Further controversy at the SFWA: what's a little race-baiting among "friends"?

[the_archfiend]

These have been very, very strange days for the SFWA, as of late. And they've gotten stranger, if that's even possible.

Recently, author N.K. Jemisin gave a Guest of Honor speech at Continuum in Melbourne, Australia that touched strongly on the subject of being an African-American involved in the pro/writing end of this little hobby of ours, and although the speech didn't exactly name names there was apparently one particular section that got somebody all hot and bothered:

Now, to put this in context: the membership of SFWA also recently voted in a new president. There were two candidates:- one of whom was a self-described, misogynist, racist, anti-semite, and a few other flavors of asshole. In this election he lost by a landslide...but he still earned ten percent of the vote. SFWA is small; only about 500 people voted in total, so we're talking less than 50 people. But scale up again. Imagine if ten percent of this country's population was busy making active efforts to take away not mere privileges, not merely dignity, but your most basic rights. Imagine if ten percent of the people you interacted with, on a daily basis, did not regard you as human. 

Now, like a lot of other speeches and discussions concerning the subject of race and/or racism in science fiction in particular and American culture in general, a lot of debate can be generated by speeches like this: that's the point of making them in the first place. Unforunately, somebody forgot to tell Theodore Beale that "debate" doesn't include using language that (for want of more elegant phraseology) covers you in the very same shit that you claim you're not standing in a pile of.

Beale - if you've never heard of him before - is a perennial SFWA presidential candidate and all-purpose wingnut who apparently has a habit of being less than calm with people he apparently disagrees with, if your definition of "less than calm" includes "going out of your way to come across as a raging asshole". As Jim C. Hines has pointed out, he's done this against outgoing SFWA President John Scalzi more than once, and his ideas concerning women and African Americans are just as debased and (again, for lack of a more delicate way of putting it) FUBAR. In other words, Jemisin wasn't quite making this stuff up. Far from it.

What followed, however, was a response by Beale (quoted via screen capture on Amal El-Motar's blog, and quoted with rebuttal on Jim C. Hines' blog) that was just as full of the sort of racist tripe that Jemisin brought up in that speech. El-Mohtar is also calling for Beale's expulsion from the SFWA. I don't have a single objection to that on principle since it is a private organization and therefore has every right to toss members who violate their bylaws, but there's an unspoken question that concerns me:

Is the SFWA actually living up to its stated purposes when they allow people like Beale to damage their public profile like this? This - and the entire debacle concerning the Malzberg/Resnick kerfuffle - is causing some pros to publicly wonder why they remain members - or worse yet, to even leave. As Jemisin stated, it's a small organization. So small, as a matter of fact, that most local Chicago SF converntions probably draw a bigger annual membership. As it is, they really don't need people jumping ship in droves since the Great Recession did as many ugly things to 501(c)3 financing as it did to the US and world economies in general. People leaving equates to their money going along with them, and it's a problem the SFWA just doesn't need.

But - unsurprisingly - people like Beale seem entirely oblivious to that fact.

Or worse yet, they just don't give a shit about it.

Comments

[unhipster.livejournal.com]

Jeez, that guy is the literal worst.