and one last thing—that’s my number one pure venom spitting hatred for all scifi/fantasy books in the world—the idea that white folks are survivors and resourceful enough to survive in the face of the apocolypse or some other world shattering event— and people of color either don’t exist or exist in this weird other sphere that rarely if ever crosses with the white survivors. the one thing I really admired about the hunger games is that the author at least acknowledged—it only makes sense that a *certain type* of white person will survive under conditions like what is presented—and it’s those who survive off of their privilege and/or those who have historically been treated most similarly to people of color (poor whites).
i *loved* how Rue was written in this story—and oh, yeah, i totally fucking cried my goddamn eyeballs out when what happens happens—i was looking forward to a long interesting relationship between Rue and Katniss. and the gift of bread thing?
**drying heaving sobs into my blanket.**
but all those good feelings shriveled up into a dry puff of dust at how Thresh was written and how he was treated and how Katniss used her relationship with Rue to save her own ass.(which oddly enough, although it was infuuuuriating, it was a believable situation)
i just…don’t understand why it makes sense that the majority of survivors in sci-fi world are white, much less that the majority of **leaders** are white. and i need this to be clear: this is only partially coming from a “i want more diversity in story telling” framework.
MOST of it is from a practical sense. from the logic of sci-fi/post apocalyptic storytelling—it simply doesn’t make *sense* that the majority of survivors/leaders are white. there has to be a reason to *explain* that—and most of these types of stories very rarely do.
and as such, i think it’s especially important for white folks who can only see “white” when characters aren’t fully described (or in some cases actually *ARE*) to wonder why they only see white.
all of us people of color have known for centuries you couldn’t survive without us there—that the only reason you survive is *because* we’re there— (I just read a testimonial from a woman who was a slave, and she says *exactly* that—if we wanted to kill y’all, you’d be dead, we know all your weak spots, we know you can’t survive unless somebody is putting your clothes on you and feeding you etc)…what does it mean that even today in 2012, white folks don’t clearly understand this yet? are still so certain that they would be smart enough and brave enough and strong enough and desperate enough to crawl under a fence to find food?
that they would even know that a fence exists?
