Well, I think you are right that the book imagery made people extremely upset. And the affective experience of watching the commentary unfold and pile up was also really unsettling and powerful.

It’s interesting that people *did* turn to Pam, a woman of color, for leadership during a controversy that was generated by a white woman’s book.

I wonder now why I found that odd at the time. (Maybe some blind/racist spot of my own going on there). In retrospect, in listening to you and opponax explain why Pam became a figure who might lead and “mend fences,” I totally understand why people expected her to say something that would either bring unity to a community, or compel Amanda to take further action in redressing the situation.

I don’t know about a lot of the people who posted here, but I did find this to be a learning experience. I was surprised by the level of anger that people felt about the images, but then I was also surprised at how white readers felt upon discovering that personae whom they *thought* were “WOC” were actually white people. And I was surprised to learn what sort of “introspective” apology some people expected from Amanda, versus the apology she gave, which was that the whole fiasco was an oversight on her part.

I can’t summarize it all, but I did learn a lot from this, though I am not sure how I will use these lessons in the real world, except perhaps to teach the book and discuss its multiple “texts” (only how will I find enough racist copies now)? And I apologize to you again for being rude. I guess one more thing I learned was not to jump to conclusions about why people respond the way they do, and that what does not offend me (at least not on a personal level) may very much hurt and offend someone else.

My waiting for Pam to say something (and I wouldn’t have mentioned it on that Feministe thread if someone else hadn’t said something first) was because I didn’t know what to do, and a number of friends of mine (white and otherwise) were getting more & more upset. Pam blogs on race issues, I thought, Pam will lead me!

My own personal coloration is best described as “whiter shade of pale”, so I was trying to defer (to a certain extent) to the feelings of people who might have more personal feelings.

Re: hoping Amanda doesn’t get caught up in her own outrage, like Bill O’Reilly, I was thinking of a recent discussion at Making Light, trying to separate parody from trolling where SF writer Jo Walton said:

Picture the sad ruin of a once-great troll tearing at the very planks of the bridge he’s sitting under because he can no longer tell them from the goats he used to try to lure, and once they are gone, tearing angrily at his own hair, not noticing as he devours chunks of his own brain.

guess again, try this link. (and we don’t even need lexis/nexis)

http://news.google.com/

You can connect the two things if you want to. But where is that going to lead? Are you trying to establish that Amanda is white racist and stealing from black?

on first case, there is no “acknowledgement” needed. Brownfemipower argument utterly collapses after a timeline is shown. She ends up looking like a fool who demands people to link her because she owns an issue. (If you can establish different timeline, then you should show it now.)

On second case, I start to suspect a lot of people who are the loudest is seeking revenge on behalf of brownfemipower by destroying A.M. image over a genuine, but not large mistake.

To that M.O. I am reacting.

It is about bunch of bloggers puffing up ego. That’s the subtext.

You are reading a lot more into my comment than I intended. I was connecting Amanda’s lack of introspective commentary on the controversy over the issue of intellectual appropriation with the comments that suggest that her apology about the images in the book is “too little to late” and that it “doesn’t go far enough”. Her apology treats the book image issue as if it occurred in a vacuum, which it clearly didn’t. It’s not about lawsuits (which I haven’t seen anyone, let alone brownfemipower, suggest, so WTF?), it’s about acknowledgment of the intellectual work that other people have done on the topics she has written about, particularly non-white women who don’t have as high profile a platform as she does. And it’s about acknowledging the privilege of being white, which means you are more likely to be listened to than if you are non-white, and which also gives you the luxury of not noticing racist imagery.

(this post by PhysioProf has a good discussion on the issue of attribution.)

I said gentlement always pays as “default”, unless the lady say something …when nothing is known…la la bla bla… (it’s a matter of convinient ways out to solve social awkwardness when nothing is known)

… then bunch of idiot say. omg, omg. misogyny, paying for woman for sex slave…

Let’s put it this way. right there and then I know who the dogmatic idiots to avoid vs. the smarter character who can negotiate situation, perceive intention and established context to fluid social situation.

I know who is going to fuck me, and who I can play with. Who is going to burn me in the future and who won’t.

no I said, interacial relationship is harder and faces a lot more hassles. That takes more resources and energy to do than same race relationship. (that unless you have the money/social skill, it’s doom to failure)

(to which you exploded and take it that inter-racial relationship is impossible.. bla bla, la la…)

I left that alone and just enjoy watching you exploded all over. Because I know, you gonna perceive anything I said as “you can’t do that/you infringe upon my freedom to date”.

It’s gonna be a waste of time. I can talk and talk and you just gonna take it some other ways. So what’s the use. It never works. Plenty of more interesting argument to be had somewhere on the net.

Don’t wanna feed the troll, but I’d just like to point out to you, Squashed, that you recently told me that times had not, in fact, changed, and thus interracial relationships and multiracial families are still inadvisable unless you want to deal with crosses burning on your lawn once a week and no school accepting your freakish mutant biracial child.

And then pretty soon after that, you maintained that “a gentleman always pays”, because regardless of how feminists might like to see the world, the bottom line is that’s just the way things are.

So how can you also think that times have changed so much that all our old ways of talking about racism are obsolete?

See what I mean? Time has changed. And society is far more diverse than the current theory and definition people are throwing around can explain.

(They are useful of course. but they also have great limitation.)