Letters to the Editor
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Let's put the blame where it belongs: Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak
If it wasn't for Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, capitalist, male, geek, oppressor, we would not have had the Apple Macintosh. Without the Mac, there would have been no Apple LaserWriter. Without the Apple LaserWriter, there would have been no desktop publishing. Without desktop publishing, a "publishing house" of two women would have been relegated to filling yummy smelling ditto ink in the ditto machine in the Church basement and would have been able to get home in time to cook a proper dinner for a man who could control them.
So we see how the WOC AND Seal Press have been oppressed and repressed by two white males.
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Linguistically Attacked
I am an elderly white southern woman.
When I was younger and new to the intetragion upheaval in the South but I was also welcomed in the the Maryland college where I was teaching.
At a party, the son of one of my colleagues burst into a rage and said as leaving, "I will not be in ANY room with a southerner who talks like the white Selma sheriff."
That was only the beginning. At another party,
the wife of one of my colleagues thought I was
affecting a southern dialect and was roundly ridiculed for it.
Black people raise a great hue and cry about slavery--which, if memory serves, was lifted before the end of the Civil War.
A gentile white person with a cultured dialect is nevertheless mimicked, cursed, ridiculed, and wouldn't you know that the man who married me for my accent turned Yankee on me and ridiculed me for my speech.
All that by way of saying is that there are people who will ridicule what is new to them,
scary to them, half informed or misinformed about the origin of that speech.
If I sat around pissing and moaning that I came along before "capable women were invented" I would have lived a very twisted and resticked life."
I am who I am and who I am can achieve, receive honors, make friends with people unlike me, travel where people do not speak my dialect.
As a child, I was among many more black people than my white family members. Our love transcended what we could not--dared not--change.
I wept many, many a tear for how my beloved blacks were treated. The first time a tall lovely black woman spoke in my speech class, I sat on the back row and wept openly that she could do that.
White southerners can no more be coralled in the same pen anymore than every black is like another black. My parents taught the first integrated nigh school in our small city. They literally risked their lives. But to every black person they met, they were the enemy. They were white.
I think I must sound like the last lines of
Absolam Absolam: "I don't hate the South. I don't." as he gazed in the iron New England dark.
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Seriously?
Ms. Clark-Flory, I can't say I'm surprised at how you framed this response. It saddens me that the white response to issues like this is to blame the WOC. If you all truly wanted to address the race issue in this, you'd be talking about why WOC responded that way instead of instantly jumping to the rescue of the poor oppressed white girls at Seal Press. Honestly, do you think all of the hoohaah is groundless? If so, you're practicing bad
journalism and you're bringing all your readers with you with this leading commentary. And before you all say it, no, I'm not going to link you, read to you or hold your fucking hands until you 'get it'. I had to read through every comment until 'I' got it. That's the problem. You have to WANT to address the reasons this blew up, the reasons aren't there to serve you. You have to prove you want to address racism by actually GOING THERE AND LEARNING FROM WOMEN OF COLOR ALL ON YOUR OWN. Racism isn't a fast food restaurant, the solutions and understanding won't be served to you. Handling racism is a self serve issue. Stop sounding off and go listen for a while. ALL OF YOU.
Signed: A white person learning to listen.
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Seal Press is a vanity press for feminist bloggers like Valenti and Marcotte. Of course the WOC feel entitled
They know their shit stinks just as much as Valenti's craptacular book did, and as much as Marcotte's. They know they can turn out shit too, and want to know why they haven't been asked to turn out shit.
I'd say their logic is sound wrt Seal Press.
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This is beside the point, but as long as we're here...
I have some interest in the expression 'women of color' and would like to know more of its etymology.
I remember the first time I encountered it - it was in Atlanta, on public transportation, in a print ad for a cosmetic company. The idea was that the product was designed for the skin of non-white women. The ad featured at least one picture of a beautiful black woman. I remember thinking it sounded a little odd, being such a small grammatical step away from 'colored women'.
I'm guessing this was about twenty years ago.
As I began to hear the expression being used more and more, it was usually by women of color, and at first it was usually about make-up, hair color, fashion, etc., and from there it began to be used in more and more contexts, and was generally intended to include all 'non-white' women.
I hear the term 'people of color' occassionally, 'men of color' rarely, 'children of color' never.
And from this we have the template for new expressions like, 'women of size', etc.
If you remember a different origin, source or year for the introduction of this expression, I'd like to know it. Thanks.
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You have completely missed the point.
This wasn't about WOC wanting Seal to publish them. This was about the editors of Seal Press showing up on one individual's blog to take her to task because she wrote something they didn't like. As many, many people commented on both BlackAmazon's thread and on the thread at Seal Press (before Seal Press deleted the thread, possibly realizing that this was not good press for them), what one would expect a professional editor to do is not to launch an attack, but to say something like, "I'm sorry to hear that you have had a negative experience with us. I'd really like to talk to you about this and to hear your feedback." *That* is how you deal with criticism in a professional manner, and that is how you build goodwill for your business.
The comment that the editors noted - that WOC have nothing on Seal Press - was completely misunderstood, as was pointed out in both threads. That comment didn't mean, "Seal Press doesn't publish WOC authors." It meant, "you've got nothing on us," as in, "we rock," "you can't beat us," etc. On BlackAmazon's initial post, there was a bit of confusion around this as Seal's response to "you can't beat us" was "we WANT WOC," and it came across, as one commenter wrote, as if WOC were simply objects one could want, as in, "I want a pony."
Eventually, some of the confusion was sorted out, but then the conversation turned, on the Seal Press blog, to discussions of the lack of WOC writers with Seal. The editors did not help their case by "explaining" that their lack of women of color writers was nothing new because Seal had initially been a lesbian publisher - as if women of color and lesbians are two exclusive groups.
There is a lot going on here that has nothing to do with, as many responses here have assumed, the notion that Seal or any other publisher should be offering anyone book deals. That so many people are looking at blatant unprofessionalism and quite simply, poor behavior, and somehow interpreting that as sour grapes, is pathetic. As BlackAmazon has noted, in all of this, no one ever asked her what she meant by "Fuck Seal Press." But everyone, it seems, has an opinion.