Conscience's Speech

(I chose to put this topic on this part of the forum because even though this discussion is inspired by events in the comic, the discussion itself is an entirely separate issue.)

Okay, I just cannot resist talking about this, and I hope we can do so without getting anyone too upset. I will do my best to be as respectful as possible toward all points of view, and I hope anyone else commenting will do the same.

I'm not quite sure why everyone is railing so hard against the way Conscience spoke in part 1. I see people in the comment box talking about how they're glad the "Ebonics" (for lack of a better term, though I know some people may object to this particular word) was all an act because, they assert, nobody talks like that. The thing is, with a few cartoony exceptions like Conscience's way of saying "fo' shizzle," a lot of people do talk like that. I don't understand why someone would consider it racist to depict a black character speaking that way. It may be considered a "stereotype," and it is certainly true that not all black people speak this way, but when I went to high school the vast majority most certainly did, to a greater or lesser extent depending on the individual. Maybe it was the nature of my high school, where whites were not the majority, but I'd say maybe 1 in 20 did not speak Ebonics as his/her natural speech among friends. So, what's with all the hate towards it? Has everyone else here just had a wildly different set of experiences from myself?

I had two different school experiences - in elementary school and the first part of middle school, I went to schools where a good 25-30% of the population was minority students, a large portion of which were black. Conversely, from 7th grade through high school graduation, I went to schools where perhaps 1-5% were minority students, but the other minorities were larger (I'd say there were perhaps only 5 black kids in my high school and I'm pretty sure we didn't have more than 500 students in the whole high school).

I do, however, understand the sentiment behind everyone feeling glad that Conscience's speech patterns...or I'd like to think I understand it; I will disclaimer that I am a VERY white girl, but I'm someone who reads and thinks a lot about race and privilege, as well as speculating about how I would feel in different situations.

The general, unschooled public (particularly whites who don't even know what the hell privilege means/www.uakron.edu/centers/conflict/docs/whitepriv.pdf+privilege+backpack&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">have not unpacked their invisible white privilege backpack) tend to see Ebonics/AAE/the dialect of most black rappers as unintelligent, whether it is a conscious thought ("I can't believe she thinks talking like that is okay! It makes her sound so...dumb!") or an unconscious thought (not hiring a completely qualified black dude who came in talking in an AAE style). It has also been stereotyped as being "poor" and "poor" is often stereotyped as "lazy" (especially with regards to many minorities). Again, these judgments can be conscious or unconscious. People have made plenty of political "comics" about how AAE "ruins" 'standard' English (comparing it to the bubonic plague, aka the "Black Death" plague), that it will cause us to head "backwards" in time instead of "into the future," and other hateful "satire".

Considering that SO MANY people fall back on this stereotype and the stereotype is generally not considered to be positive, I can see how it would get to be REALLY annoying, really fast. Generally, people who use stereotypes such as this are part of the unschooled public.

Example time! --- Let's say that you're reading a "straight comic" and there is ONE lesbian character and they personify all the negative stereotypes - fat, ugly, desperate because no guy will sleep with them, cranky/crotchy/bitchy, immoral, a child molester, full of drama, etc...it gets old (and offensive) really fast. I don't know about you, but I'd probably assume that the author is rather homophobic. The only way I'd keep reading was if EVERYONE was an offensive stereotype and it was satirical and trying to show how stupid stereotypes are (sorta like how I can watch Family Guy, even though parts make me cringe).

That's an interesting argument, but it seems to condemn the people criticizing Conscience's Ebonics/AAE more than it does the use of it, doesn't it?

Your hypothetical situation would certainly arouse my disgust, but it seems like a very unequal comparison. It seems more like if (in this hypothetical "straight" comic) there was one lesbian who embodied, say, the physical stereotype of the butch lesbian. Short-cropped hair, flannel vest, baggy jeans, combat boots, etc., but was otherwise a perfectly fine character in terms of personality. I'd probably at first have the same knee-jerk reaction most people would and say, "Oh, come on, that's just a stereotype," but the truth is that there are a significant number of lesbians who look and dress like that, and that kind of reaction treads dangerously close to condemning those people. At least in my mind...

Huh. I thought I had put this below the comic on the site, but I wrote other stuff instead.

I very much feel that ebonics/AAE is a legitimate dialect. Nobody rags on Southern accents. Lots of people I've met think they're sexy. Nobody thinks it's bad that there's a difference between American English, British English, and Australian English. There is no RIGHT way of speaking English. But AAE gets portrayed as unintelligent, "bad" English, and when it comes down to it, it's because it was created by black people, and spoken primarily by black people. To say ebonics is bad is to discount a legitimate dialect simply because black people use it.

So for all the people saying "I'm glad she's not talking that way anymore," it's fine that she was talking that way, if that was who she was. But it wasn't. I made that clear earlier in the comic when she would forget her accent and speak differently, reverting to her preferred method of speech.

But Mary's character had almost no development outside of this stereotype. She was used for comic relief, and didn't even have a name. Her speech was not what made her a racist character, it was all the other things coming together to make her just one more in a sea of stereotypical people of color who get no storylines of their own and are only there to advance the plot for the white characters.

hate to say it, but in my highschool, overall, it was the kids who didnt do well who would talk that way. but it wasnt just black kids. most of the kids who werent taking their education seriously would talk that way. i can honestly say that i dont know of one kid who was in my honours classes who spoke that way, except for the one dominican kid who always "borrowed" peoples homework.
i know its not right to stereotype people, but at the same time, thats what the kids were like at my school.

and otherwise, there were looots of stereotypes in the story. i was a nerd in highschool. i was kind of an outcast, but i like to think that i was fairly pretty and had no interest in av club. so really, theres no reason to get all hipped up about it. i know its not the same, but i mean, if you know that you are not perpetuating that stereotype, what have you got to worry about?

Thanks for weighing in on the topic, Megan. I'm glad we seem to be on the same page here... I certainly agree that forcing Mary to play the dream version of herself, "Conscience," as a complete stereotype is rather wrong (even if it is only to maintain the illusion that the dream world does not exist as an entity separate from the dreamer's own understanding of the world), but I couldn't agree with people's complaints that it is wrong to simply portray a black person as speaking that way. I'm really glad you really thought about the notion that she was "just one more in a sea of stereotypical people of color who get no storylines of their own and are only there to advance the plot for the white characters." And also that you're now remedying that.

Sara wrote: i can honestly say that i dont know of one kid who was in my honours classes who spoke that way

I actually knew a few honors kids who did. One who even kidded with me for talking in what he perceived to be an unnaturally stiff way, and advised me to loosen up and "talk reg'la." I guess it all depends on your point of view.

Everest wrote:I'd probably at first have the same knee-jerk reaction most people would and say, "Oh, come on, that's just a stereotype," but the truth is that there are a significant number of lesbians who look and dress like that, and that kind of reaction treads dangerously close to condemning those people. At least in my mind...

Ah yes. I certainly wasn't trying to say that butch lesbians aren't hot and awesome (because THEY ARE! I just saw one today at the mall and I swooned a little... XD). I was trying to get more at what Megan mentioned...that the character was ONLY stereotypes - a one dimensional, token character.

Sara wrote:i can honestly say that i dont know of one kid who was in my honours classes who spoke that way

Sure, perhaps they didn't speak it at school. That doesn't mean they didn't speak it at home or when they were around other black people who wouldn't think it meant that they were unintelligent.

freakingdork wrote:I certainly wasn't trying to say that butch lesbians aren't hot and awesome

I want to clarify that I don't mean that either. I love the butch aesthetic! Butch girls are incredibly attractive and the people who disagree are, well, wrong!

freakingdork wrote:
Sure, perhaps they didn't speak it at school. That doesn't mean they didn't speak it at home or when they were around other black people who wouldn't think it meant that they were unintelligent.

There's probably a lot of truth to that. Since everyone's preconceived notions of people who speak AAE are that it is unintelligent, and if you're seen as dumb, you'll be treated like you're dumb, they probably do adopt a more "normal" way of speaking so that they can be seen as just as intelligent as everyone else.

everest wrote:
I'm really glad you really thought about the notion that she was "just one more in a sea of stereotypical people of color who get no storylines of their own and are only there to advance the plot for the white characters." And also that you're now remedying that.

Oh, I planned to do this storyline since before Conscience made an appearance. (I still often refer to her as "Conscience", because Conscience is actually a name as well.) None of this is me backtracking after unwittingly making a racist character. I knowingly and deliberately made Conscience this way, because I wanted to show what happens when you're a white kid surrounded by white people all the damn time, surrounded by prejudices and double standards as far as what people expect of minorities. Like how they taught in my school that "racism is over" because of MLK, and that we didn't need to worry about it anymore. And heck, I wanted Fiona to have some flaws to her character. Racism, intentional or not, is a major flaw. I really wanted to have a main character that the audience didn't 100% identify with at all times.

Now, see, I could understand this being a problem if Mary/Conscience talked like that ALL the time, and/or if her boss did as well, but the fact remains that not only is it not their natural speech pattern, Megan did a great job of explaining the thought processes behind it, both under the comic and in this thread.

There are people out there who truly believe that ALL black people speak in AAE, simply because they've never been exposed to anything different. This is hardly Megan being racist, or even Fiona being racist-- it's just the only thing they know. If a child is raised being told all their lives that what we call blue is actually called red (and you understood that situation), you wouldn't blame the child for not understanding.

As Mary/Conscience's boss says, the dreams writers wanted the dream to be as close to what Fiona knew as possible-- if that hadn't been true, most if not all of the shock of the "holy shit, this isn't real" realization would have been lost, because it would have been obvious from the start.
As far as I'm concerned, this was a really brilliant little mini-plotpoint. Not only does it address a problem (that of people being able to be so ignorant-- as that's what this is: ignorance, not racism) but it also has a tie-in to previous occurrences in the comic.

A+ in my book.

freakingdork wrote:

Sara wrote:i can honestly say that i dont know of one kid who was in my honours classes who spoke that way

Sure, perhaps they didn't speak it at school. That doesn't mean they didn't speak it at home or when they were around other black people who wouldn't think it meant that they were unintelligent.

actually, i forgot to put this up there but i have a neighbor that went to a school a town over where basically everyone talks like that and she was talking to me about it the other days and actually said that she has to change the way she speaks to be accepted around her friends. its almost bizzare because her speech patterns change entirely with me versus her friends, ive seen it happen. the sad part was she had said that if she were to speak to them the way she talks to me or while shes at work or whatever, they would basically go "are you trying to be better than us?" i dunno. people make such stupid judgements. i dont like it, but i also cant help but see it.
in all honesty, i personally get annoyed when anyone messes up grammar badly so i could be slightly biased but even if my teacher uses the wrong part of speech it bothers me. im probably just being nitpicky now.
and i did mention that it was not just the black kids. it was kinda ... the "gansta" kids. (no lie, thats what most of them would call each other so) i knew plenty of kids from all the races who could speak "perfect english"

Aerai wrote:Now, see, I could understand this being a problem if Mary/Conscience talked like that ALL the time, and/or if her boss did as well, but the fact remains that not only is it not their natural speech pattern, Megan did a great job of explaining the thought processes behind it, both under the comic and in this thread.

Yes. But you have to understand that this thread is talking about why people are SO glad it is this way (well, more like "Why was Conscience using Ebonic/AAE in part 1 SO bad?" but it's sorta different sides to one coin). You have to remember that some people have been reading this comic since it started (4?) years ago. We only NOW know that she didn't speak like that because she wanted to or because that was her way of speech. We didn't know that we would be given more characterization after part 1 was done. Some people didn't know these things for YEARS, so for YEARS the character of Mary has been problematic - they've felt that Mary was a one dimensional black character, only around for comedic effect and to push Fiona's white girl story along.

Aerai wrote:...if that hadn't been true, most if not all of the shock of the "holy shit, this isn't real" realization would have been lost, because it would have been obvious from the start.

I'm not quite sure what you meant by that. I don't think it would have been SO obvious to Fi that the dream wasn't real life just because ONE person (that she didn't already know) didn't talk like she assumed they talked.

Sara wrote:hate to say it, but in my highschool, overall, it was the kids who didnt do well who would talk that way. but it wasnt just black kids. most of the kids who werent taking their education seriously would talk that way. i can honestly say that i dont know of one kid who was in my honours classes who spoke that way, except for the one dominican kid who always "borrowed" peoples homework.
i know its not right to stereotype people, but at the same time, thats what the kids were like at my school.

But it's hard to figure out cause and effect. Sure, you can say that kids with those accents talk that way because they're dumb... but kids who talk that way, because of the stereotype of stupidity associated with those accents, are also going to be subject to the teacher's stereotypes. They might not get put into the advanced classes, or they might be treated by the teacher as if they are less intelligent than the other kids (this could start as early as kindergarten, really). After years and years being treated sub-par, they're not going to have as much confidence in their abilities, they're not going to test as well, and they're not going to get put into as high a level of courses.

Unlike Meagan's experience, where I live, people with Southern accents are seen as uneducated and, frankly, a bit on the dull side. But the truth is-- it's JUST an accent. Yeah, there's slang and grammatical construction involved, but we all use poor grammar in our speech that we don't necessarily use in formal writing.

That's just my opinion on it, sorry if it came out harsh or ranty. ><

freakingdork wrote:We only NOW know that she didn't speak like that because she wanted to or because that was her way of speech. We didn't know that we would be given more characterization after part 1 was done. Some people didn't know these things for YEARS, so for YEARS the character of Mary has been problematic - they've felt that Mary was a one dimensional black character, only around for comedic effect and to push Fiona's white girl story along.

Yes, thank you, exactly. For a couple of years now, I have felt deeply uncomfortable with Mary/Conscience's part 1 characterization, without much indication anywhere I looked that there might be more to her. (The description of her character in the FAQ, for instance, did not help. Sure, it's not negative, but it's easy to read it as supporting that 2-dimensional stereotype.)

Megan, I'm glad to know you were planning this from the beginning! Given the culture we live in, it's hard to automatically place faith in creators and writers when it comes to such sensitive cultural issues. I look forward to the next bit of story. Will you address the fact that all three (I think it's been three?) consciences we've seen so far have been people of color? That's the sort of thing that seems to imply conscious choice.

(Sorry to butt in! I just now noticed the very last bit of the note under yesterday's page, about the call box and the forum. I've avoided joining here, because I really don't have time for another online community right now, but I wanted to stop by and say something a little less abrupt.)

I need to start remembering where I post things, because I always think I put it everywhere, when I only put it in one place.

In my livejournal, I wrote:People have asked me why all the consciences we've seen are POCs/why does Mary, Fi's Conscience, look like a black version of Fiona?
These two questions are tied together.

I wanted people's consciences to look sort of like the people they are tied to. If you notice Lia's conscience, she looks like Lia, but with black hair and darker skin, and Mary looks a lot like Fiona as well. I wanted a clear visual way to establish who went with who. Now, they still look very different. Mary's facial features are not at all the same as Fiona's, because Mary isn't "Fiona in blackface," she is her own legitimate person.

And I thought it would interesting to explore how Fiona, with her somewhat ingrained racist tendencies, would react to finding out part of her own soul is, indeed, black. Because that is what consciences are in this story. The relationship between a person and their conscience is like the closest friend you'll ever have, one that you literally keep inside your heart.

And since, so far, we've only seen Fiona's Conscience and Lia's Conscience, and they're both white, their consciences were both PoCs. Mary's boss is black as well, because... well, you'll see in the next few pages, the type of dynamic they have, and how part of the point I make relies on both of them being the same race.

We will see consciences who are not PoCs. In fact...



Oh, it's so hard not to give stuff away!

im comming off as kinda racist here... i really dont want to cause im not the kind of person thats gonna not be friends with/ not hire/ not whatever a person because they talk that way. the structure bothers me, but other than that i could care less.
im just saying what i observed in a fairly diverse school situation. their personalities im sure had a lot more to do with either them wanting to fit in or just not having enough love as a kid or something and much less to do with arbitrary things like speech patterns. im not sure why everyone --seemed-- to fit the stupid stereotype but at least of what i saw, thats the way it was. i wasnt really involved personally with many people either though, so i am only seeing it from one side. and i may be biased because i was often teased by said kids.
i like both conscience and mary. conscience's speech was just a part of her character and she obviously was no slouch. so, would it not be a good thing that a character who was the voice of reason and who was smart and clever talked that way? did she not kind of break what most people thought of people who talk that way?

Megan Rose wrote:

Nobody rags on Southern accents. Lots of people I've met think they're sexy.

Not to derail the discussion or sr start anything, but HA! Try going around with a Texan accent. Every time I speak so much as a word around non-Texans I'm immediately branded as either an inbred moron, pure, unadulterated oppressive christian evil, or most likely both. I can filter out the accent but then I sound like an automaton.

And you're no more an inbred moron than someone who speaks ebonics is a gangsta.

And I agree that different accents get different perceptions in different areas. (And as far as Texan accents go, Bush ruined those for everybody.)

Part of why this issue is so hard to discuss is because we're from all over the country, heck, all over the world. Situations and opinions of people's cultural differences vary so vastly that I can say "Southern accents are held in higher regard than AAE," and it would be true in some places, false in others.

Ah, well I guess I should give my two cents into this popular topic :B.

I really didn't mind the way Concious talked in part one, in fact I thought it was pretty cool n' such. But as soon as I hear the whole "Concious doesn't actually talk like that" for part two thing I felt as if I had a huge anvil dropped on my head that had the words "Idiot" across it in red. And I can see where the whole issue of her talking that way is, I have trouble listening to people with an accent D:. And Ebonics always makes me look like the idiot in the situation, as I nod my head and say "yeah yeah" to the person I'm talking to D:. If only we had closed captioning right under the person's face so that I can read what they're saying. It would work for my grandmother too, since she can't speak english as well as I can speak telugu XD.

But yeah, sometimes you go ahead and expect a person to have a particular accent, as I did with Mary/Concience, and that's not exactly true.

I mean, tons of people mistake me for being mexican when they talk to me, since I show no diversity that would fit with a a certain country, but I mean, I have an accent, as everyone does, but it's hard to tell, since I grew up in a family that talks 3 different languages around me, plus I was born californian, so I have a little bit of the surfer-dude and valley-girl speech, as sad as it is to admit it XD.

But anyway, it's a bit of a surprise to people when I say I'm indian XD. They say "oh" and such and then they ask me about other stuff or they change the subject entirely :/. But everyone says my parents have an accent, when really I don't think they do XD. My mom maybe, because she makes fun of the way we pronounce our "r"s, but that's basically it XD. I haven't exactly gotten a 7-11 remark yet though, so that's good . But I have the constant already sterotype that I do good in grades and such. But I only get A's if I'm in average classes where they calculate your grades for "completion" and "effort" rather than accuracy. I mean, when I submitted my homework to the institute (where I was doing home-schooling) I got back a bunch of D's and an F T_T.

Anyway, I'll stop talking now . Since I must of caused some of you guys to tl;dr me already, because I'm much of a typer D:. So sorry for the spammage if you did XD.

as a side note, did you know that they teach pretty much everyone in major spoken media to have a conneticution "accent"?
oddly enough, thats where im from and as you can see, ive seen all sorts of different "dialects". im my area specifically, i think we sound more new york than anything, but i think what most people are speaking on the television news and whatnot is something like rich, greenwich drawl. funny, apparently they only want people in the major spotlight to sound like rich socialites. im not sure if this is changing/has changed but i remember hearing that. were also one of the worst places for urban relations. apparently we have some of the richest and poorest towns in the usa. ive seen people swich to private schools because mommy and daddy didnt want their kids with "those sort of people".
its horrible really.

Do people in California have an accent? I remember a german teacher I had several years ago describe how, as he went further and further west across the US, the accents became more and more homogeneous, until he reached California, and the accentual variations almost disappeared entirely.

FlyingLemon wrote:Do people in California have an accent? I remember a german teacher I had several years ago describe how, as he went further and further west across the US, the accents became more and more homogeneous, until he reached California, and the accentual variations almost disappeared entirely.

I live in Massachusetts (not in Boston, in suburbia) and to me, Californians don't have accents.

Of course they actually do-- someone with a southern accent would probably hear an accent on them-- but it's similar to New England, I guess.

Sara wrote:as a side note, did you know that they teach pretty much everyone in major spoken media to have a conneticution "accent"?

Actually, they teach a "mid-west accent," which technically doesn't include Connecticut (click here). Of course, that doesn't mean that the accent isn't similar.

First off, kudos for Everest for finally starting up this thread. I was thinking about it but I was too lazy. xP

When this issue came up in the cbox, I thought about it briefly and decided: "Conscience probably acts like a stereotype because that's what Fiona would expect. Because Fiona has had almost zero experience with black people in real life."

It sounds like I was pretty much correct. And the thing is, I understand this because I've heard about it from my mom and my grandmother. They both grew up in extremely white areas and had virtually NO contact with anyone who wasn't white. Thus, they accepted whatever stereotypes were handed to them by other people and the media. And then were somewhat shocked later on when they found out the stereotypes weren't necessarily true.

Oh, one more thing.

@FlyingLemon: Yes, some California people DO have accents. Like the pronunciation of the word "because", for example. They say "BUH-cuz" instead of "bee-CAWZ". xD And don't get me started on the valley girl "uptalking" phenomenon.