At the front desk

[mrissa]

At the front desk of the chiropractor's today, another patient stopped me to ask if she'd heard me correctly when I told the receptionist I was a writer. I agreed that I was. She started questioning me about how I go about it, quickly narrowing her specifications to how to get published (without, apparently, writing anything at all -- at first I thought she couldn't describe what she wanted to write, but it turns out she didn't know what she wanted to write). Okay, so that's bad enough, but plenty of people are in love with the idea of Being An Author without actually wanting to auth.

But then the [white] receptionist said to my [black] fellow patient, cheerfully, "Oh, and you'd be a shoe-in, because they're really into that black stuff these days. Y'know, multiculturalism and stuff." And my jaw dropped, and I thought, "Oh, Lord, this is the bit where this woman rips the receptionist's head off and feeds it to the squirrels." Because that's what I'd have done, for heaven's sake, and what just about every other writerbeing I know would have done.

Instead, my fellow patient nodded and said, "Oh, yeah, that's good." It is? Oh. Well. My mistake. I couldn't imagine a situation in which it would be appropriate to say, "they're really into that black stuff these days," but apparently I would have been wrong. Especially with "you'd be a shoe-in."

I'm still appalled, frankly.

Comments

Metaphorical levels

[mackatlaw.livejournal.com]

We are all at different levels in our life and different places, and some people are on much different places than others. Yes. I'm not even sure it's a hierarchy, which implies superiority, as much as a "I am here, and you are much further away" thing.

Sometimes when asked to explain the legal field, I feel this way. It's not that it can't be understood or explained, but it's an alien experience if you haven't been around it much.

Mack

Re: Metaphorical levels

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't say there's a general superiority going on here, but I would say that it is better not to assume that you know someone's interests based on their ethnicity or that ethnicity does or should trump talent.

Re: Metaphorical levels

[joelrosenberg.livejournal.com]

Well, sure. The other thing, of course, is that when it comes to writing, talent trumps ethnicity and other (in this context) irrelevancies, by a lot. If it was true that it was easy to get "black stuff" (whatever that means is another discussion) published, it's entirely possible that Raheem "R-Dog" X, hypothetical bestselling "black stuff" author, could actually turn out to be an albino Presbyterian Irish woman, after all.

Orthogonally, years ago, Longyear and I were talking about collaborating on a romance novel, to be set in a Pittsburgh steel mill. We had a title (Love's Blazing Inferno), and a psuedonym (Bambi Levine), and if we'd actually gotten around to writing the thing, it could have been published.

Re: Metaphorical levels (ethnicity)

[mackatlaw.livejournal.com]

I agree absolutely.

Mack

Ethnicity and interests

[mackatlaw.livejournal.com]

More thoughtful reply on interests based on ethnicity: I remember my voir dire experience, helping my father choose jurors for a small automobile case. He chose from his career background based on theories about race and social class. Blacks are good for a plaintiff, because they will tend to see him or her as the underdog against a corporation, while engineers are bad for a plaintiff because they know too many numbers and will try to second-guess the expert witness. I've heard other lawyers say this too and read it in places.

I don't know if that's right or not. The lawyers may be. But it still bothered me. I didn't like it, but if I had to choose my own jury, how would I do it? Picking juries is an art based on conventional wisdom, pop sociology, and personal observation. Once you've heard convention, it's hard to defy it for fear of being wrong.

Maybe I think too much.

Mack

Re: Ethnicity and interests

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure how I think juries ought to be selected, but the whole experience appears to currently be a "gut feeling" exercise on the attorney's part, and I'm not sure that's optimal. I would hope that your dad could recognize generalities like that for what they are and could at least try to assess people individually as well as in groups.

I don't think the problem is thinking too much. You may be thinking in a suboptimal direction for an attorney who wants to win cases or who wants justice done. I don't know that part. But I don't think thinking too much is really a problem here.

Juries

[mackatlaw.livejournal.com]

There are specialists who do nothing but advise attorneys on picking juries, but in your average small case (small being relative when it comes to verdicts and importance: we were asking for $70,000 for damages), there's not much time to strike the jury. At least, in last months' trial, we were given half an hour deliberation plus the hour or so spent having the jurors be sworn in and answer our questions. Dad used personal analysis and then fell back on generalities. Hard to say what I'd do myself, though I liked people he didn't. But then, the ones I liked may have had more to do with my own background then with the needs of my client....

I don't know, it's definitely an advanced people assessing skill. (That or mere divination.) Something about this system feels off to me, but I can't put my finger on it without more experience. I'm glad to hear you don't think I've overthinking; when I get more exposure to the matter, I'll post the results and invite discussion.

Mack