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#WritersCoffeeClub 17 Nov. What role does race play in your work?
The concept of "race" is a vile 19th century shibboleth invented to support colonialism and to justify so-called "scientific racism". Human races are far less distinct than cultivars of broccoli or breeds of dog: we're all one hominin species.
So I generally only use it in my fiction as a handy tag for "the character talking about this shit is misguided and/or has an evil agenda".
@cstross
What words do you use to refer to different species and subspecies?
I'm more familiar with usage in fantasy, but then again, in fantasy it's just "humans".
Interestingly, Rimworld takes the route similar to you and uses the term 'xenotypes' or 'xenohumans' to describe genetically engineered types as well as baseline humans modified post-birth.
The community often still refers to them as "races" tho (for example, game mods).
@cstross
Hm.
Curiously enough, the game I still cherish, SkySaga, refered to different fantasy "races" within it as "tribes". Which was rather inspiring for me because it drew attention away from visual appearances (lizard men and cat people?) and to differences in culture. And all that by picking another word for it.
(they started with "races" but changed the wording approaching the storyline update)
@cstross Scientists who study human history are talking about calling Sapiens, Neanderthalensis, and Denisovans all by the same label of Homo Sapiens. This is because all three groups, while having slight differences, were so close in so many ways (Eurasians especially, have Neanderthal and Denisovan genes), that there may be little reason to divide them up as distinct groups.
Footnote to #WritersCoffeeClub 17/11: my current two WIPs are space operas set 700,000 years hence. Our subspecies of hominin is long-extinct: humanity has speciated. There are references to "elves" and "dwarves": genetically engineered hominid descendant species designed for different planetary environments. "White" skin as currently construed is extinct—everyone has a gene hack to synthesize Vitamin D without sunlight and melanin reduces the risk of sunburn. (Skin cancer is also extinct.)
@cstross Reminds me of an A.C. Clarke story, where it turns out humanity was seeded by aliens, and ends with the aliens offering to cure us of our unfortunate paleness. Or something like that. Don’t remember the title.
@cstross it's interesting to think how the concept of beauty would work in such scenarios. Would beauty be a goal as much as adaptation to the different planetary environments, and, since you mentioned elves and dwarves, different surface gravity?
@rbanffy Beyond symmetrical features and general good health, standards of beauty are highly society-specific and often reflect social status.
@cstross they would be varied, but would societies that engineer themselves to better fit an environment consider it important in relation to evolutionary fitness? Would they guide themselves to specific forms that don't impact adaptation?
I read "The Mismeasure of Man" at an impressionable age, and also Shirer's "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich"—more to the point, one entire branch of my family tree is bare since 1943. (My great-grandfather and his kids left in 1906: the side of the family who stayed behind no longer exist, because of Hitler.) Finally, I can empathize with other groups of people who've been caught up in similar outcomes of racism.
@cstross Yes, I always see this scene in "Hitlerjunge Salomon" in my mind where Sally Perel is measured against those vile color charts - and I refuse to wrap my head around this concept.
@cstross I blogged quite a lot on black music, I used the broad frame of Paul Gilroy’s “The Black Atlantic” and an understanding of race as constructed from Ronald Radano and Philip V. Bohlman’s “Music and the Racial Imagination”. More subjectively, aesthetic concepts such as the break, jurisgenerativity and bricolage which I learned from the music permeate, I’d like to hope, my writing, composing and visual art
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