Stop the GR Bullies: Defending the Indefensible "Save the Pearls"

We have spoken about Stop the GR Bullies and their awful site before. As can be clear, we not only think this site is highly reprehensible, we think the people behind it are pretty damn awful as well. But, perhaps from some shred of naivety, we kind of thought they would have some limits. Then we found the latest author they are protecting from the legions of us nasty nasty reviewers. Yes, it’s Victoria Foyt’s racist Save the Pearls. She is being bullied by being called a racist, according to STGRB

Yes, we were naive. They have no limits.

Save the Pearls (read: save the poor oppressed White people from the beast like Black people) flew under the radar for quite sometime, until Foyt paid for and received the Eric Hoffer award.  Suddenly, people who never would have heard of her racist novel were forced to pay attention.  I watched with pleasure as reader after reader took to Goodreads to register their dissent.  Some were angry and some were thoughtful, but what they all had in common is a righteous reason to declare Foyt’s work racist.  This must having been shocking because prior to the revelation of the award, most of the reviews on Save the Pearls were positive.

Some took their criticism a step further and not only declared Save the Pearls racist but the author as well.  Of course Stop the GR Bullies could not let it stand.  To be clear this is a woman who  proudly claims to live in a colorblind world, erased the comments from POC on Facebook who challenged her, and she questioned whether or not an African-American community exists.  Even before reading her racist novel, her statements alone would be enough to understand that White sheets are one of Foyt’s favourite items.  Establishing the degree to which Foyt is absolutely drowning in her privilege, to the point where her work is blatantly racist is not difficult.

Let us be clear here, we reviewed Save the Pearls after we read it. All of it, all the way through - and I apologise right now to all of our DNFs because, while we didn’t like any of you, at least you weren't this offensively racist. STGRB loves to push the idea that most of the people criticising this book haven’t actually read it, because that’s such an easy way to dismiss them (and STGRB seems very eager to dismiss POC). No, we read it and we hated it.

And we have to remember that Victoria Foyt, with her blackface promotion videos and her racist blog posts means that people don’t have to have read the book to know to avoid it - and to spread the word warning for others to avoid it. Victoria Foyt, with her own words, already made it clear what kind of book it was and her own racism. Foyt said on Facebook, “Judging A Book By Its Cover Gives Birth To Racism,” this highlights the fact that not only does Foyt have no idea what racism really means, but after all of the criticism her book has received, she still cannot understand why having a White woman in Blackface on the cover is problematic.  At this point, choosing not to read Save the Pearls absolutely comes down to an act of self care.

STGRB has also pushed the idea that people should avoid labelling someone a racist because it is supposedly “slander” (note: it can’t be slander because it’s written) and “libelous” (note: it’s an opinion and you can say anything as an opinion as long as you are not asserting a fact.  An opinion cannot be untrue)  More importantly, it is not liable if what you’re saying is true, and judging from the promotional video, and Foyt’s various responses, Foyt is unequivocally a racist. Stop the GR Bullies seem to feel  a book review is not the place for this sort of accusation, and to that I say that there always seems to be some reason why White people should not be held accountable for their language/actions. No one forced Foyt to pen such a racist tome and no one forced her to engage in further racism to defend it. Contrary to popular opinion, living with racism is much harder than being called a racist.  In fact, being called a racist is something that is easily avoidable, whereas living without being affected by racism is absolutely impossible if you are a POC.  For a website so determined to hold reviewers accountable, it is absolute hypocrisy on the part of Stop the Goodreads Bullies to fail to hold an author publicly responsible for the hatred that they knowingly and willingly put in this world.

Review of Save the Pearls Part 1 of Revealing Eden by Victoria Foyt

We normally put  a cover of the book at the beginning of every review, but I think that the following video better illustrates this book.



As you can see, Eden Newman, the protagonist is a White woman who wears blackface.  Eden does ths because from a  post apocalyptic earth, where Pearls (read: white people) are oppressed by Coals (read: blacks). Because of the higher levels of melanin, Coals were better able to survive the harmful suns rays.

Of course, the dark races got The Heat too, but not nearly as often.  The higher amounts of melanin in their skin protected them from the sun's radiation.  Since their numbers hadn't been decimated in the Great Meltdown, as the other races had, they now ruled the planet. [page 14]

I cannot begin to tell you how horrifying the very concept of this book is.  How this White woman thought this role reversal would read as anything more than appropriation and racism is absolutely beyond me.

Foyt even goes as far as to include a scene where Pearls perform in White face.

"On the main stage a band of Coals performed in Whiteface. Eden's sensors told her their name: The Lost Caucasian Tribe. [page 40]

So it's not bad enough that we have a protagonist tromping through the majority of the book in Blackface and whining about the fact that she is White and no-one sees the real her, but Foyt decided to appropriate Blackface. In this scene, those performing weren't othered and it did not read as a minstrel show.  There was no historical meaning to this supposed whiteface and it only served as yet another reminder of Hoyt's racial ignorance.

Asians are referred to as Ambers, which essentially calls their skin colour yellow and is offensive. We are told on page 11 that Pearls is the racist name for Whites, yet this is the word that Foyt uses for the entire book to describe White people. They are also referred to as "earth-damned Pearl" and "White death." Suddenly this reversal of power means that there are  racial slurs which effect White people and futuristic or not, this flies in the face of human history. It is further troubling that though we are told that the term Pearl is indeed a slur, so is Coal.  This tells me that Foyt has no idea how a slur really works.  A dominant group is not effected by a slur and the fact that she chose to give slurs to every racial group, undermines the supposed superiority that Coals have. If Coals were the oppressive force that they are supposedly cast as, Coal would not be considered a slur, just as honky, gringo, cracker and paleface aren't slurs today.