
White guy named Michael couldn’t get a poem published so he became Yi-Fen Chou - xacaxulu
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/09/08/a-white-guy-named-michael-couldnt-get-his-poem-published-then-he-became-yi-fen-chou/
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jawns
"He sort of implies that minorities are published because we're minorities,
not because of our work. That's just insulting."

What Prof. Chang means by this is that she believes minorities are published
because of the quality of their work, and anyone who suggests that they're
published simply because they're minorities is wrong and motivated by a belief
that minorities' work does not stand on its own merits, which would indeed be
insulting.

If this white guy announced, "I'm going to use a Chinese-sounding pen name
because I think it'll make my poems more likely to be published," then yeah, I
think a case could be made that it's insulting, because he would be
_presuming_ that minorities' work does not stand on its own merits.

But in this case, the white guy did not make a racist statement. What he did
was demonstrate that in at least one case, the Chinese-sounding name _did_
influence whether his poems were published.

So, if it's insulting, it's insulting not because of what this man said or
did. Rather, it's insulting on the part of the publications, who _did_ judge
the poems on something other than their merits.

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Asbostos
Strangely one of the critics considered it wrong that a member of a
"traditionally privileged" class pretended to be a member of a less favored
class. That despite the fact that Michael's work was consistently rejected
under his own name. Apparently in poetry, Chinese is a privileged class and
white Americans suffer discrimination yet people believe it's the other way
around.

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snarfy
I'm not sure why they are calling him racist - he's not the one judging poems
based on author name. The name is not relevant to the content.

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duncan_bayne
Because, and I wish I were making this up, calling establishment figures on
racism is itself considered racist if the racism being called out favours
certain groups.

It'd be A-OK if a black person did the same thing, pretending to be white, but
flip the races and the person exposing the racism is pilloried for being a
racist.

And, not only did he call them on it, he did it in a very public fashion, and
in a manner to which the only real rejoinder is a smear campaign against him.

~~~
ubertaco
>And, not only did he call them on it, he did it in a very public fashion, and
in a manner to which the only real rejoinder is a smear campaign against him.

Effectively, "nuh-uh! Uhh...YOU'RE racist!"

~~~
duncan_bayne
Yes.

It might make more sense, actually, if you think of 'racism' as being devoid
of any meaning other than an expression of political opprobrium.

It only becomes confusing if you think of racism as actually meaning what it's
supposed to mean: discrimination on the basis of race alone.

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ap22213
This isn't so surprising. Quite a few years ago (when I was doing art
installations) I met a couple people (Americans) who had changed their names
and accents to sound German or Nordic so that they'd be taken more seriously
(and sell more gallery art). Apparently, this had worked for them.

But, is it all so different from my Chinese co-worker who refers to himself by
his American name? Or, perhaps even the chain Häagen-Dazs that wanted to be
considered as an exotic ice cream maker to the average American?

Art is (and has always been) only what the market will bare.

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dools
Donna Chang?
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsKpShq2X6s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsKpShq2X6s)

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Spooky23
Trying to grok the criticism.

So English professors are racist, so using a ethic name as a pen name is more
racist?

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Asbostos
Their judgement has to be appear consistent with all the famous writers who
have done similar things before. So it's more specific than that. A woman can
pretend to be a man, and a black can pretend to be a white but a white can't
pretend to be a Chinese.

Yep, weird mess of racism on all sides.

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gboudrias
Can't tell if this is an abstract or the full thing, but here's what the poem
looks like at least:
[https://muse.jhu.edu/login?auth=0&type=summary&url=/journals...](https://muse.jhu.edu/login?auth=0&type=summary&url=/journals/prairie_schooner/v088/88.3.chou.pdf)

This is pretty interesting. It seems obvious to me though, that one's identity
is hugely important in the meaning of any creative endeavor. However it seems
equally obvious that a name does not necessarily imply any specific identity!

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norea-armozel
I'll never understand why names matter in poetry or fiction writing. Maybe
it's just me but I usually buy a book or read a poem more on the title than
the name of its author.

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generic_user
When you set policy to favor certain genders or races instead of meritocratic
ability you open the door for people to cheat the system and deny hardworking
talented people who don't fit into your favored groups. Chinese Americans have
parity or higher average income, college graduation rate, etc than European
Americans for some time.Clearly there was some selection criteria to favor
certain groups which outweighed merit in this case.

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glomph
Of course this is considered big news. However the statistically measured
significant bias against marginalised groups isn't even mentioned in the
story.

 __One __white man does better under a different name and that is enough for a
whole article in the Washington Post. The article doesn 't even mention the
wider context of studies on implicit bias / blind reviews and so on.

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JoeAltmaier
Its just a puff piece. Maybe folks can use it to find an ecosystem where they
can win for once!

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Tycho
Terrible victim blaming from the poetry community here.

