I am aware the inclusion of letters at the end of my stories (
Intent to Join and
The Vixen) are a bit confusing. I've seen plenty of feedback from beta-readers expressing that even though they tend to also enjoy the letters. So I guess it's fair to explain the many reasons I have for their inclusion and placement.
From a storytelling perspective, I generally consider them optional and that's why they are detached. However, I also decided the letters would be a nice new take on the mentorship trope. The mentor is dead already, but he prepared guidance beforehand. Similarly, it did not make sense that the right letter would appear in a given story nor that they would read it in a given situation. Instead, I decided the characters would have read a bunch of letters and the one attached at the end would be just one that addressed one of the themes.
I know some people do not like being told the theme of a story, but as mentioned before, they are optional in my opinion. The personal reason for their inclusion is for children, particularly my own. I fear that I would be dead before I could convey these lessons to my children. I do not intend to write-down to an age-group, so I instead include the letter to help younger readers digest.
When I was growing up, one thing I appreciated was my dad calling out objectionable things in movies and shows. This helped develop my moral compass and counter issues that were implicitly promoted, particularly lying in hero stories.
As I was watching a series that did a fantastic job of establishing the emotional and psychological motivation for why someone would commit murder, I felt sad that there was no investigation of how to navigate the emotional turmoil in a positive way, only the condemnation of the murder. As I recognized some events in the series could be triggering, I decided I had an obligation to provide some guidance if I were to do the same.
Now in one of my WIPs, I touched lightly on racism. As this can be triggering for some people, especially for the black community who do not have parents, I think it’s right for me to also address it. So here is an early draft of a letter that I intend to include as a bonus in that story.
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Letter from Sera's father: On Dehumanization
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My precious children,
It is with a heavy heart that I write this letter for the topic saddens me deeply. While the racism I suffered in high school pales to that of many people, I know it hurts. It took me a long time to realize the underlying reason why, but it hurts nonetheless. It felt so unfair. There appeared to be no reason. Why such horrible things?
I cannot stop the pain. I cannot prevent you from feeling the pain, though my parents did a good job of that until I entered high school. In my travels, I have seen racism is not exclusive to any nation; that unjust discrimination is not exclusive to any thing, time, or place. But maybe I can help you understand the pain and various causes and by doing this, provide the building blocks to dealing with it.
I realized that racism, sexism, etc. are tightly coupled with bullying. If you ask me for a definition, it’s that racism is the bullying of a people. Looking closely, racism is often merely part of bullying. So what is bullying? In most cases, it’s the dehumanization of a person. So racism is the dehumanization of a people based upon ethnicity or place of birth. Sexism is the dehumanization of a person based upon sex.
When we realize that racism is bullying, then we can recognize how the causes of bullying are also causes of racism. Things like fear, ignorance, spite, revenge, jealousy, lies, corruption. These all feed into the cycle and as history has shown, some races can eventually get out of it. For example, Whites were racist against Whites in the early US. It wasn’t until other ethnicities became competition for jobs that they reconciled. However, some races don’t have that luxury due to how the system is against them, and neither political party gives what they need.
Consider the racist notion in the US that Black people are uneducated. This is because the school districts are drawn to their disadvantage, placing them in poor schools with little funding and locked. This makes it harder for them to get into prestigious schools, which businesses are biased towards selecting for jobs. Add in that some of these schools have unjust discrimination in their application process and we can see that it’s hard for Black people to get into better communities. Similarly, wealthy neighborhoods don’t want the uneducated in their district so they work to keep them out by manipulating the school district lines, which never gets fixed no matter the party in power, and therefore perpetuating this cycle. I know I don't know enough how to fix it. Perhaps school choice could help overcome these barriers when paired with subsidies. Funding could help but I also understand it cannot solve all issues. Tricky thing about subsidies though is that it makes others jealous as it feels unfair, just as it always does among siblings. For that, we need to correct the perception that most rich kids did not earn their tuition money, it was given by someone else who had money, their parents. However, that only addresses one cause of racism, to really handle all of them, we need to look to a specific hero.
Daryl Davis was a Black musician who, over the course of years, swayed a high ranking member of the KKK to leave his racist organization. He would talk with him and even attend KKK rallies. In his talk about the events, he commented on fear as a major cause. He called out his big size and quick reaction as something that evoked fear and potentially death. But his main point that won his enemy over was respect.
The antidote for dehumanization is respect. Daryl Davis and the KKK member both called it out that respect is the key. When you respect someone, you do not see them as a monster, a spoiled brat, etc. Instead, you see someone as a person. Dehumanzation is when we try to deconstruct someone as a person like yourself. Respect is when you see someone as a person like yourself.
This is a hard teaching put into practice as we feel justified attacking those who hurt us. But like with bullying, we sometimes target people who don’t actually target us or sometimes are unaware of their actions. We try to vilify anyone who dares even listen to the enemy. We often dehumanize racists, which only perpetuates the cycle further. Racists, sexists, and all other are people; people who are suffering in their own way and have valid concerns that we try to ignore because we consider them to be monsters, not human. And this in turn leads us to justify our vilification by any means possible, even corrupting religion to do so.
Christianity preaches to love your enemies and do good to those who hurt you. I would argue you don't have to like people, but you cannot love if you do not have respect. Respect is not only good, but also it heals. Simply care for and respect them. When we do this, the scars will heal. And maybe, just maybe, we’ll walk out of it with not a bully, but a friend.
With love,
Your father
P.S. You can watch Daryl Davis' talk on youtube
