Transcript: Dear Samari, I am emailing to express my sincere apologies for the hurt and pain I have caused you with both the black comics series, the shift to multicultural comics, and the email exchange between Henry Jenkins and I.
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I am autistic, and I was writing in a state of distress brought on by autistic meltdown, and did not follow my usual procedures in asking someone to check how I am communicating on this occasion. Consequently, I often do not recognize tone, whether in person, in email, or on >
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social media. My comments regarding yourself were particularly inappropriate, and I am truly sorry for this. I was trying to be an ally and I failed miserably on this occasion. I admire you and your scholarship greatly. I will ensure that I continue working on understanding >
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structural racism, and listening to people of colour as well as people in marginalized and disempowered positions, rather than engaging in debate as a white, male academic. I want to really try hard to be an ally. I am deeply, deeply sorry, Billy // end transcript
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Here is my response. The transcript will follow below this tweet:pic.twitter.com/N9nq15Wqc7
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Transcript: Dear Bill, I want to acknowledge this email and it's intent. As a consequence, I do not accept this apology. I will note this publicly because I think it should be noted publicly, and because I would prefer that there remain public records of these interactions such>
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that nothing can be misunderstood later. First, I believe this email isn't an apology. By choosing to frame this as an event caused by anxiety and autism, you've sidestepped the fact that neither racism nor sexism are in any way a consequence of autism.
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There is extremely good work acknowledging this, most prominently the work All the Weight of Our Dreams: On Living with Racialised Autism (edited by Lydia Brown, Morénike Giwa-Onaiwu, E. Ashkenazy) as well as this article here.
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As someone who cares a great deal about access and does labour on campus of this nature, I am not unaware of the disability community's acknowledgement of the pervasiveness or racism and sexism. Nor am I willing to allow this to slide on behalf of autistic people of colour and
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marginalised genders. You do them a disservice and your claim that these are interrelated harms people of colour in your own disability community. As someone who lives with anxiety and depression myself, I have never used it as an excuse for racism or sexism
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nor do I believe that someone would be racist or sexist simply because they are anxious or depressed. That is an ableist and right wing position and it does you no favours to have attempted to mobilise it here. It also elides how many people of colour
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(particularly Black people, given history and our contemporary moment) experience anxiety and depression as the result of oppressions such as racism and sexism. Your effort to shield yourself from accountability by evoking disability in this manner does a disservice to people
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in these communities and those allied with them, particularly as it positions your understanding of this as white male centred with room for little other. Moreover, I am not unaware that this is not the first time you have used this excuse when confronted with your racism or >
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sexism. Given that these incidents have continued to occur, I have to assume that despite having acknowledged these errors at the time, you have taken no real steps to prevent them from happening again or at least minimising the harm and damage.
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If these were single or rare instances followed by genuine attempts at change, I would have been more open to this conversation, but as it stands I know this to not be the case from multiple accounts from multiple people from the larger media studies community, student community,
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and administrative community. I believe very firmly in holding care and space for people with disabilities, but I do not believe that disability precludes accountability. I work with enough people and have enough of my own issues with mental health to know that this is a foil
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at best, a deliberate attempt to mask racism by attempting to position any further pushback as ableist. I refuse this. Additionally, I do not believe you appreciate my work as I am aware that you have denigrated my work in conversation as well as that of Rukmini's on numerous
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occasions. The media studies community has enough whisper networks that I don't have to provide any evidence for this; you will already know it as truth. As a consequence, this is not an apology. This is a refusal of accountability. And so I refuse it in return.
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I have put in a lot of work thinking through disability justice over the last five years to make sure I do good work for the communities I serve. I am not letting someone try to do this without being really fucking clear. Also, /everyone/ should read All The Weight of Our Dreams.
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Further updates: Multiple people have mentioned that apologies went out publicly/ semi-publicly, but they went out on the comics listserv to which neither Rukmini or I have access (and wouldn't want this). I wanted to see these to see how any larger narrative was being framed.
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Here is @DrWilliamProct1's semi-public email on the comics listserv. Transcripts will follow the images as they are text heavy.pic.twitter.com/04WKiy3ugi
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Transcript: Dear colleagues, First of all, allow me to express my deepest, most sincere apologies for the comments that were shared on the list-serve yesterday. I have emailed Dr Samira Nadakarni and Dr Rukmini Pande separately, two scholars whose work I admire with great >
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affection, to offer further apologies. As members of the list-serve will know, I sent out a call for a series titled Black Comics Matter. I naively believed that I was being supportive, prosocial, and more than anything, an ally, although I fully recognize that the call seemed >
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to suggest that I would be editor on the series. With hindsight, that was a mistake, and an enormous failure on my part. After receiving a few emails that suggested I ask a black scholar to co-curate the series, and others that requested that the topic be expanded to include >
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comics created by other nationalities and cultures. I thought this would be a productive maneuver, so I issued an apology email about my failure to understand the issues regarding not having a black scholar, or scholar-of-color, to lead, and to state that an Indian/Kenyan scholar
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had kindly offered to co-curate the series, which would now be on multicultural comics. An email on Friday evening criticized the shift to multiculturalism, and asking that the focus be on black comics helmed by a black scholar. To this, Henry Jenkins replied to the email on >
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Saturday afternoon, announcing that we would be running two series in response to criticisms: the first one to focus on black comics, with a black scholar in the lead, and the second, to continue with the series on multiculturalism and comics.
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Again, I thought this was a necessary step to repair and correct the offence caused by the items I list above, and I will not be involved at all with either series. My exchange with Henry was underpinned by several factors.
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