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[002] MrDeath Current Version
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Annoyance, yes, I can understand. Starting the criticism with \
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Annoyance, yes, I can understand. Starting the criticism with \\\"FUCK YOU JIM BUTCHER!\\\", as the original complaint went, and automatically assuming that Butcher was motivated out of malicious racism, however, is a different story entirely. It wouldn\\\'t be the first time he\\\'s made a mistake about the geography and demographics of the city (giving the baseball stadium a parking lot, for instance), and if the original complaint had been delivered more civilly than with \\\"FUCK YOU, YOU RACIST SOB!\\\" then I imagine Butcher would have, in turn, reacted more civilly.

As for the demographics portrayed[[hottip:*:first off, I forgot about Rashid, oughta be 4 of 7, not 3 of 7, but anyway]], okay, part of it is, unavoidably, that Harry is white and, in the real world, whether you\\\'re racist or not, and whether it \\\'\\\'should\\\'\\\' be the case or not, people do tend to associate themselves with people of the same ethnicity. Just because 37% of the population of the city is black doesn\\\'t mean that those people are evenly distributed throughout the city and regularly associate and interact that 42% of white people.

This is on both sides of the coin: If you walk through a city, you\\\'ll usually see the groups segregated, white people with white people, black people hanging out together. So from that perspective, it makes sense that a white guy would, in fact, mostly hang around with other white people. I work in a (admittedly much smaller) city, and when I walk through town, there are \\\'\\\'definitely\\\'\\\' areas where I see nothing but black people, and others that are predominantly white. Ask yourself this: If I were to write a story about a person living and working in one of those predominantly-black areas, and my story included only two white people among his friends and associates, would that be racist?

Yes, Butcher could probably have included more people of various ethnicities, but Harry isn\\\'t taking a census of the city here, he\\\'s just interacting with his friends and allies. Also, I could\\\'ve sworn Stallings was black too, but I might be getting him mixed up with Rawlins.

And looking at the character sheet, a solid chunk of the people he interacts with on a regular basis either aren\\\'t Chicago natives to begin with (and thus aren\\\'t indicative of whether or not Butcher is portraying the city correctly) or are literally monsters who it\\\'s probably best to not count (though I imagine \\\'\\\'someone\\\'\\\' will take issue with the bloodsucking monster vampires being almost uniformly from South America with Hispanic names).

Bottom line is, yes, there\\\'s probably some UnfortunateImplications, which I\\\'m finding are absolutely inevitable no matter what you try to do and how you try to do it. This doesn\\\'t, however, mean the books are \\\"racist\\\" or that Jim Butcher is.
Changed line(s) 1 from:
n
Annoyance, yes, I can understand. Starting the criticism with \
to:
Annoyance, yes, I can understand. Starting the criticism with \\\"FUCK YOU JIM BUTCHER!\\\", as the original complaint went, and automatically assuming that Butcher was motivated out of malicious racism, however, is a different story entirely. It wouldn\\\'t be the first time he\\\'s made a mistake about the geography and demographics of the city (giving the baseball stadium a parking lot, for instance), and if the original complaint had been delivered more civilly than with \\\"FUCK YOU, YOU RACIST SOB!\\\" then I imagine Butcher would have, in turn, reacted more civilly.

As for the demographics portrayed[[hottip:*:first off, I forgot about Rashid, oughta be 4 of 7, not 3 of 7, but anyway]], okay, part of it is, unavoidably, that Harry is white and, in the real world, whether you\\\'re racist or not, and whether it \\\'\\\'should\\\'\\\' be the case or not, people do tend to associate themselves with people of the same ethnicity. Just because 37% of the population of the city is black doesn\\\'t mean that those people are evenly distributed throughout the city and regularly associate and interact that 42% of white people.

This is on both sides of the coin: If you walk through a city, you\\\'ll usually see the groups segregated, white people with white people, black people hanging out together. So from that perspective, it makes sense that a white guy would, in fact, mostly hang around with other white people. I work in a (admittedly much smaller) city, and when I walk through town, there are \\\'\\\'definitely\\\'\\\' areas where I see nothing but black people, and others that are predominantly white. Ask yourself this: If I were to write a story about a person living and working in one of those predominantly-black areas, and my story included only two white people among his friends and associates, would that still be racist?

Yes, Butcher could probably have included more people of various ethnicities, but Harry isn\\\'t taking a census of the city here, he\\\'s just interacting with his friends and allies. Also, I could\\\'ve sworn Stallings was black too, but I might be getting him mixed up with Rawlins.

And looking at the character sheet, a solid chunk of the people he interacts with on a regular basis either aren\\\'t Chicago natives to begin with (and thus aren\\\'t indicative of whether or not Butcher is portraying the city correctly) or are literally monsters who it\\\'s probably best to not count (though I imagine \\\'\\\'someone\\\'\\\' will take issue with the bloodsucking monster vampires being almost uniformly from South America with Hispanic names).

Bottom line is, yes, there\\\'s probably some UnfortunateImplications, which I\\\'m finding are absolutely inevitable no matter what you try to do and how you try to do it. This doesn\\\'t, however, mean the books are \\\"racist\\\" or that Jim Butcher is.
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