So yesterday I posted about Greg Egan’s somewhat dumb and insulting comparison of “geek” and “nerd” to certain incredibly offensive racial insults. What made it even worse was that he made this comparison in the context of responding to Adam Roberts’ review of his latest novel, Incandenscence. Well, Egan popped up in James Nicoll’s post discussing this action. He got into a discussion with Carlos and after some prodding, decided Carlos was right in thinking this comparison was offensive. Egan therefore altered the paragraph in question and it now reads:

These days there’s often ranting about “nerds” and “geeks” — terms that the world would be better off without, though I have to admit there’s something gloriously awful, in a Love And Death on Long Island kind of way, when would-be sophisticates who spend half their time discussing Joyce or Sophocles switch to a vocabulary whose current usage was largely forged in the supremely inane universe of American high school cliques.

I still wouldn’t agree with his argument that nerd or geek are slurs; they used to be but they’ve long ago been reclaimed. But this doesn’t matter. What’s important is that Greg Egan saw he had made a mistake and had inadvertently insulted people and then apologised and took action to recitify this. Well done!

In related matters, cluefulness has not broken out everywhere in science fiction land, as another of James’ posts shows:

Apparently in their current version, the skin of Drow who convert to good becomes lighter coloured while the “blackness of the drow’s skin has become a permanent sign of their depravity”. The Curse of the Lamanites angle seems to have been introduced by self-confessed Canadian author Lisa Smedman in The Lady Penitent.

Oi. That really is some old skool racist imagery, isn’t it? With fantasy there’s always the danger, if the writer isn’t careful, that old racist stereotypes are redeemed by applying them to Orcs or other fantasy races, but this is so obvious that there really is no excuse. This isn’t just an awkward appropriation of an “exotic” culture to populate some generic fantasyland with, but use of an old idea that has served as a particular pernicious justification for slavery: the “curse of Ham”. From wikipedia:

According to pro-slavery literature, Ham’s transgressions, particularly the shaming of his father by looking upon his nakedness, provoked “Noah’s curse”. Allegedly, Ham’s son Canaan and his descendants were thereafter doomed to serve their American lines for all of eternity. Indeed, when discussing the slaves of the pharaoh in Exodus, Origen specifically identifies them as descendants of Ham who were punished due to their ancestor’s skin color. In 1823, amidst controversy concerning the justice and morality of slavery, South Carolinian Frederick Dalcho argued: “and perhaps we shall find that the negroes, the descendants of Ham, lost their freedom from the abominable wickedness of their progenitor (Ham).”

Much worse than some of the offenses that have driven racefail 2009…

As you may have encountered if you’re following online science fiction fandom, for months now there has been an increasingly poisonous but important discussion about race, cultural apropriation and science fction going on in various sf blogs, mostly on Livejournal. Science fiction/fandom prides itself on being open and inclusive, but in reality has huge blindspots when it comes to matters of race, culture and gender. Which in itself is not a new conclusion of course, but which Racefail 2009 –as this increasingly acrimonious discussion has been dubbed by cynics — makes clear is still a sore spot for the genre. Even well intentioned writers have been shown to be –how to say– less than tactful in their handling of these matters.

Greg Egan’s throwaway remark that the use of words like “geek” or “nerd” is as bad as certain racial slurs could therefore not come at a worse time:

These days there’s often some ranting about “nerds” and “geeks” — words that belong in the same rubbish pile as “niggers” and “gooks” — though I have to admit there’s something gloriously awful, in a Love And Death on Long Island kind of way, when would-be sophisticates who spend half their time discussing Joyce or Sophocles switch to a vocabulary whose current usage was largely forged in the supremely inane universe of American high school cliques. It’s also quite handy to have a word or two around whose use swiftly identifies a proud scientific illiterate just as effectively as the words that mark a proud racist. Of course, there are a handful of scientifically literate people who have decided to self-identify with the same vocabulary, but when it comes to using n-words the example of Fifty Cent is a great deal less appealing to me than that of Barack Obama.

But you have to admit that there is no better proof than this that yes, science fiction is clueless about race. Nerds and geeks may be bullied in high school sometimes, but it’s all a far cry from being forced to use separate water coolers and such, now is it, or being stopped “randomly” for wearing pocket protectors… Especially considering the context in which Egan makes these remarks, his attempted putdown of a negative Adam Roberts review of Egan’s latest novel, this show an astounding level of entitlement and cluelessness.

If you want to read more about Racefail 2009, Torque Control has a good overview post up. I myself have been reading, but not writing about the discussion as I have little to add and there are enough half assed opinions being slung around in it already…