Blogging Against Racism, better late than never

[adiva_calandia]

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.

Comments

[cupenny.livejournal.com]

Yes, looking at Milliways, the majority of the characters are white. I'd believe that this is due to most of us being English speaking players (Most- I know of one person that english is not his first language, and I'd believe there are others), and the english language has several hundreds of years of literature available for us to draw on. This liturature is going to be written by english-speakers, which for most of this time, were white.

The last hundred or so years, there has been more written, and other medias available for story-telling, but for the most part of this time, they were still controlled by the upper-class- which still tended to be white. Now, this is changing- slowly, but it is. Compared to a hundred years ago, more people in the world are literate, in what ever language they speak. English isn't the only 'educated' language out there anymore. I would imagine that in 20 years from now we'll be getting best sellers from China, Brazil, and Egypt- and we'll be having to wait for them to be translated into English for us to read them.

As for now, hopefully we'll have more people write from their cultural point of view on things- because with being 'politically correct', I think a lot of white writers shy from writing about other cultures and ethnic backgrounds, for fear of 'doing it wrong'.

[adiva_calandia]

This is all very true, and I share your hope that we'll start seeing more non-white authors in the mainstream bestseller list -- same as I hope we'll see more gay or female authors (though glancing over the NY Times Bestseller List, that latter seems to be doing okay).

It doesn't change the fact, though, that the pups in the bar who are as much OC as a canon are predominantly white, and they don't automatically have to be. Yeah?

[cupenny.livejournal.com]

*nodnod* My one char who is 'half OC' (ie, me having to make up a lot for her, since she has about one paragraph of canon) is pretty much 'culturally neutral'. Laini is kitsune, and while there are roots in Japanese culture there, obviously, for her as a character it isn't much of an influence.

Dapheline, who's in Brazil- he and I will talk about books, and most of them are by American authors, that he's either read in english or waited until they were translated for sale down there. Aside from manga and british novels, I can't think of many books that were written in another country or another language, that I've read. (Or that have even been that popular in mainstream american culture.)

[agonistes]

It's not necessarily about being PC. *points up at own comment* It's like -- if you can't give characters depth, and if you only write them as stereotypes, you're inviting other people who haven't had much or any experience with this culture to see people of that culture as stereotypes, and not people. I choose not to propagate that, when and where I can.

You do have a really good point about the comparative lack of characters of color in English literature. The first academic presentation I ever saw -- at Nimbus 2003, of all places -- was by angiej on postcolonialism and Harry Potter, and one of the things she said was that as a woman of color who grew up reading children's classics and fantasy/SF, she did not have any favorite characters who looked like her. That statement has stuck with me (obviously) -- and I think it goes a long way toward explaining why the bar's racial makeup is how it is.

[cupenny.livejournal.com]

Ah- for some, I would imagine, its the fear of being thought non-PC that keeps them from it. Not all. I do agree with the idea of not wanting to propagate stereotypes and spread the wrong ideas around.

Now I'm looking at the books I read as a child, and even the ones on my own bookshelves right now- and even in the whole house. My family are closet romance novel junkies. (Thankfully we go for the ones that aren't just bodice rippers!) I can think of one, out of the hundreds, that feature a black couple. Its one of the few Western Historicals, the rest tend to be Regency and Modern.

Looking back at the books I read going up- science fiction and fantasy, and if the characters weren't aliens or elves, they were for the most part, white. Did I notice this? No. Would I have, if I wasn't white? Probably not.

Now I'm recalling a scifi book my sister bought ages ago. (I'm trying to recall the title to look it up on amazon.) I was halfway through it, before it clicked- the first person narrative clearly stated she was black- and the picture on the cover portrayed a white woman. Now I'm wondering at the discussions between the writer, editor and publisher, when picking out cover art.