I didn't notice how old the post was, sorry. No, you don't have to respond point by point. I also haven't really followed your posts in particular so I don't know if there's any particular history that would alter my base assumptions from that particular post.
The reason I felt motivated to respond was that frankly, the person did NOT seem all that angry/vengeful to me. Everything that he's genuinely angry about is stuff that I think is perfectly acceptable to be angry about, and I thought a lot of the language on the more controversial points was couched in terms of "this wouldn't be a big deal... except that it's combined with these other things." His initial point is that when you have a show that's guilty of all the same things as the rest of the shows out there, throws in tokens to look diverse, and then on top of that have the white main characters act all oppressed, it's adding insult to the usual injury.
A lot of business executives THINK they are simply hiring based on the best resume, the best performance, the best writing. But studies have showed that that is simply not true. When you take away the names on resumes so that you can't tell whether a name sounds black or white, more black people get hired. When you do orchestra auditions blind, more women get accepted into the philharmonic.
When a movie starring black people does badly, they blame it on the black people. When a movie starring white dudes does badly, they never say "hey, maybe if we had thrown in more women or ethnic minorities."
The fact is that straight white dudes run most things, and as such they have a preference for straight white dudes. This doesn't make them bad in the way that the KKK is bad. I consider reflexively locking a car door when you see a black person on the street is approximately as bad a character flaw as forgetting your car keys, at least in terms of how "guilty" the person is. But that doesn't make all those actions collectively okay.
You can call it racism, or you can call it something else if you want, but it IS a problem and it needs to be fixed.
---------- Post added at 10:30 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:16 PM ----------
Random note on the subject of "is the writer angry?"
His opening line "there is nothing more infuriating that middle class white people whining...." happened to have very similar wording to something a friend of mine said to me recently. I am a thin person. My friend is a.... not particularly thin person. I was complaining about not having time to exercise and eating too much ever since I started a new job, and I was worried about starting to gain a lot of weight. My friend said "You know what's really annoying? Thin people who complain to fat people about being fat."
He wasn't particularly angry about it, but it's the sort of thing that bugs him and which I probably should have thought about on my own without him having to remind me. So that was how I read the opening paragraph.
I actually was a little more turned off my the dissing of Lie to Me, but the Lie to Me rape episode I think was a fairly unique phenomenon in that it was not sexist because that's norm for hollywood and the writers were being lazy. The rape victim had to be lying because otherwise, the show would be boring. "He raped me." "Yup, they're telling the truth." "Okay, the end!" Not a good episode. In fact, my biggest problem was that even with the more drawn out version, it was painfully easy to predict the plot twists simply by virtue of the constraints of the show. There needs to be at least two twists, the first twist has to be that she's lying for some reason, the second twist has to be that she was somehow partially right.
The reason I felt motivated to respond was that frankly, the person did NOT seem all that angry/vengeful to me. Everything that he's genuinely angry about is stuff that I think is perfectly acceptable to be angry about, and I thought a lot of the language on the more controversial points was couched in terms of "this wouldn't be a big deal... except that it's combined with these other things." His initial point is that when you have a show that's guilty of all the same things as the rest of the shows out there, throws in tokens to look diverse, and then on top of that have the white main characters act all oppressed, it's adding insult to the usual injury.
This is what I was trying to pre-emptively address with my final paragraph. There is a world of difference between people actively trying to hurt black people and people who have some subconscious prejudices that they don't notice who would never consciously think ill of people because of their race. But just because there is a difference does not absolve us of the fact that the latter is plenty harmful as well. And most of the rationalizations as to why it's okay are just that: rationalizations.
A lot of business executives THINK they are simply hiring based on the best resume, the best performance, the best writing. But studies have showed that that is simply not true. When you take away the names on resumes so that you can't tell whether a name sounds black or white, more black people get hired. When you do orchestra auditions blind, more women get accepted into the philharmonic.
When a movie starring black people does badly, they blame it on the black people. When a movie starring white dudes does badly, they never say "hey, maybe if we had thrown in more women or ethnic minorities."
The fact is that straight white dudes run most things, and as such they have a preference for straight white dudes. This doesn't make them bad in the way that the KKK is bad. I consider reflexively locking a car door when you see a black person on the street is approximately as bad a character flaw as forgetting your car keys, at least in terms of how "guilty" the person is. But that doesn't make all those actions collectively okay.
You can call it racism, or you can call it something else if you want, but it IS a problem and it needs to be fixed.
---------- Post added at 10:30 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:16 PM ----------
Random note on the subject of "is the writer angry?"
His opening line "there is nothing more infuriating that middle class white people whining...." happened to have very similar wording to something a friend of mine said to me recently. I am a thin person. My friend is a.... not particularly thin person. I was complaining about not having time to exercise and eating too much ever since I started a new job, and I was worried about starting to gain a lot of weight. My friend said "You know what's really annoying? Thin people who complain to fat people about being fat."
He wasn't particularly angry about it, but it's the sort of thing that bugs him and which I probably should have thought about on my own without him having to remind me. So that was how I read the opening paragraph.
I actually was a little more turned off my the dissing of Lie to Me, but the Lie to Me rape episode I think was a fairly unique phenomenon in that it was not sexist because that's norm for hollywood and the writers were being lazy. The rape victim had to be lying because otherwise, the show would be boring. "He raped me." "Yup, they're telling the truth." "Okay, the end!" Not a good episode. In fact, my biggest problem was that even with the more drawn out version, it was painfully easy to predict the plot twists simply by virtue of the constraints of the show. There needs to be at least two twists, the first twist has to be that she's lying for some reason, the second twist has to be that she was somehow partially right.
