Welcome to part three of my mini-series on Helen Keller. I took a Disability in Literature class in Spring 2022 that focused heavily on her legacy. In this class I’ve learned that the idea we have of who Helen Keller was is not entirely accurate. A lot of people either see her only as the seven year old at the water pump, a scene made famous by the film The Miracle Worker. Or, they see her as this elderly woman who could do no wrong and only wanted to help others, that is the image the American Foundation for the Blind and other similar charities and organizations popularized.
In this post I’m going to be discussing some of the controversies surrounding Keller–because there are a lot. Some of these are well known and publicized, and others have been brushed under the rug.
It is important to discuss the controversies around Helen Keller, particularly how internalized ableism can impact a person and disabled communities. I wanted to share this video by Deaf and disabled creator, Jessica Kellgren-Fozard, in which she discusses the topic of internalized audism and eugenics from a Deaf perspective. I tried searching for things that discussed her privilege more in depth and found this that includes the following:
“Helen Keller was a socialist who believed she was able to overcome many of the difficulties in her life because of her class privilege – a privilege not shared by most of her blind or deaf contemporaries. “I owed my success partly to the advantages of my birth and environment,” she said. ” I have learned that the power to rise is not within the reach of everyone.”
I wonder if the other part includes people like Anne Sullivan, part of the community who helped her, which was, in the end, afforded to her through class and white privilege because her family was able to afford to find and pay Sullivan in the first place.
Prison labor is a problem we need to address soon.
Convicts in prison should have to work like the rest of us.
You mean like slavery?
No, we’re giving them 3 meals and a bed, at our expense, while they just sit around and watch TV. They should have to work!
Right. Like slavery.
It’s not like slavery!
Can they leave?
No.
Can they refuse work?
No.
So how exactly isn’t this slavery?
We DO pay them!
Do we pay in accordance with labor laws?
No. We pay them between 33 cents and $1.41/hour with a maximum daily wage below $5, then take up to half of that as room&board fees and victim compensation.
Below URL image reads “fun bonus fact: enough of our labor market currently relies on labor at these depressed rates, that it has a substantial downward pressure on both wages and job availability in low-skilled sectors. Immigrants aren’t taking your jobs. Slavery is.
End description.
I’d also like to add it’s not just private prisons. It’s also private detention centers where ICE keeps the immigrants.
-fae
The constitution even acknowledges that it’s still slavery
a hefty chunk of items with that ‘made in america’ sticker are in fact made by prison labor
at the very least anything that is a product of prison labor should be required to have a similar sticker to inform consumers they are taking part of this system, which is difficult to track because prison made manufactured goods include almost the entire uniform of a US soldier, road construction in most southern states, and agricultural goods sold in most stores
this…. looks familliar
Prison is just covert slavery and that’s why they wanna keep so many black people in there for the smallest offences.
This is insane
(Just to clarify, I’m not saying you’re wrong. I’m just giving you more information because you’re right, and I like your blog, and I want you to have sources in case you need them.)
It’s not even covert. It’s blatant and overt. It’s even called slavery in the constitution.
“Slavery is illegal except as punishment for a crime.”
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
People just don’t care because they think it’s all murderers and rapists, despite the fact that the number of violent criminals in jail is so small it might as well be negligible.
As of September 30, 2009 in federal prisons, 7.9% of sentenced prisoners were incarcerated for violent crimes,[39] while at year end 2008 of sentenced prisoners in state prisons, 52.4% had been jailed for violent crimes.[39] In 2002 (latest available data by type of offense), 21.6% of convicted inmates in jails were in prison for violent crimes. Among unconvicted inmates in jails in 2002, 34% had a violent offense as the most serious charge. 41% percent of convicted and unconvicted jail inmates in 2002 had a current or prior violent offense; 46% were nonviolent recidivists.[46]
It’s literally slavery, just dumbass racists and capitalists don’t care enough to figure out why we’re calling it that.
Apologies in advance if this comes off as a really navel-gazy question, I’m genuinely not sure if I should start writing this book. I’m a white woman writing paranormal fiction set in late Victorian England. The male lead is a young Black gentleman scholar. His role is to solve the mystery and be the ‘voice of reason’, and his race doesn’t come into play at all in the main plot, and only a little in his sub-plot romance with the (white) female lead. Even there, it’s not a major obstacle, and their relationship will proceed smoothly and happily. Being Black in England during that time, he has been exposed to racism and prejudice which has affected his character in various ways, but while this will be touched on as part of his general background, but won’t be a theme. The book is set in a remote location and he socially outranks everyone he meets there, except the female lead, who is his social equal. Everyone takes his position of ‘gentleman’ at face value and treats him accordingly, which he accepts from them as a matter of course as his due. There is no slavery in his or his family’s backgrounds. His grandparents were well-to-do in their countries of origin, and decided to move to England to be well-to-do here because it suited them to do so (this part is based on research and I believe that the family history I have constructed is historically plausible).
The reason I am writing is that I keep getting stuck on the idea that the whole thing falls into the ‘nobody asked for this’ category. I’ve gone over my plans and character concepts in some detail with a sensitivity reader, who came back with the verdict that the character/story was ‘perfectly appropriate’ for me to write. If I do write it, I will obviously continue to work with them, but right now I’m really stuck on the thought that just because it’s technically okay for me to write the character, doesn’t mean anybody actually wants to read it. I mean, there’s literally no reason for the character to be Black, other than that he is. I can’t justify it, I am not trying to ‘say’ anything by or about it. He came about because I had the whole rest of the story and characters ready to go, but just couldn’t 'get’ the male lead, who I assumed at the time to be white. Then I saw something about trying out characters as other races or genders, and suddenly there he was, fully formed.
To be completely honest, if I’m wandering around a bookshop and see a new historical novel with Black leads, the first thing I look at is the author page. So far (in my actual experience of walking around bookshops), the authors have always been Black themselves, at which point I get excited and usually buy the book*. Honestly, if I saw a smiling white lady who looked like me on the back page, I would almost certainly go 'pfft, what does she know/who does she think she is’ and put it back down, which is pretty much the same reaction I have when I think about this prospective book of my own. On the other hand, I’m super attached to this character now and really want to write him!
*Also, I note that the characters in those books usually (always, in my actual physical 'walking around bookshops’ experience) have their roots in slavery one way or another, and now I feel weird that mine doesn’t, like I’m ignoring something I shouldn’t be?
Write the story!
Given the popularity of books and shows likeBridgerton, there is clearly an audience for it. I’ve also heard of a similar book and show release called Mr. Malcolm’s List.
Black characters in history don’t need an excuse to exist. Unfortunately, the average reader may call for an explanation, especially if the character is not a slave or servant. For this reason, it’s helpful to give them a background that “explains the why.” No need to dwell on it, but you can just “place it there.” without making a big fuss on their existence. The background you depicted, for example, is enough.
This is to get it out of the way due to the racial bias-embedded questioning that suspends some readers’ belief (bleh). It’s too bad, but reality at the moment.
If Jane Austen could write a Black woman heiress in 1817, why can’t authors do this today without folks bumbling and mumbling about “historical accuracy”?
Georgiana Lambe, Black West Indian heiress in Jane Austin’s unfinished novel turned television series, Sandition
For similar reasons, it’s good to describe characters physically and to do it early, as characters that are not described are often defaulted to being white.
All that being said:
Thisdoes not mean you need to give in to giving them a slavery-based history. That’s where accommodations for reader bias ends. We. do. not. always. gotta be slaves! Please explore the rich and varied history of the African diaspora. Black history doesn’t need to begin or end with slavery. These are important stories and important history, but not the only, single story, not the only, single history.
Romance
Some things to keep in mind: Black men / white women relationships shouldn’t have to be the default.
From a representation standpoint, there’s a lack of:
Black men in (healthy, equal) relationships with dark skinned women, particularly Black women
Black women in (healthy, equal) relationships with any race (Black, interracial or no)
Other Black, Indigenous, People of Color in historical stories and romances overall
Including some more of those groups could be a great idea. You could always give your character a sister, brother, cousins, BIPOC friends, etc.
As for you being a white author
This puts you under higher scrutiny of getting things right. You may also have people who will question and ignore the book for that reason alone. I’m personally not one of those people, and I know a lot of other people just want a good story that is inclusive and well-written. Remain open to constructive criticism and feedback, but do not feel as if you’re not “allowed” to write BIPOC protagonists and love interests. Build it, and they will come!
Still, whenever you get a chance, please do boost and support your fellow Authors of Color, as their stories are often overlooked by publishers in favor of those by white authors.
~Mod Colette
I am going to add in that, for every popular genre of book, there are people who want to see themselves in it. For some people, this is very easy; for others, it can be like finding hay in a needlestack. I personally am very in favor of adding more hay to the pile, which it sounds like you aim to do.
did you guys know that the robot genre of science fiction sprung up as a critique of the way in which industrialization reduced workers to taking up monotonous, unskilled factory jobs in order to earn profit, jobs which in turn alienated them from their own humanity? did you know that the theory of the alienation of the self under capitalistic mode of production is a core principle of marxism? did you know that robot itself comes from a czech playwright who, for a science fiction play, coined the word as a derivative of the czech term robota, meaning forced labor? did you know that the robot genre is rooted in anti-capitalist sentiment?
Well, yeah, amongst other things.
But then, robots are kind of my thing.
Although Marx’s theory of alienation, self v other, and sublimation of the other through labour is actually derived from Hegel’s Master/Slave dialectic, which is a theory of the interdependency of self-conscious beings, which he casts in a struggle for dominance that can never be resolved as each depends on and desires to obliterate the other. THIS IS A GROSS SIMPLIFICATION (and yes, it really is called that, I don’t know what to tell you) but the point is that trying to reduce a genre to any one philosophical idea is kind of a mistake, and relying on etymology can get you involved in a can of worms.
Like, the Nazis really liked Hegel, which is not to say that Hegel would have agreed with the Nazies - I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t, but he was kind of a radical writing in a time of heavy censorship and it’s kind of hard to say exactly what he was getting at half the time - but the robot genre is no more inherently Marxist than it is inherently Fascist. Can it be used to support that? Sure. There’s some very Marxist robot fiction out there. There’s also some really dodgy robot fiction too. And as long time readers will know, The first two Terminator movies are woven with existentialism and nigh-on quote Sartre in places.
I say this not to harsh on OP, but more because I’ve seen people react strongly and judgementally about robot fiction increasing over the last few years, projecting belief systems, prejudices, and philosophies onto the genre as a whole, and it’s… a problem.
Robot fiction is not inherently pro-enslavement and people are often unpacking the power structures of this world, rather than living out enslavement fantasies, when they write it.
Robot fiction isn’t fundamentally sexist just because a bunch of Hollywood types who make sexist things in every genre have made some creepy movies about robot women being exploited.
But nor is robot fiction inherently Marxist or existentialist or queer or about freedom of religion just because some robot fiction is about these things and the genre (like most science fiction) does lend it well towards exploration of the self and encounters with the other.
Genres aren’t about anything. They’re kinds into which stories can be fitted. STORIES are about many things, and despite what you’ve heard in writing class, they’re rarely about just one thing at a time, and different stories can be about completely opposed things.
don’t know if you guys saw this from a couple weeks ago but since there are a couple posts doing the rounds re: ofmd and slaveowning this is worth a read
apparently paywalled so here are some screenshots (alt text is attached)
