Racial representation

@Joe_ : Most writers I admire take care each time a character appears in a new scene, to describe, briefly and relevantly, what they look like. Even if we know the character, they'll describe what they are wearing, and first time they introduce them, this can include mention of skin colour or eyes, facial shape, weight, build, age etc. Read Murakami for a perfect example of this. I think it helps the narrative flow better, to picture who's involved, especially if you use your description later to flesh out dialogue. For example, you described a man as having sunken cheeks, square jaw and a threadbare tweed suit, so later, when he pauses in conversation, you can show him picking at a thread on this trousers, or dusting them off, or some such. Relevance is the key.

I don't think referring to someone as a 'handsome Black Man' is a bad idea, but I wonder whether making too much fuss of their race will result in pigeonholing them into the stereotype (because that's what it might translate to in reader's head). Skin colour can be described without making a reference to race. My sister goes really dark in summer, she's often mistaken for an Indian or Pakistani, even Persian. If I was introducing her, I might say 'oriental features', 'high cheekbones' or 'deep chocolate skin contrasting with snow-white jacket' without referring to her as 'Indian' or 'Arab' which she isn't anyway, but looking at her, one might resort to the current stereotype and pull her over for body search every time she flies to and fro America

 

I have rebutted your argument precisely based on what you said, nothing else. You would have to have not read much of what I actually said, in order to presume such a thing.

'White Anglo privileged male' is not every white male of Anglo origin, just as misogynysts aren't all men, just some men. Only the minority who are so privileged that they dare angrily rant to others how 'there is no discrimination', purely because it doesn't affect them, and they don't even have enough empathy (or common decency) to open their eyes and try to see the world from someone else's percpective.

So I have referred to a subset of white men, inspired by your comment, and you decided to insert yourself right into that group, and instead of considering my very reasonable points and perhaps modifying what you said, you continue this self-referential tirade. I also find it fascinating how easily you insinuated yourself to be representative of your entire demographic. But white privileged males have a tendency to do just that, so I am not that surprised. Just bored of this conversation now.

Oh I don't know, you tell me Selbbin. Does term 'artists' refer to races other than white, or do you have a different word for non-white artists? Because otherwise, this is just an attempt to make an issue with my comment where there is none. Better put your efforts into picking apart your own statements, there are issues with them that aren't purely implied or imaginary.

 

@Selbbin : So, let me get this right... I mentioned 'white male privilege' in reaction to your comment, you got offended, and that means I was insulting all white men? Interesting reasoning, one I can't say I agree with.

You have every right to be offended by anything you choose. However, you don't have the right to not be offended. We disagree. I can live with that.

 

I don't mean to derail this thread, but I'm kinda curious as to what led you to believe this?

There certainly is a lot more diversity here than where I grew up (no real shock there, comparing one of the biggest cities in the world to the rural Midwest in the US) but there has definitely not been enough mixing of races to create homogeneity to the extent that Vandor76 described. From what I have observed, here in São Paulo the vast majority of people are Latino. I believe that Blacks are more prevalent in the northern states, but here they are the largest minority, followed by Asian (mostly Japanese, I think,) and then Whites and un-mixed indigenous people are pretty close together. In the mainstream media minorities have the same lack of representation here as they do in the States, maybe even less. There is not a single black reporter or anchor that I can think of from any of the major news channels we get. In fact, the only non-Latino reporters I can think of on any of the stations we have are one White man and one Asian woman.

If you want a good look at their mainstream concept of beauty, just look at the backup dancers that are extremely popular on the talk shows here. There are usually 20-30 scantily clad women in heels who preform during commercials or along with certain guests on the shows, and when they aren't dancing they just pose smiling behind the host like some kind of backdrop. ALL of them are tall, curvy, with long hair and more makeup than clothing. The vast majority are Latino, with maybe a half dozen Whites, and a grand total of ONE Black woman (trust me, I spent a couple weeks trying to spot others.)

Granted, I am working off of my own observations of the largest city here and not government-issued statistics, and I have seen very little overt racism outside of a few fringe groups, but the country is many, many years away from becoming some sort of homogeneous melting pot.

 

Oh wonderful, so we do agree on something. I'm not celebrating yet, though. I sense further baiting, you keep complaining about this, then that, all the while casting yourself as a hero and a champion for... Who exactly? Oh, sorry, I forgot about your gambit to project everything I told you, back in my face.

It's been a pleasure Selbbin, carry on if you must. I really am bored of this tantrum now so I'm going to other threads or better still, to do some work

 

jazz. May I call you that? I love jazz music. I certainly understand your comment on that line; "You have become quite a handsome young Black man."

You are not American and am unfamiliar with how African Americans from here's dialect. That term is often heard, not unusual. The African American community here has gone through a lot of hard times simply because of the color of their skin and as a result on a societal level have been held back, if you will.

So to see a young man like Tony all grown up, in college and on his way to a better life makes older people of his color proud and they use that expression to show it.

Maybe I will post my chapter 1 here and have you look at it and give me some ideas if it is ok. I need to wait though, I have not been here 14 days yet.

 

Thanks so much for sharing! I don't know a lot about life in Brazil, but it reminds me of India, where skin bleaching and white skin are beauty ideals in a country with hardly any white people in it. It's really sad, possibly has to do with colonisation history?

I meant to say that race mixing to an advanced level similar to the 'melting pot' (whatever that means) has occurred in Brazil already on a biological level. So in medicine, when we visualise the future 'melting pot', we use the appearance of the average Brazilian as a clue to what it might look like. It's all speculative though, and I'm not saying that you have a perfectly homogenous phenotype, far from it, or that there is no discrimination, bias or that your beauty ideals are realistic. Although I do hope to see less of that in the future. I'm white, from a country that is almost 100% white and the whitewash bothers me, I can't imagine how non-white people must feel.

 

Of course you can call me jazz I know about the situation of black people in America and UK, what from a personal interest, what from friends and family who are mostly Jamaican, half of them live in London, others in Arizona and Florida. But you are right, I've never lived in the US and I'm not familiar with the vernacular.

My comment was superficial, and if it doesn't apply in your case feel free to dismiss it. It's how I approach my characters, but I only have UK and Australia as references.

Unrelated to the above, though, I wanted to share an excellent article that might contribute to this discussion:

 

Thanks jazz. I actually just made some changes per your advice. And your comment has made me think about a global audience and how some one not familiar with our dialect may perceive this such as what you alluded to.

 

Cool! I'm glad it helped in some way @Joe_

 

Returning in the morning: Yes, my classroom example assumes a modern co-ed school. I suppose the restaurant would have been better, though there it's still presumably possible to find a country where women aren't allowed out of the house.

 

In response to paragraph 1. Maybe in western Europe, not in U.S (cardio kickboxing doesn't count). Certainly, amateur tournaments are NOT 50/50 men/women.

In response to paragraph 2. Yeah, I've herd that. Not sure aggression and viciousness is the same exact thing, but it is very interesting.

 

I don't think the competitions over here have equal amounts either; men are the majority, but when it comes to those who just train the sport for the joy of training, it's pretty much even. It should be noted, though, that in Finland at least, those women who do compete, tend to reach international success a bit more often than their male counterparts when we look at the percentages (e.g. we've had several female thai boxing world champions). Kinda like the reverse of how things are in horseback riding; men are a very small minority but those who do ride competitively, are more often successful than the female riders (percentage-wise only, of course).

I wouldn't say aggression and vicousness are the same thing; you can be aggressive, but e.g. fair. For instance, you can KO your opponent with a brutal one-two, catch him before he hits the pavement, and turn him on his side to wake up safely and make sure he's not too badly hurt. Being vicious, the way I see it, is akin to ruthlessness, cruelty, things like that; in the same scenario, you'd KO the guy, let him hit his head when he collapses, out before he falls, and then stomp his teeth in while he's unconscious. Of course they aren't mutually exclusive as aggressive people can be vicious and vice versa, but imo they are two different things that just tend to go hand-in-hand.
It seems (speaking as a layman here) that men tend to be more aggressive, i.e. they fight more often at more easily, but that, on average, when women fight, the fights are more serious and usually they will not shake hands and go for a beer together afterwards; to them, it's a fight, not just a way to let off a bit of steam, settle an argument, or measure who has the bigger... equipment.

 

I agree. For most women that I've known, there's no such thing as a friendly fight. You engage in friendly practice of skills that you want to develop anyway, and most women aren't invested in having fighting skills. If they make a conscious decision that they want those skills, they're not likely to get into casual sparring matches; they're likely to sign up for a class, and any fighting will be in the clearly controlled context of that class.

To be clear, that's not true of all women, and I don't think that it's inherent, I think it's about social roles.

 

When I talk about diversity I'm talking about cultural differences because the issue of race (physical differences in appearance) isn't interesting to me on it's own. Not everyone in my story looks physically similar to me. And even people born and raised in a single city can look different depending upon their genome. This to me is the inherent problem in the whole argument, that someone's genome is what needs to be represented in fiction. Whereas I tend to think what defines diversity is culture which often (but not always) has a correlation with genome.

The argument in this thread seems to be primarily about genome, that we should be representing blondes and brunettes in equal measure, oh and don't forget about the redheads too. Make sure the people with hazel eyes don't get left out. That kind of argument for diversity I find to be trite. Yes I realise it's about skin colour, that everyone is talking about, but to my mind the colour of someone's skin is no more important than their hair or eye colour. So I use that example to illustrate a point. To write a story about 4 friends who set off on an adventure and one is asian looking, one has black skin and one is blonde and one is arabic looking but all of them are essentially from the same culture doesn't do much to include a minority group in actuality. Their cultural influence (what defines them as a group) is left out. It's just putting in colour for the sake of it. It doesn't create a positive introduction to a misunderstood culture and the people associated with it.

Issues of minority groups are complex. Mainland chinese people are different to chinese people from Hong Kong and a person of chinese descent born and raised as an Australian would not be seen as a chinese person at all by the former two. They are English speaking Australian. I doubt a Chinese national will find much to identify with in a fictional character who has a similar genome but is essentially an Australian. Yes some human themes are universal but a lot of our behaviour is also cultural, lets not forget the influence that has.

I'm all for diversity in fiction but don't get this fixation for notional diversity. Make the character rich by endowing it with an appropriate cultural background, but also make sure you do it well. I don't see anything particularly wrong with a writer saying, you know what right now, I don't feel I can accurately portray x character so I'm going to write this story based on what I can do. And research that character for the next one.

 

Hmm...

Well, the story I am working on doesn't specify race, but for some main characters their ancestry is brought up. I try my best not to work too much based on stereotypes for the characters who are not white.

Dialogue coming from someone with an accent will be written differently. So this includes rednecks, British, Irish, Russian, Latino, and a kind of accent for a couple of the black characters.

I am considering having a latino gang at one point...but probably won't use it cause even if it weren't stereotypical, it would be pretty cliche.

Also, there is a female Japanese character who is possessed by various demons. I can't imagine Japanese women being stereotyped as being possessed, but I'm concerned that its kind of already been done with The Grudge, so it may be cliche.

Also, it's not racial, but the main villains are a Christian group.

Not to mention there will be a couple rather disturbing scenes.

I think I may wind up offending quite a few people actually, for various reasons. But it is my idea. If I change it too much, it would be like I am typing out someone else' idea.

 

I don't mention race in my writing unless it is pertinent to the story. Otherwise, why do it?

 

Some readers are miffed if they've imagined a white MC for the past 50k words and then find out he's actually e.g. African-American. Same thing with sex: some of @KaTrian's and my beta readers didn't like it when we just wrote "the sergeant said..." instead of "the female sergeant said..." even though we didn't really want to make a point of the character's sex as it didn't affect the scene or story in any way; we did eventually refer to her as "her" and "she," but people weren't comfortable finding out her sex later. So we went around the problem and rephrased the whole thing so that we could refer to the character as "she" from the get-go, and the readers seemed to prefer that.

I kinda understand that to a degree; in Joe Abercrombie's "The Blade Itself," the book cover shows this handsome Aragorn-type character, but about halfway through the novel we're suddenly told the MC is actually this fugly woman-repellent. That was a little annoying since all of a sudden you have to change the way you imagine the character. In the end, it's a minor nuisance but a nuisance nonetheless, so it's good to at least be mindful that some readers don't appreciate such surprises even if you choose to include them in your story.

 

I can understand this - if skin color is vital to the story and character. If not, don't mention it. If so, mention it upfront.

The original screenplay for the film Alien had no mention of character race OR sex. That's why nobody has a first name. Ripley could have been a man - and almost was. Ash could have been a woman. It didn't matter to the story either way. Although, many were against the idea of casting a woman as Ripley, but she became a very strong female character because she wasn't conceived as a woman, but simply as a strong character.

 

Agree. If it's necessary to the story, the reader should know as soon as possible, before their own picture of the character forms.

 

I agree but keep in mind that you should be consistent. If you introduce some of the characters with a detailed description and do not do the same in case of your MC, then readers will be confused who is important and who is not. Later on they will realize who is the MC but they may have the same problem with this as @T.Trian mentioned earlier.