#daily racism

[adelacreations]

I don't think people understand just how...exhausting it is living as a black person. Like I can't hide it. At all, it's very visible on my skin, my culture, etc

I should be used to it. I should be fucking used to the slurs...but nope. Nothing throws you for a loop than your co-worker just calling you "monkey girl" cause I didn't move down a bench fast enough

I don't think I can like describe how numb I feel but...I keep going. What else can I fucking do

But man...don't you love being casually dehumanized?

[dizzyhslightlyvoided]

The perfect neat summary of racism in Dracula is the fact that Mina described the Romanians as "superstitious" for thinking she was a vampire, when she was that very minute visibly turning into a vampire, whilst on a journey to slay the vampire who caused her to start turning into a vampire, for reasons which explicitly included the hope that she would stop turning into a vampire.

Like every time a character from Romania shows up, they are 1. worried about vampires, 2. absolutely correct every single time, and 3. ignored, overruled, and/or written off as "superstitious" by the English characters, even in cases like Mina's where the concern about vampires was obviously correct.

[decolonize-the-left]

(to preface this, i am white. figured i should make that known off the bat) i wanted to come bounce an idea off of you that i've been rolling around in my head for a bit. i have this pet theory that, for the population ill call here "white progressive queers who know very little about poc and racism", a large underpinning of this group's interaction with poc is a Fear of Fucking Up and more generally, moral purity thought. they (maybe even "we"- im still hopefully learning myself) get so paralyzed by this idea and line of thinking that goes something like this: "1) since i know nothing about poc & racism, then 2) clearly in discussions about these topics, i will fuck up and say something wrong or perhaps even Bigoted, which if i did 3) makes me an Irreparable Ontologically Evil Racist, hence 4) i should just be quiet and never ask questions/speak on these topics" which then results in said White Progressive Queer and those around them never learning. i wanted to know what you think abt this and tell me if im on the mark or not

also thank u for the work u do on this blog, ive found so many helpful resources through you

You're right. In my experience that's exactly how it is.

I want to add tho: yes they're uncomfortable that they might fuck up and be considered racists sure, but a huge part of that stems from the massive inability to place the discomfort where it belongs. Which is with their own guilt.

Instead they blame the conversations for making them uncomfortable.

And let's take some worthy notes here: this is not how white people feel all the time. Because white people are not uncomfortable making these fuck ups in front of other white people.

So it's not that the conversation is uncomfortable. They are made uncomfortable. And they are made uncomfortable because even when discussing anti-racism they step into the role of oppressor (the little fuck ups or accidentally bigoted comments) so naturally and God forbid other (not white) people can See how easy it is.

My advice for white people that are like this (that nobody asked for) is

Your fuckups do not define you but how you react to them does

Listen, respect, learn

That's it. That's the whole list. Say something bad? Apologize, but don't over-explain yourself. Ask how to fix it. Google how you fucked up so you understand why it wasn't okay. Google again to get idea of how your fuck up hurts people. Google some more to make sure you don't do it again. Go to some safe space and ask some clarifying questions. Listen, respect, learn.

Maybe the people you fucked up with don't forgive you and that's okay, they don't have to. But YOU won't ever make anyone feel bad or less than in the same way ever again and that's what matters.

Having one less person making racist comments matters even if it's a struggle for that person to get to that point.

I need y'all to understand that none of you are gonna just wake up being suddenly perfect anti-racist allies. And we will literally never ever have allies like that if y'all refuse to even sit with your own discomfort.

•°•°•

This weird morality issue white people have over looking racist is also just such a non-problem. Like if y'all want a PoC perspective: white people are already being racist ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯ ....we Already see y'all as racists. And also I'm gonna experience racism anyway so I'd rather it be because someone was just being ignorant on the path to anti-racism.

Y'all are so worried about how shit Looks that you can't be bothered how really things are? Like you're so afraid of looking racist you'd allow yourselves to continue being actually ignorant and casually racist. And to avoid what? Being uncomfortable for a minute? Being called-out? A mean comment?

We are trying to stop hate crimes and genocide. Like that's what we are dealing with okay. Accountability for your actions is an acquired taste but I think y'all can handle some discomfort considering.

[atundratoadstool]

Stoker took the assertion that Romani attach themselves to local nobleman (and could functionally serve as a "parcels-delivery company") from Andrew Crosse's Round About the Carpathians. What neither Stoker nor Crosse delve into though is that the reason Romani were ostensibly settling around local Magyar authority figures probably had to do with over a century of forced settlement/assimilation policies in Hungary (and as a slight reminder, during Dracula, Transylvania is still part of Austria-Hungary and not yet part of Romania).

After over a hundred years of being forced by various 18th century decrees to abandon one's language and numerous means of transit/moving (with things like owning horses not for sale and setting up encampments being restricted), it might seem pretty sensible to--you know--affiliate oneself with settled people in power. Basically, the Romani moved from being perceived as antisocial vagabonds to being perceived as sycophantic hangers on... which moves them right from being fodder for traditional racist fictional depictions of colorful/exotic wanderers to being fodder for racist fictional depictions of villainous henchmen.

[catsvrsdogscatswin]

Thanks to my post about the 28th, it’s come to my attention that a significant portion of humanity don’t read history books for fun, so here’s a few broad strokes of what, exactly, is going on with the cultural connotations of race within Dracula, as understood by an American:

European racism of the day was predominantly based on cultural ethnicity rather than skin color, and one of the main sliding scales (other than how old and prestigious the ancestry was) was how far west you were on the Eurasian continent. The further east you went, the less “civilized” things became, until you hit Asia and Oceania and just became inundated with absolutely rancid racist caricatures. Stuff from the “Orient” was there for exotic/shiny toys and moral lessons about how much better the West was, and not much else, so you can imagine what depictions of actual Asian people thus became.

(We’re faced with this east vs. west scale in Jonathan’s very first entry: Budapest straddles the line between the “civilized” western part of Europe and the “uncivilized,” opulent, and exotic world of eastern Europe. Jon is going from the known and familiar city into the mysterious, unfamiliar wilderness, an extremely common Gothic horror archetype.)

Both the fear of the unknown and the exoticizing/othering of Eastern Europe play heavily into Dracula’s themes, with the sexually predatory Count Dracula coming to England to do all sorts of unspeakable sordid things to innocent English women. (Not exactly Stoker’s finest hour, but this was a typical attitude of the day.)

Following that, it was also thought at the time that one’s moral character was essentially genetic. Certain people of certain races were predisposed to be “better” or “worse,” and your own moral character was also influenced by your parents’ status in society and behavior. A prostitute mother or a criminal father meant you would inherit their dubious moral quality, which is partially where “this person has bad blood” comes from. Bad blood is literally the negative morality passed onto you from your parents: you’ve inherited the bad qualities carried in their blood.

Linking back to the east-west thing, the further east you go -you’ve guessed it- the worse this supposed ancestral bad blood gets. People of “lesser” races included the Romani, Jews, Slovaks (and sometimes the Russians), and they were just supposed to be, like, naturally inclined to be bad. They were Programmed For Crime from the moment they were born, so you didn’t need to explain why such a character was evil when they showed up in your novel: I mean, they’re [INSERT RACE], aren’t they? It’s in the blood. No explanation needed. Everybody knows that. 

The assumption of the time was that such people were literally born bad, which of course naturally justified how they were treated. When they showed up on a page, you were supposed to distrust them on sight. 

Occasionally, low-class people were also treated as a race all their own, like poverty was some kind of moral failing. After all, the older, more prestigious, and wealthier your family was, the better their inherent moral quality, so poor people are obviously uncouth and have bad blood, right? 

(It’s an extremely stupid circular way of thinking, but that’s bigotry for ya.)

Dracula is a nobleman with old lineage, but he’s also steeped in the flavor of Eastern Europe: “barbaric” and proud, yet initially treating Jonathan with extreme courtesy; threateningly exotic and yet also familiar with English customs. As we go through the book, you’ll see that he almost exclusively hires Romani, Jewish, or extremely poor for his henchmen: he’s a force of evil that uses other “evil” tools, who bend easier to his will than “normal” people of “proper” races. 

(By all means, please pause here a moment to scrub yourself of the nauseating feeling that such a bullshit attitude evokes.)

In any case, Dracula himself is a pretty good example of all these racial ideas converging, which was also why he made such an effective monster to the Victorians: there’s just enough that’s familiar and proper in him that they couldn’t quite properly Other him, which links back to the transformative horror of vampirism turning something formerly good into something very very bad, which with their worldview of “you are born with this moral code because of racial predisposition and lineage” is just shocking. You mean this Eastern European man can infect our formerly good and pure citizens and make them act his way, just by an act of force? Uh-oh.

Anyways TLDR Dracula is a book steeped in the cultural traditions and expectations of the day which means that it’s lovely horror but also an absolute crock of shit at times due to racism (and several other -isms, which I will not cover here because I am trying not to make this an essay). 

[immediatebreakfast]

I have seen a few posts about how Van Helsing and Dracula are positioned as foils between eachother in the narrative by how their introductions, and history with a younger male character (Jack and Jonathan) are seen in the context of the text. I love them, and I do want to add another theme that I noticed.

Both Van Helsing and Dracula are the archetype of the Foreigner within the english characters that we have known. The main difference in how these older men are received is based on not only the classical xenophobia argument, but also their roles as destroyer/savior in the eyes of the narrative.

Count Dracula is the "Bad" Foreigner, the one that secretly comes with the intentions of invading England with brute strenght while dragging all of the "Old" world on his shoulders. In here Dracula is both the watsonian evil warlord vampire that kills innocent people because he enjoys their suffering, and the doylist stereotype of all of Victorian England's xenophobic anxieties over other cultures that they thought had the power to destroy their lives.

Van Helsing on the other hand is the "Good" Foreigner in a subtle contrast. This one doesn't have to use a plan to secretly come to England, he is invited by a person that knows him. He does come from the "Old" world, but the narrative establishes that he is a man of scientific knowledge. Here Van Helsing is the watsonian wise old professor who comes with a vast sea of knowledge with the intentions of helping Lucy, and the doylist "acceptable" type of foreigner that comes to help the characters without having any intentions of threatening the established culture.

[kaiserin-erzsebet]

Also I think it should be obvious to most people, but it is worth saying explicitly:

This is some of the most blatant period typical racism in the book (in the sense that it shows the age of the book).

Bram Stoker's characterization of Roma people as untrustworthy, lawless, superstitious people who willingly serve evil is deeply racist and damaging.

That is the kind of rhetoric that continues to negatively impact Roma people, and it is not just a thing of the past.

[odinsblog]

FYI, there are no good guys here. Ben Shapiro is an Islamophobic, misogynistic, anti-Black racist. And Candace Owens is an antisemitic, Islamophobic, misogynistic, anti-Black racist. They both suck.

[atagotiak]

I understand why sometimes when characters in Dracula say something bigoted it’s dismissed as Stoker making them OOC to promote his opinions. And it does sometimes read like him soapboxing using the characters. But it still doesn’t seem at all unrealistic to me that they could be nice but also bigoted. People are like that today. People were also like that in the Victorian era, and to a degree that can seem even more jarring.

Like Charles Dickens for example. He advocated for poor and disabled people with his work. He also wrote an essay on how “savages” are “highly desirable to be civilised off the face of the earth.” He donated to 43 different charities - hospitals and orphanages and women’s shelters and more. He tried to send his wife to a lunatic asylum, allegedly because he didn’t find her attractive anymore, but was unable to prove she was insane.

It just doesn’t seem weird to me that Jonathan would be charming and helpful and caring and racist. That Mina could be a sweet, intelligent, nurturing eugenicist.

[starlooove]

Ppl will say fanon v canon doesn’t matter and it’s all jokes and I’m sooooo close to going sure sometimes and then I remember y’all removed a major role of one of the if not THEE most prominent black character in Bruce’s story who was created a whole decade before tim and gave it to tim based off a run where he literally handed the role back! Like IN THE COMIC Tim was CEO in name only and handed it back to Lucius relieved when he didn’t need to front anymore like.

[allthecanadianpolitics]

A Quebec man convicted of promoting hatred against Jews has been sentenced to 15 months in jail and three years of probation. Quebec court Judge Manlio Del Negro said today in a Montreal courtroom that it's clear Gabriel Sohier Chaput hasn't grasped the seriousness of his actions or the harm he's caused to society. Sohier Chaput was found guilty in January, after the judge ruled that a 2017 article published on the neo-Nazi website the Daily Stormer actively promoted hatred of Jewish people. The accused was a frequent contributor to the website, writing more than 800 articles for the online publication named after the Nazi-era propaganda newspaper Der Sturmer.

Continue Reading.

Tagging: @politicsofcanada

[tianshiisdead]

every time i think the sinophobia in this fandom couldn't possibly get worse... 😬

[ladondelphi]

As we approach Dracula season again, I want to go over the fact that something’s kinda culturally lost due to how old Dracula is.

Like, when we all think of Victorian England, we think of gothic horror. We think of vampires, spooky things in the night, and a less civilized past.

But the whole POINT of gothic horror was the terror of bringing these things to the modern day. To the Victorians, vampires, spooky things, and a less civilized past was all stuff they had gotten over, and boy wouldn’t it be scary if that stuff popped up in our age of science?

One of the big points of horror in Dracula is that Dracula himself goes undetected for so long because the Big Brain English™ all think vampires aren’t real, while the Romanians that said English perceive as backwards and less civilized actually DO understand what’s up with their good ol’ count.

[atundratoadstool]

I know you've listed the character ages already, but what about physical descriptions? I remember Van Helsing being described as having red hair and blue eyes and I know Lucy's a blonde, but that's it.

Stoker is both frequently very spartan in his physical descriptions of characters and obsessively interested in detailing their facial features owing to his zealous belief in the thoroughly racist science of physiognomy. Here's a breakdown of what we know in the text plus some notes on how these features possibly operate in relation to Stoker's views, experiences, and research:

[CW: Spoilers and a fair number of mentions of Stoker's inescapable racism/antisemitism under the cut.]

Jonathan Harker: Jonathan is barely described but in possession of hair that turns white over the course of the novel. He possibly has a beard or a lot of stubble following the unfortunate yeeting of his shaving mirror. Like many of Bram Stoker's hunky lawyer protagonists, he's more often describing characters than being described by them.

Mina Harker: She is described by Seward as "attractive," "sweet-faced," and "dainty looking." She also has eyes that blaze like "pole stars," which is a very common description in Stoker's greater body of work (See: Stephen Norman in The Man and Teuta Vissarion in Lady of the Shroud) and match with his rapturous descriptions of real world actress Geneviève Ward. While it isn't as common a denotation of willfulness and determination as aquiline noses, it's generally used to indicate female characters who are very hardcore and may obtain a gun. Her skin is light enough for the red mark she obtains to be clearly visible upon it, although I will note that Mimi Salton from Lair of the White Worm is both undeniably a Mina 2.0 and mixed race/darker skinned, which might be worth considering in the realm of headcanon given how frequently Stoker just recycles characters and their physical attributes.

Lucy Westerna: She's pretty, and her weight and appearance definitely fluctuates over the course of her illness. Her hair is laid out in "sunny ripples" while she's alive. She becomes a "dark-haired woman" while undead. This frustrates many many critics and commentators. It's been proposed that the "sunny ripples" just refers to the gloss on her dark hair. It's been proposed the blondeness/darkness hair is an indicator of her innate goodness/evilness... like Smurfette (which has--again--some Stoker-typical racist implications). The most obvious Doylist explanation is that Stoker cannot track characters' hair color much as he cannot track all his dates.

Jack Seward: Strong jaw. Nice forehead. Immense lunatic asylum. He's also mentioned as being thin in comparison to Renfield and Lucy thinks he's handsome (although obviously not as desirable as Arthur).

Arthur Holmwood: His hair is curly. He is tall. He is also a hottie, as attested to by Lucy and by Jack (who finds him very manly as he kills his vampire fiancee).

Quincey P. Morris: I haven't recalled or been able to look up any major descriptors. He apparently carries himself like a "moral Viking" (as Jack attests in the midst of commenting on yet another friend's manliness). I went into some detail as to how he reads in terms of race here and how it might mesh with Lucy's comparison of him to Othello.

Abraham Van Helsing: After the Count, he's the most thoroughly described character in terms of physiognomy, and that physiognomy... is more or less the spitting image of Bram Stoker as he describes himself (...you know, Abraham "Bram" Stoker, who has the same first name as this super genius great-at-everything character). He's got sensitive nostrils, big forehead bumps, a nice jaw, a big mouth, a strong build, and red hair. I wrote a comparison between him and Stoker here. I will also note that the forehead bumps are a phrenological feature denoting creativity and that Jonathan remarks that he apparently has eyebrows incompatible with self doubt.

R. M. Renfield: He appears to be swoler than Seward even if his swoleness is to no avail against Dracula.

Dracula: There is a lot to unpack with Dracula. He has an aquiline nose, which is one of the absolutely most significant recurring features in Stoker's greater corpus (See: The Judge from "The Judge's House"; Solomon Mendoza from The Watter's Mou; Don Bernadino from The Mystery of the Sea; Joy Ogilvie from Lady Athlyne; and Edgar Caswall from The Lair of the White Worm), and this trait was shared by his boss and Idol Henry Irving. It undoubtedly has physiongomic significance to Stoker, who seems to use it to denote command and leadership, although it is worth noting that Cesare Lombroso mentions aquiline noses as a feature of murderers and that many critics have pointed out its potential connections to Stoker's antisemitism (and specifically the suspicion regarding Jewish immigrants in the wake of the Jack the Ripper killings). Dracula additionally has a "domed forehead," which can paradoxically be associated in physiognomy with both high intellect and mental feebleness. His sharp teeth are a trait Stoker associates with "a militant instinct" (Lombroso, again, connects them with murderers) and are described in much the same way he describes Alfred Lord Tennyson and Sir Richard Burton's teeth, although he took notes from Sabine Baring-Gould's Book of Were-wolves in which sharp teeth are a werewolf trait. We also have pretty explicit evidence that Dracula's unibrow, pointy nails, and hairy palms are also from Baring-Gould. Overall, Dracula seems to be a real hodgepodge of physiognomic traits that seem to haunt Stoker's work, racist criminological theory, and actual folklore.

[scarlet-came-back-wrong]

Some Commentary on the Brides

It's noticeable how Jonathan calls the Brides "ladies by their dress and manner". Which makes it unlikely that they're wearing these white nighties that they are usually depicted wearing, or that they're visibly dirty/unkempt/bestial. Speaking about their masses of hair implies that they're wearing their hair loose, though.

So, who are they? When I first read the book, I instantly assumed that they were Dracula's wife and daughters (doesn't mean he's not screwing all of them anyway) but now I'm not so sure? Now that I know more about Stoker, it appears that he was enough of a skull-measurer to make the two of them look like Dracula just to show that they are of the same ethnicity, and the blonde bride isn't. Him implying that he loved them in the past also may support the theory that all three are his lovers/exes, because it is more psychologically realistic to stop loving your lovers than your daughters/sisters/other relatives. Still, this may also be a commentary on how vampiric influence erodes familiar love with time.

I don't mind calling them "Brides" btw. Yes, I know that it's not the name that Stoker came up with, but I think it's a neat metaphor for their undead state, with a bride being a short-lived state between an unmarried and a married woman and theirs being an unnaturaly prolonged state between life and death. It also reminds me of "brides of Christ" and adds to the Dracula-as-an-Antichrist-figure reading.

[dizzyhslightlyvoided]

Mina: The Romanians, they're so superstitious, they thought I was a vampire!

Mina: I mean they were right, but still! Superstitious!