Rachel Simmons, advice columnist to Teen Vogue, sent me an interesting query from one of her readers. The question? “I Like Him, But What If He’s Not Into Black Girls?”

Jacqueline, a biracial girl who just transferred to a predominately white area, writes:

For the most part, I’m treated like everyone else. But when it comes to dating and someone asks, “What do you think of Jackie?” People either respond nicely or say “I’m not really into black girls.”

This comes across to me as extremely unfair. I have a great personality, I get good grades, I try my best to be nice to everyone. The point is, I’m more than the color of my skin, and what’s wrong with black girls anyway?

Poor kid – I sent it around to the team, figuring we could all relate. And we could.

Here’s what ended up in Teen Vogue:

Your letter brought back memories, not just for me, but from all of us at Racialicious. As a group of men and women who are multiracial, Black, Latino, and Asian, we all could relate to your letter for two reasons:

1. Dating in high school sucks.
2. Adding race into the mix sucks even more.

All of us have been in the exact same situation you have. That heady, scary feeling of having a crush on someone is hard enough to deal with. The idea that your race – something you have no control over – could determine if this person likes you or not is almost unbearable.
So first, I want to say you are absolutely right – there’s nothing wrong with being a black girl. There’s nothing wrong with being biracial. There is never anything wrong with being who you are. I’m glad your parents worked so hard to create an environment where you felt comfortable being yourself. Unfortunately, everyone isn’t like that – bigotry and racism are still very much in effect, and as long as people are willing to believe in stereotypes and not individuals, we will be stuck in the same situation.

But that doesn’t solve your problem. So putting the huge part of race in society aside, let’s focus on something equally as important: how race impacts your dating life.

Ultimately, you’re going to have to make a move. Sitting there wondering won’t solve anything – and the best case scenario is he feels the same way. Maybe he’s afraid that a cute biracial girl won’t be into white guys! Of course, it could always play out where he doesn’t like you for a non-race related reason, which sucks. Or he could believe in the stereotypes and reject you for no good reason at all.

Nadra, one of my columnists who is in an interracial relationship, has a suggestion if you want to try to gauge his reaction:

“She could say that she heard about a white person rejecting someone simply because the girl is black. ‘Isn’t that awful?’ she could say, or ‘What do you think about that?’ she could ask and observe his reaction. The problem here is that his reaction probably won’t be terribly honest. He could say, ‘Yeah, that sucks,’ because it’s the PC thing to say, not because he means it.”

The trouble is, there’s no way to really know why someone rejects you. The only thing that you will know for sure is if he’s interested or not – and isn’t that what’s most important?

After all, your racial heritage is a part of who you are – and you deserve someone who will like and respect everything that’s awesome about you.

In our team-only conversation, Thea mentioned:

I guess I would say that, as frustrating as it might be, it is often difficult to tell whether or not interpersonal relationships are coloured by racism, unless people are flat out spouting racism. In other words, if she tells this guy she likes him, and he turns her down, unless he is overt about it, she will never really know whether or not it is about race. It’s possible that he won’t know either; for a lot of people racial prejudice is so deep-seated that they can’t even admit to themselves how it shapes their actions. This is a painful and difficult obstacle that many young people of colour have to learn to come to terms with. I suggest she visits Racialicious for support

But I don’t think that her worries that her friend doesn’t like black girls should stop her from asking him out, if that’s what she really wants to do. Best case scenario? They live happily ever after. Worst case scenario? He turns her down because of race, and then later realises his terrible mistake and regrets it forever.

Because Jackie’s right – of course there is nothing wrong with black girls! She sounds like a smart, self-confident and loving person, and if she’s at a school that’s trying to break down her self-esteem – what she has to deal with sounds just awful, and she is a tough cookie for being able to talk about it in such a level-headed way – the most important thing she can do is to remember how great she is, no matter what, all day, every day.

Readers, what would be your advice for Jackie?

The Racialicious inbox received a very honest email from a writer currently enrolled in a creative writing program, with reference to the book Ms Hempel Chronicles by Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum.  Bynum waits until late in the book to reveal that Ms Hempel is a mixed race person of colour. This raised all sorts of queries for our questioner:

…when I write fiction, I write white characters.  When I read fiction I read them as white characters unless/until I am expressly told otherwise.  This feels like an ignorant move on my part but at the same time, I feel that that’s what I do because I am white, and that people of other ethnicities read fiction as their ethnicity (or perhaps not, since the field is dominated a lot by dead white guys, but that’s another issue), and they write characters as their ethnicity…

Which I suppose eventually comes to this question: am I to assume that a writer of color is writing stories about people of (their) color?  Am I to assume that the black woman in my class is always writing about black people?…[That] the gay writer is writing about the gay experience, or gay relationships? Was I supposed to assume that Shun-Lien Bynum was writing about an Asian character because her name is Asian?… (See how much of an ass I sound like right now?)This feels like a form of discrimination or stereotyping.  Why should I assume that just because a person is black that they’re going to write about black characters?  Do people of other races assume that white writers are always writing about white characters?  Or is that what we’re supposed to do, as writers and as readers?
…
I’m sure it’s obvious that I’ve been in a sort of bubble with this issue.  In my undergrad, there were only 2 nonwhite students in the creative writing classes I took, and in my MFA program there is only one.  It seems to be an issue that we skirt around in workshop, for fear of offending someone, perhaps…

This questioner had the fortune (or misfortune) of sending this to me: in case you didn’t already know, when I am not crusading on the internet, I too am a graduate student in a creative writing program.  Here are some amended excerpts from the earful and a half I sent back to our questioner:

As for your question: should we assume that all writers of colour are writing for themselves?

All writers have audiences that they are writing for, and it becomes evident who their audience is as soon as they get going. But because much of Great American Lit is written by white writers who are white-centric, much of Great American Lit is written for white folks. So the assumption grows that all audiences and all characters are white – sometimes readers are surprised when they realise all along they have been reading a nonwhite book.

I would say many white writers are not conscious that they are writing for a white audience, just as often in the media the word “everyone” or “regular American” or “the people” means (middle class, hetero, cisgendered, abled) white people. I have to disagree with your (qualified) assertion that generally readers will just assume that the character is of the same ethnicity as them. Rather, many readers of colour are hyperconscious of the fact that a Great Book is not addressed to them; for many of us* learning to appreciate literature requires an extra step that is not there for white readers: we have to learn how to find ourselves in work that may sometimes actively exclude us.

Sidebar: I tend to have very little patience with white readers who tell me they didn’t like a piece of lit of colour because they felt it “didn’t speak to them” or “it made them feel bad.” Readers of colour learn the contortions necessary to be able to take part in Great Literature which may, in its whiteness, act as if we do not exist. Considering the amount of daily work this requires, I don’t think it is too much to ask of white readers that they twist their heads around every now and then to try and meet literature of colour where it is.

But back to your question: the fact of the matter is that all writers write, consciously or not, for a particular ethnic audience. When you go to read a book, don’t assume who the audience is either way. It should become clear soon enough who the book is for. In any case I would try to avoid pigeonholing writers of colour in general; read our books on their own terms, just as you would any other book.

Which brings me to my next point – I think it’s vital to recognise that there are things we will simply not understand when we read books seeking to tell an ethnic experience that we ourselves do not share. I am not saying we will not get the book altogether. Rather I am saying there are aspects we will not understand. For example, I really loved Drown by Junot Díaz.  But I am very happy to acknowledge that as a mixed race middle class Chinese woman from Toronto, there are lots of things in his stories – which are very proudly Dominican American or even Dominican New Jerseyian – that are over my head. There is still much in his work that thrills me; I think Diaz is a particularly generous and inclusive writer. But I think it would be disrespectful, arrogant and honestly colonising of me to insist that I can totally understand the book, just by virtue of my superior reading abilities. No matter how many Spanish dictionaries I have, there are things in his stories that will elude me. And I think that is his intention.

In other words, it is totally untrue that all the secrets of a story will become available to you if you read hard enough. I had a creative writing instructor speak of “owning stories”: his theory was that if we read a story enough times and with enough of a critical eye, we would “own it.” I think that idea is problematic – there are many things that are not available to us, simply because of the narrowness of our own life experiences. Which is fine – just read books as the person that you are. Writers are not asking anything more of readers usually. But to assume that you can understand everything about a story, especially when it is not written specifically for you, can be a symbol of entitlement, a refusal to accept that many politically marginalised writers write things into their stories that are only for their own people.

You see the flip of this in how some white writers approach the writing of characters of colour, without humility, and with the insistence that they should be able to write whatever they want, as long as it is within their ability. But this is entirely about something other than ability. Speaking for a character of colour in a culture that often silences actual people of colour is a political act (whether or not that is the intention of the writer) that can be totally botched, if you do not recognise that as a white writer there are spaces in a life of colour that you simply can’t understand.

The bottom line for me, is to just be conscious of the fact that you’re white. And that white writers are white. And that all writers that write about humans are writing ethnic concerns. And I think it’s very important for writers and teachers of writing to be able to fess up to that: all writing is racial, all writing is political. All choices on a reading list are political. As a Racialicious reader I am sure you have heard before that race is invisible to (some) white folks because it is not a barrier to them; but that doesn’t mean it’s not there.

Let me close with a Junot Díaz quote about the faux colourlessness of American literature. I just can’t get enough of this guy:

We’re in a country where white is considered normative; it’s a country where white writers are simply writers, and writers of Latino descent are Latino writers. This is an issue whose roots are deeper than just the publishing community or how an artist wants to self-designate. It’s about the way the U.S. wants to view itself and how it engineers otherness in people of color and, by doing so, props up white privilege. I try to battle the forces that seek to “other” people of color and promote white supremacy. But I also have no interest in being a “writer,” either, shorn from all my connections and communities. I’m a Dominican writer, a writer of African descent, and whether or not anyone else wants to admit it, I know also that Stephen King and Jonathan Franzen are white writers. The problem isn’t in labeling writers by their color or their ethnic group; the problem is that one group organizes things so that everyone else gets these labels but not it. No, not it.

*Clearly this is not true for ALL readers of colour. My dad, for example, couldn’t care less what race the protagonist of the new Lee Childs book is. But this is true for me, and I have heard many readers and writers of colour say the same.

I’m in a class at my university that focuses on cult movies and gender issues, and my professor has been describing the cult movie phenomenon as specifically white and middle class. You guys have been running a lot of articles on fans of color recently, and I was wondering whether what my professor said was actually true. Do you know anything about the breakdown of cult movie audiences? Or are we just watching all the white cult movies and paying attention to the white cult audiences? The readings she’s assigned have agreed that audiences are certainly mostly white, but we’re also studying most of the more accepted/acceptable/entrenched cult movies, like Rocky Horror or Bladerunner.

Good question.

I suppose there are two questions at play – what defines a cult classic, and which things are considered cult to what types of audiences?

For the first, a cult movie is determined by its following. Other than that, details are hazy about how a film makes it into the cult cannon. (Any film students/makers/scholars feel free to chime in here.) Entertainment Weekly published a list of the “Top 50 Cult Movies” in 2003. The results themselves are fairly diverse. Akira, Shawshank Redemption, The Warriors, The Mack, Dawn of the Dead, the Wiz, The Harder They Come, and Friday (among others) are all represented.

Also, I don’t think cult films break down neatly among racial lines, especially as much of their popularity is due to genre. For example, I’ve watched Akira, because that was an anime classic. EW mentioned This is Spinal Tap – since I’m a congoing geek, I’ve watched This Is Otakudom. Everyone I knew growing up had seen the Wiz; I really like Jim Henson so I will always catch the midnight showing of Labyrinth. Sometimes, it’s a decade thing – I read the EW list and immediately thought “Where the hell are Purple Rain, Crybaby, Welcome to the Dollhouse and Coming to America?” (They did get Heathers.)

However, I have noticed some things are race-based/ethnicity based cult classics. The majority of the African-Americans in my social circle have watched Love Jones. Regardless if they loved it or hated it, most people get the touchstone, while most of my white friends have no clue what that movie is. So I suppose it depends. However, I would argue your professor is incorrect that cult movies are a middle class, white phenomenon. I would argue they are an outsider phenomenon. The framing of cult hits in the media (which is dominated by white voices, particularly in criticism) may also contribute to this idea. (I’m also toying with post about “coming out” as a fan of color, which as Bao mentioned earlier, isn’t always a great experience. That may also contribute to the lack of visibility of fans of color in explorations of fandom.)

But that’s my two cents. Readers, what do you think?

Earlier this week, I received an email from a new reader:

Hi Latoya,

My name is B and I live in Florida. In fact, the neighborhood where I reside is a very desirable, mostly residential area centrally located near downtown and only a few short minutes to our lovely beaches.

The reason I am writing is because I just received the current issue of our neighborhood newsletter. The publication is several pages long and is in a glossy magazine style format. It is widely read not only by the neighborhood residents but also by other neighborhoods because of a general curiosity of all the events that take place here year round.

Well, each month, a regular feature is written called “Mr. Trivia, things you need to know, things you wanted to know, things you would care less if you ever knew!” I read it regularly and consider it mildly entertaining. However, this month, I was left with distaste after reading its opening paragraph.

It reads:

“Senor Trivia est en Mexico on vacacione. He has ad to muy tequila. He as me too rite de newleter fo viktor pak. I not god en Englsh. He sho me ow to copy on cumputr. I hop u lik me yob. Senor Mex trivia.”

The article then continues in its regular format citing various facts and then ends with:

“I ride burro now and bring this to u.

Gracias.

Senor Mex trivia.”

I mentioned my dissatisfaction about the article to a friend and she felt I was overreacting. I’d considered writing the editor of the newsletter stating that I thought it bordered on a negative racial stereotype, though I have held off from doing because of my friends comment about my “overreacting”.

What do you think?

I wrote back:

Hello B,

Thanks for writing.

You were right to feel offended. Here’s why:

Race based humor is a tricky subject. However, there are some very clear signs when the joke shifts from humor into racism.

One way to tell is to ask “Is this joke still funny if I don’t know the stereotype?”

Our publisher Carmen Van Kerckhove wrote a popular post on 5 New Rules to Deal With Race at Work and included a tip on how to react to a racist joke:

Rule 3: When someone tells a racist joke, play dumb.
Figuring out how to react when a co-worker makes a racist joke is tricky. If you don’t call the person out on her racism, you seem to be condoning the behavior. But if you do say something, you risk alienating him and sabotaging your working relationship.

The best response to a racist joke should accomplish 3 things:

1) Communicate that you find this behavior unacceptable.
2) Demonstrate that the joke is racist.
3) Inflict as little damage as possible to your working relationship with the joker.

My recommendation? Play dumb.

Put on a bewildered expression, act as if you don’t understand the joke, and ask your co-worker to explain it to you. He will not be able to explain why the joke is funny without evoking a racist stereotype. You can then question the veracity of this stereotype, thus pointing out the racism of the joke, without being confrontational and without humiliating your co-worker.

Racist jokes rely on an unspoken, shared knowledge of racist stereotypes. Without the stereotypes, there is no humor.

Also, check comedian Kate Rigg’s take on the subject when she talked about the difference between humor involving race and racist jokes (strong language!):

Kate, was Sarah Silverman saying “chink” in her one bit about jury duty different from you saying chink?

KR: You know what, it actually was not. Because her joke was not about the word “chink,” it was about racism. It was actually a very good joke, a very socially responsible joke. And everyone freaked out : “She said ‘chink’!” I’m offended when I see comics get onstage going “…and then I went to the Laundromat. Ching-chong, ching-chong, ching-chong!” Then I’m fucking offended. When someone tells a joke about Asian people and there’s no actual joke – the joke is the Asian people. The joke is [racist-comic voice] the funny way they talkie-talkie! “They don’t use proper diction! Only verb and noun! Verb and noun!” I just heard a comic that I respect doing that fucking joke the other night. An Asian comic. And I was like, “Dude! Write a punch line or you’re just being racist!”

—

So that was my take readers. Feel free to add your own in the comments.

Our first question comes from reader F:

Yesterday I went to a nail salon with my mother. I’m mixed-race, of mostly Indian descent, and while we there, quite a while after (and it was very quiet in there) an elderly Indian lady came in. There was one other (white) lady in there, and she witnessed everyone coming in at separate times, my mother and I talking, and having no contact at all with the older lady. At some point, I accidentally left my book on a chair and the nail salon person asked whose it was. Before anyone could say anything, the white woman piped up that it was ‘your daughter’s’ to the old Indian lady (meaning it was mine). Ok. This really annoyed me – because I knew that that woman saw brown people and just assumed, despite all evidence to the contrary, that we all belonged together or were related. If I and the older lady had been white, she never would’ve randomly assigned me to be her child, I think, because she would’ve been able to see more than colour and to identify more than that. She just grouped any brown people together automatically. I know it’s not a major thing, but to me it feels the same as when someone assumes I’m from India (I don’t assume all white people are from Norway, for example), or tells me I look like some Asian actress/friend/individual I look absolutely nothing like (I don’t remark to random white people that they remind me of Madonna), or can’t tell the difference between myself and other people they know who are also ‘brown’, despite huge differences in every other aspect of our being. So was this a kind of ignorant racism, or am I just overreacting? And even if it wasn’t, why is it still so deeply irritating, despite being so minor?

Andrea responds:

Dear F–

I don’t think you’re overacting to this at all. What the white woman did was flatten or erased all of your uniqueness and relationships–yours, your mom’s, and the elderly woman’s–solely based on what you all looked like to her. So, not only did she make assumptions about all three of you on race (“all brown-skinned folks must know/are related to each other), she made an assumption about all of you based on age, too. (“Elderly brown-skinned woman must have a grown daughter. I saw a grown brown-skinned woman walking in/getting nails done here. The other woman that came in with the grown woman couldn’t possibly be the mother. That grown woman, therefore, must be the elderly woman’s daughter.”) I suss that was the woman’s reasoning because she stated it when asked to whom the book belonged.

Now I didn’t say the woman’s logic made any sense or was based on any observable evidence, like your possibly referring to your mom as, well, “Mom” or “Mama” or “Mother” or whatever appellation you call her, in and overhearable conversation or in your and your mom not interacting with the elderly Indian woman. That white woman “knew,” and she was determined to tell everyone, by declaring that the book belonged to that elderly woman’s daughter–you, f–what she knew about you, your mom (who was erased in this situation, which also peeves me), and the other woman. The white woman’s “knowledge,” however well-meaning, was based on ignorance grounded in racism and ageism.

I’m also a bit worried that your friends are so dismissive of your feelings around this…

Fatemeh responds:

I feel for you, F. I had a friend ask me recently to teach her to Bollywood dance. wtf…?

Latoya responds:

F, I really like your question because it gets to the heart of the little day to day indignities of racism that function to wear people down. The reason you are second guessing yourself is because it is a very small thing – in the grand scheme of things, this woman’s small false assumptions don’t really have much of a bearing to your real life.

And yet…it bothers you doesn’t it?

All these little seemingly innocuous things become a lot more sinister when you cover a racist bias at the root, even when you know the person means no malice. So yes, what is happening to you is fucked up, even if it is on a small scale. However, advice in this vein is a little tricky, as it highly depends on the situation. As a person with a very prominent nose, I am often stopped in the street by strangers (generally white or black) who are pleased to tell me I look just like someone they know. Generally speaking, if the person stopping to address me is black, it is because I remind them of a family member. (One guy actually pulled out a picture.) If the person who addresses me is white, they normally compare me to some other black person with a large nose. (I’ve had two people look up pictures – online or in a yearbook – compare them, and then look crestfallen. “Well, not as much as I thought…”)

Every so often, I’ll ask directly “Oh, what about me reminds you of ____?” or “In what way do I look like (random celeb I do not look like – I got Queen Latifah once).”

And perhaps, if I was feeling like escalating a situation, and in your predicament at the nail salon I would have asked the women directly “Now, why did you assume that was my mother?” (Master the amused look of skepticism – one eyebrow raised, bemused looking smirk playing about the lips.)

But these interactions tend to pop up at random, when I’d rather be doing something else. So, most often, I (1) remind myself that I am not crazy because that was a racist assumption, (2) sigh and extract myself from the situation as possible and (3) go about my business.

It’s not the best solution, but it does tend to free up my time to fight on fronts where I feel like I can make an impact.

—-

So that’s our take. Readers, do you want to weigh in?