Obligatory…
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Ugh. Here I’ve been thinking that LARB is a good place for book reviews. Turns out it’s too white.
When medievalist Mary Rambaran-Olm wrote about having her book review “torpedoed” for not being “more generous” to the book’s authors, no one could have expected that this would send shock waves across the academic community in what became an online maelstrom revealing the extent of white academic gatekeeping, ally performativity and blatant racism. For those of us who work on decentering whiteness in premodern fields such as classics, medieval/early modern studies, archaeology and in or on the Global South, this latest attack targeting a scholar of color exposed what many of us have been trying to draw attention to for years—that racism is deep and pernicious in the so-called liberal and woke academy.
Good thread on this whitish debacle:
This is how racism becomes a systemic problem, and the intentions of each person involved aren’t enough to change that. That’s why antiracism is necessary. It took many decisions from many people to pull a critical review by a Black woman and endorse instead a glowing, redundant review from a white woman. No one individual made this happen but all involved share responsibility.
Rambaran-Olm has published her rejected review here:
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Using his white male privilege for good:
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Holy crap, is she trying to melt this kid’s eyes out?
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Soooooo many ways that could go wrong, and yet I’m certain at least one white woman has tried this.
I’m equally certain no Black woman has.
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Makes sense to me. It’s plainly a fertility ritual ensuring both the health of the baby and continued productivity of the bees, and I am glad they have found something more constructive than dressing as animals and trying to kill Nicolas Cage.
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I mean…that part sounds productive.
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Rich white guy whines about how hard it is for white men these days.
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John Scalzi is a white dude. Doing just fine
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I mean - sure- ageism exists.
It doesn’t effect a guy worth nearly a billion to any reasonable degree.
And the white dude shit is just sad nonsense. Maybe your work is just lazy lately and doesn’t resonate with people?
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Considering that something like 90% of the stuff published under his name is written by someone else this is especially galling.
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Yeah, but those ghostwriters are old white guys…
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Patterson’s?
Absolutely it is; damn near all his stuff for the last 20 years has been the same exact formulaic BS.
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No, no, clearly today’s young readers are to blame. Only possible explanation, really.
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I’ll put this one here, since it’s so firmly grounded in this cryptobro’s privilege.
Being yet another young white male Libertarian, his pre-emptive response to the article has been to double down on making the exchange a safe space for racists and misogynists and other bigots. From the indispensable Molly White:
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