In the twitter community and elsewhere, there’s been a lot made of “white privilege.” While most of what’s said about what’s called white privilege is unfortunately true, I have a problem with the terminology. I don’t deny the fact that being white gives one an advantage in the U.S. over those with darker skins, or the fact that, as a society, we need to do something about it. What troubles me is that the term – “white privilege” – suggests, especially in the way it’s being currently used, that it’s a singular problem.

It’s not a singular problem; it’s one of several “privileges” or problems that have significant adverse economic, legal, and social impacts. Being white offers an advantage, ranging from considerable in some circumstances to minimal in others, but it’s a definite advantage. So is coming from a strong and supportive family background. So does having a good genetic background. So does having family wealth. So does living in a less polluted environment. All of these have significant impacts on children and how they grow up, and even into early adulthood, but no one speaks of “family privilege” or “genetic privilege” or “environmental privilege.”

Study after study has shown that growing up in a unified, supportive, and functional family has a huge beneficial impact, yet this is minimized, except, interesting enough, by religious conservatives, despite the fact that “family privilege” is an enormous factor in how successful children will be.

More and more studies have shown the significant adverse impacts created by various forms of pollution on children’s health and intelligence, and yet there’s very little society-wide outcry about the fact that, effectively, upper middle class and upper class children essentially have what amounts to geographical environmental privilege because pollution disproportionately impacts the poor and minorities. In reality, we actually practice pollution discrimination, both here in the U.S. and in our manufacturing outsourcing to third world nations.

What’s called white privilege is a definite and pervasive social (and still a legal) problem, but highlighting it obscures the other “privileges” that often have an even greater impact on society, especially on the poor and minorities.

In the last few years, apparently the younger generation has suddenly discovered history, and in discovering it, they’ve learned, and have been outraged in many cases to discover that historic personages not only had feet of clay, but often acted in ways currently unacceptable and even illegal, as well as holding views now regarded as unfashionable and sometimes despicable.

That one-time paragon of the Founding Fathers, Thomas Jefferson, was not only a slave-holder, who hypocritically declaimed on freedom, but who also made his dead wife’s younger half-sister (and a slave) his mistress. It also turns out that the noble Robert E. Lee savagely beat at least one slave, if not more. In the fourth debate with Stephen Douglas, Abraham Lincoln stated bluntly, “I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races…there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.”

Monuments and statues have been torn down, and buildings renamed because of the “discovery” and outrage about the dead men [and all of them have been men so far as I can determine] and their acts and beliefs. Two awards in the F&SF field have been altered or renamed as a result of protests about the earlier author and editor they honored because of the racist views each held.

There seems to be a view gaining credence, particularly among those of a more “liberal” persuasion, along the lines of that we as a society should not honor dead people who held views no longer accepted, no matter how important their contributions to literature, society, or history, because their contributions do not outweigh the harm of their views.

Those opposing such renaming and destruction make the point that many of these individuals held views that accurately represented public opinion at that time and that many [but far from all] were “honorable” by the standards of their times.

We tend to forget that those times were indeed very different. For example, slavery was an accepted practice in the majority of societies and cultures across the world until roughly two hundred years ago. So, for as far back as records go, some 6,000 years, if not farther, slavery was accepted for 5,800. Now, I’m not condoning slavery, but does that mean that every monument to past powerful slaveholders, including a plethora of rulers and military heroes, should be destroyed? If not, why destroy monuments to men who grew up in societies that accepted slavery, but found society changed around them?

Yet, as we know, some “historic” figures were rather awful individuals, and the question is how we balance past positive achievements against past beliefs and past actions that we now regard as despicable. Or should we just obliterate the memory of those with now-unacceptable social and political views?

Every time I look around, it seems like there’s a new massively funded, special-effects-loaded movie about some super hero or another, most of which I’ve never heard of , except as comic-book versions of Norse gods – even though I did read a few comics in my youth, but they ended with Superman or the Fantastic Four. I never bought comics because I could read them quickly off the racks, and then I discovered that F&SF books were so much better – and lasted a lot longer.

So why is it boom time for comic superheroes?

Because viewers want complex problems power-solved? Or because they feel powerless and want to experience power vicariously? Or because they want to escape a cheerlessly complex world? Or is it that fewer and fewer can actually read well and quickly? Or that they have trouble concentrating on non-video/cinematic entertainment?

I don’t have an answer, nor do I see any answers out there, most likely because no one else seems to see it as a particularly vexing societal problem. After all, superhero movies are “just” entertainment. But some forms of entertainment are indicative of culture, or lack thereof. The Romans packed the Colosseum to be entertained by some definitely bloody and often fatal gladiatorial contests, and public hangings or guillotining always drew crowds [and in some cases, hawkers even provided refreshments]. So, by comparison, aren’t superhero movies just cotton candy or gilded escapism?

Possibly… but I still have my doubts.

The fall semester is either about to begin or has already begun at colleges and universities across the United States… and one thing is already clear. The march toward turning colleges and universities, particularly state institutions, into glorified high schools is continuing.

As I mentioned in an earlier blog, the administration at the local university has mandated a switch to a trimester system so that students can graduate in three years. To accomplish this, each semesters has been shortened by more than a week, with no increase in class length or number of classes. At the same time, there has been a push for “greater retention,” more electronic learning, and a more encouraging atmosphere [i.e., more cheerleading and less critical evaluation of actual student performance].

The latest edict from the administration is that faculty must not only take attendance, but report absences to administration, apparently because of financial aid requirements, in effect adding another reporting requirement that has teachers doing additional administrative chores for the finance industry. What happened to the idea of student responsibility? We’re talking about 18 year olds and older, not grade-school or high school students.

My wife the professor has taught a diction and literature class for students beginning the B.M. [performance] degree in voice. It’s a fairly standard, if slightly more intensive class which covers the basics of proper diction and introduces students to classical vocal literature. The course requires students to study the music and listen to a range of classical vocal recordings by composers. The listening requirement takes roughly six hours a week for 15 weeks. The goal of the course is to familiarize students with the work and styles of the more noted composers over the last century or so.

My wife has been teaching the course at this university for 15 years, and the basic requirements have remained the same, and students have evaluated the course for all of that time, yet in the last two years, for the first time, there have been complaints about the amount of work required, one student even saying that the workload had that student in tears.

This isn’t just my wife. The majority of professors in the department have noted the same development. One administrator responded by saying that perhaps the professors should just teach less.

Teach less? At a time when either more technical knowledge and/or more education are required to compete for the better paying jobs?

I’ve often been criticized for the “slow” pace of my books, especially by the “action junkies” who expect a fight, revelation, or surprise in every chapter, or at the least every other chapter. Now, I’d be the first to admit that even my books aren’t completely realistic, because there’s more action in them than in corresponding events in real life, but I try to give the feeling of real life and action by providing more lead-up events, and a certain amount of routine, than do many authors. Possibly that’s because I’ve experienced more “action” in life than I anticipated and because it wasn’t much like the way I’d visualized and imagined it, especially how much time and preparation for “action” takes.

I was a competitive swimmer in college, and even more than fifty years ago, to be competitive required at least 3-4 hours a day of practice six days a week. Yet we generally only competed once every week at most. Today, it’s more like twice that and a lot more work with weights and machines. All that for a few minutes of “action.”

But the same is true of any action in life. A one-hour military flight mission for one single aircraft will require from 10 to over 200 hours of maintenance, depending on the aircraft. So what does this have to do with writing and battle scenes? Simply that no society, especially a lower tech society, can support a lot of battles day after day right on top of each other. There’s no time for recovery, resupply, or even travel.

All right. Then why shouldn’t a writer skip over all that dull but necessary stuff in a few sentences or paragraphs and get on with the action?

In fact, a lot of writers do. Even the “slowest” writers condense the events and maintenance in between the exciting stuff. But there’s a balance. If it’s all action, the reader loses the “reality” of what’s occurring and a book becomes the unrealistic verbal equivalent of a video game. If it’s totally true to life, most readers won’t finish the book because they get overwhelmed by the details.

As an author, I give more details than most fiction authors, but that’s because I feel that those details are real to the characters and shape the way they see the battle and the action. The “boring” training, or the trade-offs between trying to make a living and also trying to prepare to fight an invader are real to those people. They’re choices they have to make, and they’re in many ways far more important than most people think because they’re what determines how the battle, the action, and the characters turn out.

There’s an old saying about war, to the effect that the competent officers concentrate on tactics, the brilliant ones on logistics. Or, put another way, WWII was won on logistics [while that’s an over-simplification, at its base, it’s true]. And for reasons like that and the fact that I don’t want my books to read like verbal video/computer games, that’s why “logistics” and “routine” are a vital part of what I write.