White Characters Dominating Fantasy Worlds

Discussion in 'Fantasy' started by MilesTro, May 25, 2015.

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  1. Mckk

    Mckk Member Supporter Contributor

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    That really depends on the background of said PoC actually. It's why PoC in the UK vote UKIP to restrict immigrants - because they don't even realise they themselves are immigrants. After a while, you forget you're not white. For example, I feel like I stand out more when I'm amongst Chinese people, even though I look Chinese. White has become the norm for me because white people are the majority in the environment I live/lived in.

    However, it's interesting to think that when I think of what sorta name to use for my books, I do take into account that a Chinese name would stand out as foreign and therefore I fear it might not sell as well. Not that I've published much - only one self-pubbed book - but still, it's a consideration, which does indicate there's a problem in the industry regarding race.

    @Nilfiry - I think it's perfectly natural to have a preference for certain looks. The thing is that often it's hard to tell to what extent is it cultural conditioning, and to what extent is it naturally in us, part of our genuine preferences, that we prefer a certain type or certain skin tones. Not that to prefer certain skin tones make you racist - it doesn't - but the line between normal preferences and discrimination is not as distinct as some would like to think and it's actually rather blurry.

    If we're honest, we're probably all a little racist/prejudiced. For example, I didn't realise I discriminated against black people and foreigners who spoke with an accent until I was at university. Up to that point, I was just never drawn to them. I didn't think of them as bad people or stupid people. I just had no opinion of them. Even if we were in a group, I'd naturally focus on my white friends or friends who possess a high level of English, or native English. None of this was deliberate - it was just a preference. The justification was easy - people who spoke native English were easier to understand, so I'm inclined towards them. Nothing "racist" about that.

    And then my Nigerian friend told me I should make more of an effort to include these people. That being a foreigner myself, shouldn't I have more understanding that they might struggle?

    I'd never thought of myself as a foreigner. Chinese raised a Brit in England - to my mind, I was white, silly though that might sound.

    Then I started noticing my behaviour, analysing it a little. I asked myself, "Well, why don't I talk to them? Why am I not interested?" Turns out, I don't have any reasons for it. I just weren't. And I knew that wasn't a good thing. I thought of all the good I'm missing out on, all the amazing people I could be meeting but don't because the fact that they spoke with an accent or have black skin has "put me off". Racism doesn't have to be hostile - sometimes racism is passive, but it's still racism. (not calling you racist - this is just me now)

    I can't say I've got rid of the prejudice completely, but it's come a long way since I actively ignored my impulse to avoid. And the more amazing people I meet who are black or who didn't speak native English, the more I shed that prejudice. Exposure is a great cure for these things.
     
  2. Shadowfax

    Shadowfax Contributor Contributor

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    So I'm racist because I don't actively seek out PoC to socialize with?
     
  3. Mckk

    Mckk Member Supporter Contributor

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    Mine was a general statement - esp about how sometimes we're unaware that we harbour prejudices. However, I made no such claims about you, your intentions, or your views, so don't take it so personally. I cannot comment on how you behave because I do not know you, nor know how you behave. You do not answer to me nor my opinions, so if you have a clean conscience, then awesome :) I examined my own conscience and those are the conclusions I drew for myself - you can decide for yourself if the same conclusions apply to you, or not. Either is fine by me.
     
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  4. daemon

    daemon Contributor Contributor

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    Correction: the reader's mind makes the character white.
     
  5. BayView

    BayView Huh. Interesting. Contributor

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    The reader's mind is part of pulling the meaning out of what we write. The reader's mind changes little black squiggles on a white page into a story, characters, and setting. The reader's mind does a lot of work!

    But the reader's mind works within confines that writers need to be aware of if we want to effectively convey information. One of those confines is that our minds are programmed to default to white. You've seen those heartbreaking studies of little black kids shown a black doll and a white doll and being asked to pick the "good" baby, right? The programming comes early, and it's pernicious.

    So I think it's a bit of a dodge to attribute 100% of a situation to the reader, when we know most of our readers have a certain mindset. If I write a character who is fascinated by Adolf Hitler and has a room filled with Nazi propaganda to the point it looks like a shrine, it's natural for readers to assume that my character is a horrible person. Now, maybe my character actually does all that because she lost family to the Nazis and has spent her life studying hate and looking for ways to counteract it and is actually a lovely person. If I don't include the second part of that in my story, it's not enough for me to say: "Oh, it was the reader's mind that made that character a horrible person".

    The reader's mind, on its own, stares at a blank page. When we put squiggles on that page and the reader starts pulling meaning out of it, it's a team effort between reader and writer to send and receive information. If we know our readers are predisposed in a certain direction and do nothing to indicate that's not the direction we meant, then it's not just the reader's mind making characters anything.
     
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  6. Link the Writer

    Link the Writer Flipping Out For A Good Story. Contributor

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    Yeah, not going to lie, I agree with her. If there's little to no description of what they look like, I do automatically assume the person is white. Even if race itself doesn't matter within the plot, it surely wouldn't kill the narrative flow to mention otherwise. We're writers, right? We're kind of supposed to figure out how to weave this sort of stuff together into a coherent order.
     
  7. NigeTheHat

    NigeTheHat Contributor Contributor

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    That feels like a distinction without a difference. Stories are all about influencing the reader's mind - as writers, we're responsible for the images we create.
     
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  8. KaTrian

    KaTrian A foolish little beast. Contributor

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    Out of curiosity, how did you then fix this? Or if you didn't, how would you do it?

    Like, are you saying you wrote a character from Nigeria (in your mind), but none of her/his Nigerian background was visible in her daily routines?

    Or, say the story takes place in the US. You write a black guy who's been born and raised in a Christian American family in the sub-urbs of some town in say, NY, who likes video games, books and tae kwon do, do you mean in that scenario you would've ignored some less-than-obvious signs of racism he'd be sensitive to because he's black, unlike a white guy, and that's why the reader would imagine him white?
     
  9. Link the Writer

    Link the Writer Flipping Out For A Good Story. Contributor

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    I think this is exactly what we need to keep in mind. A person of color is going to be more sensitive to racism than a white person. Someone who is LBGT will be more sensitive to homophobic remarks than someone who is not. Someone who is disabled is going to be more sensitive to insults lobbed against the disabled community than someone...you get the picture.

    It all depends on the character's life experience, everything that the character may have to deal with. If the character is 'different' in some way to everyone else and gets picked on for it, it's going to alter their way of thinking. Fantasy and sci-fi should be no exception. Just because it's not set in the real world with real people doesn't mean that 'oh, race doesn't matter'. It still can.

    My main characters being black might have just been because that's how I imagined them in the first place, but don't you ('you' in general, not you, KaTrian) think it's foolish for a writer to close the door on potential story elements? Suppose in my fantasy story, Akeshia (black) and Mishu (white) met a member of a hostile kingdom who thought that Akeshia was a mud-child/Mishu was a walking corpse due to skin color? Very offensive shit going on in here, and perfect for conflict and character development. My main characters would have to find a way to deal with the fact that because of some arbitrary thing like skin color, this bigoted character has them pegged as worthless. Hell, it doesn't even have to do with race. Maybe it's the kingdom the two ladies come from? Or whatever deity they worship?

    Now, I'm not saying that just because you have a non-white character in your story, you must address racism. I'm saying that regardless of genre, we writers should be encouraged to diversify our cast of characters. We should also not close the door on possible conflicts that might brew up as a result of certain characters harboring bigotry toward those who are not exactly like them.

    All I'm trying to say are these:
    + Life experience. This doesn't even have to be about race. A white Jewish person in Bosnia might/will have a far different life experience than I, a white Christian in America, would. Or even in this country! I'm reminded of a book I found in the library once written about a white Muslim woman living in America detailing her experiences as both American and Muslim. Kinda wish I had borrowed that book, as it would have made for a very eye-opening read.

    + Diversifying the cast should be encouraged. As writers, we should know how to weave descriptions into the narrative without it feeling forced. We should also be aware that certain characters will be more sensitive to bigotry than others.

    + Having characters who are different than others are a melting pot of potential story conflicts, and it would be foolish to close that lid before it's even explored.

    (If I didn't make myself clear, sorry. Let me know and I'll attempt again, just woke up and need to have coffee...)
     
    Last edited: May 27, 2015
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  10. Nilfiry

    Nilfiry Senior Member

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    Everything about a person, from their very identity to their habits, is the result of cultural conditioning. There is no reason to differentiate between cultural conditioning and genuine preferences because they are both the same part of us. The line between discrimination and preference is only as clear as how well a person knows him/herself.
     
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  11. KaTrian

    KaTrian A foolish little beast. Contributor

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    I don't think it always even has to be arbitrary. In Medieval Finland (and maybe elsewhere in Europe), the paler your skin, the more privileged and valuable you were, as it meant you had money and didn't have to work. The tanner your skin, the more you were looked down upon because tan skin meant poverty, lowliness etc. This dynamic could exist in some, I don't know, feudal fantasy world too.
     
  12. MilesTro

    MilesTro Senior Member

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    I guess that would make black characters rich.
     
  13. Lae

    Lae Contributor Contributor

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    No.

    You missed the point its the opposite, or I've missed a joke or something else.

    Tanned usually meant working class, working in fields, working in unskilled labour. The rich had indoor pursuits, education etc that"elevated" them from working in the fields so to speak but tanned doesn't necessarily mean black. Black folk would have been traders, some soldiers (moors i think) and generally poor like the rest of medieval Europe.
     
  14. KaTrian

    KaTrian A foolish little beast. Contributor

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    There was no joke in my post. That was how skin color could affect people's lives. It was an example how, in a fantasy world, provided there's a sun and people tan, class divides may happen based solely on color. Dark becomes something negative because toiling or being a serf is a negative, oppressed role in that kind of society.
     
  15. BrianIff

    BrianIff I'm so piano, a bad punctuator. Contributor

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    Usually I wouldn't side with corporate reasoning, but based on how little bearing a character's race would have in SFF, why haven't the publishers encouraged a cast more reflective of society? They have to be expert marketers and knowledgable about readers' tastes, so would it be fair to say that there is very little demand for racial representation? Maybe people of colour don't care about being doubted as adequate fighters of dragons.
    And no one has addressed why an individual author might not want to get into ensuring a perfectly equitable cast. Why did he put a Chinese character and not an Indian or Japanese one? Do I write out accents or just make allusions to how we envision other cultures. It's a bit of a minefield, especially to those who have only had minimal contact with people of colour.
    To draw too much attention to race also runs the risk of symbolizing history and politics, something I suspect is not top of mind for all SFF writers.
     
  16. Steerpike

    Steerpike Felis amatus Contributor

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    I think it is probably more a reflection of what most writers write and submit to the publishers. The top publishers in SF/F are amenable to publishing works with diverse casts of characters. There are plenty of examples of it out there. I don't think any of the major publishers turn away such works based on marketing considerations. I suspect the majority of what they receive feature a more traditional (in context of the genre) cast of character. If you send an amazing fantasy epic to Tor, Baen, or others featuring black characters, or LGBT characters, they'll publish it.
     
  17. BrianIff

    BrianIff I'm so piano, a bad punctuator. Contributor

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    Cool. I'm just wondering if I have actually implied that publishers don't want to publish such casts, or it's me who is misreading things?

    ETA: Perhaps I could've been more clear, but my intention was to elaborate on my reasoning. The question in my first post isn't rhetorical.
     
    Last edited: May 27, 2015
  18. The Mad Regent

    The Mad Regent Senior Member

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    White characters dominating fantasy worlds. Well, I'll start by saying I'm not a big reader of fantasy novels. Three huge Lord of the Rings movies was enough to put me off fantasy for a long time; however, saying that, I am well aware of the standard cliques of the fantasy world, and I believe that this is most likely the reason why white characters dominate the realm of fantasy.

    Think elves. Blonde haired, blue eyed purist race. Same thing goes when you think of let's say a small town in a fantasy world. It's stereotyped to a rabble of white mud-stained peasants that just happen to have cockney accents. I honestly believe it also depends on the writer, his ethnicity, and his awareness of the world. If I was writing a fantasy novel for instance, I would most likely introduce a character of different ethnicity as having a certain mystique, so that you're able to play with their cultural background, and their personalities. Similar to Morgan Freeman in Prince of Thieves. A Saracen in England, who's wise council and advanced knowledge of chemistry portrays him as a likeable and unique individual.

    I don't think that white people are intentionally the dominant characters in fantasy. I think it's just how authors had original laid the foundations of fantasy worlds in the past, and in time it will gradually evolve.
     
  19. Steerpike

    Steerpike Felis amatus Contributor

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    I think this will be exactly what happens. Though as I noted above, whenever I see a "how come fantasy" question, my first reaction (which generally turns out to be right) is that the person asking the question has a limited reading experience in the genre. There is actually a lot out there, but we still need to move a lot of that into more mainstream fantasy (though, that said, one of the most famous lead characters in fantasy fiction is a black-skinned elf from D&D tie-in novels).
     
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  20. The Mad Regent

    The Mad Regent Senior Member

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    You know, I was going to mention something about high elves and dark elves being comparable to white and black folk, but I decided not to when I realised that dark elves are supposed to be evil. :oops:
     
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  21. Steerpike

    Steerpike Felis amatus Contributor

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    Yeah. The big example I mentioned above (Drizz't - I think that's the spelling) is an exception to the rule of an evil race, which of course has problems in an of itself. I know there is some mythological basis for drow, and D&D just made an evil race of them early on and it stuck. Not sure if the mythological versions were supposed to be all evil.
     
  22. daemon

    daemon Contributor Contributor

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    @BayView
    @NigeTheHat

    "So a guy walk into a bar..."

    Quick, what color is the guy's skin?

    Am I responsible for your answer?

    (I have more thoughts on this; I am just trying to gauge the extent of your claim of authorial responsibility before I respond in more detail.)
     
  23. Lae

    Lae Contributor Contributor

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    :supergrin:

    my response was to MilesTro, I couldn't figure to how tanned skin (as you said, the serf, manual labour, whatever) would make "black characters rich". i wasn't sure if he was making a joke or he'd just gotten mixed up.
     
  24. KaTrian

    KaTrian A foolish little beast. Contributor

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    Hah, okay. :) All clear then!
     
  25. BayView

    BayView Huh. Interesting. Contributor

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    Well, this won't work! I'd just looked at your userpic, so the guy I pictured was purple... and wore an oversized top hat, and a monocle...
     
    Last edited: May 27, 2015
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