I am a Caucasian who writes adventure stories about characters of color. Perhaps because I was raised to be sensitive about racial profiling I am constantly second guessing my motives for doing this. Is what I’m doing somehow wrong or unfair to people of color?
Why bother showing different races at all? In my comic (Sweet and Sour Grapes) I use different skin colors to help distinguish two different cultures. The Tashoni people have tribal roots, medieval technology, polytheistic beliefs, and dark skin. The Cunaveri are technologically advanced, non-confrontational, pale skinned, and almost extinct due to a massive war in the story’s prehistory. I could have reversed the skin colors but I feel more comfortable destroying my own race. Another reason I feature characters with dark skin is to distinguish my story from other fantasy adventures. There are seers and ghosts and princes but not in the traditional way. My audience will hopefully have fewer preconceptions about what those roles mean when they aren’t filled by the characters they’re used to seeing.
Wouldn’t people of color feel fetishized by my story? I hope they don’t because the color of my character’s skins aren’t their biggest defining characteristics. I write my cast to be whole people with aspirations and challenges, not 2-dimensional stereotypes. Lae is committed to protecting the pilgrims in her care. Kaga struggles to become a leader. My white characters get the same treatment. Silas looks for way to belong in the world when everywhere around him is evidence that he doesn’t.
What about my audience feeling mislead that the author of this comic isn’t black like the characters? And wouldn’t a black writer write the same characters differently from a white one? I can’t deny that my middle-class upbringing in a white-dominated neighborhood has effected how I write but trying to fake a black writer’s outlook seems like a bad idea. I think all I can do is be very upfront about who I am. Pictures of me around the Internet are very clearly white and I blog the way I talk (which is white).
On the one hand, being overly sensitive about problems like racism can draw too much worried attention to it, risking overcompensation. On the other, ignoring the issue gives it free reign to be even more disruptive. I feel the best I can do is acknowledge the problem and write solutions that work for me without worrying about changing the world.
What do you think? Are you comfortable with the idea of writers creating characters outside their race? Does a fantasy setting change anything?
I’m also drawing a webcomic set in a fantasy world. Or, more accurately, a sub-continent where, naturally, people living in the south have darker skin than those living in the north. My protagonists, though, are light skinned, and the ruling elite is especially pale, and all blonde, too. I’m already bracing myself for accusations of racism, but at this point all the skin colours of all the characters are just too set-in-stone in my brain to change anything, so I’m pre-emptively typing up essays on why having an all-white ruling elite in a sub-continent where skin colours vary from very light to extremely dark is not necessarily racist.
So don’t worry, my worries are bigger!
Yikes, that does sound pretty bad! Hopefully your dark-skinned characters are just as complex and interesting as the paler ones.
My advice? Don’t write up essays explaining yourself. It won’t help.
Having white viewpoint characters is not racist. No explanation is necessary. People living in desert regions will naturally have darker skin. This is also not racist. No explanation is necessary. Without a further view of your story, it sounds like you’re totally fine. (And Diana, I read SSG, and you’re totally not racist either. You’re doing fine!) Game of Thrones has this setup, and I’ve not heard any complaints leveled against it. By explaining that you’re not racist, you only draw attention to it – like when somebody tells you they’re not too drunk to drive; maybe they are, maybe they aren’t, but you immediately doubt them and are now thinking about it.
Now, the problem could come if you make the darker skinned race feral savages, or worse, slaves for the white race. You could make them less civilized, or unintelligent. Or evil. Or you don’t develop them and they are just kind of there for no purpose. Intentional or not, this could be getting into racist territory. At this point, writing an essay still won’t help.
Look at DC comics loudly proclaiming they aren’t discriminating against women. But then they put out a Justice League #1 that Wonder Woman isn’t even in (but had plenty of time for Cyborg!). They change Harley Quinn into a Juggalo Stripper. They change Catwoman into someone who can’t even keep her clothes on during a heist. Perhaps worst of all, Voodoo spends most of her launch title not as a hero, but as a stripper, and editorial changed it so she had to be on her knees while she did. Intentional or not, there is totally some sexist stuff going on over there, and denying doesn’t change anyone’s mind.
I really think most racist and sexist stuff is not written by racists or sexists, it’s written by white men who don’t have the life experience. I am a white man who doesn’t have the life experience! And I’m guilty of having been called out for writing women who were less than stellar.
But rather than waiting until AFTER the comic comes out and may be racist, and taking action then, take action BEFORE the comic comes out. Have friends take a look at your script and listen to their opinions, preferably friends of color who have different life experiences than you do. More than likely they will tell you it’s fine. They might suggest some small changes. But even if you have to make some sorta big changes to prevent yourself from being in bad territory, it’ll pay off. Do it BEFORE.
All that being said, you’re probably fine.
Looking back, I love how I started that comment with the phrase “My advice? Don’t write up essays…” and then proceeded to write up an essay.
Haha, I also wanted to say, “don’t write up preemptive essays denying being racist!” but then remembered that I basically did just that with the above article.
To be fair, I was trying to provide insight into the worries a comic creator can have but ffff… I may have messed this one up. XD
I suppose I may be worrying too much, the skin colour of my characters has hardly any bearing on anything at all, the darker-skinned characters are just normal people, the ruling elite just happens to be a tribe that comes from the north, and thus just happens to be white. But I just can’t help but be paranoid about this stuff, and explain it all at least to myself.
Personally, I think that you might be worying overly much about it. As you said, becoming so obsessd with the idea of racism that you overcompensate is a bad thing. From the way you’ve described your comic (and keeping in mind that I haven’t actually read it – something that will change in the near future), everything seems perfectly fine to me. I don’t think an author should worry about whether or not they can accurately portray people that aren’t of their own race, especially if they’re writing in a fantasy setting where the black people could be from a civilization advanced in technomagic and the white people could be from an Africanesque tribal society and it be perfectly all right, because that’s what the story says they are.
Saying that a white girl can’t write black characters is like saying that non-elves can’t write stories about elves because they don’t know what the lives of elves are like… which is pretty lame, when you put it that way.
Holy crap, this is almost becoming a blog post of its own! BUt in closing; I write stories about people who go on a frontier mission to a continent inhabited completely by furries. (okay, more complicated than that, but still. Brevity.) I’ve never been on a frontier mission, nor am I or will I ever think I am a furry. But there you have it.
Yeah, I think the fantasy genre gives me a bit of wiggle room but I can’t quite bring myself to completely ignore the issue. Anyone who reads my work probably understands that the difference in race between me and my characters isn’t a big deal but my neurotic side worries that it could potentially be off-putting to new readers.
And thank goodness imaginary races don’t send hate mail to authors who depict them poorly. The furries would be picketing our homes. XD