Adding (skin) color to a character (and talking about White Savior tropes)

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themindstream

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Disclaimer: I'm white. (Incidentally, also, female).

The main character of my novel is currently also white. This is admittedly a default. In fleshing her out I'm considering the possibility that this isn't necessarily set in stone. But I'm second guessing the heck out of it.

The story is mainly set in a fantasy world but the MC is from modern Earth. The plot involves going to another world and a fantasy kingdom inspired a lot by ancient Egypt and other ancient Saharan civilizations, finding she has magic abilities that make her a figure of respect in the local belief system, ends up being involved in freeing a lot of slaves and escaping with them. If this has uncomfortable echos of "White Savior" to anyone...yeah, I've noticed. But I don't want to change the plot. I'll do my best to execute it respectfully (and what I've described is very over-simplified) but it's one I'm very set on seeing through.

Thing is, is adding ethnicity to the MC (or even half so I wouldn't have to change her last name) in hope of avoiding the problematic trope just misguided?

My current thought is to give her some Indian (Hindi) descent. It works with her name (Tara, which I originally took from Irish) and the recent history of the area she's from (a lot of immigrants in tech jobs). The "white savior" part isn't the only reason I'm considering it; I think as a character she badly needs more distinct personality and flavor and it would give her different ways of looking at the world as well.
 

Ari Meermans

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There is no right (or wrong) way to develop the characters in your story—some writers start with a character, put them in a situation, then develop the plot from there. Others start with a plot and a world and "people" that world with characters. Both come with certain challenges and certain eases of facilitation. Whichever works for you, works for you. The point is to make your character as fully-realized as possible.

The particular challenge you face—as it seems to me—is that you don't yet know your character. You're on the right track in getting to know your character with this:

. . . the recent history of the area she's from (a lot of immigrants in tech jobs). The "white savior" part isn't the only reason I'm considering it; I think as a character she badly needs more distinct personality and flavor and it would give her different ways of looking at the world as well.

Ask yourself some questions:

  • How did my character move through the world/culture/environment she comes from?
  • Was it a constant learning experience for her?
  • Did she have to shed misconceptions?
  • Did she face a daily morass of the misconceptions about herself from others? How did she react?
Your answers to these and other questions will then help you to determine how she reacts to the new world/culture/environment.

Some helpful resources you might want to look into to begin to identify considerations and how you might overcome them in building or designing your character are:

Writing the Other: Writing Characters of Different Races and Ethnicities
Writing With Color: Character Design and Assigning Race and Ethnicity
Writing With Color: Character Creation: Culture or Character First?

There are many other resources, of course, and maybe others will come along with suggestions, too.
 

WriterBN

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My current thought is to give her some Indian (Hindi) descent.

Just so you know, "Hindi" isn't an ethnic group but a language. India has many different ethnic groups, each with unique cultural, religious, geographic, and language characteristics. Many of these are subtle differences that may not be apparent to a non-Indian, but they're very distinctive to anyone who has lived in the country. If you did decide on an Indian character, you'd have to do a fair amount of research to get it right, IMO.
 
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mccardey

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Disclaimer: I'm white. (Incidentally, also, female).

The main character of my novel is currently also white. This is admittedly a default. In fleshing her out I'm considering the possibility that this isn't necessarily set in stone. But I'm second guessing the heck out of it.

The story is mainly set in a fantasy world but the MC is from modern Earth. The plot involves going to another world and a fantasy kingdom inspired a lot by ancient Egypt and other ancient Saharan civilizations, finding she has magic abilities that make her a figure of respect in the local belief system, ends up being involved in freeing a lot of slaves and escaping with them. If this has uncomfortable echos of "White Savior" to anyone...yeah, I've noticed. But I don't want to change the plot. I'll do my best to execute it respectfully (and what I've described is very over-simplified) but it's one I'm very set on seeing through.

Thing is, is adding ethnicity to the MC (or even half so I wouldn't have to change her last name) in hope of avoiding the problematic trope just misguided?

My current thought is to give her some Indian (Hindi) descent. It works with her name (Tara, which I originally took from Irish) and the recent history of the area she's from (a lot of immigrants in tech jobs). The "white savior" part isn't the only reason I'm considering it; I think as a character she badly needs more distinct personality and flavor and it would give her different ways of looking at the world as well.
I think "adding ethnicity" is a perilous way of looking at the issue, to be honest, particularly given the fact that you're placing so many restrictions on what that ethnicity add would be allowed to affect.
 

JetFueledCar

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Just so you know, "Hindi" isn't an ethnic group but a language. India has many different ethnic groups, each with unique cultural, religious, geographic, and language characteristics. Many of these are subtle differences that may not be apparent to a non-Indian, but they're very distinctive to anyone who has lived in the country. If you did decide on an Indian character, you'd have to do a fair amount of research to get it right, IMO.

Pretty sure the OP was using the term to distinguish from Native American. I believe there are more accurate terms that can be used here, though. Sounds like the MC is also American by birth, which means the mountain of research might still qualify as a hill.

That said, I'm going to come down on mccardey's side. "Adding ethnicity" isn't... really a thing, IME. You can change the race of a character, but it involves a lot more than putting some makeup on them or even (and I agree it's worrisome that you want to avoid this) changing their last name. It also concerns me that you're looking at it from a place that this will add "flavor" to her. Put that way, it gives the image that ethnicity is a pizza topping to be added or removed at will, which is a problematic way to view a part of the character's identity.

Flip side... Oh yeah, "Mighty Whitey" is a hugely problematic set of tropes, that concerns me whenever I see it. And I understand you don't want to change the book's plot, or set it somewhere less controversial. So in that respect, I would come down on the side of "Write a POC main character." I'm saying it that way, not "make her a POC," because if you go this route, you'll be reworking a lot of her. You may find in the course of your research that a lot of her life and personality won't change--but you'll have to examine it to be sure. If she's living in this area as the child of those immigrants working in tech jobs, she's going to have a very different view of the area than the child of one of the white families that (just an example, I have no idea where she lives) lived there since the Great Depression.

Disclaimer: I'm probably whiter than the OP.
 

gmwhitley

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Is her ethnicity going to be a major component/driver of her character/identity and how she interacts with the fantasy world? I think there's nothing wrong with trying to avoid the white savior trope - but if you are going to incorporate her ethnic background I think it needs to be as more than an incidental "lustrous olive skin and deep brown eyes" physical description.

If you could change that physical description to any race and not impact the rest of the book then I think doing it doesn't work - and if she is mixed (disclosure - I'm mixed), then there is a particular identity in being mixed - of more than one culture/world, not truly belonging to one in particular. If she's mixed and never felt at home in the Indian culture but was never welcomed in white culture - that could play in to her actions/attitudes when she is suddenly a goddess figure in the fantasy world.
 

LeftyLucy

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Pretty sure the OP was using the term to distinguish from Native American. I believe there are more accurate terms that can be used here, though. Sounds like the MC is also American by birth, which means the mountain of research might still qualify as a hill.

That said, I'm going to come down on mccardey's side. "Adding ethnicity" isn't... really a thing, IME. You can change the race of a character, but it involves a lot more than putting some makeup on them or even (and I agree it's worrisome that you want to avoid this) changing their last name. It also concerns me that you're looking at it from a place that this will add "flavor" to her. Put that way, it gives the image that ethnicity is a pizza topping to be added or removed at will, which is a problematic way to view a part of the character's identity.

Flip side... Oh yeah, "Mighty Whitey" is a hugely problematic set of tropes, that concerns me whenever I see it. And I understand you don't want to change the book's plot, or set it somewhere less controversial. So in that respect, I would come down on the side of "Write a POC main character." I'm saying it that way, not "make her a POC," because if you go this route, you'll be reworking a lot of her. You may find in the course of your research that a lot of her life and personality won't change--but you'll have to examine it to be sure. If she's living in this area as the child of those immigrants working in tech jobs, she's going to have a very different view of the area than the child of one of the white families that (just an example, I have no idea where she lives) lived there since the Great Depression.

Disclaimer: I'm probably whiter than the OP.

I'm agreeing with this. I'm currently writing a PoC MC (three of them, actually, as I have multiple POV characters), and it is a slow slog because their race fundamentally affects the way they view the world and interact with it. Things I would fly through if I was writing a White MC, I have to stop and deeply examine for my PoC MCs. There's a ton of research involved, enough so that I can take what I've learned about PoC, understand it to the best of my ability, and then ultimately discover whether that thing I've only just learned is actually a cliche for PoC. If you decide you want to proceed with a PoC MC, it should change your narrative. Maybe not dramatically. But there will be things that are different.

You may want to check out some past threads in the PoC forum. There was a recent discussion along these lines, and past conversations are a treasure trove of information.
 

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Just my 2 cents, but I also take issue with the idea that you'd be "adding ethnicity" or that making your MC POC will make her more interesting. Ethnicity is not a character trait. Yes it informs character immensely, but it's not a shortcut. And remember, white people have ethnicity too. Whiteness is not some magical neutral state, it's just easier for white writers (myself included) to approach because we've experienced the world as a white person.

I second the idea of having your MC be tied to the real world counter part of your Saharan fantasy culture. Magical outsider tropes are worse imho when it's an awesome white person fixing the POC problems, but the entire concept you are working with gives me pause. Obviously if you have it well, awesome! I'd be happy to be wrong. However when the concept is already hard to pull off sensitively, do you really want to make it harder on yourself with a White Savior MC?
 

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My question is this: why even bother mentioning her ethnicity? If she's an American, she can have any ethnicity, with any name. Might be the same for Canadians. Just have her do what she does, and let other people assume her race. After all, personality type is the main memorable thing about any given character.
 

Shoeless

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There's also a question of just how ethnic a POC character actually is. If you're talking a third or fourth generation South Asian (which is another term for people from India) who has been living entirely in the USA, then there's a chance that this person only has minimal "ethnicity" and largely lives a life identical to the average white American. On the other hand, if your character's family had drilled in some semblance of familiarity to the Hindi or Tamil culture that is your character's heritage, then there's a question of just how familiar even they are with it. I'm Canadian, but of Asian ethnicity, and I know a TON of other Asians that only speak a smattering of their native language, and are only familiar with their homeland and culture as a result of an occasional family holiday observation, or one or two trips to the Motherland, and otherwise know Klingon culture better than they do their ancestral one. Person of color doesn't always mean Person Deeply Ingrained With Culture Of Ancestral Origin.
 

JetFueledCar

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My question is this: why even bother mentioning her ethnicity? If she's an American, she can have any ethnicity, with any name. Might be the same for Canadians. Just have her do what she does, and let other people assume her race. After all, personality type is the main memorable thing about any given character.

Going to go ahead and object strenuously to this one. Yes, an American can have any ethnicity with any name--but my experience of life is NOT the same as my Indian classmates' experience. We lived in the same area and went to the same school, but we did not experience the same America, and we would not interact the same with the fantasy culture the OP is describing. Moreover, if you don't specify that a character is POC (and sometimes even if you do--Hunger Games, anyone?) people will assume she's white, and then we're right back where we started re: White Savior tropes.
 

jjdebenedictis

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Going to go ahead and object strenuously to this one. Yes, an American can have any ethnicity with any name--but my experience of life is NOT the same as my Indian classmates' experience. We lived in the same area and went to the same school, but we did not experience the same America, and we would not interact the same with the fantasy culture the OP is describing. Moreover, if you don't specify that a character is POC (and sometimes even if you do--Hunger Games, anyone?) people will assume she's white, and then we're right back where we started re: White Savior tropes.
:Clap: Yes, this. A white writer in a majority-white society should think hard about this stuff, and solicit outside opinions, and write with intention, because if they don't, I don't see as there's any way they won't wind up writing a blinkered (privileged) perspective. It's really freakin' hard to see your own privilege, and writing all comes from inside your own head unless you make a conscious effort to get into someone else's head.
 
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James Ryan

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:Clap: Yes, this. A white writer in a majority-white society should think hard about this stuff, and solicit outside opinions, and write with intention, because if they don't, I don't see as there's any way they won't wind up writing a blinkered (privileged) perspective. It's really freakin' hard to see your own privilege, and writing all comes from inside your own head unless you make a conscious effort to get into someone else's head.
Yes...just yes!
 

themindstream

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The particular challenge you face—as it seems to me—is that you don't yet know your character.

That's an apt summation...I know her personality and some of her biographical sketch but I've been struggling for a long time over what sort of life experiences she might have had that would drive her to make the choices she makes in the story, outside of the things that happen in the story. She is young (19) and middle class so she hasn't had a lot of time or pressure to have them; when danger comes knocking her initial reaction is about what you'd expect of someone from that background.

Pretty sure the OP was using the term to distinguish from Native American. I believe there are more accurate terms that can be used here, though. Sounds like the MC is also American by birth, which means the mountain of research might still qualify as a hill.

This - not Native American. But also leaning toward Hindu-influenced background as opposed to Muslim. The fact that there are also many Indian ethnicity was one of the things I ran into within about five minutes of digging into Ari's links. In the current draft she is non-religious though she does end up interacting with the religions of the cultures she runs into and changing her religious background would change how she sees them; I'm fine with that.

That said, I'm going to come down on mccardey's side. "Adding ethnicity" isn't... really a thing, IME. You can change the race of a character, but it involves a lot more than putting some makeup on them or even (and I agree it's worrisome that you want to avoid this) changing their last name. It also concerns me that you're looking at it from a place that this will add "flavor" to her. Put that way, it gives the image that ethnicity is a pizza topping to be added or removed at will, which is a problematic way to view a part of the character's identity.

Flip side... Oh yeah, "Mighty Whitey" is a hugely problematic set of tropes, that concerns me whenever I see it. And I understand you don't want to change the book's plot, or set it somewhere less controversial. So in that respect, I would come down on the side of "Write a POC main character." I'm saying it that way, not "make her a POC," because if you go this route, you'll be reworking a lot of her. You may find in the course of your research that a lot of her life and personality won't change--but you'll have to examine it to be sure. If she's living in this area as the child of those immigrants working in tech jobs, she's going to have a very different view of the area than the child of one of the white families that (just an example, I have no idea where she lives) lived there since the Great Depression.

Disclaimer: I'm probably whiter than the OP.

Just out of curiosity, could you have the MC's family come from the real-world+modern equivalent of your fantasy setting?

Ok, I dramatically simplified the setting description so I'll explain it and why I came to the decision to make Earth her origin. This is portal/multiverse setting. Every place in the multiverse is part of the real world and there are potentially infinite combinations of what constitutes "humanity" on any given one (though worlds closer to each other in the fabric of hyperspace tend to share similarities). Worlds that are aware that they are part of that multiverse have alliances and conflicts and every diplomatic combination in between; think of it like interstellar societies except to get to the next world over you walk through the nearest portal or natural tear in hyperspace. (The ability to be sensitive to and control these forces is the scientific-flavored "magic" of the world).

Tara falls through a portal on her homeworld into not the African-influenced world (specifically, a region of it called the Waeru Valley and a city in it called Xalidar) but a European-influenced one (the city state of Remairhey). The place she lands is a member of one of those multi-world alliances (if you read my Sissyfus this year, it's the same one: the Society of Travelers); a sort of inter-dimensional United Nations. She's helped by people who know what to do when a confused person from another world falls into theirs out of apparently thin air. What should have been a nice day tour of the local city to keep her entertained while the Society figures out how to get her home turns into a nightmare when the public square is attacked by a raid of slavers from the Xalidar. Having nearly escaped being killed, Tara is now a material witness and because of newly-discovered affinity for the aforesaid magic (along with personal reasons I'll gloss over for now) she ends up joining the rescue party (which includes an exile from the.

So that's a lot to process and we haven't even gotten to Xalidar yet. The oldest draft of this story that exists opened on Earth but the story really starts when she falls through the portal. When I restarted the story a couple years ago, I gave her an "earth-like but not necessarily Earth" origin but this got frustrating quickly as I kept writing in vague allusion and unspecific detail. Eventually I gave up on this and decided to make it Earth after all; she is there as the point of view character and the person the reader relates through, the story doesn't actually spend a lot of time on her at home and there's just not enough space to develop a third constructed world for her origin.

There are possible future stories in this multiverse; stories focusing around the origin and operation of the Society, stories focusing on the aftermath of this one in the Waeru kingdom and possibly stories of Tara becoming the Society's point of First Contact for Earth.

Is her ethnicity going to be a major component/driver of her character/identity and how she interacts with the fantasy world? I think there's nothing wrong with trying to avoid the white savior trope - but if you are going to incorporate her ethnic background I think it needs to be as more than an incidental "lustrous olive skin and deep brown eyes" physical description.

If you could change that physical description to any race and not impact the rest of the book then I think doing it doesn't work - and if she is mixed (disclosure - I'm mixed), then there is a particular identity in being mixed - of more than one culture/world, not truly belonging to one in particular. If she's mixed and never felt at home in the Indian culture but was never welcomed in white culture - that could play in to her actions/attitudes when she is suddenly a goddess figure in the fantasy world.

Yeah, I did gloss over a lot in my post, but she is the point of view character and changing her background would obviously change how she thinks about things. Some of the reading I did last night suggested some possible background hooks that would mesh with her existing story and personality really well though.

Ok, time to get personal for a bit and I think this might be one of the sources of my struggle with Tara's character: While I grew up white in a majority-white area I was ostricised and bullied because I was singled out as gifted early on. So my perspective growing up is closer to that of an outsider than not (and I used to be frustrated when I went to college and took classes in the social sciences and have people insist that having had the privilage of being white meant I couldn't really understand what it meant to be Other...a topic I understand with much more nuance over a decade later). What I had been trying to imagine for Tara was the sort of high-school life I never had: someone who joined sports teams and had a steady group of "average" friends and not many life-changing stresses and delt with typical teenage problems and for whom the main thing defining her current life before the story is that she isn't entirely sure what to do with hers. And there are many areas where I've drawn little but blanks. But within a short time of thinking of her as someone a little bit Other and reading about that background, things to fill many of those blanks started suggesting themselves...things that would have to be double checked against my own sterotypes and biases I'm sure but more than I had before. I can immagine what her mother and father might be like, how they might have tried to raise her, how she's experienced culture clash (a major theme of the story) in the past, why she might empathise with certian other characters where before I was having trouble expressing reasons beside "because she's that kind of person".

There's also a question of just how ethnic a POC character actually is. If you're talking a third or fourth generation South Asian (which is another term for people from India) who has been living entirely in the USA, then there's a chance that this person only has minimal "ethnicity" and largely lives a life identical to the average white American. On the other hand, if your character's family had drilled in some semblance of familiarity to the Hindi or Tamil culture that is your character's heritage, then there's a question of just how familiar even they are with it. I'm Canadian, but of Asian ethnicity, and I know a TON of other Asians that only speak a smattering of their native language, and are only familiar with their homeland and culture as a result of an occasional family holiday observation, or one or two trips to the Motherland, and otherwise know Klingon culture better than they do their ancestral one. Person of color doesn't always mean Person Deeply Ingrained With Culture Of Ancestral Origin.

Yeah, I think it's likely that having been born American she would be very Americanized. I can't say yet how much of her parents would have rubbed off on her yet. My inclination is to have her mother be from India and her father to be white; her mother a practicing Hindu and her father a lax Christian and for Tara to not be really dedicated to either (with her parents not wanting to push her) but moderately pulled more toward her mother's faith.
 

mccardey

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While I grew up white in a majority-white area I was ostricised and bullied because I was singled out as gifted early on. So my perspective growing up is closer to that of an outsider than not (and I used to be frustrated when I went to college and took classes in the social sciences and have people insist that having had the privilage of being white meant I couldn't really understand what it meant to be Other...a topic I understand with much more nuance over a decade later).
This, I think, is not the same as dealing with institutionalised racism or Othering. I think though that heading into the PoC area and asking some of the people there if they are willing to help you out with their take on your question might be really useful.

Best of luck with it.
 

themindstream

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I actually looked for a dedicated forum for this kind of topic and didn't find it because apparently I'm a bit blind. Can I get a pointer?
 

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This, I think, is not the same as dealing with institutionalised racism or Othering. I think though that heading into the PoC area and asking some of the people there if they are willing to help you out with their take on your question might be really useful.

Best of luck with it.

^^ Agree with this. It's really not the same at all. :D

Tara falls through a portal on her homeworld into not the African-influenced world (specifically, a region of it called the Waeru Valley and a city in it called Xalidar) but a European-influenced one (the city state of Remairhey). The place she lands is a member of one of those multi-world alliances (if you read my Sissyfus this year, it's the same one: the Society of Travelers); a sort of inter-dimensional United Nations. She's helped by people who know what to do when a confused person from another world falls into theirs out of apparently thin air. What should have been a nice day tour of the local city to keep her entertained while the Society figures out how to get her home turns into a nightmare when the public square is attacked by a raid of slavers from the Xalidar. Having nearly escaped being killed, Tara is now a material witness and because of newly-discovered affinity for the aforesaid magic (along with personal reasons I'll gloss over for now) she ends up joining the rescue party (which includes an exile from the.

Aside from the excellent points others have made above, I find this a little bit troubling...as the story currently stands, you have a White Savior, which you're questioning (yay!), but your alt world is...hrmm. The European-influenced city sounds civilized and friendly and then the African-influenced one has...slavery. And is waging war?

Honestly, the last thing we need is yet another book about "savage" PoC (especially black PoC) vs "civilized white people".
 
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themindstream

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Well the models for the Waeru are a mixture of the ancient Egyptians and Xalidar in particular is inspired by the ancient Garamantes (a group we know very little about but they were at their height at the same time as the Roman Empire). It's a desert kingdom supported mostly by its major river; it's in turmoil because that river is drying up and the position of the ruling dynasty has been destabilized. Xalidar has become a breakaway power and it's their leader who has fallen onto the use of slavery (which had long since fallen out of use in the kingdom for the most part) in order to mine for water underground because she was unable to recruit help from their neighbor cities.

I hope that when expanded out in detail like that it becomes less problematic-sounding. I've also been making an effort to include more and more sympathetic viewpoints from other Xalidar characters. I'd also like to bring out more themes of multiculturalisim vs isolationisim: Remairhey is progressive largely due to it's contacts with other worlds and the Society (they have, to a degree, been Uplifted), Xalidar suffers because it's isolated itself from its neighbors.
 
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Putputt

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Well the models for the Waeru are a mixture of the ancient Egyptians and Xalidar in particular is inspired by the ancient Garamantes (a group we know very little about but they were at their height at the same time as the Roman Empire). It's a desert kingdom supported mostly by its major river; it's in turmoil because that river is drying up and the position of the ruling dynasty has been destabilized. Xalidar has become a breakaway power and it's their leader who has fallen onto the use of slavery (which had long since fallen out of use in the kingdom for the most part) in order to mine for water underground because she was unable to recruit help from their neighbor cities.

I hope that when expanded out in detail like that it becomes less problematic-sounding. I've also been making an effort to include more and more sympathetic viewpoints from other Xalidar characters. I'd also like to bring out more themes of multiculturalisim vs isolationisim: Remairhey is progressive largely due to it's contacts with other worlds and the Society (they have, to a degree, been Uplifted), Xalidar suffers because it's isolated itself from its neighbors.

Personally, and keep in mind this is largely subjective, I think it's still problematic, because at the end of the day, you still have Civilized White People vs Uncivilized, Warring Black People. If this book were to exist in a vacuum, then that would be fine. But it doesn't. It's going to exist in a market overflowing with other books which have Civilized White People vs Uncivilized Black People. And all those other books probably also have "Good Reasons" to explain why their African-inspired cities are so brutal and savage, while their European-inspired cities are so civilized and progressive. But at the end of the day, the imagery it's created is the same: Black/brown = Savage, White = Good and Progressive.

Here's a thought: play around with the idea of flipping the cities, so the African-inspired one is the uplifted one while the European-inspired one is the isolated one embroiled in a war over water. Have your uplifted, peaceful characters be the PoC and the Other be the white people. If the thought of it makes you uncomfortable, ask yourself why.

ETA: I don't want to tell people what to write or not write, but I think now, more than ever, writers need to write responsibly. It's not enough to just be well-intentioned. I'm sure the author of THE CONTINENT had good intentions. I'm sure Roth had good intentions when she wrote CARVE THE MARK. But good intentions are not enough. We need to really question what we're doing. Are our stories truly interrogating racism, or are we just going to be showcasing racism and propagating it? I don't know that having sympathetic Black characters is enough when your entire Black city is steeped in violence and Othering. One could argue that GoT has sympathetic PoC characters, but that doesn't erase the fact that he's pretty much shown the Dothraki as savages who are much less civilized than the Westerosi.
 
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themindstream

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Is it better or worse that in old drawings I did of the Xalidar characters they were white? (In the current incarnation they are Somewhat Brown and I might have used the word "olive" to describe the skin tone at one point but I suspect that doesn't make a difference to your point.) I only shifted their skin color darker because I couldn't reconcile "desert culture" with "pale skin". (I see skin color mostly as a biological adaptation to climate.)

The character whose skin color is most analogous to what we'd consider a black person is the Society agent traveling with them.
 
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Ari Meermans

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Mod Note: The room mods for both rooms discussed the placement of this thread and it was determined that it should stay in RT. So.

themindstream, what research have you performed so far? Did you at least check the links provided in my earlier post? I'd guess I appreciate ultracrepidarianism about as much as the next person, so when the subject is as loaded a minefield as this one is (especially if you care about getting it right) you can't afford to get haphazard with your research—go for the source material.
 

themindstream

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Mod Note: The room mods for both rooms discussed the placement of this thread and it was determined that it should stay in RT. So.

themindstream, what research have you performed so far? Did you at least check the links provided in my earlier post? I'd guess I appreciate ultracrepidarianism about as much as the next person, so when the subject is as loaded a minefield as this one is (especially if you care about getting it right) you can't afford to get haphazard with your research—go for the source material.

Was the first thing I did, for a few hours on the evening you posted them. Focused mostly on looking into the background I was interested in. I'm well aware of course that this has only scratched the surface. No final decisions have been made as to what or how I might change Tara yet.

I've also done, over the course of a couple years, extensive research into the world-building for Xalidar and some of the dicier topics I'm attempting to cover like slavery, digging into college-level texts and working to get past just stuff you'd find on the internet. I sometimes spend more time researching this sort of stuff than I do on the actual writing. :p
 

LJD

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ETA: I don't want to tell people what to write or not write, but I think now, more than ever, writers need to write responsibly. It's not enough to just be well-intentioned. I'm sure the author of THE CONTINENT had good intentions.

I was going to bring up The Continent. OP, I suggest you read some of the critical reviews of The Continent...this may help give you some more insight into possible issues with your manuscript.
 
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