I have always considered myself an ally, though I would never have used that term. I didn’t know that term. I knew people. Different colors of wonderful people. I liked them. They liked me. How utterly clueless of me. I realized how clueless reading along on various blogs about RaceFail 09, and before, and after. Finding good posts and, hopefully, not making an ass of myself in comments. I had other ways to make an ass of myself, I guess. (click to read more… a.k.a. my ass, let me show you it.)

In 2007, I created artwork for a book cover featuring an African American protagonist. She’s an artist who experiments with using different styles and mediums in one canvas. I focussed on that idea, the different styles and mediums.

There were previous pieces of art that were liked but, for whatever reason, didn’t pass muster as a cover. I started over, thinking about what a canvas of hers might look like, and I produced this for the cover.

It was intended to demonstrate a piece of art, not the protagonist. The person on the cover is static, collaged to death…and blue-eyed. Unfortunately, when there’s a female on the cover that specifically doesn’t show an African American woman when a WOC is the protagonist, that’s me missing an opportunity NOT to erase someone. That’s me erasing someone. Inadvertent. Unintentional. Without malice aforethought. An embarrassing example of well-meaning what-not-to-do.

Year 2009. I needed a cover for a collection of short stories about a young girl only described physically as having dark, curly hair, who is menaced by an unreal monster. I intended to put the monster on the cover, but then I started thinking about what that monster would look like.And I remembered the discussions I’d read about orcs and other fantasy monsters whose physical descriptions were based on a particular race.

The monster’s not a particular color, grey, I think, in the book, but it’s seen in the dark; it’s alien; it’s disturbing in its not-quite-humanity. It made me think of the madness of Gollum.  But my thinking… dark, alien, disturbing… made me wonder if I could depict this monster without invoking even a shadow of the orc.  I’d wanted luminous eyes and a yearning expression, and so, when I stopped and rethought things, I realized that my first, barely begun attempt might be tweaked a different way. I started over again. I went with the luminous eyes, but I made the cover depict the protagonist instead. I didn’t think, again, of the color of the protagonist once I’d decided not to actively make a monster who might be seen as othered by race.  I just tried to make a cover that felt right. The author is very happy with it. I am too, but I wish it had been more actively intentioned.

DP publishes books by and/or about POC. We really want those books, we want perspectives different from the “default white male gaze”.  I hope we’ll continue to receive submissions of those books so that next time I can pay attention and actually do something right deliberately.

I think the clueless white ally could start there. I always want to do the right thing. I just haven’t always looked for the right way to do it. Been deliberate in my intentions, as it were. So that’s my goal, to be deliberate. To learn to more easily and naturally consider my actions from some other point of view than my own.