White Characters Dominating Fantasy Worlds

Deliberate Buffy or Accident Buffy

 

Deliberate. That is, I knew I was quoting, though I couldn't remember who.

 

Is fantasy only written in English? (More or less genuine question - I mean, I know it's not EXCLUSIVELY written in English, but is it mostly in English?)

And are you sure that English is predominantly used by white people? If you look at the list at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_English-speaking_population you'll see that of the top 5 English speaking countries, only one of them has a majority white population, and that country (the US) is quite ethnically diverse...



I'm not sure I accept the logic of your argument, but I'm also not sure about the facts of it...

 

I suspect that the answer to that might be circular. I could point to Chinese fairy tales or Japanese fantasy manga, for example, and someone could argue that that's not really fantasy, because real fantasy has to look like the fantasy that they're used to, which is written in English...

 

Unless you're adding fantasy literature from foreign countries into the total statistics on character ethnicity ratios, those countries aren't relevant. Besides, if you looked for fantasy literature outside the US, most would probably have the "ethnic representation" you're looking for.

 

What does that have to do with representation in America?

 

63% of America is white. Of course there's going to be more white "representation" in American literature.

 

And? Your point?

 

1) Didn't I already cover the disproportionality?

2) Why would representation in America be a function of representation in other countries?

 

Given that representation has some kind of importance to the masses, people are going to want to write about their own ethnic group. White people, being the statistical majority, will have more represention simply because there are more white authors writing about characters of their own ethnicity.

1. Marketing towards the largest demographic that will buy your product is financially smart. If you're a producer investing millions into a movie, your only agenda is likely to make money.

 

No, I get the point of the argument, and I think I've made enough posts on topics like this to show I'm totally on board with it. I just think it's a bad way to make the point. It's got some use as a counter to people saying things like 'but if only X% of the population is black why should >X% of books have black characters', but I don't think bolstering the butthurtness of the straight white males (since it is, I think, almost always that demographic arguing for keeping things much as they are) by referring to them as a minority and adding to their 'but we're oppressed too' vibe is particularly useful.

 

Dunno about you, but the idea of policing the free market of fiction in an effort to achieve statistical equity bothers me greatly. If you don't agree with the decisions another author has made with their work, vote with your wallet and create your own works to fit your ideals.

I'm not "white". I'm not "straight". I'm not native to America's culture. However, I've had no problems identifying with straight white females or any character with random combinations of labels slapped onto them. The notion that characters in fiction must be identical to the reader for them to be able to identify with the character is absurd. Ethnicites are defined by ever-changing political boundaries constructed by humans. They're meaningless beyond signifying birthplace and citizenship.

 

It's not about whether white people should be a majority - they probably always will be in literature in this culture, for exactly that reason. The point is that they're too much of one. If you're not actively looking for books with minority characters, they're relatively hard to come by, and they shouldn't be.

That makes significantly less sense as an argument for a book, though. Even if you buy the argument that media known to involve non-white people will make less money - which I don't, particularly, but I do think different is scary when your job is potentially on the line, and the end result is much the same - with a movie, you'll usually have seen a ton of trailers, so if it's a mostly minority cast you'll know about it before you've given them any money. A book's far less visual. You're unlikely to know the race of most of the characters before you've bought it and have started to read.

 

On a business level, the answer always lies in profit, I think it's safe to say that everyone agrees there.

But when I asked why does diversity arguments boil down to skin colour and orientation, I was trying to highlight that the current existence of the argument is incredibly shallow. Do you have to be black to like Tuvok, the Vulcan chief security officer of Star Trek: Voyager? Do you have to be a woman to appreciate the courage and achievements of Amelia Earhart? Frankly, those who do, and they exist on both sides of the spectrum, are a bigger part of the problem IMHO.

Diversity is not stuffing every group into a single piece of work, it is having lots of works out covering them. If every work starts having every race and creed even when it's not representative of the setting, that actually undoes the very notion of diversity. Diversity, in its truest form, is having different works showing different views, cultures, and places.

There is one diversity that no story, be it movie, book, or even video game as a story telling medium, cannot function without, and that is intellectual diversity. The greatest stories have people who think differently to one another. It gets boring if they're all singing off the same hymn sheet.

Another argument by those of the who call about what I'm going to call from this point superficial diversity is comparing anyone who is not a protagonist to a Star Trek red shirt. Like side characters are somehow completely disposable.
Yet both the lives and (and in some cases, deaths) of some of these characters make entire arcs possible.

 

Well, yes... but the whole point of this thread (and the countless others like it) is that the canon of literature as a whole isn't doing a good enough job with that.

No-one's ever said that every work needs to include every race and creed - at a wild guess as to why, probably because it's a fucking stupid argument. Just that there should be more diversity in the market as a whole.

 

I was bringing attention to the behaviour of the worst of the worst using this argument. I didn't say that anyone here said what I had pointed out, only that it has.

 

It doesn't.

 

Probably. A lot of the push for diversity in literature isn't just about diverse books, but diverse books written by 'diverse' authors. That's what #ownvoices is all about - disabled authors writing about disabled characters, queer authors writing about queer characters, transgender authors writing about transgender characters...

I don't know how much of it is lip service and how many agents/publishers/readers are actually putting their money where their mouths are, but it's definitely a Big Thing right now.

 

Too much of a majority? Seems like a moving of the goalposts. I don't think it presents a good reason to tinker and interfere with the free market.

Too hard to find? Google dude. Takes minutes at most. If you're not actively looking for a book with minorities in it, then that would appear to indicate you don't care, and so it wouldn't make sense to then get frustrated that you can't find a book with minorities in it.

 

Oh Jesus, are we playing this game again?

I don't understand how saying 'there's not enough minority representation in literature' one way and then saying 'there's not enough minority representation in literature' in another way is moving goalposts, but whatever. You do you. I don't really have the time for bait-and-switch bollocks you seem to think counts as 'discussion' today.

I said 'when you're not actively looking'. When you're actively looking, it's a piece of piss. You go to the shelf marked 'Octavia Butler' and you're golden. If you're just browsing, minority characters don't appear anywhere near as often as they should.

 

Stupid people do indeed say stupid things, agreed. But since I don't believe any of them are here, it feels like a bit of a derail.

 

Well, because "not enough" is a completely subjective term. And so you're moving the goal posts to the spot where *you* think they would then be appearing as often as they should be. Except, you haven't defined at what rate they should ideally occur either.

So I mean, what "should" the ideal amount be then in your opinion? The percentage of books with "black characters" (out of the total number of published books) proportionate to the percentage of "blacks" in the United States (out of the total population)?

 

No. That's a dumb question.

You don't need to know exactly where the line is to know which side of it you're on. Insisting you do need to know that is a stupid argument.

I do like how you've defined 'moving the goalposts' to be 'discussing the thread topic', though. That's an impressive piece of linguistic manoeuvring. Let me know if you want a job in copywriting.

 

No, it's that you felt the need to say they're "too much" of a majority.

"Yeah, I know that the so-and-so group is already a minority... but they're *not enough* of a minority."

If you're looking for a product that is by nature of the free market going to be less common, then you can seek out specific retailers, ask for assistance from an employee at the book store, or do some quick searching online and find what you would like.

Seems like a far more pragmatic solution. If you aren't actively looking for minority characters, don't complain that you aren't finding any.