Okay, I'm a brown person. I'm writing a character who started off as a white person because I thought "well everyone defaults to white anyway", but then I decided screw that, I will write the character I want to.
He's half black, half white, like me. He has schizophrenia- and it's sort of implied that it was a result of smoking weed. The reason I've thrown this in is because he initially puts down a lot of the symptoms to being high a lot.
He's also lower class which is really important for the story development. His father is also absent, left when he was a baby. Another thing central to the story development.
So, I realise I've written a black, weed smoking, lower class youth with an absent father. Like, could there be a bigger stereotype? Because the plot is driven by his schizophrenia I don't want it to come across like that was my starting point and then I just fit "black, lower class, weed smoker" to someone who has schizophrenia in their youth.
Basically I'm really apprehensive that I'm going to throw black boys under the bus with it.
Incidentally I could write the whole thing like he just gets schizophrenia and i forget about him smoking a lot so it has nothing to do with weed (which I never say it does directly or even that there's a link, he just smokes a lot and develops schizophrenia) but considering he's sixteen, has an awful family life, and is dealing with stuff in his mind that he doesn't understand, I feel like naturally he'd be turning to something.
So, what do you think? Should I write out the weed aspect of the storyline to try and save a stereotype or keep it in and hope any future readers will see it as a reality and not just bad character development?
He's half black, half white, like me. He has schizophrenia- and it's sort of implied that it was a result of smoking weed. The reason I've thrown this in is because he initially puts down a lot of the symptoms to being high a lot.
He's also lower class which is really important for the story development. His father is also absent, left when he was a baby. Another thing central to the story development.
So, I realise I've written a black, weed smoking, lower class youth with an absent father. Like, could there be a bigger stereotype? Because the plot is driven by his schizophrenia I don't want it to come across like that was my starting point and then I just fit "black, lower class, weed smoker" to someone who has schizophrenia in their youth.
Basically I'm really apprehensive that I'm going to throw black boys under the bus with it.
Incidentally I could write the whole thing like he just gets schizophrenia and i forget about him smoking a lot so it has nothing to do with weed (which I never say it does directly or even that there's a link, he just smokes a lot and develops schizophrenia) but considering he's sixteen, has an awful family life, and is dealing with stuff in his mind that he doesn't understand, I feel like naturally he'd be turning to something.
So, what do you think? Should I write out the weed aspect of the storyline to try and save a stereotype or keep it in and hope any future readers will see it as a reality and not just bad character development?