In 2015 Brad Torgersen wrote a an interesting piece about tribalism in the SFF community. According to Torgersen, much of what is taken for racism and sexism in the US is actually a form of cultural tribalism, where people from different cultural backgrounds distrust and disrespect one another because of their difference. He lists some fundamentally different groups as examples, including religious groups, regional groups, progressives and conservatives, and notes that even people who think they are the most open-minded often exhibit sharp limits, if not open hostility, which faced with opposing cultural viewpoints.
Torgersen goes on to discuss the current battle over the Hugos, noting that the organizers of WorldCon and the Hugo Awards are a very exclusive group of trufans who consider themselves the in-tribe of science fiction and fantasy. According to him, this explains the small size of the convention and the elitist title, which suggests its members represent all real SFF fans in the world. Torgersen’s explanation of the current situation is that the Sad Puppies represented a different tribal group which was seen as a threat to the convention culture by WorldCon insiders. Of course the situation deteriorated from there. This explanation makes me wonder what the small group of core WorldCon fans thought about opening up the membership to a broad swath of Internet “supporting memberships?” Doesn’t this dilute the trufan blood?
As a side note, Torgersen calls himself a perpetual out-tribe because of never fitting in anywhere. He may have written this blog in response to attacks on Twitter, where one poster called his African American wife and biracial child “racist shields.”
Lela E. Buis 
Dec 20, 2016 @ 23:53:21
Yes, the “racist shields” comment is particularly revealing, as if Brad wed a POC and fathered a child in some bizarre attempt at virtue signaling. The very idea shows the depths of the current thought police tribe’s hypocrisy, the ones that claim to want diversity and color-blindness, but then attempt to upend every virtue into a vice if “the other” joins in.
This is supremacism at its finest, though not white supremacism. It’s tribal supremacism, wherein nobody outside the “real” tribe is approved, because every move the outsider makes is a catch-22. Fall in love with a POC? You must be using her. Stay with your own color? You must be racist. Stick to your own culture to mine your tropes? You are a colonialist, a racist, a bigot. Try to include the culture of others? You’re appropriating.
As with every bigoted Puritan, past or present, they declare you to be damned if you do, damned if you don’t, damned no matter what you try until there’s no point in trying anymore, because you’ll never be let into their privileged little club.
Sound familiar? We become what we hate. What used to be the admirably anti-racist far-Left has joined the Jacobins, the Bolsheviks, the Khmer Rouge and every other hyper-conformist movement in becoming just as hateful as those they opposed. I suppose we should be grateful that they only lynch reputations and livelihoods. That seems to be their sole advantage over the far-Right.
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Dec 21, 2016 @ 09:33:44
Although the people you’re talking about do exist (and have loud mouths), they’re not very numerous, and they have little real influence. Nor are they really representative of the fans you find at places like WorldCon.
I do think the racism of the modern Right is different from the racism I grew up with in the South in the 1960s. The modern Right believes that blacks are inferior to whites on average, but they accept the idea (in theory, at least) that some blacks are equal to some whites. If you decide to give a black person a chance, they won’t bother you about it.
The old racism, by contrast, insisted that all blacks were mentally and morally inferior to all whites, and if you decided to give a black person a chance (e.g. hiring, promoting, renting/selling to, marrying, etc.), someone would try to kill you. The old racists played for keeps.
I don’t know Torgersen or his wife, but I can certainly see how a new racist could have a black spouse and simply think that he/she was one of the exceptional ones.
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Dec 21, 2016 @ 12:54:56
Greg, I don’t really know Torgersen, but I suspect from this article that he has complex views on human interactions and that he thinks race is only a small part of other cultural issues. Pointing to his family is actually a definitive defense, I think. His wife should have realized by now if he holds “racist” views and would have left the marriage and taken her daughter out of a poisonous environment if she were dissatisfied. The fact that they seem happily married points to the fact that his views about people of color suit her. Ergo, he is not a “racist.”
Attacking her in this way is actually highly disrespectful, as if she’s not smart enough to recognize that she’s married to a racist.
The issue here is how the term “racist” is being used in the current social/political climate. In the past, the charge was serious and reserved for people who exhibited clear prejudice and discrimination against people of other “races” (based on whatever definition was current). Since the push for civil rights and then multiculturalism, as you point out, it’s unusual to run into the kind of full blown discrimination that reconstruction generated. Instead, as Torgersen says, the issue has become quite a bit more complex. People throw the term “racist” around as a casual weapon based on snap judgments and minor microaggressions. The end result is that the accusation loses its power.
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Dec 21, 2016 @ 12:32:13
David, I suspect the problem is just that people are looking for ammunition to advance their viewpoint. The “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” thing is why people recommend that authors resist bullying by refusing to engage. If you try to answer one charge, bullies will only shift to something else.
Torgersen’s wife and child are seen as racist shields because he points to them when he’s accused of racism. When you get right down to it, is there any real defense against charges of racism? I don’t think so. It’s just opinions against denial, and the charge is often used in the face of clear evidence to the contrary. This actually weakens its power.
This is an interesting article, as Torgersen says that before he got married, he thought racism was cut and dried, but afterward he realized the complexities. The concept of cultural tribes is interesting, too. I think these ideas make him more thoughtful about the subject than the bullies he’s dealing with.
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