Detcon1 and Diversity
In talking about diversity in SF/F fandom, I’ve pointed before to convention committees and staff that are mostly or exclusively white, and often male-dominated. This isn’t uncommon, and it’s part of a larger systemic problem with fandom and genre. Recognizing that your favorite con isn’t as diverse and inclusive as you thought doesn’t mean it’s a Bad Con, or that the people running it are Horrible People. What’s important, at least to me, is to recognize and work to change things for the better.
Detcon1 has gotten a lot of things right on that front. They established a Diversity Advisory Board, consisting of Muhammad A Ahmad, Anne Gray, Mark Oshiro, Kat Tanaka Okopnik, Mike VanHelder, Pablo Vazquez, and Sal Palland. They chose to honor a range of guests that acknowledges the broader scope of the genre. They established the FANtastic Detroit Fund to help provide free memberships to fans who might otherwise be unable to attend.
What follows is a video discussion between Pablo Vazquez and Anne Gray about the work Detcon1 has been doing. I’m also including a transcript of the conversation. (But the video is better, because it has music and special effects and stuff!)
Michigan is my home base, so I’m biased, but I think Detcon1 has been doing some awesome things, and I’m really looking forward to the convention.
Detcon1
North American Science Fiction Convention
Renaissance Center Marriott
Detroit, Michigan
July 17 through 20, 2014
[Welcome to Detcon1.]
PABLO: Hi. I’m Pablo Vasquez.
ANNE: And I’m Anne Gray.
PABLO: Yeah, we’re part of the Diversity Committee, and also doing work with the Afrofuturism programming at Detcon1. And we’re really excited about it.
ANNE: Yeah, we’ve – Right from the first, Detcon1 has been dedicated to having a diverse group of attendees – and, when we started inviting our guests, for example, we really wanted to have a diverse group of people so that it was, I think as you said, “representative of the modern world.”
PABLO: Yeah, of Modern Fandom.
ANNE: Yeah
PABLO: Detcon1 has definitely diversified and found absolutely quality people for their guests.
ANNE: For instance we have people of color…
PABLO: Yeah, like John Picacio and Steven Barnes.
John Picacio, Artist Guest of Honor
Steven Barnes, Author Guest of Honor
ANNE: Yeah, including Nnedi Okorafor
Nnedi Okorafor, YA Author Special Guest
PABLO: mm-hmm.
ANNE: Which is also part of our reach out to young people, cause she’s our YA Author. Our Scientist Guest of Honor is a woman. Helen Greiner. She’s a roboticist.
Helen Greiner, Scientist Guest of Honor
ANNE: Musicians are a couple, a man and a woman. Bill and Brenda Sutton.
Bill and Brenda Sutton, Music Guests of Honor
ANNE: And you were really excited about our Fan Guests.
Bernadette Bosky, Arthur D. Hlavaty, and Kevin J. Maroney, Fan Guests of Honor
PABLO: Yeah! And I like that our fan guests, I mean, it’s the first time that I’ve seen, like, a polyamorous triad as a fan guest. And as a polyamorous person myself, I was, you know, exceedingly happy to see that. And I’m sure a lot of other people like me will as well. Lifestyles or racial diversity or gender diversity. We also reach out to typically ignored parts of fandom, like the video game fandom, by having our video game guest Jon Davis, who’s worked on, like, Titanfall and other popular video games.
Jon Davis, Video Game Special Guest
PABLO: We have outreach to those communities. We reach out to tabletop role players; we reach out to video gamers; comic book fans. So on and so forth.
ANNE: Steampunk
PABLO: Steampunks, you know.
ANNE: Afrofuturists…
PABLO: Exactly.
ANNE: I mean one of the things – We’re in Detroit. I mean, we are the North American Science Fiction Convention, but we’re in Detroit. So we wanted to make sure that Detroit fans, even if they’ve mostly gone to a comicon, or they’re just readers, or something. When they find out about us, they wanna come, and when they come—
PABLO: mm-hmm.
ANNE: They feel welcome. We want everybody to feel welcome and included.
PABLO: By making Detcon1 diverse, we’re introducing fans who have never, like, met each other, or knew about their specific subsects of fandom, to be able to connect with one another, and share their love of, you know, what makes them a fan within greater fandom as a whole.
ANNE: mm-hmm.
PABLO: So, you know, I can’t wait to see that, to see all these different people actually connecting with one another, on, you know, our greater love of science fiction and fantasy; of speculative fiction.
ANNE: Yeah. Science fiction conventions are where we come together, we have great conversations, and then we take that out into the rest of our lives, and … this should be exciting.
PABLO: Yeah!
Pam Adams
July 2, 2014 @ 12:06 pm
Being unable to attend- curse this capatalistic society!- I’ve just donated my membership to the FANtastic fund, and hope some new fan can use it to enjoy Detcon and worldcon-ish fandom.
Jim C. Hines
July 2, 2014 @ 12:16 pm
I’m sorry you won’t be able to make it, but thank you for that!
quilly mammoth
July 3, 2014 @ 6:07 pm
As a partial Native American I’ve never really seen prejudice in the SF community. I think we make a mistake when we equate amounts of participation by various demographic groups with prejudice. White, male hetro’s are the predominate buyers of SF. Seems ipso facto they would run most of the cons.
But, not really. I can think of several cons, such as LibertyCon, that the conchair is a woman as is many of the committee chairs.
But, oddly, in all the recent Romance cons I see no movement to attract white, male heterosexuals to participate greater.
Finally, Jim, if you really, personally, want to promote diversity in the field I recommend Mike Kobongo as an agent. You should switch to him, he’s like the Shaft of SF agents. Really great guy…But he eats his bacon with his hands. No one is perfect.
Brad
July 3, 2014 @ 11:49 pm
Jim,
Is it really diversity if everyone has the same opinion? So you have changed the wrapper, but the book is still the same. How is that diverse?
Jim C. Hines
July 4, 2014 @ 10:58 am
“As a partial Native American I’ve never really seen prejudice in the SF community.”
Many others have. Are you disregarding their stories and experiences?
“White, male hetro’s are the predominate buyers of SF.”
[Citation needed.]
As for your Shaft reference, I’m sorry, but I have no idea what you’re trying to say there.
Jim C. Hines
July 4, 2014 @ 11:02 am
Brad – I’m sorry, but I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make here. Nobody’s talking about conformity of opinion, and if you’ve paid any attention at all to the genre and to fandom, you’d see people disagreeing and arguing about pretty much everything. As for your book cover comment, huh???
Matt Thyer
July 5, 2014 @ 11:22 am
Jim,
I’m really looking forward to being at DetCon1 this year and hoping we get to spend some time together. As a young nerd the SFF community was a place I could be and not worry overly about all the things that make me a little different. Since I started attending conventions as an author I’ve seen a variety of crowds. I’ve been told that DetCon1 represents a good one and can’t wait to jump in with the rest of you.
Brad
July 6, 2014 @ 1:34 am
Jim, Yes there is lots of discussions, but unfortunately they are quite vitriolic, just look at the mess that has happened at Archon this year. But like most conventions, this is not a convention with much diversity of opinion. Can you name just 5 people on the panels that you have fundamental differences on opinions with?
Most conventions have a singular view point whether it is liberal, progressive, socialist, libertarian or conservative. If everyone has the same viewpoints then where is the diversity?
Jim C. Hines
July 12, 2014 @ 10:04 am
“Can you name just 5 people on the panels that you have fundamental differences on opinions with?”
Sure.
“Most conventions have a singular view point…”
Really? That’s…interesting. And you seem to be doing that thing where you slap a label onto a group of people, and then assume that because of that label, they must all have the same viewpoint and opinions. There are a number of problems with that kind of thinking.
Diversity in Sci/fi | Rants, Raves and Diatribes
July 12, 2014 @ 11:59 pm
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Diversity in Fandom | everydayfangirl
July 20, 2014 @ 4:25 pm
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