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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]On racism: I don't think it is accurate to say that Dorland experienced racism here. If you define racism as the combination of institutional power with bigoted beliefs based on race to harm, regardless of whether you believe white people can experience racism, I don't think Dorland experienced it. Now, I think there is possibly an interesting theoretical question about Gay and Ng and their use of their power, because they do have significant power and Gay at least seems to be open about displaying bigotry towards white women in particular (not men, which is another twist), but I don't see any real evidence of racism against Dawn in this scenario. In other words, I reject the theoretical narrative that POC cannot be racist, because POC with institutional power and bigoted beliefs that they act on to harm members of one race based on that power falls into the definition of racism, to my mind. However, because of the racist structure of white supremacy, I think racism against whites happens far less frequently. I'm not saying it can't happen, because I do think that POCs with institutional power can and do use race in bigoted ways, but that it happens much less often because of the larger and more overwhelming structures of white supremacy.

What happened in this situation instead is a grossly cynical misappropriation of the language of anti-racism to justify deeply classist and sexist behavior. Keep in mind that some of the worst actors here are white. Castellani, Murphy, Hennick, Scharer, Marzano-Lesnevich, most of the other Chunky Monkeys, and later Kolker and Rosner: they are all white. In fact, although Ng, Larson, and (later) Gay are POC, if you lay what happened to Dorland solely at their feet, that itself is a racist act, because some of the worst and most toxic people in this were white. Making what happened to Dorland into a racist act excuses the terrible behavior of the white people involved.

I've seen commentary elsewhere and there was some earlier in this thread about how a lot of contemporary DEI discourse is actually used in the service of preventing the solidarity of working class members. I think that's what is happening here: in-group members with significant power (Grub Street executives, literary establishment figures like Rosner, blue check authors like Gay, etc.) are weaponizing the language of anti-racism in the service of keeping a lower-class member from accessing power. Dorland's race in this view is just a mechanism for UMC and UC people with power to exercise deep classism. [/quote]
Brava. Agree on all points. [/quote]

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