Captain Vorpatril's Alliance.

So yesterday I went over to the BAen website and bought the advance reader copy e-book of Captain Vorpatril's Alliance by Lois McMaster Bujold.

It's frivolous, paced less evenly, surprisingly insightful in ways both expected and unexpected, and it showcases Ivan brilliantly.  It's hard to say much more without spoilers, but all the characters are delightfully themselves, and the tone (frivolous and unevenly paced) is perfectly suited to the protagonist.  There are two or three twists to the story, none of which I saw telegraphed more than moments in advance, a whole host of new faces, and what may or may not be the plot lead-in to an unwritten Miles novel squarely in the middle of the book.

There's a sort of universal structure problem in the treatment of one character -- who is respected by the narrative, but who is, in a meta sense, put in a position that annoys many fans, but as with anything spoilery, I'll keep the details to my comment threads.

Reading it on a Kindle was less problematic than expected.

Facebook comments I am not currently writing.

Pointing out racism is not "race-baiting."  The problem of racism will not go away if we all stop seeing race.  How many of your problems go away when people ignore them?

Let's break down a simple, straightforward example of how "colorblindness" perpetuates racism, rather than helping to solve it.  Charge a black man and a white man with the same crime.  Put them both in court.  Prosecute them with the same degree of evidence.  The black man is more likely to be convicted than the white man.  But let's say they're both convicted.  Sentence them.  Statistically speaking, the black man will receive a harsher sentence for the same kind of crime carried out under the same conditions.

Does this make the judge and jury racist?  Depends on what you mean by the word.  If you mean, do they hate minorities, do they think of other groups of people as subhuman, are they consciously trying to oppress and disenfranchise people of different colors?  No.  Or at least, most of them aren't.  But just like a drink doesn't make you an alcoholic, you can commit racist actions, have racist thoughts, without being a racist in that sense.

Let's look at why.  Why are we more suspicious of black people than white people?  Why do we treat minorities worse when they are accused of the same acts with the same evidence against them?  For most people, rather than conscious bias, it's a subconscious thing.  We know that there are more black people in prison than white people.  Black people and white people alike report that black people seem more threatening and more suspicious to them, on average (maybe because more of them are convicts?  It's a vicious cycle).

But that's exactly why colorblindness hurts people.  If you don't think about and process the reactions you're having, you're never going to realize the source of this bias.  If you truly do not see color, then you are more likely to perpetuate the cycle of systemic and institutional racism without examining the cause of your actions or working to come to a balanced, rational conclusion.  You won't realize why you find the defendant more dangerous than his paler co-defendant.  You won't be able to stop it.

Which is why, when someone accuses someone else of race-baiting, or says someone played the race card, my default response is just to say "bullshit."  Because it is bullshit.  And you can only explain it so many times before it makes you too mad to have a useful conversation.

Thoughts?