Diversity in Protagonists

Honest Bill said:

Yes, but i never once implied that everyone is colour-blind, I was speaking of situations where you already know the person in question. There are many situations where somebody's ethnicity will not be remarkable. If you have a best friend who is black, you don't think, Oh here's my black friend Steve, look at how black his skin is looking today.

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This is true, but it is also true that the race of your character would come up a lot of the time.

For example, one of my closest friends is of Indian ethnicity but born, raised, and currently living in California. She's married to a white Californian. I don't really think of her as "my Indian bestie", I just think of her as "[NAME]". But our conversations touch on race a lot. She'd complain to me about her in-laws, about how they don't quite get her cultural background and so it is a constant source of friction between her and her hub's families. How she had a client who requested a different doctor because he didn't want to be with an "Asian" doctor. How her PhD advisor admitted that one of the reasons he picked her was because he needed to have a more diverse group of students (this was in Santa Barbara, just btw). So...yes, despite the fact that she lives in one of the more progressive, diverse States in the US, race is still a big part of her identity, and it's also a part of why she and I connected so well -- through our "Otherness", we bonded over things which our white friends didn't get.

And maybe this is something someone from the privileged majority won't get -- the fact that race and "otherness" is something we have to live with everyday. It's not just something that comes up now and again. We don't get to forget that we're "your black friend Steve" and just become colorless, raceless "Steve", even if you do start seeing us as colorless. I'm always, and forever will be, "your Asian friend, Hippo". Just because you stop thinking of me as Asian, it doesn't make the issues that arise out of me being Asian stop. There will always be situations where I come to my friends with something race-related or race-specific. Maybe it would be me complaining that some dumbass yelled out "Ni hao ma" or "Konichiwa" to me while I was out walking. Maybe it would be me complaining about some movie coming out that's been white-washed. Or me mentioning that my Mandarin is getting so bad I'm getting side-eyed by all my relatives when I open my mouth. It's not that I don't talk about anything other than race, but I'm saying it does come up, even in casual conversation.

And so it's very, very easy for me to reveal my characters' races without explicitly stating their race, because I know it's part of who they are. I honestly can't think of a PoC I have come across in Oxford, England or California who can tell me that race isn't something they are aware of in their day to day lives, even when they have completely assimilated into the culture.

Okay, I'll try to answer the OP's question, in case the little bit of experience I have can help. I'm white, straight, female, American, and extremely Catholic, in case that knowledge is needed.

It seems like you're really screwed as a white writer on the diversity thing. I'd cottoned to the whole POV that I should include more diverse characters, but then I've heard people ranting about white writers who are trying to make money off of diversity. Really, the safe thing to do is just write white.

But...I really liked Uhura in the original Star Trek. Not because she was black, although it certainly didn't bug me, but because she was a woman. I'm old enough for childhood memories of he 60s, which was hard to distinguish from the 50s where I was. I wanted more than perfect washing and cooking from my life.

And I could see how it would bug me that everyone was automatically white. It bugs me even though I am white. Latinos are a majority in California, which is where most of my stories are set.

What I've done, and I offer it as a partial solution, is what I do when I'm working on any other writerly skill. I work it out in short stories. I've only written PoC protags in shorts. My novels have PoC secondary characters and deal with race (pretty hard not to when writing Civil War), but I don't feel like I understand the PoC POV well enough to write an entire novel from that perspective.

Hopefully, the shorts and the secondary characters will make it clear that I'm not trying to whitewash the world. And the protags from my novels (which is where any writer makes the typical pittance they're paid) are all from my ethnic group so that any accusation that I'm trying to cash in will lack authenticity.

This is just my current compromise. My skills may increase, and I may make a close friend who helps me to write a novel protag from another ethnic group believably in the future.

I just wanted to add a note that it feels like a lot of people 1) are using passing and light-skinned almost interchangeably, which is far from true and 2) Don't ever assume that Passing or being light-skinned means you think less about race.

Examples: both of those identities come with a certain amount of privilege and stressers. You might be treated better than other people of your race by people (not just white people, but BECAUSE OF the subconcious/concious 'white as better' systems that exist in the world). But on the flip side, you have the stress of 'what happens if they realize I'm a POC' or listening to your sister being treated violently because she's darker-skinned...these are just examples of how things might affect any number of characters, and the ways in which race may effect daily life in ways that you might not notice.

If you're writing a modern story- does your character have an extra challenge or an extra advantage when dealing with other characters depending on their race? Are they going to be wary about how they're going to be treated because of their race?

A lot of writers (white and non-white) see these as things that make story telling harder, but instead, I'd argue that these are things that make your story different, that make your protagonists have a more fleshed out life, that make them different from another character in another story.

Also, if you're working hard to defend why your characters don't need to be anything other than white, well, I'd stop and ask myself why that's a sticking point for you. Just a strong moment of reflection on why this is one of the moments you need to put your foot down.

daniL said:

I just wanted to add a note that it feels like a lot of people 1) are using passing and light-skinned almost interchangeably, which is far from true and 2) Don't ever assume that Passing or being light-skinned means you think less about race.

Examples: both of those identities come with a certain amount of privilege and stressers. You might be treated better than other people of your race by people (not just white people, but BECAUSE OF the subconcious/concious 'white as better' systems that exist in the world). But on the flip side, you have the stress of 'what happens if they realize I'm a POC' or listening to your sister being treated violently because she's darker-skinned...these are just examples of how things might affect any number of characters, and the ways in which race may effect daily life in ways that you might not notice.

If you're writing a modern story- does your character have an extra challenge or an extra advantage when dealing with other characters depending on their race? Are they going to be wary about how they're going to be treated because of their race?

A lot of writers (white and non-white) see these as things that make story telling harder, but instead, I'd argue that these are things that make your story different, that make your protagonists have a more fleshed out life, that make them different from another character in another story.

Also, if you're working hard to defend why your characters don't need to be anything other than white, well, I'd stop and ask myself why that's a sticking point for you. Just a strong moment of reflection on why this is one of the moments you need to put your foot down.

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I agree with your assement of the issues associated with being lightskinned and/or whitepassing.

However, as the one that made the initial comparison, I don't agree that people are using the words to mean the same thing due to the example people have given. I'm lightskinned myself and some of my relatives are light, some average or dark, and some can pass for white. I definitely never said itwas the same.

Maybe quote some examples?

Others have already made this point, but I think reading work by QPOC writers is the best move. I live in a very diverse area and know a lot of QPOC, but that isn't enough to get the perspective of people's actual experiences and outlook. Reading diverse fiction is important, but I've also had a lot of help from reading blogs, eg if you need to get at the perspective of a Black woman from a particular part of the country then follow blogs or Twitter feeds that can give you that perspective.