Racist, woman-hating fantasy author Theodore Beale (aka Vox Day) is upset that people are calling him racist. I mean, it’s not like he called all black people “savages,” he objects; he merely called one black woman — speculative fiction author NK Jemisin — a “half-savage” in a portion of a blog post that, he complains, has been taken out of context. Indeed, he sniffs,
the fact that the same ungrammatical excerpt chopped out of the middle of a sentence keeps being trotted out again and again should alert the dialectical mind to the probability that there simply isn’t very much, if any, there there.
Ah, context! A lot of shitheads who say terrible things complain, when others point out these terrible things, that their words have been taken out of context. So I thought I’d do Vox a little favor here and provide the context to his infamous quote so we can all see how much there is there.
You may notice that the context here does not actually make Vox look any less racist.
I’ve taken the liberty of bolding the especially egregious bits, though to be honest there isn’t much here that isn’t egregious:
Jemisin has it wrong; it is not that I, and others, do not view her as human, (although genetic science presently suggests that we are not equally homo sapiens sapiens), it is that we simply do not view her as being fully civilized for the obvious historical reason that she is not.
She is lying about the laws in Texas and Florida too. The laws are not there to let whites ” just shoot people like me, without consequence, as long as they feel threatened by my presence”, those self-defense laws have been put in place to let whites defend their lives and their property from people, like her, who are half-savages engaged in attacking them.
Jemisin’s disregard for the truth is no different than the average Chicago gangbanger’s disregard for the traditional Western code of civilized conduct. She could, if she wished, claim that privileged white males are responsible for the decline of Detroit, for the declining sales of science fiction, even for the economic and cultural decline of the United States, but that would not make it true. It would not even make it credible. Anyone who is paying sufficient attention will understand who is genuinely responsible for these problems.
Unlike the white males she excoriates, there is no evidence to be found anywhere on the planet that a society of NK Jemisins is capable of building an advanced civilization, or even successfully maintaining one without significant external support from those white males. If one considers that it took my English and German ancestors more than one thousand years to become fully civilized after their first contact with advanced Greco-Roman civilization, it should be patently obvious that it is illogical to imagine, let alone insist, that Africans have somehow managed to do the same in less than half the time at a greater geographic distance. These things take time.
Being an educated, but ignorant half-savage, with little more understanding of what it took to build a new literature by “a bunch of beardy old middle-class middle-American guys” than an illiterate Igbotu tribesman has of how to build a jet engine, Jemisin clearly does not understand that her dishonest call for “reconciliation” and even more diversity within SF/F is tantamount to a call for its decline into irrelevance.
In case you want a bit more context, elsewhere in the same post he 1) mocked a man for taking his wife’s name, 2) suggested that one of his female critics was totally not as hot as his wife, the mysterious “Spacebunny,” and 3) reminded anyone who had forgotten that he had “three Billboard-charting club hits,” a fact that evidently makes him irresistible to women.
You see, Vox was briefly a member of a largely forgotten techno group called Psykosonik more than two decades ago. Well, “largely forgotten” by everyone but Vox, that is.
CONTEXT!
Growing up, we were told that that my mom’s great-great grandmother was Shoshone (my family is otherwise mostly of German ancestry). As a kid, I thought this was kinda cool, but I never considered myself to have gained mythical anti-racist superpowers from this fact.
Then, when I was in my teens, my mom decided to take up genealogical research as a hobby. …And now we have no idea.
Half of the family says she was Shoshone. The other half says that’s ridiculous; she was Irish. Only one photo of her exists–she has black hair (which is done up on top of her head), and she’s smoking a pipe.
So we’re not sure if one half of the family was racist and said, “Hey, she’s smoking a pipe! Indians smoke pipes! Let’s say she’s from this specific local tribe!” or if the other half of the family said, “NoooOOOOO, we don’t have any nonwhite ancestors. She’s Irish!” And with some—er—interesting family dynamics happening in general, it’s not immediately obvious who’s more likely to have made something up.
It would be interesting to get tested, just to find out who (if anyone) is right.
@Paradoxical Intention “I do believe I read somewhere that ancient Egyptian statues and monuments were “restored” in different ways and marred by having their noses removed so that they bore no resemblance to African people.”
Yeah, that’s a pretty common conspiracy theory. It’s possible that it may of happened.
However, the vast majority of broken noses probably had to do with the Ancient Egyptian religion itself. The ancient Egyptians believed that the soul couldn’t inhabit a statue or mummy if you damaged its face. Does anyone modern even consider the Ancient Egyptians “white”?
@yama “It’s ethnically diverse because Portuguese are totally Hispanic, right?”
The Portuguese may not consider themselves Hispanic but many racist Anglo-Saxon whites do. I remember a big to do several years back when Emeril Lagasse did something racist and some of his white followers defended him by saying that he is a “minority” because of his Portuguese descent and therefore can’t be racist, or something. It was cringe-worthy all around.
@Banana Jackie:
I found a website talking about Caracalla, which claimed he was African. His Wikipedia article says his dad (Septimius Severus) was born in Libya to an Italian mother and a Punic father. Caracalla himself was Punic and Syrian, born in Lyons, France. Septimius Severus was born in Libya and died in Yorkshire. So birthplace has very little to do with genetics in Rome.
I haven’t found any other websites that talk about Roman emperors from Ethiopia (plenty about emperors of Ethiopia). I do think it’s safe to say that there were lots of Roman emperors from around the Mediterranean, like from Libya, Carthage (called Punics), Syria (which isn’t even Africa), etc.
A lot of Egyptian dynasties were from outside the classical borders of Egypt, but that was because they conquered it for its crown. And at least early on, there seems to be some recognition among the pharaohs that the people of Nubia were darker than the Egyptians.
(I still remember that PUA of color who came in here one time and claimed all bald-faced that Cleopatra was black. Hah!)
@Funkula:
Oh, I love the emphasis that rhythm gives to the Dipshit part. Diiiip-shiit. I have never felt so sophisticated and immature at the same time.
There are Mammotheers who have done that kind of work but they have ethical objections to doing that kind of investigation.
@mrex:
I thought it had to do with chiseling the name of a disgraced pharaoh off of their monuments, and breaking their statuary, so that they would not be remembered, like they did with Hatshepsut, of whom Wikipedia says:
There seems to be a lot of bigotry in general among Anti-Feminist types, especially on YouTube. Its not just misogyny, they also seem to have issues with racial minorities, LGBTs, etc… For example, AmazingAtheist and Davis Aurini are both hardcore, prominent anti-feminists and both have also openly referred to black people as n_ggers. A lot of anti-feminists will use thinly-veiled racist remarks but some of them are blatant about it. They don’t even try to hide their racism.
@Falcolner “I thought it had to do with chiseling the name of a disgraced pharaoh off of their monuments, and breaking their statuary, so that they would not be remembered, like they did with Hatshepsut, […]”
Yeah that was part of it, AFAIK the ancient Egyptians believed that the soul only lasted as long as a person was remembered. However, remember that the ancient Egyptians also believed that a person’s mummy or statue could LITERALLY come to life if entered by the deceased’s soul, and you could see how grave robbers and other enemies were pretty terrified of this. Knocking the nose off of a statue or mutilating its face was a pretty easy way to prevent the soul from recognizing the statue, or causing it to suffocate if it did enter.
And there’s also the problems with working in stone. It’ll carry a lot of weight, but it tends to break off if you make long bits of it without support, cf. all those armless Greco-Roman marbles we have. I don’t know for sure, but I’d think the nose, being thinnest and most out-thrust, would survive less well than the rest of the head, when done in large scale and stone, and then weathered for four thousand years.
King Tut is closer to us than he is to the Pyramids. Random fact.
@Falconer
Thinking on that post, I think I was confusing Egypt and Roman empires, considering there were Ethiopian pharaohs; I also think I was confusing some time lines here and there so…yeah…
*scuttles off under rock*
I should say I know very little about Ancient Rome and Greece. I’m more into Ancient China, Egypt and Norse mythology.
Fun fact about the vikings, particularly those in the Scandinavian region: They took rape allegations very seriously, and those cases usually ended in death for the accused rapists. They also named a lot of people after bears, wolves, spears and helms.
THE MORE YOU KNOW.
David I was wondering if you were going to cover the Hugo Awards, um, upset, since it covers so much of the same “aggrieved white male” territory as your usual bailiwick.
Excellent rebuttal, Magnesium.
The thing that irritates me the most in this screed is the throwaway line about an African tribseman has no clue how to build a jet engine; I’m pretty sure Vox has no knowledge of them beyond knowing about them and whatever Wikipedia has on the subject.
A common trope among Sexist/racist white males is that since a white dude invented something in the past, that somehow means fuckers like Vox invented it by proxy. They also never take it to its logical extreme.
A gay man pioneered computers, and a Female Admiral pioneered modern programming. Does that mean all gay men and women are inherently superior with computers? A black man pioneered open heart surgery, does that mean black men are the best heart surgeons? I’m pretty sure Algebra has is roots in the middle east, so does that mean all western advancent is due to Islamic people?
Yeah many of the statues of any ancient civilization are missing noses due to erosion/being moved/falling over, but there’s plenty of evidence that many of the statues from ancient Egypt have been purposely mutilated. (Chisel marks will give it away. 🙂 ). There’s a bunch of conspiracy theorists that want to believe that it’s due to racism, but it’s not. The Ancient Egyptians did it themselves because they didn’t want the deceased punishing them or otherwise interfering with life on earth.
The conspiracy theory sounds reasonable, but it’s probably mostly or entirely false. And since when does “black” always equal “wide nose” anyway?
Didn’t the Romans kind of destroy civilisation wherever they found it (if it looked slightly different to their own)?
Like the marauding Roman legions, Vox Day and his ilk are the real barbarians, trying to destroy anything different to what he is comfortable with, trying to conquer all.
@Falconer
“King Tut is closer to us than he is to the Pyramids. Random fact.”
I love stuff like that. I’ll trade it for:
We are closer in time to T-Rex than T-Rex was to Stegosaurus
Note: I tend to believe that Ancient Egyptians were straight up black racially, but the idea that they therefore must have had broad noses puzzling. Especially since a lot of surviving ancient Egyptian artwork shows narrow noses, the wide variation of nose size/shape in Africans, and that there’s some thought that narrow noses are advantageous for living in deserts.
I laughed loudly at this, as I’ll be doing so in a few months. Vox Day’s displeasure is a tiny bonus.
That would be very nice. Thank you for the offer.
Another interesting idea! It would make covering a book with 800+ pages a little easier.
I really don’t think there’s only one answer to the question of what race the Egyptians were. Remember, they were around for 3000 years and they traded with many other civilisations. They probably would have been more black at some points in time, more Middle Eastern at other points, and more Mediterranean at the end of it all after the Macedonian conquest.
Here’s the real reason noses of antiquity are missing:
@Alan Robertshaw:
Well then why was there one of each in the box of dinosaurs my babies got, heeenhh?!Gary Larson termed the Stegosaurus’ tail spikes a “thagomizer” in one of his Far Side cartoons, and some dinosaurologists still use the term informally.
http://www.thefossilforum.com/uploads/monthly_11_2012/post-6208-0-26891200-1352397818.jpg
Also, apparently, Bill Watterson coined the phrase “the Horrendous Space Kablooie” because he was writing a strip in which Calvin thought “the Big Bang” too bland, and Watterson’s phrase was picked up by the academic world.
Y’all race was invented by white people so whites can say shit like “there is no evidence to be found anywhere on the planet that a society of NK Jemisins is capable of building an advanced civilization.” White is whatever white people need it to be.
@ Falconer
As a Yorkshireman (with all the curmudgeoness that entails) I’m a big fan of Fred Hoyle. You may recall he came up with the phrase “Big Bang” as a pejorative term for a theory he didn’t subscribe to.
In fact I’m so Yorkshire I refer to the Big Bang as “the modified steady state theory” just on principle.
Mind you, I also call that film “Mostly Cretaceous Park”.
@psychpunk: Well, that’s somewhat true, but whites didn’t come up with “Fuck them over there, they’re not us, let’s kill them and take their land.”