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i keep seeing posts about cs pacat being a ‘white woman writing a poc’ and
since she is australian and i am australian i thought it can be helpful to understand the way australians construct race

australia
has different race constructs to the USA. VERY different race
constructs. especially different is the way we construct the race of
people from
mediterranean and middle eastern countries

in australia italians (which cs pacat is), lebanese (which i am), greeks
(which people debate if damen is or not?), maltese, turkish (which akielon
sports are modeled on?), syrians, balkans, macedonians, egyptians and anyone
from mediterranean or middle east countries around there, we are all thought of
as being the same racial group. we are ‘wogs’. (look that word up if you dont
know that australian racial construct.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wog

so here we are not poc as such we are wogs which is sort of a third category
that doesnt exist in america??

when i read captive prince to me as an australian it doesnt read as a ‘white woman writing a poc’ but as a wog writing a wog. in australia, damen’s olive skin, dark hair and dark
eyes are  signals of that. and everywhere that i have looked for
interviews of cs pacat talking about damen and casting or ethnicity i notice she has
never used the term poc but instead says ‘mediterranean basin descent’ and ‘not
a tanned anglo-european’ which is  the australian way of thinking about race, since
wog vs anglo is a main racial divide here

i think since americans only have two categories (white/poc) they try to put
that on to captive prince and they end up sorting the author into one category
(white) and damen into the other (poc). which is true in the american system.

but as a lebanese-australian i would
sort damen, myself and pacat who is italo-australian into the same race catagory of
wog along with egyptians, turkish, maltese etc because that is the way we construct race here. thats not erasing,
lightening or whitewashing damen’s olive skin, its just our different way of
constructing his race while his olive skin colour stays the same.

i know its hard for americans to understand beccause you dont have this
category. and im not saying that damen is not a poc in your system, because in
your system he is a poc. but i hope americans will respect that other countries have
other ways of looking at race too. all race is a construct.

also these arguments about is damen greek and therefore white or is he
turkish and therefore poc are ridiculous since in australia greek, turkish,
maltese, italian, lebanese, egyptian etc we are literally all considered the
same ethnic group

tldr but i think its important to understand the
author’s race context bc the
book is different when you think about it as a wog author writing the
experience of a wog character marooned in a northern-european country
(vere =
france-ish) and feeling sense of racial difference as well as a sense of
cultural isolation, because that is the wog experience living here in
australia for turkish, greek, lebanese, maltese, italian, etc. and thats
just… different to how the book reads if you think of it in the
american way as a white woman writing a poc.

ALSO wog has a different meaning here in australia than it does
in the UK (and dont use the word if you are not a member of the group because
we use it as a friendly term, but it is a racial slur if used by others.)

Bigotry and ethnic prejudice against Mediterranean people has a long history in Australia, and while in a lot of ways it has passed, our entertainment landscape is still mostly Anglo, and just the other day, my boss made an offensive remark about Greeks. 

TL;DR the entire world is not the US, and US constructions of race are not universally applicable. 

Yeah when I saw people describing Damen as a POC I was like “But he’s…oh, yeah, I guess by US standards…”.

That said I think there is a difference these days between attitudes towards ethnic groups associated with Islam (Turkish, Lebanese etc) and those associated with Christianity (Italian, Greek) Islamaphobia and the old anti-all-Mediterranian-people attitudes mix in complicated ways. They also combine weirdly with antisemitism, as the darker and/or more Jewish members of my family can attest. But it’s definitely not as simple as Italian-Australian=white default (in my opinion as a white, sort-of-Anglo Australian)

Also worth noting: As a reclaimed slur, “wog” is not a term people
should throw around if they’re not 100% sure of it’s appropriateness.

EDIT: Oh! And I’m sure the OP didn’t mean to imply this, but in case people misunderstand: wog vs anglo is a main racial divide, but not the only main racial divide. Anti blackness, for example, is most definitely a thing, though the dynamic and history are different to the US.

Those are all good points! 

There’s also prejudice against Orthodox Christians, as the people who regularly mend the windows of my local Greek church would attest. But it’s quite possible that the local racists are under the impression it’s a mosque. 

I recall my confusion when, not long after I moved to Australia, my wife’s best mate (a product of a large and thriving Italian-Australian family) angrily corrected me: “I’m not white, I’m *Italian!*”

I was completely flabbergasted. I shouldn’t’ve been. After all, I knew perfectly well how America gradually decides that this or that ethnic group is now officially white (or sometimes back the other way – my mother clearly remembers the puzzling period in the early ‘50s when she, then a little girl in California, watched as society mysteriously morphed her latinx friends and neighbors from “white” to “colored.”) – so long as they’re not black, that is.

I feel the need to point out that this divide was something that existed in the U.S. Italian-Americans (particularly originating from the south of Italy, where my grandfather was from) and others of Mediterranean origin faced a great deal of bigotry and were not considered white until relatively recently. Those who were also Catholic (like my family) had to face bigotry for that as well. Actually, my family still uses the “dago” or “wop” vs. anglo terminology.

It’s honestly frustrating reading these discussions as a Greek-American because I’m very much an “ethnic” white person and I’m definitely treated differently by other white people the moment they see my last name. It’s not as clear cut as US tumblr would like to say it is. Especially when it comes to Mediterraneans.

To pretend that there is such a hard line between Greeks (white) and Turks (poc) or Armenians (white) and Syrians (poc) is kind of absurd to me. Here’s the “average” face of two women, one from Turkey and the other from Greece.

Can you look at these and honestly tell me you know which is which? Is it super obvious which woman would be considered white in America? Like??? I’m not even trying to argue that Turks should be seen as white or Greeks should be seen as poc. I’m just really uncomfortable that one of these people would earn more fandom points compared to the other despite looking so similar.

We bloody are the same ethnic group lmao

The only difference is in our mixes… Turks and Egyptians have been mixed with Arabs (and Egyptians with African people from inside the Continent while Turkish have mixed with Mongolian people ) Greeks have mixed with Slavic people and European people but also with Turkish and before all that romans

Tlthe only thing thst changes is the small amounts of ppl we mixed with

Which isn’t huge

And just remember how a slave most times also meant servant. And someone who you call a slave basically was the same. As a servant in say…. Middle age Europe… Or a poor farmer in Feudal Europe….

We called ourselves slaves during our enslavement from the Turkish….

Slaves had also been prisoners of war in most of the aforementioned cultures NOT BASED ON RACE or. CULTURE

Which doesn’t make it any. Less. Disgusting but it didn’t happen because eof appearance or culture only because human rights weren’t a concept and ideas about someone being g poor or born in a low class meant they were inferior

And also both of the characters went against that system

The issues come when people start romanticiing such relationships between two people which is very harmful

In ancient Greece slaves were prisoners of war or people who were too poor to actually live by themselves

In in turkey slaves were the people they occupied and we also called the Genisar army or the concubines as slaves.

The Egyptians had a form of slavery kind resembling a more European type of slavery but still the main people who were called slaves were considered servants

It s a disgusting way to view humanity but it existed in every single ancient world and it didn’t exist in the same way in every culture. Good thing it ended.

Just psi Macedonians are Greeks… They are not a separate entity if you mean people from. FYROM pls so not use that name it is not recognised or accepted.

Also… Slavic people from the balkans belong in a different ethnic group from the rest. BUT ARE still discriminated against because of their ethnicity and being I eastern Europe