Comments Elsewhere

I think that the primary thing that the “definition” demonstrates is the kind of gibberish that you get out when you assign writing tasks to a committee.

Pham, blaming the lack of non-white characters on the lack of non-white authors doesn’t really tip the scales at all. There’s no reason why white authors can’t be expected to write stories with sensitive and intelligent portrayals of non-white characters. If they can manage non-human races, they can surely manage to think up a non-white human if the existence of such people crosses their minds, and they put a good faith effort into it. If it doesn’t cross their minds, or they don’t put a good faith effort into it, then that’s something to worry about in itself.

Also, while the invisibility of non-white characters is one of the worrying things about Golden Age sci-fi, as far as race goes, it’s hardly the only thing. I can think of some pretty nasty cases of overtly racist stories from Golden Age heavies. To take a rather egregious example, Heinlein’s Sixth Column is pretty embarassing more or less from start to finish. (To be fair, Heinlein later on said he was really dissatisfied with Sixth Column, and that the idea had really come from John W. Campbell. But then, that only relocates the problem.)

Anyway, I’m not at all sure that this is what the Seattle school officials were referring to. Then again, I’m not at all sure that they were referring to anything concrete or identifiable at all.