives (a little bit redundant, don't you think?), olive oil (gold might not be a skin color, unfortunately for the Man-Emperor of Mankind, but it's not as weird as my first guess), regions historically famous for producing olives?

 

Olive skinned is a truly strange term, probably created by Americans because its a race crazed society with a Anglo-centric world view. How many American prior to WW2 ever saw people of Mediterranean decent, let alone grasp how dark their skin can turn when there reference for white is Northern Europeans. If you read early 20th century literature Italians barely made it into the "White Club". The mental gymnastics American and Anglo racialists went through to square the circle of their own views and Europe history with Rome could fill a college course.

 

Yeah, I can definitely see "olive-skinned" coming around because olives evoke the Mediterranean region (to Amerians at least) more than as an exact description of a color. That said I can't remember if that's the exact word Hunger Games uses--but it's definitely the image it suggests.

ETA: I googled it and olive is definitely the word everyone agrees on but I can't find the actual book quote.

As someone with mostly Norwegian and German blood, let's just say there's a reason Tycho is my avatar.

 

Blond men with speaking role seems to be more common the blond women, but now a-day it seems that most blond ,ales introduced are bad guys.

Regarding olive-skin, this is what wikipedia say: "Olive skin is a human skin color spectrum. It is often associated with pigmentation in the Type III[1][2] to Type IV and Type V ranges of the Fitzpatrick scale.[3][4] It generally refers to light or moderate brown, brownish, or tannish skin, and it is often described as having yellowish, greenish, or golden undertones.[5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13]

People with this skin type can sometimes become somewhat pale if they receive too little sun exposure. Lighter olive skin nonetheless tans more easily than does fair skin, and generally still retains notable yellow or greenish undertones.[14][15][16]"

The "is often described as having yellowish, greenish, or golden undertones" may be the reason why it is called olive skinned

 

I suspect that the phrase "olive skin" comes from the ugly shade of greenish yellow that people like me have in the winter.

Or maybe it's really just a cliché about the Mediterranean