Change for Westerns
When I began writing western fiction, decades ago, I gradually discovered that the genre was deeply imbued by southern traditions and beliefs. Most of the writers were southern. Most wrote stories in which the protagonists were from the South, and were ex-Confederate soldiers, and angry at everything that lay behind them in the East. The genre was European-only. The conflict was personal, and not informed by ideals, and settled only one issue: Who would be the Top Dog?
There was little overt racism, but plenty of covert hostility toward Indians, and non-Europeans, who were all in the pathway of expanding white civilization. The idea of a literature promoting or favoring the historic occupiers of the western lands was so beyond the thinking of western novelists that Dee Brown's Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee came as a shock. How could there even be another side, opposing the racially preordained expansion of English-speaking civilization? (Stories about non-English-speaking Europeans were just as rare. Ever see a Western novel about, say, Norwegian or Czech immigrants?)
But these were lesser peculiarities compared to the deep infusion of Confederate values into the western story. I have discussed this elsewhere, and won't rehash it here. I continued to write what I considered more traditional western stories, usually involving the building of a new civilization. The recent re-examination of the Confederacy, wrought by the alleged brutal murder of South Carolina blacks by a young racist, has brought to light just how deeply this racism still slumbers across the South, and for me, how deeply it infuses the mass-market paperbacks that are alleged to be Westerns. Most of these employ house or franchise author names, and I have never been told the names of their authors, but it is easy to see they are southern, or southern sympathizers, and that the Westerns they write are intended for southern, racist, white males.
I have moved steadily away from gunman fiction, preferring historical novels set in the West, or mining stories with a minimum of violence, stories that include the whole broad ethnicity of the frontier West.
What I am hoping is that the recent exposure of barely concealed racism in the South, that affects so much Western fiction, will begin a process of change that will root out the Southern "hero" once and for all. Western heroes, like mystery heroes, should courageously wrestle against disorder and lawlessness that threaten settlers, and not be a part of the problem in their own right. In mystery fiction, the detective's object is to restore safety and security and bring the criminal to justice. I am hoping that the Western hero will start to do the same, instead of using his anger and rebellious feelings to turn the West into a wasteland. A large branch of western fiction has been corrupted by the unreconciled South. But some good change is on the horizon.
There was little overt racism, but plenty of covert hostility toward Indians, and non-Europeans, who were all in the pathway of expanding white civilization. The idea of a literature promoting or favoring the historic occupiers of the western lands was so beyond the thinking of western novelists that Dee Brown's Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee came as a shock. How could there even be another side, opposing the racially preordained expansion of English-speaking civilization? (Stories about non-English-speaking Europeans were just as rare. Ever see a Western novel about, say, Norwegian or Czech immigrants?)
But these were lesser peculiarities compared to the deep infusion of Confederate values into the western story. I have discussed this elsewhere, and won't rehash it here. I continued to write what I considered more traditional western stories, usually involving the building of a new civilization. The recent re-examination of the Confederacy, wrought by the alleged brutal murder of South Carolina blacks by a young racist, has brought to light just how deeply this racism still slumbers across the South, and for me, how deeply it infuses the mass-market paperbacks that are alleged to be Westerns. Most of these employ house or franchise author names, and I have never been told the names of their authors, but it is easy to see they are southern, or southern sympathizers, and that the Westerns they write are intended for southern, racist, white males.
I have moved steadily away from gunman fiction, preferring historical novels set in the West, or mining stories with a minimum of violence, stories that include the whole broad ethnicity of the frontier West.
What I am hoping is that the recent exposure of barely concealed racism in the South, that affects so much Western fiction, will begin a process of change that will root out the Southern "hero" once and for all. Western heroes, like mystery heroes, should courageously wrestle against disorder and lawlessness that threaten settlers, and not be a part of the problem in their own right. In mystery fiction, the detective's object is to restore safety and security and bring the criminal to justice. I am hoping that the Western hero will start to do the same, instead of using his anger and rebellious feelings to turn the West into a wasteland. A large branch of western fiction has been corrupted by the unreconciled South. But some good change is on the horizon.
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