Posted by Rodger Whitlock on February 09, 1999 at 10:57:41:
In Reply to: Why I Think Farnham's Freehold Is Racist posted by Terry on February 08, 1999 at 14:32:09:
> Vance, on the other hand, skates close to racism in _The Grey
> Prince_ which at least abstracts the problem to another planet
> and another society. If the prince were black and the country
> were South Africa, say, I'd lay the charge on Vance as well.
> Vance has always had a Eurocentric viewpoint which is fine by
> me and especially fine when the villains are Dirdir or other
> alien races. When villains become humans of a different racial
> type (but not black) I'm made uneasy by that narrow distinction,
> but can give credit to a fine author of an earlier sensibility.
> I'm trying to remember black people in Vance and can come up
> with only a couple - believe in Slaves of the Klau there's a
> black jazz band (here's what saves Vance from stepping over
> the line I think, his obvious love of jazz that is rooted in
> the black soul/experience). Also believe that in Take My Face
> there is a visit to a Bohemian neighborhood in San Francisco
> with black jazz musicians there. Anyone care to add to this
> list of black people in Vance?
Vance racist? Not in my eyes. I've long been entranced by Vance's
dazzling invocations of widely variant cultures, for example those
in Planet of Adventure. It's notable that he rarely holds even the
most outrageous lifestyles up to ridicule, and then only when he's
deliberately being funny, as in a few places in the various Dying
Earth titles.
Consider the Khors (in The Pnume) who lead austere sexless lives
by day and don masks and different, highly eroticized, personas by
night. Any mockery there?
And what about the Sarkovy venefices and their culture based on
poisons (in the Demon Princes series)?
Or turning specifically to the issue of skin color: what about the
Grays or the Caths (golden skin). The list could be extended
indefinitely. Asking specifically after folks with black skins
is a rather blinkered view, IMHO. -Race-, in Vance, is pretty much
a non-issue. It's -cultural- issues that fascinate him.
(Let me mention, for the benefit of those who haven't paid close
attention that Ursula LeGuin's Wizard of Earthsea features a
protagonist with a coal-black skin.)
Perhaps I've said so before, but some of Vance's imaginary places
remind me of nothing so much as accounts of the borderlands between
China and Tibet in the good old days, where peoples of many
different races and cultures lived side by side, mingling
higgledy-piggledy. Not in a state of blissful tolerance of course;
Vance makes no bones about the mutual detestation some of his
peoples hold for others, and in that is far more realistic
than some goody-two-shoes, let's-all-be-pals approach.