Racial representation

Well, I think it is important to research if you are writing about someone of a different race or ethnicity. There are certain commonalities you want to get right, so that your characters are authentic. To the extent that we choose a race or ethnicity for our characters, we presumably do so for a reason. I think the problem arises when we get too locked in to what is "typical" (hence @shadowwalker's concern about stereotypes). In my experience, the most interesting characters have been the ones who defied stereotypes, like the white lawyer in the American South in the 1930s who wasn't a bigot.

 

I almost never mention skin color (except in my sci-fi series, but that's because a certain subset of the popular has pinkish skin due to genetic experimentation and has nothing to do with race). I do mention it in my fantasy but you have to be paying attention to catch it (and very few ever have). I have had readers assume my characters were white, black, Asian, and robots (don't ask). So let the readers assume. It really doesn't matter to me.

 

Because culture plays a major role in how a person is going to feel, act and think in every situation. If I write a novel with person with x skin, acting and reacting in exactly the same way as person with y skin or features then my effort at diversity is trite. My characters are not diverse at all, they are multi-coloured. If I want to portray someone born and raised in Uganda, then I'd better make sure I understand what the cultural mindset of Uganda is if I want that person to be believable. And that would be true even if the person is white.

When you write fantasy or a historical novel, you are borrowing from era's past and so cultural influences are important. You can't have them acting like 21st century New Yorkers because it feels wrong to the reader. I would only make someone Asian in a fantasy novel if I were borrowing their cultural influence and wanting to create that flavour in my setting. To just give them a sallow complexion and almond eyes and plonk them in a celtic setting would fight against what people understand of history and cause disbelief with my storytelling.

 

True, true, I must agree with the points you are making to some degree.

But we've got to think about this. You said that culture plays a huge part in how people feel, act and think, and I agree. The way we are brought up has a huge impact on our life. But at the same time, how is it ever possible to research how someone thinks and acts? Isn't that something that we ourselves can work out ourselves?

To be very, very honest, I think it's extremely sad (in the crying way, not in the scornful sarcastic way) that people feel the need to have to research how a person of a different colour would act. It's not a science project, it's not suddenly a different way of life, it's simply a person who's been brought up a different way.

No one argues the believability of a character's reactions if they're written well. No one but someone paticularly narrow minded and with way too much time on their hands is going to say:

"Hey, that x coloured skinned person of there acted in a way that is so not a way for an x coloured skinned person to act!"


It doesn't make any sense! I get that people are afraid to cause offence, we don't want our writing to spark a nerve somewhere, we want it to be accepted and believed.

But just because someone is a different race, it doesn't suddenly need intense analysing! We feel no need to analyse how a white person may act, so why do we feel the need to analyse how any other race of person may act?

For culture, yes. I do believe it needs highlighting; some amount of study, but for being a different skin colour? I'll say it again, I believe it's terribly sad how being a different colour causes such a thought of: Surely, they must act and think differently from this coloured person.

No. Put a black person in a difficult situation. Put a white person in a difficult situation. Put an Asian person in a difficult situation. See how differently they act.

Our job is to create characters. Characters. Why should it ever matter what form they come in as long as they are interesting to read. The written word is fantastic, really it is. I believe it is our job to bridge the narrow whispers of colours and prejudices, stereotyypes and borders. Writing can bridge those gaps for a moment, immersed in that world.

So, one more time:

Why does it matter how you write your different raced character? Forget about that!

Focus on writing a character someone can love.

Just focus on writing a character. Leave the prejudices and the idiotic claims for the people out there with too much time on their hands.

 

Fair enough. But all I meant was that things can be tweaked. We're not robots. I don't understand why there's such a huge fuss over what people should look like or whether or not this and that...

We have imagination. That can step in for tiny things like whether or not so-and-so suddenly changes colours. But I get where you're coming from in this respect. But what I'm really saying is that there's too much strictness with what colour someone is or where someone comes from.

The story of someone doesn't suddenly change just because they've changed skin colours. Although I understand your reasoning with it being Norse mythology, looking at it in a wider viewpoint leads simply to this:

What should always matter is the story.

Why are people so hesitant to add a different racial character?

 

You have some interesting thoughts about this, IMO, but I think you get the core of it wrong. To me the most natural thing is to "write what I know". So if 95% of the people I surround myself with are white, the percentage of my characters who are white is probably going to be about 95%. Authors who spend 95% of their time around people of some other ethnicity (in Asia and Africa etc.) will probably have 95% of their characters be from that ethnicity. This should average out to a 1:1 real life - fictional characters correspondence on a global scale. That isn't to say racism and all sorts of economic and subliminal stuff is happening and that those are real issues, it just means "the system" is it itself efficient in representing people equally.

We mustn't forget that the English-speaking world, though large, is a bubble inside the larger sphere of human existence. It's not our responsibility to equally represent those outside that bubble, only to know that the remaining 6.6 billion people exist and that they are just as important as us. But that doesn't mean 60% of our stories should be set in Asia just because 60% of the world population lives there; the Asians take care of that.

How many Chinese, Indonesian, Nigerian, Peruvian, Russian or Iranian authors have you read books by? How many Arabic- and Hindu-langauge films do you watch compared to ones in English? Can you even say 5% of the music you listen to is from a country other than the US, UK, Canada, Australia, Ireland or New Zealand? You might know the names of all the members of One Direction, but do you even know the name of the presidents and prime ministers of India, South Korea, Japan or Mexico? Is 3.5 percent of the news you watch about Indonesia? Probably not, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes important things happen in places with small populations, and even more often things happen in once place that doesn't matter at all somewhere else. There's a limit to both the amount of information we can take in, and the stuff we care about. That's just how it is, for good and bad. Even if you lived in Detroit you probably wouldn't care or have heard about some school that's been evacuated in the Upper Peninsula, but if you were a parent who lived in the small town that happened in, it might be the most important thing that happened in your life that whole week or however long it lasted.

Do you know the names of the 19 counties of Norway? I'd be very surprised if you do. I do because it matters to me, because I'm both Norwegian and a geography nut. You probably wouldn't have any use for that information, but I might not even be able to function in Norwegian society if I didn't. I don't, however, know how to spell Manmohan Singh, I don't know whether he's the prime minister or president of India or even if he's still in office. And, you know what, it doesn't bother me that I don't know that. Not even NPR is going to ask that on Wait Wait Don't Tell Me or Ask Me Another!

Man kan ikke vite alt! (which means "You can't know everything!" in Norwegian, which is something you certainly don't need to know ... but I do!)

 

From what I gather, the question boils down to: does race matter?

It depends on the plot. Let's pretend for a moment that I'm writing a romance set after World War II, and my plucky young protagonist meets a Japanese-American woman. A love blossoms between the two, but problem: the protagonist's parents are heavily racist towards the Japanese, forbidding him from seeing "that [insert racial slur] cow ever again!" The protagonist must wrestle with his sense of honor and duty to his parents, and his love for a woman who just so happens to be Japanese (and ethnically Asian.) In this instance, race does matter because it's about how love is so much more powerful than racism, how these two young lovers defy and befuddle those who think such a union is impossible (and scandalous.) In this instance, yes, it would matter and I would have to specify that the lover is, indeed, Asian.

However, if the theme isn't about trouncing of racism and racial-related bigotry? Eh, it depends, really. It depends on the setting, the plot, the circumstances in which the characters grew up in, etc. If it calls for heavy research, then it calls for heavy research so you can make things more believable to the readers.

That's just my two cents.

 

I make it a point to describe as little as possible about characters' appearance or cultural background. I do not even know what race they are. But that is not because I want to avoid offending anyone; it is more of a way to put my deep-seated individualist/humanist philosophy into practice, as well as my philosophy that the differences between books and movies should be embraced rather than bridged, one such difference being that books are more abstract.

I would not have that luxury with a period piece, but I have no interest in writing period pieces anyway. I am more interested in writing about situations that could arise in any geographic/historical setting, often using elements of science fiction or magic realism to make things interesting.

 

But how do you research a black man? Do you research New York blacks in the 60s - or New Orleans blacks in the 70s? LA blacks in the 80s?Blacks that live in the projects or blacks who live on farms? Native born or immigrant? What commonalities do those folks have that are specific to their race, and then - and most importantly - how do those affect the story, if at all? I can guarantee that if I were to include characters specifically identified as black, and base them on people I have known for many years, there would still be people claiming I hadn't gotten it "right".

I agree that if you're writing about someone from a different culture - as in a different country - then yes, one needs to research that culture. Past that, a character is as much an individual as any real life person, and just as hard to pigeonhole.

 

I don't see the issue in writing diversity, why get up in arms over it? Characters don't have to be white. I'm not saying other cultures, just different skin tones. What's the difference?

 

I just love when white Anglo men start telling everyone (angrily ) that 'there's no discrimination'. That's privilege for you. And a prime example of a total BS.

Anyway, I agree that there needs to be greater diversification in the media, and authors should actively consider including characters of other races and cultures. To claim that just because we aren't 'them' we are doomed to creating cardboard cutouts, is untrue. Maybe some writers won't be able to, others will. There are loads of ways to research and simply just write a person with some cultural elements thrown in, what can possibly be bad about that, as long as it's written well and with reasonable sensitivity?

People of all skin colours 'feel' the same. We all have the same emotions. Our reactions to certain things may differ, but those instances are in the minority. I had patients from all different backgrounds and I can tell you that one thing that came through most strongly for me, is how similar people are, not how different. Culture is just the spice, not the essence of a person.

I also find strange when people are vehemently against political correctness. I must say from personal experience (which may not be representative at all) people most opposed to PC are white men (in any mainly white society, I have no experience of living elsewhere). As an immigrant, I find it actually quite nice that people aren't encouraged to call me a 'bloody wog' (an Aussie expression, meaning a 'bug' or a 'parasite' that was originally applied to Italian immigrants but by the time I came to Australia, it was pretty much used to insult any immigrant or a refugee). I'm happy that in my workplace and in my (hypothetical child's) school, insulting jokes and comments about women, or rape, or domestic abuse, or other races are frowned upon and I can easily avoid them. Nothing is forbidden in art, but in day to day life that we all have to attend, one can't be a misogynist idiot in the name of 'humour' or 'personal opinion'. Or rather, they have to suffer consequences for such behaviour. Good! About bloody time.

Everyone who is making unsavoury jokes or comments knows they are unsavoury. They are choosing to force others to listen to it, whenever they feel like it, which is essentially aggressive behaviour. Nobody can 'cure' humans from being discriminatory, but what's changed with PC, is the number of places one is allowed to be an ass. No more attention-seeking via insulting others? I don't think that's a tragedy at all.

 

It comes down to the setting in which you are putting your character. There are likely specific dynamics that apply to each of the groupings you mention above, but there is a commonality of experience that runs through all of them, and that is the hangover from having countenanced race-based slavery. Black enclaves - ghettos, if you like - were created, not by law, but through social and economic isolation. I was actually part of "white flight". In my neighborhood, real estate brokers sold a few houses to black families, then scurried from house to house. "You see that new colored family, just moved in up the block? And two more houses a few blocks over. The neighborhood's going colored. Better get out now." And they did. They sold in droves, driving prices further and further down, a buyer's market in the middle of the post-war housing boom. We didn't own a house, we rented. One day, my father came home and saw me chatting out front with my new friend, Darnell, a black boy whose family had just moved in two blocks away. My folks started looking for a new place to live the following weekend, and in months we were gone.

Characters may succumb to the passions that this dynamic creates (which still exists today - eg. Ferguson) or they may overcome it. But it's impossible to portray characters in such a setting without understanding it.

 

I appreciate that, even if only peripherally, individuals within a group would have some commonalities. As a woman, I understand the whole rape thing - but that doesn't mean that I react to men the same way some other woman will, especially one who has been raped. I didn't have the experience you did - my parents didn't care who the neighbors were as long as they were just plain "good neighbors" (ie, didn't have wild parties, trash their yard, etc). I didn't even realize I'd had my first encounter with black kids (at age 8) until years later when I saw the vacation pictures. My entire childhood was learning, by example, that people were just people. Maybe that's why I get my back up when I'm told I need to include this group or that group as some kind of social reform - I'm not writing for that reason. If it's important to the story, sure. Otherwise, I'm just writing about people, and readers can see them however they wish.

It's ironic to me. For years, we heard about developing this "color blind" society. Now, those of us who grew up that way, or learned to be that way, are suddenly wrong for doing so.

 

I don't think it's "wrong". And, in fact, if you were to write a fictionalized version of your childhood, even if it flew in the face of a larger group experience, it would have the ring of authenticity to it because you would likely include all of the little details that led to the end result. And it would most likely trigger a reader reaction of "how cool is that!" (assuming the absence of malignant ideologies to the contrary). But if one is portraying someone growing up in, say, my old neighborhood after white flight, and depicted a black youth with none of the usual environmental influences, it would likely not ring true unless there were factors in the story that would logically account for the difference.

People refuse to conform all the time. Nothing wrong with saying so. But if we choose such people as characters, we need to explain the reader how and why they refused to conform. As I said, it's all a matter of authenticity.

 

This is basically my perspective, too. Literature is largely a way to write about life in the way the author perceives it, and since race does not really affect my perception of people, it does not show up when I write fiction.

 

Oddly enough, not a week ago @GingerCoffee posted a link to an award-winning article on this very topic: http://aidanmoher.com/blog/featured-article/2013/05/we-have-always-fought-challenging-the-women-cattle-and-slaves-narrative-by-kameron-hurley/

The entire article award is worth reading - they don't hand out Hugo Awards to just anybody - but I would like to share this passage in particular.

 

ASOIAF has been criticized of white leaders - black followers type of dichotomy before. A classmate wrote her Master's on the issue (the white girl leading a nation of non-whites or something along those lines), but I get the feeling GRRM wrote what he knew, what he envisioned, and he saw his world in this way, and I wouldn't demand more racial diversity conscious writing from him. If one goes out of their way to appease certain groups, I feel like they're producing that piece for the wrong reasons.

I'm actually more worried my and T's WIP seems like an intentional attempt to answer to some of these demands because the three MCs are an actiony woman, a gay male soldier, and a PoC. But that was how the story turned out, those are the characters we are most interested in writing now.

As a woman, I do enjoy novels with identifiable female leads, but I actually prefer stories with strong male leads. I really enjoy writing men, and yeah, in a funny way it makes me feel like a traitor when the likes of Hurley tell me I'm making "a conscious choice to erase half the world." Like, no pressure or anything... Good thing I collaborate with T 'cause he loves to write female leads so there's no danger of "cattle" and "slaves."

 

But culture is different for different people. My growing up as a white middle-class teenage girl in the Midwest in the seventies and eighties was not the same culture as growing up as a white middle-class teenage boy, or white lower-class teenage girl, or a black middle-class teenage girl, or a black lower-class teenage girl, or someone growing up in a different place or a different time.

So, yes, if you want to research a black man, and that man grew up in New York in the 60s, then I think that you research what it was like to be black and male in New York in the 60s--and you probably have to narrow it to what part of New York.

You can't get it perfect, but I also don't feel that I can say "people are people" and assume that everyone would react the same way that a white middle-class lapsed-Protestant Midwestern woman raised in the seventies and eighties would react.

 

So you think every black man that grew up in a certain section of New York in the 60s is going to act like every other black man that grew up in a certain section of New York in the 60s? I grew up with other small Midwestern town white girls of working class parents in the 60s and we have some radically different perspectives and reactions to life. This is what I'm saying. You write your character, not some new style stereotype, especially when it's just to appease the social agenda of any group.

 

Of course not. But is that a reason to choose complete ignorance about that culture?

 

The "culture" of my character is whatever I choose it to be, based on the needs of the story. If I need to research anything, I will look for individuals' stories, just as I did to find individuals' stories of their experiences in Vietnam.

 

I'm confused here. How many important characters are in your novel? Is it plausible to have twenty primary characters all one specific color? Sure. Or are you (to those pro diversity) saying I need to describe the skin color of every single person who inhabits the MC's space? If so, then you have much bigger problems to worry about than diversity.