Ray Bradbury's take on censorship and inclusivism

[asterroc]

I just reread Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (first read in high school). The edition I had included two afterwords, one of which discusses some letters he received from readers in this and other books of his. A number of these letters, he says, criticize his treatment (or lack thereof) of blacks and women. Bradbury harshly rebuts that this is the first step of censorship, and that changing his works to appease the many different minorities present in a large and populous society such as ours would be changing the essence of his pieces and would destroy his artistic creation. Unfortunately the afterword is still under copyright so I'm not easily finding the relevant text - anyone happen to have a link?

I'm disappointed by this attitude. Bradbury lumps underprivleged minorities (such as blacks and women) with privileged or neutral "minorities" such as dog lovers. He doesn't show understanding of the distinction between elective special interest groups, and minority status imposed upon one by society, and he also doesn't show understanding of the privilege/status/power involved in the involuntary minority statuses. He also doesn't show any interest in increased inclusivism in future works, applying the criticisms only to past completed works - altering completed works wouldn't be right IMO, but I do feel it is worthwhile to portray a more ideal society in pieces one writes in the future, without as many boundary lines of privilege between different members of society.

Comments

[ayashi.livejournal.com]

This reminds me of this post someone linked me from a fandom post secret community a couple of weeks ago.

Granted a lot of people are coming from the fanfic POV and they aren't quite reaching Ray Bradbury's level of fame. :P But even so they sure to seem to share some of the same ideas!

http://community.livejournal.com/fandomsecrets/516771.html?thread=321119395#t321119395

For the people who say, "But my reality only includes white people! That doesn't make me racist!" I think they're kind of missing the point of what people are saying when they say they'd like to see more diversity...

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

I once posted to the NaNoWriMo forum asking for suggestions for names that were not "white names," but weren't stereotypical, because I wanted to write a story set in the future where the races had all melded together well and race was not an issue. Someone replied "why are you forcing the issue, you should just put in normal names" - entirely missing the point that white names are only "normal" if you only care about whites.