THIS WEEK
Opinion On anti-racism
Tara Tobler
The response to the criticism of Kate Clanchy’s memoir was a moral failure on the part of white publishing—and an artistic failure too
Lessons from Clanchy I
and polarising, and when so much of the energy of writers of colour is then siphoned away from creative pursuits and redirected towards resistance, self-preservation and protest—it’s clear that something is desperately wrong. Why is it happening? Where does the hostilit in white publishing come from? Why are these discussions so resisted and made so fraught? It would be easy to say “because of white supremacy” and be done with it, though for some that answer won’t be very satisfying. It would also be easy to cite exceptionalism and cut the branch off behind the more outspoken white people involved. The truth of the mater, however, is that Philip Pullman, Lionel Shriver and Carmen Callil are not exceptional. I know many liberal white people who become indignant at the thought of what they call “identit politics” and “approved vocabulary” lists being applied to literary work, or get angry when they feel “cultural sensitivit” is valued more highly than risk, boldness, “literary greatness”, a willingness to defy taboo and so on. Many view the current push towards inclusive language as a limitation placed on artistry, and feel persecuted or constrained by—to use one of the many astonishing words Pullman threw down over the course of this thing—a totalitarian spirit at work in our reading culture. All of these indignations, angers, fears and beliefs need
to be unworked if we are going to move forward; most of them result from racist assumptions we can’t see for what they are. Why, for example, is the debate about “offensive language” framed in terms of free speech? When Monisha
10 1st October 2021
have worked in literary publishing for 10 years and I have never once met anyone—be they editor or publisher, writer or reviewer, publicist, rep, distributor or bookseller—who doesn’t on some level believe what they are doing is an act of service. And most of the time I believe that too. We do what we do in service to language, to each other and to ourselves. But when controversies like the one surround- ing Kate Clanchy’s memoir* unfold—when the behaviour from the white sector is so hurtful
Political correctness is not what is holding artistry back. Racism is. Writers of colour feel pressure to “shape” their narratives in uncomfortable ways because of it
Rajesh, Chimene Suleyman and Professor Sunny Singh voiced their concerns about the Clanchy book, what they were doing wasn’t unusual. It wasn’t censorious. It was criticism. Criticism points to a writer’s limits and says, Here you are circumscribed, here you are weak: break through. And when writers of colour step up to say how white English could be made more compassionate, more intelligent, more accurate, more vital, why on earth aren’t we saying thank you? Effusively? The push for inclusionary language is there because racist language is a failure. Ethically and aesthetically it fails. It causes trauma, it’s reductive, it’s riddled with clichés. Why anyone would fight to hang onto it, I don’t know.
What I do know is this, and it can’t be said loudly enough: political correctness is not what is holding artistry back. Racism is. Writers of colour feel pressure to “shape” their narratives in uncomfortable ways because of it. The white novel is plagued by paralysis and narcissism because of it. Racism is what allows us to close our ears to the message that we so desperately need to hear; a message that will re-commit us in our service to the artform that we love; and a service, dare I say it, that writers of colour are rendering much more bravely and faithfully than we are right now.
The message, which I address to myself, and to white
writers of fiction and non-fiction alike, and equally to white publishers and members of the trade, is this: to refuse the work of anti-racism is to fail to understand both ourselves as we exist within the world, and the world in its true complexit. To fail in that is to refuse to write or publish well. And it is to admit that we as white people will, through inadvertence or ignorance or both, hurt many of the people whose lives our lives touch.
Taking action
*Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me (Picador)
If you are reading this and you are a white writer or editor, and you would like to do beter but you are not sure how, my best advice is this: take some time. Write less. Acquire less; acquire differently. Listen. Listen to podcasts, listen to Twiter, listen to the people around you. Aſter listening for a while, say hello. Start a conversation. Don’t take it personally if people don’t have time. Keep listening. Ask other people to talk. Stay listening. Work harder, work with those already doing the work, work not only to find new voices but to support those who are exhausted from
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