Kate Clanchy - poet - is 'cancelled' by her publisher

KiminkosNightmare

You know Kate Clanchy’s Scottish, right?

It was a joke. She was comparing the class to the inner city pupils she’d had the year before and joking that it was the entirely white, entirely Scottish-born class she ‘couldn’t tell apart’.

There does seem to be some out of context cherry picking, yes.

KC herself I think is being unfairly demonised, though. She’s the locus of an argument that’s divorced from what she wrote, despite people extensively quoting her.

I agree with this, NoSquirrels.

And as other posters have said above, there absolutely CAN be a fundamentalism of the left, just as there can be a fundamentalism of the right. People can be dogmatic and intolerant regardless of where their political views fall.

I increasingly feel that there's a split between old-fashioned liberal lefties, committed to values like free speech, and a new kind of hard left anti-racist discourse that attempts to police and ban anyone who doesn't fall into line.

I feel rather torn sometimes, because I think postcolonial theory and critical race theory are hugely important (and that the liberal left needs to recognise its own longstanding inadequacies in that regard), but in cases like this one, I find myself siding with the classical liberal left. In fact, ideally, I'd like to stake out a position in the middle, but that's hard impossible? to do when Twitter discourse effectively says, 'You're for us or against us'.

Also, I don't know KC personally, but I live in the catchment of the school where she teaches, and I've seen firsthand how she has helped to raise the profile of that school over many years, and encourage the pupils there, long before the book was published and everything exploded. Her elderly parents, the historian Michael and his wife Joan, a retired headmistress and teacher, were also much loved in the community and it was very distressing when they died during lockdown last year, within a couple of weeks of each other. I don't think KC was making a hollow play for sympathy when she said that bereavement had affected her and that she wasn't herself at the time she overreacted to the Goodreads reviews so badly on Twitter. I'm not saying that all this exonerates her, but there's definitely a more complicated human context that goes beyond the oft-quoted snatches from her book about the almond-shaped eyes and the Ashkenazi nose.

The quotes don't reflect the larger body of what she has written and how she has lived.

No. That's not what I think or what I said.

Seriously, it is not the job of members of minority groups to be teachers or counsellors to the very people who are contributing to the system which disadvantages them, even if they are doing it inadvertently. There comes a point where people have to take responsibility for what they think and say for themselves, and if they react badly to honest criticism, that's their own fault.

Kate Clanchy is unfailingly honest in her expression of her experience and her feelings. We need a lot more if that if we are going to build understanding between people.

If someone says they struggled to tell apart a group of people that share a particular characteristic in a particular circumstance, then rather than denigrating her for being honest surely it would be more interesting to explore why?

But having read the book before the controversy appeared, it was a clearly a well-meaning book, intended really for a white middle-class audience who don't actually know any working class or ethnic minority people to get an insight into how tough and different their lives are

Hmm, not sure about that. I'm white, middle- class, living in a part of the UK which is overwhelmingly white and have spent my entire life in a safe, middle class bubble.

Perhaps the critics are cherry- picking the worst parts for effect but I find them shocking.

Apologies if this has been posted before. It's critical of Clanchy but isn't coming at her with pitchforks.

culturematters.org.uk/arts/life-writing/item/3767-kate-clanchy-s-class-conflict

I have to say this has me boggled.

In an early teaching job, she admits that she found her Scottish working-class pupils to be so homogeneous that it was difficult to tell them apart

Now, was brought up in and live in Scotland, am as middle class as Clanchy and, in a spirit of honesty, will admit I'm a crashing snob but I can't get my head round this at all.

@SevenWaystoLeave
I cannot believe that the day after Holocaust Memorial Day posters on here are defending an author who has written about a boy in such an obviously anti semitic way.
In fact having read your post I was disgusted by Clanchy but certain other posters are now actively wanting to read her work?!

@EishetChayil
I agree with your sentiments entirely.
The comments that Clanchy made about her young pupils were racist, anti semitic and well, to be honest also made her sound quite judgmental and bitchy about any girl who happens to be overweight/ working class.

Clearly as I'm an anti racist, slightly fat working class woman her books are not aimed at me.

I work in a hospital as an HCA- if I wrote a book describing the looks and eccentricities of patients (particularly in a racist unpleasant) manner), I would be out the door immediately. It would be hard to find similar employment ever again.

How does Clanchy as a teacher get away with being so unprofessional and inappropriate.

I think it would have been useful to have had the further thoughts of the Orwell judges.

www.orwellfoundation.com/political-writing/some-kids-i-taught-and-what-they-taught-me/

The judges said:

"In this book, a brilliantly honest writer tackles a subject that ties so many people up in knots – education and how it is inexorably dominated by class. Yet this is the very opposite of a worthy lecture: Clanchy’s reflections on teaching and the stories of her students are moving, funny, full of love and offer sparkling insights into modern British society.”

2020 POLITICAL WRITING BOOK PRIZE JUDGES
Elif Shafak
Paul Laity
Robert Tombs
Stephanie Flanders (Chair)

Yes, xxyzz.

As I said up thread- she got the contract to write the book largely based on her Twitter feed, which centred poetry from ‘marginalised’ young poets.

Those are the credentials the publishers bought the book on.

So it’s not surprising everyone missed the problematic issues, because in a way the problematic issues were the basis of the book. She explores them, though - she centres her ‘problematic’ white woman viewpoint as the lens. It’s not unacknowledged. I expect that’s why she reacted so unwisely to the accusations of racism - because she was so sure that she was being explicitly anti-bias in pointing out the context.

That’s no excuse, though. It should have been better interrogated.

KC herself I think is being unfairly demonised, though. She’s the locus of an argument that’s divorced from what she wrote, despite people extensively quoting her.

I think the worst that can be said about Kate Clancy is that she was a bit white saviour-y and insensitive in her use of language. But having read the book before the controversy appeared, it was a clearly a well-meaning book, intended really for a white middle-class audience who don't actually know any working class or ethnic minority people to get an insight into how tough and different their lives are.

Now, in that sense, the book does really belong a bit in the 1950s, as it didn't seem to have occurred to her that her readers might also include some working class and ethnic minority people, who might not like being described as they come across to an old-fashioned, middle-class white woman.

But her intentions were so obviously laudable and her insights sometimes genuinely revealing, so it seems clear the fault was not with her, but with her (presumably also middle-class, white) publishers, who didn't spot that this was how it might come across to readers from other backgrounds. That's their job! They should have spotted this at the editorial stage. Too lazy - and unfair - to blame the writer alone.

Sam Missingham on twitter gives a good overview on why the Kate Clanchy situation went so badly for KC

She seems to be fighting back. Lots of articles in the press by her putting forward her side of the story now, which presumably her publisher wouldn't let her do before. So being cancelled by them is not all bad, in that at least it's enabled her to regain her voice.

As I said above, I'm Jewish, and didn't find what she wrote antisemitic. Compared to some lauded works which really are antisemitic and no-one seems to pick this up, I have tried to find antisemitic intent here and failed.

There are definitely some racist (incl antisemitic) works out there which probably do deserve cancelling for racism (incl antisemitism). But this isn't one.

In case anyone wants an example of one work that shows the literary world doesn't give a toss about racism/antisemitism, try reading the apparently entirely uncancelled Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day. Now this was written in the 1930s, so maybe understandably isn't up to modern sensibilities.

BUT this wasn't a book which had been popular ever since the 1930s. This was a book which had been entirely forgotten and out of print, and then someone IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY decided it would be a good one to reprint, and some more people decided to make a major movie of it in 2008 (haven't seen the film so it's entirely possible the blatant racism and antisemitism is removed from the film version - I certainly hope so).

The ENTIRE PLOT OF THE BOOK hinges on the heroine's friend having to choose between 3 possible love interests - the 'D*go', the Jewish man and the 'Englishman' (the Jewish man is also English, from what I can remember, but of course not really, as far as the author and her presumed readers believe, because 'Jewish'). Who should she choose?

Well, durr, it's a no-brainer, of course, because - spoiler alert! - she can't choose the 'oily' D*go' or the Jew, 'because he's not one us', so of course she will have to go for the Englishman - who is one of us!

And yet the book gets rave reviews and precisely no-one, apart from me, apparently, seems to notice or care about the really vile, shocking and overt racism/antisemitism, which quite spoiled for me what was otherwise a pleasant, charming read.

So don't tell me that this all because publishers care about racism. They don't. Plenty of types of racism - and yes, that includes antisemitism, they are quite happy to turn a blind eye to.

I think the thing that worries me is that many - possibly all - of the phrases referenced as objectionable aren’t in the second edition. And yet this still wasn’t enough.

Now more than at any other time in human history, not being published does not mean being censored. There are so many other ways to have your voice heard than traditional publishing.

How much are you prepared to endanger the general principles protecting all people to punish individual bad people?

What general principles have been endangered here though? A publisher has ended a business relationship with an author. This is a commonplace daily occurrence for all sorts of reasons, it does nothing to threaten the fabric of our society. Nor does people criticising Clanchy's writing. People criticise books all the time, in fact I'd argue it's a general principle protecting our society that they are allowed to do so. All that's actually happened here is Clanchy received some criticism of her work which many people feel is justified, she didn't handle it well, and this ultimately affected her business relationship with her publisher. She's not being censored, she's still allowed to write books, and to seek another publisher. I think someone said in another comment she already has another publishing deal. She may even find her sales rise as people buy the book to see what the fuss is about. There are no consequences for the "general principles of society here", all that's happened is Clancy has received some personal and professional consequences for her own behaviour. Publishers, meanwhile, will continue to publish work and promote authors that they think are profitable to them, as they have always done.

It's great she has a new publisher, but it's important to look at the general principle.

Should publishers be withdrawing their contracts, or even simply not renewing them, because their author has said something that is controversial?

Because that's what happened. It wasn't that they were unpopular. It wasn't that everyone agreed that she was beyond the pale. It was because some people didn't like what she wrote.

What's the knock on effect on that in publishing? And the context there is that we already are aware that there are huge issues in publishing right now if what you want to say does not toe certain lines. Especially if you are a woman. We already know that there are publishing houses where employees have tried to say that they will not work on certain books.

The weight of the current political moment is not on allowing people to say too much.

Her book is still being published! She has a new publisher. She has not been cancelled.

The thing is this board is full of women who find a lot of the language used in the name of genderism hurtful to them and an attack on their group.

But as they're also facing demands that their language is hurtful and an attack on the gender believers.

So what's are the possible outcomes here?

• Clancy not published, pro-gender stuff not published, GC stuff not published. General censorship nightmare.
• Clancy not published, pro-gender stuff published, GC stuff not published. One-sided Woke censorship nightmare.
• Clancy published, pro-gender stuff not published, GC stuff published. One-sided right-wing censorship nightmare.

The only good outcome is a truce:

• Clanchy published, pro-gender stuff published, GC stuff published. Then let's fight it out using liberal principles.

The more people call for stuff to be banned, the further we get away from the liberal truce, and the more danger all vulnerable groups, including women, are.

How much are you prepared to endanger the general principles protecting all people to punish individual bad people?

Every time someone like Clanchy is attacked like this, the foundations of our society are chipped away a little more. So sorry, I am going to reflexively support whoever the censors attack. The censors are the danger to society here, not her.

I don't think the idea of anti-anything tropes means you can decontextualize the actual test. In a book about how we respond to people, if it's an honest book, we will see people's thinking. Whether we like the thinking or not, or like the origins of the thinking or not.

I'd also point out something that seems somewhat to be going under the radar here, which is that ethnicity can often be discerned by people's physical characteristics, and all the more so by those who spend lots of time interacting with those groups of people. There are patterns there that are real. And yes, it does include things like the shape of the skull, the way the skeleton looks, eye shape, etc.

It's become somewhat forbidden to talk about these kinds of observations and that is a particularly common thing in some id pol circles, but I don't think there is in fact widespread agreement that it is wrong to do so. It represents a real difference in opinion and I would say one that is not divided along lines of ethnicity so much as politics.

There are of course deliberate caricatures of ethnic patterns that are in themselves meant to be reductive or nasty, which is a different thing, and people naturally want to stay away from that. But it does tend to get into the territory of not allowing for real observations about human communities, and usually when we tell people they are not allowed to notice the things they notice, it's a bad thing. It leads to a kind of inherent dishonesty in discourse. People notice the gap.

Or are we now saying those were and are right wing movements?