no subject

Listening to the audiobook of The Warrior's Apprentice in lieu of the news -- was startled to hear Miles muse on being complicit in "the white slave trade" through mercenary financing arrangements. "The white slave trade"?? Startling partly because color-word race descriptors aren't often used in the Vorkosigan Saga; ethnic modifiers like "Eurasian," meaning what exactly I can't think, are employed, but not black/white/brown.

Why not just "the slave trade," Lois? "White slave trade" at this point mainly makes me think of conservative loonies yelling about illegal immigrants kidnapping white women, like Trump talks about. I know WA was written a long time ago, but I can't imagine that connotation wasn't already present at the time. Either way, the idea of a "white slave trade" only makes sense if, as in the US context, black people are the "default" enslavable humans, and slaves of other colors are unique enough to remark on. Which makes absolutely no sense in the Vorkosiverse.

Sometimes I like the way that the earlier books show Miles, Ivan ect as more realistically privileged upper-caste men, with various kinds of immoral behavior and illegitimate assumptions. Sometimes it rubs on me. I wish that, as they'd grown up, their author hadn't been falling more and more into pleasantly conservative literary tropes; if they'd done more as adults to correct themselves, I really would like it, all the way through.