adiva_calandia | Blogging Against Racism, better late than never

It's easy to identify prejudices in another's work, though -- that's why we have editors, because it's too hard to find our own problems in our own work. Which is why, I think, the representation problems in Milliways go largely unnoticed. It's our work. Last night, Coalhouse Walker from Ragtime entered and summed it up: You travel beyond the reach of the sun, to whatever world lies beyond, and it's full of white people.

I'm as guilty of it as everyone else. I was thinking this morning as I walked back from getting coffee, composing this in my head, Why didn't I cast Epimetheus as Greek? Well, because I'm playing off Prometheus' PB, who's white, and whose music partner is white. So why is Prometheus white?

For that matter, why are all of the mythical, seperate-from-general reality characters in Milliways white? The only exceptions I can come up with off the top of my head are Coyote and, on occasion, Raven (

varadia talked about that a lot). Why are these pups that are half personal canon white? Why did I assume Tom would be white? Why are none of my pups in The Wasteland non-white?

I don't feel that I can use the excuse that I'm white, and that I therefore can't write a non-white perspective. I'm female and I write guys fine. I'm straight and I write lesbian okay. I'm young and I write middle-aged or immortal okay.

And to be fair to myself, I play two non-white characters: Carmela Rodriguez and Nirupam Singh. But I still come back to that question -- why are the characters I create white?

Not like I'm going to change my PB selection on Epimetheus and Tom and Russ and Journey all of a sudden, but it's worth keeping in mind when I write.

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This is something I think about a lot - and I still find myself playing white Anglo characters in Milliways, and I feel kind of guilty every time I pick up another one, because it's a trend both in Milliways and in the kind of fiction that I read and that appeals to me in such a way that I want to play with it in an RP setting. And it's a trend that a lot of us do without thinking.

That guilt is one of the reasons I try really hard to play OCs who are non-white; I've been trying to write more non-white characters too, in my original fiction. When I first conceived of the character of Preston, he had a different last name and was going to be PBed by Macauley Culkin. He turned into a very different character when I chose to use Freddy Rodriguez instead, and I'm incredibly glad I did - but the fact remains that my first mental image, when I think up a character, tends to be white. And it's something I'm trying to change.

Heh. When I first conceived Heather? She was black, and I just wasn't going to mention it. And then because it was never mentioned, when we needed to NPC her, someone else chose a white PB.

Freddy Rodriguez looks very white to me, even though evidently he's Hispanic. It's confusing.

Now, see, the thing about Journey, though -- I have fewer qualms over her being white, because I think her character is such that she can only get away with being as crazy as she is because she has white privilege on her side.

Oh, yes, that's definitely the case. And there's a lot of meta in Journey's character which works really interestingly, too.

See, I've always had Freddy Rodriguez very clearly in my head as Hispanic because he's very culturally coded in the roles I've seen him in - Carla's brother on Scrubs and Rico Diaz in Six Feet Under.

when we needed to NPC her, someone else chose a white PB.

*cringes* I'm sorry. The icon just looked practical and vaguely grumpy like I saw Heather.

Is totally fine! I find it a very interesting sort of . . . diagnostic. You know?

She is a fine Heather PB. :D

*nods*

Oh, good. Natalia V-somethingrussianIcan'tspell is a very useful lady to have pictures of. She's flexible.

I still find myself playing white Anglo characters in Milliways, and I feel kind of guilty every time I pick up another one, because it's a trend both in Milliways and in the kind of fiction that I read and that appeals to me in such a way that I want to play with it in an RP setting.

I have that same problem; my reading tastes are overwhelmingly Anglocentric, and I draw characters primarily from the books I loved growing up. As a theorist, I know very well that there is a problem with my selections, but as a writer, I know whose stories I'm interested in telling.

Now -- because you've brought the subject up, and because I've been feeling guilty about all of my white, Anglo-Saxon (or British, because Bran Davies ap Arthur Pendragon is certainly not Anglo-Saxon) characters, and because I am frankly bored with my current set of characters and would like a change of pace, and because the first of the month is coming soon -- I'm trying to think of non-white characters who I could actually play.

Cat Valente's Orphan's Tales is full of powerful nonwhite women, but my favorite character, Sigrid of the Ways, has the body of a northern, near-Scandinavian milkmaid before she gets old and fat. No help there.

I've been thinking about exploring the options in Madeleine L'Engle, but all of her nonwhite characters that I can think of at the moment are magical Indians whose treatment rather gets on my nerves. Most of them even have blue eyes. Besides, the characters who interest me most in L'Engle are the minor characters who aren't Indian (or have very little Indian blood) in Swiftly Tilting Planet: Beezie, perhaps, or Matthew. (Matthew, at the very least, is disabled!) But that just puts me back where I started from, with characters who are white and, for goodness' sake, Welsh.

In

canadabear's Arthurian game that never really got started, I was going to play Sir Palomides the Saracen, who happens to be a black Muslim knight associated with Arthur's court. I couldn't really think of what I'd do with him, though.

Except that I never really liked the books, it would be lovely to play Ged or Tehanu or some other Earthsea Archipelagan character and actually use an Indonesian actor for the PB. Of course, then I come to the problem that my favorite character is Tenar... who is barbarian, and white.

I'm still stumped, I guess. Any ideas?

I do love Sir Palomides. *wistful* Especially the Once and Future King version. But anyways.

. . . I am trying to think of texts I know both you and I have read. There's always Flower-in-the-Night from Castle in the Air! But . . . I can't remember if you've read Castle in the Air. >.>

Blogging Against Racism, better late than never

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