What does this have to do with the discussion? Nothing. I'm not talking about self-identification. I'm talking about empathy with the reader. The white author may say the main character is Indian, but if that white author knows shit about an Indian language or culture, then the white author is just using the Indian character to attract attention for the Western audience.
You might be right. If a writer with Sherlock avatar reinvents one well known version of Sherlock it must be just a coincident with zero plagiarism - not in moral, artistic or juridical level. And I will not point out that A.C.Doyle died 1930 which might make reinventing his characters legally less risky than reinventing characters from tv-series that is under production.
Sure, but you are just suggesting that a white male US author has no business writing about any character that isn't a white, male, US citizen and can't research that kind of character enough to write something legitimate. If you are ethnically Chinese - who are you allowed to write about? Can I claim you can't understand my caucasianness enough to write a caucasian character? There is a lot said about cultural appropriation these days, and some of it is right on when it comes to really screwed over minority populations. But Indians are not one of those groups, being one of the largest populations on earth, having cultural links to Europe that go back centuries and having massively exported their culture.
That is not my point at all. My point is, if race is not important in the plot, then don't mention it. Let the reader to decide who the character is. A character may be given the name "Samuel", and may be of any race - Jewish, White, Indian, Chinese, etc. It is not the author's job to insert everything for the reader. The reader can imagine whatever he wants in the character. Harry Potter may be a British wizard, but when translated into Chinese, his Chinese readers identify with his character. The translator has made Harry Potter Chinese for the Chinese reader.
But you were just saying that culture affects who a character is—weren’t you? A generic, culture-free character isn’t really going to be a character at all—and people are going to tend to assume that they’re white. An author should know enough to write their character convincingly, whether or not that character’s race is important to the plot. Race being important to the plot is neither necessary or sufficient for creating a nonwhite character.
First of all, there is no such thing as a "generic, culture-free character". People will not assume a character is white because that character is "generic" and "culture-free". People will assume that character is white, because white people identify with that character. A good example is Jesus from the Bible. Jesus is actually a Jewish man from the Middle East. As a native to the environment, it is very unlikely that he would appear like the blonde-hair-blue-eyed Jesus in the West. But because Germanic peoples identify with Jesus, they imagine Jesus to be their kind. Thus, Jesus in Western culture looks like a white man. Jesus in other cultures appears like the indigenous peoples. His actual race in the Bible really doesn't matter, because Christians from all over the world see him as the Son of God. If race is important, then people probably see him as Jewish, and being Jewish is not really tied to one's physical appearances. Second, there is nothing wrong with creating a white character. If the author is white and is surrounded by white people, then the author may not be familiar with non-white people that much. The author will just write based on what he or she knows - white people. Third, writing fiction is about writing a story. The plot is most important. If race is relevant to the plot, then the author should definitely mention it. If race is not, then the reader can assume it - whatever it is. That character may be Hermione Granger from Harry Potter. If a black person sees Hermione as black, then Hermione is black. If a white person sees Hermione has white, then Hermione is white. One way to write a convincing, non-white character is by personal experience with a non-white person. If you don't want to create a white person, then create a witch instead. The character's race is witch. Or maybe an elf... or a dragon... or whatever. I don't care if you use fictional races. Those come from the imagination of the author, but I do care if a person just randomly writes about a real race without any personal experience with a person from that race. Race is inherently a social concept. By introducing race, you are also introducing this social concept in the work. If you think of race as white/black/yellow/red, then that is also the Western definition of race. Because of Westernization, this concept of race is widespread and global, so it may seem like an objective reality, when it is not. It is also one of the main reasons why many Westerners do not understand the Chinese concept of race. Westerners may translate 华人 as "ethnic Chinese", but that is actually quite misleading, because Taiwanese people may also identify themselves as 华人, but in English, most Taiwanese people do not say that they are "Chinese", because "Chinese" in English is political. Using pinyin to write "Chinese characters" is also misleading, because it assumes that the language is based on exact pronunciation. If this social concept is irrelevant to the plot, do not mention it. Mentioning that a character is white/non-white assumes that you are inserting a particular form of race into your work. You are inserting this social concept into the work. You are inserting the real-life baggage that comes with this social concept. Just give the character a generic name, like Bob, and let the reader imagine whatever race that person is.
"Race" isn't important to this subject, and you're the only one talking about race. What is important is the character's biography, which explains some of the ways he looks, sounds and acts and what sort of expectations those external signs create in the people he meets as well as how it colors his behavior and perception. You seem to be trying to make this a racial thing because an Indian man doesn't look "Germanic", but if the OP had said his character is German, the situation would be no different. His character would still be foreigner speaking accented English, wearing slightly different clothes, having a different perspective and using a different set of cultural values to approach his job. But I doubt you'd be talking about the "German race". India is a country, a range of related cultures and a range of related ethnicities. It isn't a race, and it isn't an identification that is undeserving of being a basic fact of a character's background.
Sorry to throw your arguments out the window, but I'm actually an Asian Indian born in India and my mother tongue is a South Indian language.
Not to me. To me, plot is about what highlights character. To me, character is most important. That means that I want to know who my characters are--their origins, their culture, their experiences. Sure, an author who tries to use a culture and set of experiences that they know nothing about is courting trouble. That is not remotely the same thing as saying that they shouldn't use them if they aren't relevant to the plot. Those are two quite different things. And the idea that the reader will just impose their own culture and experiences on a character is a third idea, one that would never work for me--it would require the character to be a blank slate. I don't want a blank slate. Not everybody is writing fantasy. I doubt that a dragon will work well in the OP's detective's world. The OP said "Indian", which sounds more like nationality than race. Sure, creating an Indian character will require a lot of research on the country and the culture. It will likely require narrowing the research to a subset of that culture--just as a writer who grew up in a mostly-white Midwestern farming town will likely have to do a lot of research (though not as much research) if they want to create a character who grew up in Brooklyn. Are you getting this from my using the shorthand of "white"? Fine, we can expand that to "white straight English-speaking Christian and probably protestant male from age 14 through 42 who grew up in the US, UK, or Canada." The default character type for much Western fiction. Sometimes, if the writer has a good excuse, they can be female instead. It's relevant to the character. And, really, it's very hard to keep it from being relevant to the plot. If a character is in, say, Alabama in 1972, I guarantee you that you'll be able to tell whether they're black or white. It means that I'm inserting a specific part of the reality of being human into the story. Yes. The difference is that I don't see that as bad. Bob? How many people from the Indian continent are named Bob? And, again, I don't want generic, culture-free characters.
But your whole basis for "reinventing one well known version" seems to be...making Watson a less cardboard character. I'm not seeing "not a cardboard character" as sufficiently non-obvious as to be plagiarism.
Just because mainstream genre fiction in the West features Caucasian protagonists as the norm doesn't mean that I'm not at liberty to use a non-white protagonist. I disagree. Plot is not the only element of fiction that is important in creating an enjoyable experience for the reader. Characterization, dialogue, POV, and the setting etc. are also important. It is the author's skillful and creative weaving of these elements including plot that creates an enjoyable experience for the reader. A good story stems from effective characterization, effective plotting, and even conveying call-to-action messages. What else do you want me to dipict in my stories? If I can't portary the real world in my works through social concepts such as race, then what do you want me to use, an alien world in another planet and their way of life?
and people are going to tend to assume that the character is their own race.* It would be hard in that specific theoretical circumstance, yes. There are many settings and plots where it wouldn't be relevant. Even if you wrote a story that took place during that time, there's no reason why you HAVE to address racism, have it impact the plot, or otherwise show up in your story whatsoever. You would just need to structure your story accordingly. For example - to try and keep this relevant to the OP - there's no reason why RightWrite *has* to address racism against Indians in his stories. There's no reason that he has to address racism at all. It sounds like the race of his MC is simply an explanation for why the MC is so influenced by Indian culture, which RightWrite claims will provide a unique approach to how he solves cases.
One thing I like about SF is that it can really be without race. But I wouldn't say that a "raceless" character is going to read white or read the race of the reader, as these two highlight the competing assumptions any reader will go through.
I agree, and should've been more clear: there are a multitude of different reasons for assuming the race of a character when the race hasn't been made clear by the author. It could be context from the story itself, the reader inserting his own race, the reader assuming it's a certain race because that happens to the be the race featured the most in the literature they've read, etc.
No, I don't think so. Not in the US, anyway. https://www.lspark.com/news/response-to-a-twitter-post/ http://www.publishingcrawl.com/2015/10/21/about-that-white-as-default-thing/ https://www.writingdiversely.com/single-post/Dismantling-the-White-Default In some fantasy and science fiction, yes. But in our real world, it's pretty much always going to affect something--background, social interaction, many things. Imagine that we normally used gender-neutral pronouns. Would you say that whether a character is male or female would only rarely be relevant, so that it would be sensible to refrain from stating whether a character is male or female? It might just be possible if the setting is 1972--I doubt it, but I'm not absolutely sure without some research. If it's 1952, I'm pretty sure it's flat-out impossible, if your story ever steps out of private homes. You would have to have your characters avoid restaurants and other businesses, transportation providers, lodging providers, law enforcement, and, really, avoid any interaction with other human beings. That doesn't leave a lot of room for story. There's no reason why a story has to address sexism at all. So there's no reason to tell the reader whether the main character is male or female. ....I don't believe my last statement. Do you?
This doesn't really follow from what you quoted. The quote says that the character IS identified as Indian, but that doesn't require a discussion of racism. The parallel would be a story with a woman that doesn't discuss sexism - and those stories abound.
I may have misunderstood Foxxx. I was addressing the argument, from at least one person in the thread, that race/nationality shouldn't be mentioned at all.
The first link is just an opinion lol. That's not evidence of anything. The second link is also opinion, and would seem to indicate an echo chamber, based on the mentioning of the names and the same tweet. You said "in the US", where the predominant race has been Caucasian since its founding; particularly the "white" variety. So yes, people are prone to either insert a character that resembles themselves, or failing that, resembles the predominant race of their country. From the third link: "Think about how hard it is to find... a non-white main character in a book or movie that isn't about race." This also supports another point I make, which is that not every story needs to be about race, and that the races of characters can in fact be inconsequential and irrelevant. There are plenty of people out there of all races who do not have a similar experience. It continues to seem to me that the only people who struggle with keeping racism out of their novels, are people who are obsessed with race, and assume that all people of race x have the same experience. Or, more generously, the people who - unfortunately - struggled with racism throughout their life. I would wager people who specifically write stories in racist settings do not "struggle" with keeping racism out of their novels, as that would be incredibly counter-productive. That would be like struggling to keep ships and gold out of stories about pirates. No, because there are actual biological and psychological differences between men and women that are far, far more drastic than any one between the races. Well, the most obvious difference between races are the aesthetic ones. But that's about as far as they go until you get into medicine (if I'm not mistaken, people of different races can be more or less prone to certain illnesses, have different reactions to medications, etc.) It entirely depends on what your story is about, and how imaginative you are. There seems to be a misunderstanding. I'm not saying, "There's no reason why a story has to address racism at all, so there's no reason to mention or describe race." I'm actually saying something that the author in your third link said. "You can bring up race - that is to say, describe a character - without needing to make the story about racism." This is why I specifically said that I support the OP using the race of his MC as an explanation for why he's so familiar with Indian culture, and how that influences the ways he solves cases (because, I presume, it influences the way he thinks). But that doesn't have to have anything to do with racism. It COULD, and that's entirely up to RightWrite, but I fail to see how it's inherently "very hard" to avoid. And given that the setting is contemporary, as long as there are no supernatural elements or something, I don't think his detective story qualifies as sci-fi or fantasy.
None of them are evidence of anything but the fact that not everyone agrees that people will assume that a generic character is their own race. You seemed to be taking that as a given; I'm pointing out that it's not. Not every story needs to be about race. But for a story (edited to add: A story in the real world or something close to it) to be totally untouched by issues of race, that story is usually going to contain exclusively characters of the predominant race represented by the readers. There are plenty of people of both genders that don't have a similar experience. But you still wouldn't advocate habitually hiding character gender, right? Because gender has at least a small influence in countless aspects of daily life. You don't want to hide gender. Are you obsessed with gender? Do you agree that all people of a given gender have the same experience? Or do you recognize that gender has an influence in countless aspects of daily life? But I'm not talking about biological and psychological differences. I'm talking about differences in one's experience of society and the world. I'd say that as a high school student in suburban St. Louis in the 1980s, my experience was much closer to that of males of Western European origin than to that of females of color. And I'll bet that's still true. But why would I want to work so very, very hard to avoid race? You could probably work very, very hard to avoid gender. Do you want to? Does it strike you as an essential goal? OK. I guess I didn't see that because it seemed so obvious. Of course you can. But the thread seemed to have veered in the direction of telling the original poster NOT to specify any non-white race for his character. Now I see that you aren't one of those making that argument. Would you agree that it would be somewhat difficult to avoid revealing, through events and interactions, the gender of your characters? Again, we're assuming that there's a commonly used gender neutral pronoun. That reveal doesn't need to mean that the story is about sexism. But it will reflect that our society does interact differently with men and women.
She's really not: "Usually" isn't a very useful word when it comes to bespoke literature. I see no reason why multi ethnic cast needs to or even usually is touched by "issues of race". People can live through many life events without addressing the race of the people around them. It doesn't have to be hard. I was in the military where people of many races were common. It was virtually never a topic and never an issue. So a military story could easily take place without it. Imagine a story where two FBI agents are stuck in the desert and have to survive. They call each other by last names and are dressed similarly. Would it really be difficult to read an entire story like this and get to the end without ever noticing a lack of gender or race?
And you are a person of color? But that sort of closed-room story is pretty rare. You could do it as an exercise, sure.
Point taken. I felt the same way about your stance, so I think we've arrived at an armistice of sorts here. Perhaps. I would never advocate for that, no, because I believe gender has a far greater impact on character than race. I'd wager that it's changed. To what degree I honestly couldn't say. I am interested in the biological and psychological differences because I'm interested in the individual. I don't embrace collectivist ideology (not implying you do, but I'm clarifying how I approach story). So unless there are actual institutionalized reasons that would impact my setting, I don't feel the need to separate "males of Western European origin" from "females of color". Gender and race aren't the same, so I'm not going to address arguments that conflate them. I don't know, why would you? You don't have to. Like I said, if you're writing a story that takes place in a setting where it's unavoidable, no, I would not suggest jumping through hoops to try and avoid it. Yes, and my apologies for possibly derailing the thread a bit. I just thought that maybe the discussion might provide *something* of use to the OP, since he seemed concerned about how he'd like to handle race in his WIP. Of course that would be incredibly difficult. I just don't see race and gender as being similar enough to make a strong argument.
That appears to be the core of our disagreement. I believe that being a minority that society reacts to—whether based on religion, nationality, skin color, class, education, other aspects of culture, sexual orientation, and I’m sure I’m missing many others—is likely to have as much or more impact as being male or female. Edited to add: in relatively modern real-world society, that is.
