*#Sensitive topic alert#* I'm currently writing a couple of chapters Where a racist explains his motives. In his tongue, he would naturally use derogatory words like nigger and Paki. From the off, I'm uncomfortable writing this, but I'm unsure how to proceed with it. If I whitewash them for weaker text it becomes unrealistic, and takes away from the story, but if I use them, I'm worried how they will be perceived. I can't imagine I'm the first to ever struggle with this, so what have you done, or what would you do? In no way am I racist, and I don't want to be perceived as one. The way I'm writing it the guy the guy clearly sounds bat shit crazy, so it wouldn't be like I'm celebrating racism with him Help!
I think it may be important to only use those words in quoted dialogue so it is clearly the speech of a particular character rather than the words of the narrator (you).
Yeah that's how I intend to use them it would be pretty clear it's the views of a particular character, I'm really getting at their use at all rather than how they are used
You should probably read To Kill a Mockingbird. Does it use racist terminology? Has it been banned? Does that make it a bad book or a racist book? You know the answers to these questions. (and if you don't, then you really need to read it) Proceed.
Before I touched on that topic I read a novel called "The Help" by Kathryn Stockett because I felt she covered the topic pretty well. It still pissed people off, mostly people who don't like being called out for past mistakes but I thought she handled the theme of Racism really well. Maybe just take a look at it.
In the context of recommending books that deal with racism, I'm going to point to Barbara Neely's Blanche White series: https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/she-the-people/wp/2015/01/03/blanche-white-maid-turned-sleuth-in-90s-murder-mystery-series-is-back/?utm_term=.71314f3d9915
The trouble with that is he is only speaking to other racists, so they agree with him. The fact he is bat shit crazy is only clear to the reader
Can you make him speak to someone else? He gets arrested and has to talk to a court-ordered psychiatrist? He’s on a date and the girl is just gritting her teeth and waiting it out until they leave the restaurant? He gets hurt and the hospital personnel similarly grit their teeth until he’s patched up and they can boot him out?
At this point, you need to ask yourself what the purpose of this story is. Is it to give the KKK a platform, to horrify the reader with things they've heard said many times before? A book with Nazis as the bad guys doesn't require quotes from Mein Kompf, and there isn't a strong reason that racist bad guys need their delusions well illustrated to be bad guys. Do you have a good reason to give these people a voice? Someone recently posted an article about how American History X has been embraced by racists because it articulates they POV so well (and doesn't really disprove their position). The only real antidote to racism is to illustrate just how awful its effects are for all of society, including whites. Just sounding awful isn't enough.
This is one of the reasons I write sci-fi. I can have two groups be horribly racist to each other, but it gets a pass, for the most part, because it's sci-fi. Historical fiction and fantasy also seems to get a genre pass as well. Imagine someone re-writing Tolkien so to replace the Elves, Dwarfs and Orcs with any racial groups on Earth today and they'd likely get burned at the stake.
Writing With Color has an incredible trove of information that authors might benefit from looking at in how to portray racial issues in fiction and one article that looks particularly relevant is Using Racial Slurs for Historical Accuracy
To be perfectly frank this isn't a book about racism, and it's not trying to prove or disprove either side of the argument. What it is is a way to wrap the book up, and writing it another way without the racists doesn't work. In an ideal world I'd have the same racist characters acting the same way, but without the language. If anyone can think of a way to do that I'd gladly take your advice. How can I replace those words with something more acceptable yet not detracting from the story? This is the sentence where it's used. "Imagine a world without Jews, where instead they all made it to the gas chambers, or a world without niggers or pakis. That, my friend is paradise." I can't really change it to "a world without ethnic minorities". It doesn't work. Can the whole passage be rewarded somehow? I can't see the wood for the trees with this one.
By "wrap the book up" are you saying that this is the concluding sentiment? Or just that it's past the midway point?
The words are really powerful, obviously in a negative way. They're going to draw a lot of attention to themselves. If you're ready to handle that kind of power and attention, ready to channel it and use it to good effect, go for it.
I'm gonna assume throughout the book you've built up to this. As long as your book doesn't come across as racist by the way you tell your story and that your story doesn't harbour racist ideas, I think you're fine. I don't know the context, but if that's the last line to your novel, that sounds like a pretty darn shocking last line - one that will be resonating in your readers' heads for days and weeks. If your story absolutely calls for it and it has purpose, use it. It sounds like a fantastic last line, to be honest. Not in its racist content but in the power it has, because honestly, the only thing I can see is the gas chambers and rather than the Jews, I'm seeing all ethnic minorities going in there and it's harrowing. (I'm one, by the way. Chinese.) It's a frigging disturbing last line. ETA: you're right that using "ethnic minorities" would not work. It would come off as absolutely ridiculous considering your character is supposed to be a racist.
It's going to be a mighty fukkin tedious read if every time grandma tuts at the window MC reminds how we are all one people under the rainbow, grandma. 'Ahh fuck off you little prick, white gammon prick kid,' said Grandma, and she returned to counting the Koreans in the street.
Sorry, missed this comment. The main story, and all major events happen elsewhere, and are nothing to do with racism. What happened remains a mystery throughout the book. The final two chapters are set thousands of miles away, and don't involve any of the main characters, but the sole reason for events elsewhere are this characters (and others in his group) actions, that are psychotic and racist to the core. Racism is the sole reason for their actions and nothing else would make sense. At the end of these two chapters the book is finished. Its basically the epilogue
At the risk of pissing pretty much everyone off.... May I suggest that you're not trying to write a racist character, you're trying to write an idiot with a cause type character. He probably just picked the cause randomly just to get attention. Most folks like that do.
Na he has a cause, it's deep routed, and I've wrote the history to go with it, talking about his father and grandparents. All the way back to the war. There has been a plot in the making for over 40 years and the story is the culmination of it.
It's good inspirational material to compare the generational values, maybe in a short? With the old merchant seaman: 'So there we were at sea, forty coolies splashing and screaming covered in fucking oil on fire, pakis and chinkies, and I lowered a rope ladder, and well, you know, none of them could swim but I jumped in and saved the lads.' 'Oh my god, Pops, Instagram will have a field day on your ass.'
