chris_gerrib (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
chris_gerrib) wrote2015-02-25 10:19 am
chris_gerrib) wrote2015-02-25 10:19 am
Entry tags:
Black Pirates, "Social Justice Warriors," and Sad Puppies
One of the many, many fine whines emitted at volume complaints of the Sad Puppies is that "social justice warriors" keep insisting on changing the races of people in order to advance the cause of social justice.
Then I was referred to this interesting article: black men and the black flag. Turns out that during the Age of Sail, lots of black men were pirates. Like, for example, Blackbeard's crew was 60% black!
Nor were these blacks just grunt labor. There was Diego el Mulato Martin (el mulato = "mixed race" in Spanish) who ended up a commissioned officer in Spanish service. Or Diego de Los Reyes, aka Diego el Mulato Lucifer. Or Black Caesar, who spent a decade terrorizing the Caribbean from his base on Elliot Key, then hooked up with Blackbeard.
In short, what happened is that history whitewashed (literally) the pirates of the Age of Sail. The "social justice warriors" are merely restoring historical accuracy to that era.
Then I was referred to this interesting article: black men and the black flag. Turns out that during the Age of Sail, lots of black men were pirates. Like, for example, Blackbeard's crew was 60% black!
Nor were these blacks just grunt labor. There was Diego el Mulato Martin (el mulato = "mixed race" in Spanish) who ended up a commissioned officer in Spanish service. Or Diego de Los Reyes, aka Diego el Mulato Lucifer. Or Black Caesar, who spent a decade terrorizing the Caribbean from his base on Elliot Key, then hooked up with Blackbeard.
In short, what happened is that history whitewashed (literally) the pirates of the Age of Sail. The "social justice warriors" are merely restoring historical accuracy to that era.
no subject
Someone wrote a very interesting post on how she read The Hobbit to her daughter, and her daughter insisted that Bilbo was a girl, and so for grins, she read it that way. It turned out to be an excellent story about a girl who had adventures among a bunch of people who thought that was such a natural thing for a girl to do that they didn't bother to comment on her being a girl.
Changing the races of people in books seems to me to have the potential to be like that. I wouldn't recommend it as an exclusive solution to the issue of visibility, because I want books by diverse authors also, but it could be one aspect of the solution. So if that were what recent authors had done, I wouldn't see a problem with it anyway.
But kind of interesting to see the whitewashing of history exposed.
no subject
“Who Controls the Present Controls the Past”
There were blacks to be found in Washington's Army, yes. there were also native Americans. There was at least one woman, too. All were individual and isolated exceptions to the general rule.
Re: “Who Controls the Present Controls the Past”
Re: “Who Controls the Present Controls the Past”
That is very interesting. Thank you! I was able to corroborate several points mentioned, including the Earl of Dunsmore's proclamation in Nov 1775, about which I hadn't known before.
I'm perfectly willing to be proven wrong on a point, so long as I'm actually wrong, and not merely unCorrect. Technically you're in error also, but your real point was that there were more blacks serving in the American army than was later admitted, and I'll give you that. +
- I love how that article has to hastily kowtow to the PC commissars and immediately whine its explanation for using the now-unCorrect term “black.” Correct Thought speaks with one voice, and such Trotskyite deviationism cannot go unchallenged! (Even Tuvok on Star Trek: Voyager was referred to as an “African-American Vulcan,” which shows how ridiculous these evil clowns are.)
+ There were black freedmen in the Confederacy who owned slaves, just as anyone else did who could afford them. Try finding that in a modern Federal school textbook! Yet it's historical fact also. Pesky things, these 'facts.'
no subject
That's not to say they embraced them with Sixties™ lovingkindness, singing “We Shall Overcome,” which is what you're intended to think. There were several occasions where a slave ship was overrun, its crew killed, the slaves freed, and the pirate ship sailed on, leaving a shipload of bewildered Africans who hadn't the slightest idea what an ocean was, let alone how to sail on it. That wasn't the pirates' problem, was it? In manu tua, Domine…
no subject
By the bye, there was an equally swept-under-the-carpet population of black homesteaders and cowboys out in the Territories after the Civil War. Made sense; they were always hated in the North and now just as hated in the South, so a good many cleared out and headed West. They didn't assimilate, nor did the established white townsfolk welcome them, but they could work and own land and not get lynched…
no subject
Actually, what "whitewashing" are you referencing right now? I certainly didn't grow up with the impression that all pirates were white. Heck, given that I actually had an education growing up, I'm aware that there were black/native slaveowners and white slaves in the Americas.
no subject
no subject
Seriously, there are at least 3 in just that one picture. From the first movie. There are several others, including the two prominent black women.
I'm begging to believe that you perceive cultural biases where none exist.
no subject
Money quote: Because reading about a dissatisfied whore while being subjected to a sermon on the importance of diversity in sexual orientation, race, and transgenderism - there's one black character mentioned in the book, and he's a real historical person.
no subject
no subject
no subject
'obviously chosen *because he's black*. - So? He's a historical figure, in town in pursuit of a fugitive in an alternate-history Seattle. Why would his appearance, regardless of reason be a problem?'
Do you not see the very direct correlation between these statements?
And why, in your mind, is pointing out a tendency to do something equivalent to saying that it's a "problem?" We could certainly debate about whether or not it's problematic, but I'm fairly certain that your original assertion is something else entirely.
no subject
What is clearly desired is for her to not select a black Marshal.
tendency to do something equivalent to saying that it's a "problem?" - in this case, the tendency to whitewash history means that we, as a society, forget that not just whites participated in history. In short, whitewashing is the problem, and the only way to not whitewash is to actually put, where historically plausible, non-whites into history.
no subject
And I have yet to see any actual *evidence* of this supposed whitewashing of history. You have *claimed* that it exists over and over again, yet you have not been able to substantiate it other than by asserting that you only *remember* one black pirate in a movie that had several of them.
As stated elsewhere, I am coming to be of the opinion that you are projecting your own "whitewashing" personal habits onto others.
no subject
10-15% of George Washington's army was black, yet you don't see that reflected in fiction.
There's two (2) black characters in the book I'm discussing over on Vox Day, leader of the Sad Puppies, site. One of them, at least from the blurb, is "passing" as white. Yet I'm being told that merely having these two characters is implausible.
You're telling me that, in a work of fiction set in an era where individual marshals chased individual fugitives, it's implausible that one man with a 40-year career was ever in Seattle?
no subject
Why are you comparing the largest % black crew estimated to the entire *cast* of a movie primarily about a bunch of people from Britain? Does that not strike you as absurd? Did you not think that maybe, just maybe, you were comparing apples to orangutans?
And it's worth pointing out that Barbosa's #2 was also black. As was Blackbeard's, in the 4th movie.
I only had to go back to the 70's to find a movie with a black main characters whose name I recognized - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swashbuckler_(film)
And that's without digging through cast photos!
---
"10-15% of George Washington's army was black, yet you don't see that reflected in fiction."
I'm not sure where you got this number, but it's much higher than any source I could find.
That said, what fiction? I don't tend to read a lot of historical fiction, so I have no idea whether this statement is accurate or not.
---
"You're telling me that, in a work of fiction set in an era where individual marshals chased individual fugitives, it's implausible that one man with a 40-year career was ever in Seattle?"
That's... not really how the Marshals worked. Cross-country chases were extremely rare. Not impossible, but implausible. And you're telling me that you think that the author *just happened* to choose the only black Marshal from the time period?
And just ftr, Vox's ballot is Rabid Puppies. Sad Puppies is Correia/Torgersen/Hoyt/???
no subject
entire *cast* of a movie primarily about a bunch of people from Britain? I thought it was primarily about pirates, and set in a region and era where black pirates were heavily active.
Do I think Bear "just happened" to pick a black marshal? No. And it would have been easier for her to pick a generic white dude. She made an effort to un-whitewash history because she thought it needed un-whitewashing.
I don't see a big difference between VD and Torgersen, especially since VD is all over Torgersen's blog supporting Torgersen's picks.
no subject