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.
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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.
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'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.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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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!
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"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.
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"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/???
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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.
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