Yes. We humans are NOT tastey. Seriously, lick your arm and tell me you taste good. ... Ok, this just went all kinds of wrong. Like Deep Web level of wrong.
WE AIN'T FOOD!! Seriously, unless you're a cannibal or are in the middle of nowhere miles from civilization and are starving to death, seeing humans as walking food should be the last thing on our minds. But mmmmm, now I want caramel.
My point is we use food words like "caramel", "chesnut" and "cream" to describe shades, why can they not be applied to people> I've seen "hazel" used all the time for light brown eyes, is that making people's eyes nuts? Seems rather contrived. If people don't want to be described with food, maybe they shouldn't institute those uses so heavily?
I thought human flash tasted like chicken ? ( that's what I've heard i have no personal experience you understand .) That aside imo the comparisons etc need to be context appropriate - if you are set on a cooking show then food comparisons are fine, if you are set in a dystopian future where everyone eats gruel then they aren't
You can find caucasian characters' skin color often in stories: tan, freckled, pale, sickly pale, ivory, and so on. I don't think I need to point out that my blonde character is caucasian unless there is something relevant to say. If the character is the one white guy in the neighborhood, it matters. His skin color and ethnicity would likely come up in the story. If the goal is to increase diversity in your characters, go for it. It depends on the genre and the story if that is going to play well to a readership. In my book, because some of the characters are akin to illegal immigrants, I've purposely avoided describing them as belonging to an ethnic group. It's important the readers don't stereotype them as 'other'.
One of my white characters has light skin, but that's due to albinism which causes lack of pigmentation in the skin, hair, and eyes. So her 'pale' skin would be different than the 'pale' skin of another white character.
I'm talking about describing, not stating. But yes, I've seen some with those. But the home country is often the default. And whiteness stil remains less often noted than blackness I think.
I'd avoid food terms for appearances: you can never tell when someone's intolerant. (Ta-dum tss!) I suppose foodstuffs are frequently descriptors because food is something everyone can relate to, but I can understand how some find it objectionably predatory (particularly for ethnicities that have a history of being socially preyed upon). Political correctness aside, food descriptions have had a lot of play, and plenty of other things exist in the world... I think the overall topic's been well covered already, but it seems kinda moot. If you don't describe your white characters as white, then they're not definitively white. There may be a variable amount of evidence suggesting so (setting, names, etc), but ultimately the assumption would be the reader's and that speaks about their preconceptions, not yours. E.g. the actors cast for Hermione in the Harry Potter movies vs the West End Cursed Child play appear quite different, but both perfectly match the scant description in the books. I'm not sure I've really settled on a technique, but I tend to give each character only a few physical 'tags' to identify them by, and only mention anything else if it's plot-relevant. When it's plot-relevant, IMO it's not intrusive to directly state it: e.g. I wrote a scene for the workshop here where the plot involved a character being compared to a photo that may or may not have been of them, so I just directly described what the person in the photo looked like. I've also avoided 'author's voice' (arguably?) by having the characters themselves make the observation: e.g. a character making a self-effacing comment about having 'the complexion of a linen sheet'. I suppose that type of thing depends on your characters' personalities though. Not sure I've brought much to the table here. Original plan was to drop the lame joke and run. P.S. @big soft moose & @BayView : You probably don't care and just misspoke anyway, but my biology alarm is blaring - it's melanin that's the skin pigment; melatonin is the hormone that regulates sleep-wake patterns.
This is an affront to all that is good in this world!! TMW someone says/writes a biology word wrong....
I know right! It's just like that time someone said they could care less when they clearly meant that they couldn't (a sentiment that I'm sensing in this thread right now...).
It hasn't really been an issue for me, because my POV character is a detective, so his observations of people tend to follow that sort of mindset. "The man who opened the door was white, a bit younger than myself, and had a naturally tapered build which made him look more athletic than he really was. His sandy hair was carefully messy, and his eyes were blue amid the bloodshot streaks of red." Other people, like friends, love interests, etc, might get a little more flowery, while other, more incidental characters might not get more than a single sentence. It's probably the wrong way to go about things, but a reader could probably tell how important a character is by how much description I give them.
My historical mystery detective is blind, so...yah. If he grabbed a random person, he's not gonna know what their skin color is.
Although names can be deceptive... I work with someone with a Chinese name. He has a Chinese name because his great grandfather was Chinese. He tells me he finds the ethnicity part of equal opportunities forms baffling. He chooses 'mixed' but doesn't know for the life of him if that's right. I've found everyone's thoughts on this really interesting - and one of the lovely things about forums is you don't have to declare (although people will try to deduce) things like race or gender that tend to be 'obvious' face to face - but it sounds like we're a bunch of white people, trying to decide between ourselves how best to write racial diversity.
I realise I'm now off the OP question (whiteness) but I found websites... http://diversitycrosscheck.com/ http://writingwithcolor.tumblr.com/ http://weneeddiversebooks.org/writers/
I think "tan" and "golden" definitely do not describe whiteness... Anyway if OP wants to indicate someone's race, their name would be a big clue. I'm not sure whiteness needs to be emphasised though, since it is assumed as the default in a predominantly white society. Like, if someone was called John Wilson, you're just not gonna assume he's Japanese. But if John Wilson is Japanese, then certainly that detail is worth mentioning because it breaks people's assumptions. If you're interested in expressing someone has a mixed heritage, giving them more than one name or a mixed name would do the job, too. I and my daughter both have an English first name, a Chinese middle name, and a Czech surname. In my case, my Chinese name is my birth name and I chose my English name - common practice amongst the Chinese. In my daughter's case we gave her her first name, and my parents made a few suggestions on Chinese names and we picked our favourite. My husband sometimes introduces himself as John, even though his name is Jan (not English "Jan" - think Germanic "Jan") - he doesn't officially have two names the way I do. But sometimes in England he might meet an old person who just couldn't quite wrap their head around the foreign name, so he simplifies things for them. He also drops the ř sound at the end of his surname if he's introducing himself to foreigners (non-Czechs). Otherwise, re describing being white, just go ahead and mention the colour. Esp in an obviously racially diverse society, it wouldn't be so out of place. And in fantasy stories I think it would be easy enough to slip it in amongst the dense descriptions the genre is known for
In a racially diverse one? Well, Australia is an immigrant country with a large asian population. So that certainly helps with Strange Days.
@Mckk If you leave it at just those possibly, however for my white self , I have a yellow undertone to my skin. So in summer I don't tan as I don't have that olive undertone, rather I get more golden... goldenize? Lol! Lightly tanned/golden skin works too for description. Just get creative with it. You have "white" people who tan like crazy too. Food for thought.
Wait. What happened? I was reading about something and now I feel a strong urge to eat a pastry along with coffee. What's worse is that it's only 5 something! Anyhow. Interesting question. Apart from the basic topology of a story I think that there are other parameters like the history of the country and some migratory knowledge. I mean, that in a city that is multicultural, let's say Berlin for example, there are many different races with their distinct characteristics, like German, Turkish, Pakistan, English, African people and you name it. Within time there has also been a lot of mixing of these races and cultures also. That means that apart from the original immigrants, there are also German citizens that are from African descent and have African characteristics. So if you hear a name like Imani in a story that is set in Berlin, if you know that this name's origin is African, even without a description, you will most likely tend to visualize a black woman without even a description. But if you hear a name like Brigitte, without a description you will think of a white woman, although she might actually be black. In that case, it's good thinking to put in a description, because Brigitte is a name of German origin and Berlin is in Germany which is a country that is known to have been occupied by white people for it's vast history. So, I think that a combination of name origins, some history of a country and some migratory knowledge, is helpful for the writer when it comes upon such dilemmas.
Dude, those sites aren't very good. They're kind of SJW and promoting unnecessary focus on skin colour when the whole racial justice thing is that it doesn't matter. Anyone who doesn't answer the question "can white people write about POC" with something along the lines of "of course" is not in my good book. I would answer of course to anyone who's straight and wants to write gay males, we're just people like anyone else, that's the point. You can write a gay male of any kind of person; jocky, nerdy, nice, mean, left, right, it all exists. I really want African Americans to do the same.
