Minority Characters

cwilliard · Dec 7, 2005

One of the first people I asked to read my novel; Belly of the Dragon is half African, half Native American. One of his first questions when he was done reading was “Where are the black guys?” I told him that there was one but he was a very minor character and was killed. Although the question about minority characters was asked jokingly it got me thinking.

I myself am half Italian; and yes being only half Italian is better than all of anything else. Just kidding. I am by no means a racist nor was it a conscience decision to exclude minorities and to a large extent women from my story. In my WIP I considered this from the beginning and probably half the characters are either women or minorities. I was just wondering if anyone else as looked at their story and saw that there was a lack of female or minority characters. Is this a common occurrence?

DamaNegra · Dec 7, 2005

I haven't had that happen much. I try to include a variety of people into my WIPs, and use most of the groups I live with in my WIPs.

three seven · Dec 7, 2005

cwilliard said:
One of his first questions when he was done reading was “Where are the black guys?”

Always nice to know your beta reader's mind is on the job.

PeeDee · Dec 7, 2005

I agree. What a wonderful beta reader you've got.

I think skin color and race are wonderful things to play with in stories. Harlan Ellison did a story (I want to say it's The Paladin of the Lost Hour, but I'm not postive) in which he told us about his two characters, and said, "One man was black, the other man was white."

He never clarified which was which. I love that. Absolutely love it.

Aconite · Dec 7, 2005

three seven said:
Always nice to know your beta reader's mind is on the job.

That (the quote referred to) was a legitimate beta reader's question. It does occur to people to wonder, "Why isn't there anyone like me in there?" Sometimes there's a good reason for it, but most often, it's because the writer didn't think of it.

If you're a woman, you do tend to notice that the only thing the one woman in a cast of fifteen characters does is scream and fall down. If you're Latino, you notice that there isn't a single non-Anglo character. Readers who don't share your assumptions pick up on them, and that's one of the jobs of a beta reader.

MadScientistMatt · Dec 7, 2005

Is it a literal or figurative dragon?

Just wondering, since fantasy often tends to take place in a world similar to medieval England, France, or Germany. So it would be expected for most of the people there to be white. The ethnicities of the characters should make sense for the time and location of your setting.

Stories set in the future can be a whole new can of worms. I've made a start on a space opera set a couple hundred years from now, where most of the people in that future are multiethnic.

CaitlinK18 · Dec 7, 2005

I agree that it depends totally on your setting. Cwillard, you're writing about the Italian mafia, right? Not a lot of women or people of mixed ethnicity in a story like that. On the other hand, my WIP (urban fantasy) takes place in a fictional, modern-day big city, so I have tried to represent what you'd find there--the protagonist is a female of Scottish descent, there's a prominent supporting character who's black, the love interest is a Ukranian immigrant...in other words, a big melting pot. Just like a big, modern-day city.

If your story is location and/or period-specific, then you can get away with not mixing ethnicity much. You wouldn't see any Anglos in feudal Japan, for example. But if it's the modern day and a story grounded mostly in reality, you are remiss if you don't at least acknowledge that there are people out there who are a different color, size, shape ect. than you.

Kasey Mackenzie · Dec 7, 2005

I'm white, but it only seems natural for me to include multi-racial cast members in my WIP's. The previous one, a paranormal romance, had a white heroine and hero, but the heroine's best friend was Indian/Hindu, her stepfather/stepbrother were black, her half-siblings obviously half black/half white, and secondary characters ranged from white to black to Native American, etc. The current WIP has four different MC's, each of which comes from a different culture including white (she was orphaned so doesn't know much beyond that), half-Asian/half-Irish, black, and either Latino or Arab-American (haven't decided on the last character). I don't sit down to make sure I have a perfectly balanced cast of characters, it just usually seems to develop that way.

Valona · Dec 7, 2005

My recently completed novel also contains multi-ethnic personalities because I felt it reflected the location and times, not because I wanted to write a treatise on ethnicity.

I think we make too much of not wanting to offend people by merely inadvertently omitting that person's race, ethnicity, color, or what have you. To me, it's more important to just write the best story we can. We're entertainers, not politicians.

I recently read several young adult books by a black author, I can't remember her first name but her last name is Draper. She has wonderful books. I loved them all. Very exciting, suspenseful, realistic, and very well written. The setting is a city in modern-day United States. However, she does not have ONE white person, or anyone of any other ethnic group mentioned in any of her books as far as I could tell. Do I condemn her as racist? Never. She's a great author. She wrote the book she wanted to write, the one that was in her heart. In the same vein, I don't think it should be a requirement of any author to make certain we include some quota of minorities so we don’t offend someone. Just write the best book you can, the one that's in your heart, as realistic as you can. The salability of the book will be its measure.

Celia Cyanide · Dec 7, 2005

When I read a story written by a man, when all the characters are men, it doesn't bother me as much. I might relate to it better if it has a female character, but it wouldn't turn me off. What DOES turn me off is when male writers create female characters that don't feel real, just for the sake of having female characters.

As much as I loved "The Last Gentleman," by Walker Percy, I couldn't stand the character of Kitty. He did a much better job with Allison in the sequel.

Nicholas S.H.J.M Woodhouse · Dec 7, 2005

Celia Cyanide said:
What DOES turn me off is when male writers create female characters that don't feel real, just for the sake of having female characters.

that is one of my biggest fears as a writer.

kmm8n · Dec 7, 2005

Celia Cyanide said:
What DOES turn me off is when male writers create female characters that don't feel real, just for the sake of having female characters.
.

I absolutely agree. Because my current WIP is a romantic suspense in NYC, I tried to include a variety of ethnicities. However, as I am a white person, I really don't know what the (for example) African American experience is. So, I asked a friend who is African American to critique my characterization. I am also not a cop, so I asked NYPD officer to critique that aspect of my story. It just makes sense to me.

Peace,
Kathleen

FolkloreFanatic · Dec 7, 2005

Celia Cyanide said:
When I read a story written by a man, when all the characters are men, it doesn't bother me as much. I might relate to it better if it has a female character, but it wouldn't turn me off. What DOES turn me off is when male writers create female characters that don't feel real, just for the sake of having female characters.

Exactly! ARGH, I HATE that. That and cheesy horror stories like the plot of I Know What You Did Last Summer 2 where the writer lets the black guy acknowledge that the black guy usually gets killed. Then the black guy gets killed. -.-

I'll give you one example of an author who tells excellent stories that I simply cannot read: Bernard Cornwell's Arthurian trilogy. His plots were fantastic, but he was such a chauvinist when it came to his protrayal of women that I didn't even make it through a whole book. His idealized woman was a blonde bombshelle with no brains in a medieval shift, and he actually managed to make Guinevere even *more* of a loathsome villain than Tennyson or Malory ever could. The women in power were always evil b****es hell-bent on castrating their male counterparts. My brother says the Sharpe series Cornwell wrote isn't any better in this regard.

Heck, I'd much rather relate to a man than any woman he writes, and that's difficult enough as it is.

Jamesaritchie · Dec 8, 2005

minority

I think a writer needs to write. If minority characters belong in teh story, put them in. If they don't, leave them out. Putting them in for the sake of political correctness is what's wrong with half the TV shows these days.

Minority characters only belong in a story if they belong in a story, and there's no reason at all to add a single minority character unless the writer is telling a story that demands such a character for whatever reason.

Get enough beta readers from enough minorities, all of who ask where their particular minority is, and then what do you do? Of course, if you skip several minorites as beta readers, well, that's a problem, too, isn't it?

You can't, and shouldn't, stick minority characters in like raisins in a cookie. And you can't stick them in for political correctness, or because someone might call you racist if you leave them out.

I think the best answer to "Where are the black guys?" is "They're in the story you're going to write."

cwilliard · Dec 8, 2005

CaitlinK18 said:
I agree that it depends totally on your setting. Cwillard, you're writing about the Italian mafia, right? Not a lot of women or people of mixed ethnicity in a story like that.

This is really why he asked why there were no black guys. He knew before hand that it was a story about the Mafia. In that book and it's sequal there are few characters that aren't involved in the larger plot. In my WIP there are a lot more secondary charaters. Also, my WIP takes place in Cleveland which is only about 45% white. Female characters have always troubled me. The ones I do create are very strong characters but I always wonder if women think in real life how they think in my stories. Fine I'll admit that a lot of the time I don't understand how women think; I'm sure I'm not the only one.

CaitlinK18 · Dec 8, 2005

Cwillard, I know that the Mafia is extremely racist and sexist...did you touch on that at all? Just curious.

loquax · Dec 8, 2005

Celia Cyanide said:
What DOES turn me off is when male writers create female characters that don't feel real, just for the sake of having female characters.

On the flipside, I hate it when female writers create female protagonists for the sake of it - ones who are successful, intelligent, but have enough problems to warrant a story to be written about them. I suppose it's the same as the Cosby show and the Fresh Prince. Two black families, both incredibly rich, successful and intelligent, with huge houses (one of them even has a butler!). And especially the Fresh Prince - where every episode has an "evil white guy". Okay. I get it. Enough now. Please, please stop. If your basis for a story is some bizarre crusade of justice and equality, I really don't want to hear it.

Lyra Jean · Dec 8, 2005

If someone thinks that a writer is racist because their minority wasn't put in the work then they are the one with the problem not you. Barring novels as thinly disguised hate speech of course.

Write your story. Give it to betas. Take or leave their advice as you see fit.

Jamesaritchie · Dec 8, 2005

minority

In the area where I grew up, there were no minorities. Zero. Even the high school had no minority students simply because no minorities lived within twenty miles. Even today, there are pretty much no minorities in those areas. Placing a minority character in a story set there just wouldn't ring true.

reph · Dec 8, 2005

Vertigo is set in San Francisco in the 1950s, and every face on the screen is white. That's unrealistic. SF had a large Chinese population then, as just one example, which helped make the feel of the city what it was, but you wouldn't know it from the street scenes. I think white viewers' sensibilities have changed. Maybe, in the fifties, people didn't notice that something looked wrong about the human background to the action.

Celia Cyanide · Dec 8, 2005

cwilliard said:
Also, my WIP takes place in Cleveland which is only about 45% white. Female characters have always troubled me. The ones I do create are very strong characters but I always wonder if women think in real life how they think in my stories. Fine I'll admit that a lot of the time I don't understand how women think; I'm sure I'm not the only one.

Then I see your dilemma. He perhaps wondered where the black guys were, because he expected to see some in Cleveland. You don't need to put anything in if you don't want to, but if the city you're writing about really is 45% white, a white person from that city might read it and wonder where all the black guys are. That might happen, since this is a mafia story, which usually deals with issues that concern a larger number of people than, say, a story about one married couple. I hope that makes sense.

In your story, whites might make up less than half of the city, but the main characters in your story might all be white. That's fine. But maybe you could set the scene by showing what the city is like? Or, if you want to, you could add a few black characters, and see what your friend thinks of them. He would be a good person to talk to about that.

I wouldn't worry as much about women, personally. I'm a feminist, but I would never read a mafia story and wonder why all the major players are men. That makes sense to me. The only reason you should be concerned is if you do write a female character, and someone (possible a woman) reads it and says, "She sucks."

AdamH · Dec 8, 2005

I usually refrain from even mentioning the race of a character unless it's important to the story. I like to make the assumption that whether a person is black, white, blue or purple, a person of equal intelligence and character and background should make the same choices. I look at it from a point of view that a person's eye colour doesn't impact their decisions why should skin colour?(other than the obvious impact of discrimination, ect...but if that's relevant to the story and his or her decisions, I'll mention it...see what I mean?)

Jamesaritchie · Dec 8, 2005

reph said:
Vertigo is set in San Francisco in the 1950s, and every face on the screen is white. That's unrealistic. SF had a large Chinese population then, as just one example, which helped make the feel of the city what it was, but you wouldn't know it from the street scenes. I think white viewers' sensibilities have changed. Maybe, in the fifties, people didn't notice that something looked wrong about the human background to the action.

I still wouldn't care. I don't watch movies or read books because of faces in the crowd. I read books and watch movie to get the story of the main characters, whatever race they are.

And from my experience, you can still be in certain sections of SF all day long and not notice a Chinese person.

FolkloreFanatic · Dec 8, 2005

As for Vertigo, I didn't notice the lack of Chinese people because I'm so accustomed to white people writing solely about white people that I expect more of the same. That's one of the few good things about cinema's evolution over the past few decades--every character is no longer automatically a W.A.S.P. or a caricature. Invisible privilege is such a gargantuan task to conquer.

Celia Cyanide · Dec 8, 2005

Jamesaritchie said:
I still wouldn't care. I don't watch movies or read books because of faces in the crowd. I read books and watch movie to get the story of the main characters, whatever race they are.

But a lot of people still do want what they feel is an accurate representation of the city. If people are reading a story set in a city in which whites make up less than half the population, they might expect to see people who are not white. The issue here is that if people catch themselves wondering about this, it might take them right out of the story, and they will start to think of it as, "this is what the writer is making happen," when you want them to think, "This is what is really happening."

Maddwriter said:
I usually refrain from even mentioning the race of a character unless it's important to the story. I like to make the assumption that whether a person is black, white, blue or purple, a person of equal intelligence and character and background should make the same choices. I look at it from a point of view that a person's eye colour doesn't impact their decisions why should skin colour?(other than the obvious impact of discrimination, ect...but if that's relevant to the story and his or her decisions, I'll mention it...see what I mean?)

I agree. A lot of the time, a person's ethnicity doesn't have anything to do with the story. But I think that if you are describing the city, it helps a lot to describe what kind of people you see there. Are certain neighborhoods "white" or "black neighborhoods"? Or is it very integrated? Are there immigrants? Non-English speakers? It's not necessary, of course, but just mentioning it shows a lot about the setting the characters live in, IMO.

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