Posted on 06/04/2015 12:42:28 PM PDT by rightistight
Writing online, author Elisa Gabbert answered one of her reader's questions about whether he should stop writing because of his "privilege" of being white and male.
An anonymous reader asked Gabbert:
"I am a white, male poeta white, male poet who is aware of his privilege and sensitive to inequalities facing women, POC, and LGBTQ individuals in and out of the writing communitybut despite this awareness and sensitivity, I am still white and still male. Sometimes I feel like the time to write from my experience has passed, that the need for poems from a white, male perspective just isnt there anymore, and that the torch has passed to writers of other communities whose voices have too long been silenced or suppressed... I genuinely am troubled by this. I want to listen but I also want to writeyet at times these impulses feel at odds with one another. How can I reconcile the two?"Gabbert's response? White men need to stop taking more than their "fair share" of being published and they need to stop appropriating other people's culture.
...White men need to stop writing so much and stop writing so well, Gabbert explains. "Editors make excuses about their submission pools they get far more submissions and pitches from men than women. Then people inevitably respond by telling women to write more, submit more, and pitch more. I think this is exactly the wrong response: Instead we should tell men to submit less. Pitch less. Especially white men. You are already over-represented."
Further, "You white men have all the advantages here, so you should work to solve the problem of imbalance, instead of putting all the burden on women, POC, and LGBTQ to fix it themselves."
(Excerpt) Read more at punditpress.com ...
POC: People of Crime
“”You white men have all the advantages here...”
Advantages? Like being discriminated against at every turn? Like paying the majority of the taxes that get redistributed to other groups?
“Privilege is the code-word for demanding white people kill themselves because of the color of their skin.”
It just occurred to me, we might be the ones rounded up and put in concentration camps or gulags next.
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