From: hamish@netcom.com (Just Another Deckchair on the Titanic)
Subject: Re: The Literary Canon
Date: Mon, 17 Aug 92 01:57:33 GMT
Organization: Pandemonia, PLC

In article <14297@mindlink.bc.ca> Crawford_Kilian@mindlink.bc.ca (Crawford Kilian) writes:
>Great, now I've got Mark Taranto to enjoy and despair over as well as Terrance!
>
>In his very thoughtful response to my posting, Mark argues that since I wasn't
>in a visible minority, my experience as a young American in Mexico isn't
>comparable. Well, when I went on the street no one might know my father's
>politics, but more than once the reaction by Mexican kids was, in rough
>translation, "Let's punch the daylights out of this gringuito." Televising a
>baseball game one day in Mexico City, my obvious Yankee father found himself
>suddenly under a bombardment of beer bottles. And while I was lucky enough to
>escape physical attack for political reasons, the father of one of my friends
>wasn't so lucky: some young toughs drove right into his front yard, got out and
>beat him up.

Yes, yes, but... I think the point is that back in American (US)
society you'd blend in in a way that Terrance doesn't - even though
this is just as much Terrance's society as it is yours (and not quite
mine, yet). There's so much baggage in people's minds about race and
skin colour that it's unavoidable - like it or not, skin colour is
crucial to the experiences of non-white Americans. You *can't* ignore
it, especially if you're non-white - it's both a fundamental part of
you and such a part of other peaople's perception of you.

On the other hand, much of the canon (or proposed conons) does ignore
it, in a way that is probably only really possible if you're white
(male?).  Is it unrealistic to suggest that a canon that seems to
ignore this crucial factor for such a significant proportion of our
society is itself unrealistic?

>Of course one's race and sexual preference shouldn't matter [...]
>Of course they do matter; I felt
>self-consciously American in Mexico because I stood out there, [...]

But you stood out there in much the same way as I stand out here - it's
not so much a matter of race (or, more crucially, skin colour), but of
accent, attitude, clothes, etc. And the crucial difference is that for
Terrance this occurs in *his own* society, and because of something as
basic and unchangeable as skin colour, whereas for us it's something
happening in societies not our own, and due to something that is in
some sense less fundamentalthan skin colour. I can always go back...

>But if we make a big issue about our race and sex--if it matters that authors,
>artists, and other prestigious people are of our race and sexual preference,
>then we're co-opted in the racist-sexist game.

But it *is* a big issue, especially for those who live it daily. To
insist that the only alternatives are to either say it's no big deal,
or to succumb to some sort of co-optation as described above, is to
yourself succumb to despair or a well-insulated complacency.

	Hamish (Answerless in Emeryville)
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