Black Fan, White Fandom - CONvergence 2020
Black Fan, White Fandom: What it was like in the days before representation was as prominent, even though we have a long way to go. Panelists: Taylor Aaron Cisco, Briana Lawrence, Justin Edward Grays. Liaison: Shannan Paul
Although COVID-19 has postponed CONvergence: The Stuff of Legends to 2021, we still were able to move forward with having an online convention. CONvergence Online was a free to attend event where we can digitally gather and enjoy the convention weekend; we were still able to hold room parties and participate in panels over Zoom. You can listen to or download an audio version of the panel here, or watch on the CONvergence YouTube channel.
As I do on all panels that I am on, I gave my gender identity [Note 1] and pronouns [Note 2] during my introduction - I believe that it is important for people to give their pronouns to help normalize the act of telling others our pronouns and respecting people’s gender identities. As pronouns are words that we use to replace names (she/him/theirs), it is important to use what most accurately represents the people to whom we are referring. If you don’t know someone’s pronouns, please ask them.
Brianna Lawrence’s reading can be found here.
Blerd: Portmanteau of “Black Nerd”. The word seems to have been popularized in the early 2000s.
I mention Commodore Stone from the Star Trek episode “Court Martial” - he was played by Percy Rodriguez, a Canadian actor of Afro-Portuguese descent. He is the first Black actor to play a flag officer in Star Trek, as well as the first person to portray a flag officer in Star Trek. I mention him and more of my experiences in my post “On Tokenism”.
The lead character in Star Trek: Lower Decks that Taylor is referring to is Ensign Beckett Mariner, voiced by Tawny Newsome. She is also a co-presenter of the podcast “Yo, Is This Racist?” and was a main character on Space Force [Note 3].
My dislike for the JJ-Trek cannot be overstated. I talk more about my feelings on the portrayal of Lieutenant Uhura in my baccalaureate capstone paper Science Fiction, Gender, and Race: How Star Trek Has Failed to Live Up to its Progressive Ideals.
Briana talks about how John Boyega is just done after his being cast as Finn in the Star Wars sequel trilogy. Some articles came out today about his experiences:
GQ: John Boyega: 'I’m the only cast member whose experience of Star Wars was based on their race'
Yahoo: 'Star Wars' star John Boyega says Disney used his race to market the movies then sidelined him
Variety: John Boyega Reveals ‘Star Wars’ Race Experience in Explosive Interview
We were asked: “what black creator and/or character should the nerd community be more aware of?” Answers included:
Watchmen (I have written about a number of the episodes - you can find them here)
One of the attendees in the chat suggested Mind’s Eye Comics
There are many reasons why African Americans are underrepresented in reporting mental illnesses and receiving mental health treatments - some of it is a culture-specific stigma that reduces our willingness to seek mental health services, some of it is because high quality mental health care services are simply not accessible, some of it is due to racism and discrimination. These disparities are quite common in mental health. One way to help reduce the stigma is to portray characters who deal with mental health issues in healthy ways.
Notes:
I identify as graygender - that is, I identify outside the gender binary and feel generally ambivalent about my gender identity. I really am comfortable with any pronoun that is used for me (except for “it”) - however, I very much enjoy it when people change up what pronouns they use for me.
The third-person pronouns that I have been using most often are xe (subject), xem (object), xyrs (possessive), xyrself/xemself (reflexive), xyr (pronominal).
Though season 1 of Space Force ended on a cliffhanger, season 2 has yet to be confirmed.
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