Hello all, I'm an aspiring writer who has not written much yet but I have a fairly decent knowledge of writing and writing conventions, but I'm having trouble with some more touchier subjects. The idea I have is essential "What if the standard fantasy/fairytale setting went through an industrial revolution and had its own version of the Gilded Age". It's a deconstructive story, examining common themes and stories with the changing world of industrialization and the common folk becoming more autonomous and free thinking, just with a bunch of magic and fantastical monsters and fairies through in. But that's not necessarily the point of the post, the idea I have of the MC is. I could just go with the standard "blonde hair, blue eyed farmer teen who is the chosen one/one true king" kinda thing but I have a different idea I want to do with that. So instead, I went in the opposite direction and thought to make them a young adult black women. Of course, I had to try and figure out the story reasons for how she was gonna been in the setting (It's based off of medieval England and surrounding areas). So started looking into minority ethnic groups of the time and other bits and bobs until I started asking some more ... meta questions. Moral questions. I've been told that "inclusion for the sake of inclusion' is a bad thing, so does my example fall into that (It quite literally went like "hmm, why don't I just make her black?") and is this a dangerous line of thinking? She's most likely going to be one of few characters to be black in the story, if not the only one, mainly because it takes place in the pasty white Anglo-Saxon-esque land. Where does the faux inclusion start and end, does it stop with stereotypes and cliches or is there more to consider. How do I properly represent a group of people when it's only one or a small group of people are present. Do I just treat it as a small part of themselves or do I ignore it entirely? I could just go "Fuck it" and run in gung-ho, but I don't want to haphazardly step all over a sensitive issue like this, so if anyone one has any advice they give, I'd much appreciate it
I'd think about it this way. This is already a fantasy setting. It's Anglo-Saxon-esque, not literally a 'what-if' about the real world. So the racial make-up of the people in this setting can be whatever you want them to be -- they don't have to be predominantly white, and she doesn't have to be the only or one of only a few black characters around. In-universe, why would she be? Is your main setting predominantly white, and she's an immigrant? Or is it a more racially-diverse place already? That's up to you and your choice of worldbuilding. It's fantasy. You can do whatever you want with it; you're not beholden to reality.
Blacks in medieval Europe aren't un-heard-of. Here's one link: http://medievalpoc.tumblr.com I'm sure that their representation in the population wasn't big enough for lot of black characters to turn up by coincidence rather than deliberate seeking-out by characters, but you can have whoever you darn well please as an MC.
Yes, it is. White men are a 5-10% minority in the world, and you don't need to cram these minority characters into a story where they don't fit just because you want to satisfy some arbitrary quota The Writing With Color blog has a ton of amazing posts about pretty much anything you can think of and right now, I think the FAQ about "I’m uncomfortable with all the pressure to include People of Color in my writing. Wouldn’t it just make it forced, anyway?" is the most important: Reading fiction improves empathy. Those who read about aliens learn to emphasize with aliens. Those who read about wizards empathize with wizards. And if we’re only (or mainly) reading about White people, no wonder they’re so easy to relate to. But not so much those PoC I guess, whose pain folks literally cannot relate to. ... what’s forced is the all-white fantasy some authors conceive for their stories. Whether you consciously or unconsciously make all your characters White, this is a choice. One that does not reflect the magnitude of the real world, which actually has more People of Color than White people. And yet you wouldn’t be able to tell from reading a book… Becoming comfortable with diversity requires unlearning White as the default and PoC as the Other. It takes setting aside feelings of pressure to emphasize, open your heart and listen.
There’s a lot of this nonsense going around lately. Do what you want and don’t fret about stupid ideas like “enforced diversity”. If you wish to write some political commentary about ethnic diversity go ahead. If you want to write fiction go ahead.
Your argument might work better if you could manage to assemble it without words like "nonsense" and "stupid". They make you sound as if you don't actually have any argument at all. Also, the original poster was pretty clear that they want to do this. It's interesting that you seem to assume that you know their mind better than they do, with your labelling of their freely stated wish as something that's "enforced".
Chicken - If the person who posted the OP is upset with my reponse and/or wants more, then they can ask me. If the author wants to be historically accurate they should look into the history. There are plenty of movie representations of figures of mythological context that don’t represent the traditional image; if it works it works, if not ... drop it. I would deem “inclusion for the sake of inclusion” as partly politically “enforced diversity”. You may not. Fair enough. Note: If you wish to debate it in the appropriate forum/s I’d happy to. Just google “badgerjelly” and “philosophy,” you’ll find me easily enough I think - would be interested to discuss the a/effects of literature and culture, and society at large. To the OP - Maybe I have not given the kind of reply you were asking for. I will assume there is a complaint because Chicken has made one, so ... Is the ethnicity relevant? If you’re thinking about it are you in danger of making it more of an issue (in your own head) than it needs to be? If you wish to “force in” the image of some character then what are your motivations for doing so? Are they misplaced? Isn’t the plot more important? If not why is this contentious for you given that we’re talking about the written medium? There is the issue of representing characters ina stereotypical sense (or in an anti-stereotypical sense). Give that we’re talking about an artistic project we’re all aware of how words can paint a positive or negative picture - but it is one representation. Someone posted a while back about a priest who was represented as a sexual deviant. I think I actually noted the stereotypical nature of this misrepresentation. Just avoid hyperbolic representations of stereotypes - unless you have a good reason for doing so. If what you write is good enough someone somewhere will take offense to it. If literally three people read our work and all find it offensive then I’d start to question what it is about what I’ve written that is so disturbing for others - that can work both for and against you. If you find that diversity into your narrative hurts the story then consider cutting it out. This could be about any issue not just reasonably common to represent women as this or that, to present this or that nation/religious/political ideology as this or that. It seems like a no brained to me. If you want to write something say it the best way you can. By all means experiment with ideas and “contentious” subjects. If they don’t sit right within the greater narrative of what you’ve created then put them aside and if you so wish make them a part of another work. Given that your story is not historical it makes no difference if they are human or not, let alone some genetically insignificant differentiation within a species. Make everyone green or blue, with the legs and asexual. Whatever you do there will be a need to split different people into different general groupings. You can choose to make an issue out of physiological differences within the narrative or to focus on other issues like geography, and demographics like language, law, military might, and artistic sensibilities and traditions within each group.
It's a complicated issue. I could write a lot on this subject, but basically I think it boils down to this: - If you want these themes to be part of the story you're telling, put them in. - If you feel you should have these themes in your story, don't put them in. Because it'll feel forced.
If you don't want to contribute to a group discussion, you should PM the OP. Once you post on the open board, you're on the open board. Do you think that a black character in a medieval-style fantasy world where all the other characters were white would have the same experience as if that character were white? If you think the experience would be identical, then I can see why you're asking if the ethnicity is relevant. If you think there would be differences in the experience, then obviously the ethnicity IS relevant. Why are there quotation marks around "force in"? Who are you quoting? Not the OP, I don't think... Why does the plot have to suffer if a character is not white? I think you're overlooking how often these dividers overlap. There are obvious connections between geography and physiological differences, but there are also a lot of connections between skin colour/race and all the cultural dividers you mention. It's not a question of picking one and ignoring the others, hopefully.
Saying that white people are normal, but that non-white people are an Other whose existence needs to be justified to white people's satisfaction, is a political narrative. Just because you personally don't know about the non-white people in history doesn't mean that they didn't exist. But only the inclusion of non-white people? Do you feel that enforcing unrealistic homogeneity is as "partly political" as enforcing realism is? What's your motivation for forcing the image of all characters defaulting to being white? Couldn't you just write people non-stereotypically? Wouldn't it be more valuable to offend bigots by telling the truth than to offend victims of bigotry by perpetuating lies? And those people think that some human beings should be The Default and that the existence of other human beings needs to be justified.
I didn’t say that, I never mentioned a particular ethnicity, and further more I even constrasted my point with the stereo typical representation of priests. The second comment you made (sorry cannot quote right now due to device I’m using) seems to have take what I said in the wrong manner. I simply meant that if the author wishes to make an issue of the ethnicity in the story then they have a lot to consider, but if they just wanted to present a number of different ethnicities in the narrative then fair enough - make them blue, green or big eyed, five-legged etc.,. I got the impression the conflict in the OP was about putting in someone I envision as looking like this or that as being contentious. The author has to decide how to tackle the issue of stereotypical representations, or to completely ignore them and simply add in a mixture of diverse looking people for no other reason than they wish to do so rather than make some point about it. In other mediums like Bollywood or anime the representation of characters caters to the demographics - in the modern age ideas have loosened up a lot and I commented here because I don’t think it should be a primary concern for the author unless it is a prominent subject within the narratives intention (in this something I have no clue about.) I have debated elsewhere (with some heat aimed at myself) about societal perspectives of “race” and “ethnicity”. It is complicated, and it is not something I am willing to get really deeply into here. I have forums where I choose to discuss such things - here I choose to take part in discussions about art and writing, sometimes the divide is less than clear. Same goes you. Look me up elsewhere if you want to get into political debates and such things. I choose to draw a line here and to try to stick to discussion based on writing choices and writing in general. My response was aimed at the OP in regards to choices to make in writing. I have no problem with anyone writing anything whether I agree with it or not. I may or may not choose to voice agreement or disagreement, but I would prefer to do so over technical issues or methodology, rather than get into ethical debates and wrongs and rights. Someone else summed it up nicely enough above. I’ve no more to say on the subject here unless the OP chooses to make a remark and/or expand on the kind of feedback/views they were looking for.
Okay a new reply. I can see where this is heading. Imagine the same kind of response as above. All I can request is that you don’t put words in my mouth. Your reply came before I’d finished typing though so I’ll leave it. Thank you
Terry Pratchett has a whole world flying through space the backs of 4 huge elephants which in turn are standing on the back of an even bigger turtle. . . I think one black female MC in an Anglo-Saxon-esque world will be fine. It is fantasy, after all.
So why not reassure the original poster that having a nonwhite character isn’t wrong? You instead seem to be extraordinarily alarmed about doing such a thing.
Around 5 or 6 AD, a strange man from a foreign land arrived at China, at Northern Wei. Nobody knew who he was; he spend most of his days meditating. He was physically strange:brown, hairy and bulky; people believed, he was from somewhere in the immediate West or South. No one learned the real name of the man; some maintain that he died meditating for nine years near the Shaolin Monastery as he was denied entry, but the stranger is today considered as one of the prime proponent of Chan Buddhism, or Zen Buddhism as it is popularly known. He is considered as the first person to have taught Kung Fu and medicine. He came to be known as Bodhidharma. The point is, he was a complete stranger in the new land, and there is a story there. Irrespective of the societal norms, configuration or composition of any given time, an author can convincingly write about a character, as if the character was MOST CERTAINLY there. I think, if you believe and are convinced that your character was there in the place and at that time, then there is absolutely no problem. Rest everything, including the characters' traits, personality, the society's response to the existence of that character and the interaction dynamics, will all fall into place. Those dynamics will themselves become interesting to read. A piece of curved glass can be both convex and concave at the same time.
Don't really know if you could these two opposite, but it sounds like you're already writing fantasy, so why not have people be whatever colour you want? You're the only one who can really say at this point whether it's inclusion for the sake of inclusion. If you feel as though it might be, I would ask whether skin-colour is important at all? You could always not mention it and let your readers pick for themselves. As a reader, I find I do this anyway.
The two issues I see with that are: 1) It means you can't describe anybody. People are visual; they like to know what characters look like. 2) Most people, if there's no description, assume white characters anyway. I find both of those things unsatisfying, so it's not a solution that works for me.
Another thought that occurs: Re-reading the OP, there's no mention of this being anything other than a pure-fantasy novel. As in, it's not based on our world at all. Therefore putting in a black woman as a protagonist and then looking up the issues that affected black women historically in our own world wouldn't really be helpful - unless this fictional world also had, for example, a slave trade which focused on using black people. A case in point: In Game of Thrones there are black people - the Summer Islanders. In that series the fact they're black is nothing more than a mention that they have tanned skin, because Westros is not our world and it didn't have our history to weigh upon the social circumstance of being born black. Essentially if you're going to go down this path, you'll probably have to cut and paste a lot of real world history into your fictional world for it to make sense. Or generally do a lot of work to fit it all in sensibly which brings me around to the point I made earlier: you have to really want to do this. Because if you don't really want to, because you don't feel it really fits but you also feel you need to include it, it'll likely come across as forced and the reader will be able to tell.
I understand what you mean, although I don't (necessarily) think omitting skin colour adds up to a lack of description. It's only one aspect of any person, and if race/skin colour doesn't have a bearing on the overall story, is it really a significant one? Don't know if this is true.
Assorted thoughts: In my WIP, I've concluded that it works quite well for me to make one of my major countries/cultural groups black, and I have a variety of thoughts and questions about how to handle certain details--thoughts and questions that I'd like to discuss. (Mostly geeky things like, "OK, if these two groups with wildly differing skin color are 'native' to regions quite close together, do I have an evolutionary issue? Do I need to assume some historical migration? How long ago can that migration be?") But if I post I'll have a swarm of people patting my hand and saying, "There, there, you don't have to do this, you were forced into it and you just don't realize, forget the whole idea." In addition to, of course, helpful people. Now, I do remember reading the advice that if your knowledge of a given group's experience is limited, and especially if you're not willing to do a lot of research, don't rush to make your MC part of that group, simply because the odds of success, with so little knowledge, are low. The advice was to get started with an important side character. But that wasn't "It's WRONG!" advice, it's, "Eh...do you want to increase the odds of failure quite so much?" And that advice was, I believe, for real-world stories, a situation where you really want both factual and emotional accuracy. The question in this thread (and also in the case of my WIP) is about a fictional world. Also, I think that we tend to assume that skin-color-based racism is the default and is inevitable, and we especially assume that if we're coming from the US, due to the history and the rampant continuing racism. But remember that racism takes many forms--it's not that long since the Irish were regarded as an inferior race, while now we tend to respond to that with, "Huh? But they're white," as if racism is all about skin color.
People choose and describe things like eye color and hair color without justifying doing so for plot reasons. If they're doing that but deliberately avoiding mentioning skin color, there's something odd there. Imagine what sort of story would be totally unchanged by changing the main character's gender. Even if the plot isn't about gender, the gender is still likely to be at least somewhat relevant, right? And in a real-world story, race and skin color are extremely likely to be relevant--not necessarily as a big plot driver, but we are far from a colorblind world. If someone is walking around in some deep-South state in the US, and no one is commenting on or reacting to their race, then they're white. If you want to avoid committing to a race and be realistic doing so, you'll need to move that story to another region, and you'll still need to make sure you avoid a variety of story elements. It seems easier to just make decisions, just as you make decisions about character gender.
This is a good point. It seems to me that if you're writing a story set in our world, you'll have to pay attention to this - either to be consistent with racial attitudes for the location and time period, or to somehow make a point that they have changed. (If your story is set in the future for example, people will assume present-day prejudices exist unless you find a way to specify otherwise)
Yes, but so is Game of Thrones. That series is basically the Wars of the Roses with dragons and ice zombies. Westros even looks like England. But as I pointed out, being black in GoT means nothing, regardless of its basis.