i keep seeing posts about cs pacat being a ‘white woman writing a poc’ and since she is australian and i am australian i thought it can be helpful to understand the way australians construct race
australia has different race constructs to the USA. VERY different race constructs. especially different is the way we construct the race of people from mediterranean and middle eastern countries
in australia italians (which cs pacat is), lebanese (which i am), greeks (which people debate if damen is or not?), maltese, turkish (which akielon sports are modeled on?), syrians, balkans, macedonians, egyptians and anyone from mediterranean or middle east countries around there, we are all thought of as being the same racial group. we are ‘wogs’. (look that word up if you dont know that australian racial construct.)
so here we are not poc as such we are wogs which is sort of a third category that doesnt exist in america??
when i read captive prince to me as an australian it doesnt read as a ‘white woman writing a poc’ but as a wog writing a wog. in australia, damen’s olive skin, dark hair and dark eyes are signals of that. and everywhere that i have looked for interviews of cs pacat talking about damen and casting or ethnicity i notice she has never used the term poc but instead says ‘mediterranean basin descent’ and ‘not a tanned anglo-european’ which is the australian way of thinking about race, since wog vs anglo is a main racial divide here
i think since americans only have two categories (white/poc) they try to put that on to captive prince and they end up sorting the author into one category (white) and damen into the other (poc). which is true in the american system.
but as a lebanese-australian i would sort damen, myself and pacat who is italo-australian into the same race catagory of wog along with egyptians, turkish, maltese etc because that is the way we construct race here. thats not erasing, lightening or whitewashing damen’s olive skin, its just our different way of constructing his race while his olive skin colour stays the same.
i know its hard for americans to understand beccause you dont have this category. and im not saying that damen is not a poc in your system, because in your system he is a poc. but i hope americans will respect that other countries have other ways of looking at race too. all race is a construct.
also these arguments about is damen greek and therefore white or is he turkish and therefore poc are ridiculous since in australia greek, turkish, maltese, italian, lebanese, egyptian etc we are literally all considered the same ethnic group
tldr but i think its important to understand the author’s race context bc the book is different when you think about it as a wog author writing the experience of a wog character marooned in a northern-european country (vere = france-ish) and feeling sense of racial difference as well as a sense of cultural isolation, because that is the wog experience living here in australia for turkish, greek, lebanese, maltese, italian, etc. and thats just… different to how the book reads if you think of it in the american way as a white woman writing a poc.
ALSO wog has a different meaning here in australia than it does in the UK (and dont use the word if you are not a member of the group because we use it as a friendly term, but it is a racial slur if used by others.)
ppl need to remember that US racial constructs are not universal, and assuming they are is pretty imperialist. even in other ‘western’ countries, as somebody who lives in western europe, i can safely say europeans care about ethnicity within what is probably just ‘white’ in the US. a considerable portion of the racism here doesn’t fall into a white/poc dynamic, though there is that dynamic too when it comes to those of us from former colonies.
If you have a clearly Italian last name you need to submit 12% more resumes than a person with an Anglo last name in order to get a job interview in Australia. This isn’t anywhere near as extreme as the similar statistics for Chinese, Muslim or Indigenous last names (68, 64, and 35% respectively), but it’s not nothing, either. [x]
every time people think white/poc is the only kind of divide that exists i just want to get my copy of Looking for Alibrandi and scream it at them until they understand.
“Do you know how many Italian girls weren’t allowed to play at my house, Michael? They wanted to, I know that, but their mothers wouldn’t let them. The Australian girls were the worst. They’d come up to me and say, ‘What nationality are you, Josie?’ and because I spoke Italian at home and I ate spaghetti and I lived like an Italian I’d say, ‘I’m Italian,’ and they’d put on a reprimanding voice. ‘No, you’re not. You were born in this country. You’re an Australian.’ So the next day the same girls would come up to me and ask, ‘What nationality are you, Josie?’ and I’d think to myself that these smart-asses weren’t going to get me twice so I’d say, ‘I’m an Aussie,’ and they’d say, ‘No, you’re not. You’re a wog.’ And I wanted to kill myself because I was so confused.”
Reblogging to add I, a Greek Australian, 100% agree with this. I have olive skin that is light brown in the winter and goes to middle brown in the summer. I have thick dark eyebrows, dark brown hair, etc. While Americans might not consider me a POC, anglo Australians identify me as a wog and therefore other.
Of course then I refuse to call them just Australians and instead call them anglos.
Having a wog like Damen in the books made me really, really happy. It was so wonderful to see someone in a published book who had the same physical features as me.
Wog and proud.
What author herself wrote about this topic on twitter:
