Artistic Segregation Is a Terrible Idea

Anyone should be allowed to write anything. The leftist assertion I flipped upside-down on Wednesday - that only people within a particular identity group should be permitted to write about said identity group - is a deeply misguided response to instances of harmful stereotype propagation. It should be replaced with an attitude that encourages cross-cultural engagement, communication, and research -- and refrains from punishing creators who are reaching out in good faith.

Regular readers of this blog have seen me make some of these arguments before, but let me assemble them all in one place for the sake of convenience:

First of all, there is no such thing as an insert-group-here "voice". A group can have a common history, but how each member of that group interprets that history - and experiences the present moment - is thoroughly individual and dependent on many factors, including one's family life, social class, education, age, etc. Thus, the best any one member of a group can do is lift up his/her/their particular voice -- which can add to our overall understanding of that group but certainly can't speak for all. Indeed, to presume that a so-called "brown" author can represent all "brown" people, or that a trans author can represent all trans people, or that a gay author can represent all gay people is to repeat the mistakes of yesterday's bigots. Members of groups are not interchangeable.

Secondly, apparent insiders are not necessarily more accurate in their depictions than apparent outsiders. For example, who is more likely to be knowledgeable about Arab culture: a third-generation Arab-American who occasionally visits his extended family in the Middle East but is otherwise thoroughly assimilated into American life, or a white scholar of Middle Eastern history who spent his childhood in Saudi Arabia? According to the D-I-E ideologues, the first writer is the obvious choice. But that's ridiculous. Based on my own observations, if the third-generation Arab-American is college-educated, middle class, and a millennial/Zoomer, the probability approaches 1 that he will be desperate to Disney-fy the culture to which he has, at best, a tenuous connection, attributing to that culture notions that will strike present-day Arabs as utterly foreign.

Third, the #OwnVoices approach unavoidably de-emphasizes merit. Idiots are going to misunderstand this, so let me be clear: I'm not saying people from "marginalized" groups are incapable of making quality art. That's obviously not the case. But "marginalized" groups, by definition, are smaller talent pools; thus, if you establish the de facto quotas SJW's demand, you will be forced, by the laws of mathematics, to elevate less qualified creators to stay in compliance. (See also: the cross-group score gaps that crop up among students admitted to elite schools.) I'm sorry, but we absolutely cannot lie about this: writers with resumes thin enough to give a paper cut to an electron (thanks, Zack!) are right now being promoted way above their current ability level because, quite frankly, companies are desperate. They want to find, say, that magical "non-binary creator of color (pronouns: they/them)" so they can finally quell their radical critics -- and if they have to rush such a creator into the production chain, then so be it. Again: I'm certain there are "non-binary creators of color" who have talent and could be excellent, salable writers and artists -- but only if they're required to go through the exact same training/development process as everyone else (i.e., years and years of failure, rejection, and taking whatever BS job you can get to keep the lights on). Condescending shortcuts serve no one -- least of all the creators themselves.

Lastly, true artists don't want to be pigeonholed. I've heard the same thing time and time again from dissident "marginalized" creators: they feel like they're being shoved into a diversity ghetto, and they're all getting sick of it. And personally, I think they're 100% correct to be annoyed. It's a huge insult to, for instance, relegate Christopher Priest to your black characters after he's successfully written (and edited) books featuring white characters. I bet if I actually did open that publishing company I jokingly proposed the other day, I'd be flooded with submits from minority authors desperate to explore Russian folklore (or something similarly "white") -- because as it turns out, these people are human beings who, like other human beings, hate being controlled.

No: stop this artistic segregation nonsense. Embrace the cause of freedom, individualism and comity instead.