Will this get me into trouble?

Layla Nahar said:

(wait - if the characters have tails, are they even apes? I thought a distinguishing feature of apes vs other monkeys was the lack of a tail.)

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The OP said Simian; that includes a very large class of primates, including monkeys (tails) and Great Apes (Gorillas, Chimps, Baboons, etc. )

If the tree is the whole world, it might itself be sentient.

Good thought. OTOH, if our own planet were sentient, its remarks would be unprintable. And rightly so. Actually, it would be pretty distressing to hear a sentient earth fighting for breath. Better to believe it doesn't feel what we've done.

Barbara R. said:

If the tree is the whole world, it might itself be sentient.

Good thought. OTOH, if our own planet were sentient, its remarks would be unprintable. And rightly so. Actually, it would be pretty distressing to hear a sentient earth fighting for breath. Better to believe it doesn't feel what we've done.

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“The Overstory” does this brilliantly.

Laneer said:

I thought this was locked. I'm glad it's not.

What got me started on the racist thing is I described my idea to a friend who immediately said, "That's racist." Maybe he was joking, IDK. You know how it is when you have an idea and haven't started writing your 80K novel, you get doubts and wonder if it wouldn't be better to go with a different idea rather than waste a bunch of time. But I started to get more ideas about the world and I like it. The two characters I made, I like them too. So I'm going to write it.

Anyway, I decided to hang a lantern on the racism thing. They are prejudiced against fur colors. Gray furred types are thought of as the lower caste. I haven't decided yet, but maybe blondes are the highest caste. Their skin color under the fur is all the same color. Maybe there's a black market for hair dyes.

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There is absolutely no way this could backfire on you.

Laneer said:

Are you serious or are you joking?

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It all comes down to what you’re planning to do with it, Laneer. Hang a lantern on it isn’t enough - it’s such a loaded thing, it would need to play into a theme. Why, for instance, would you decide to have blondes as the highest caste? What will you be saying with that? How will you use it? As helix says, it can easily backfire unless you know just where you’re going with it, and how to keep a tight hold of it.

Laneer said:

What fur color would you suggest for the lower caste? What color for the higher? I could do blonde for lower and grey for upper. Or red for upper.

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I’m not writing it.

I think the point is this: If you're doing this as a racial allegory, you're going to have to be careful not to write something seen, at best, as reductive.

If you're not doing this as a racial allegory, a differentiator other than color is maybe a better way not to be misconstrued.

Laneer said:

I'm pretty flexible when it comes to fur colors.

I had the bad guys as white furs. Why? because they live down at the roots of tree where there is little sunlight. I'm kind of thinking now to make them hairless.

What fur color would you suggest for the lower caste? What color for the higher? I could do blonde for lower and grey for upper. Or red for upper.

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Would it be colder by the roots, without sun? If so, they would need fur of some sort.

And these are not humans. Why must their prejudices align like ours (and ours don't even always align just on racial/color lines)? Even just going by obvious visual differences, what about spots or stripes or blotches or plain? Long ears or short, pointy or blunt or folded? Eye color?

Though if you're going to delve into racism/xenophobia as a theme, I strongly urge you to do a little research; it's not just about "black or white, blonde or dark, rah rah hate oppress, but all we need is one clear-eyed MC to sing us Kumbaya and teach us we're all the same and it all goes away, yay!" There's a lot of history that goes into it, a lot of rationalizations and culture clashes and economics and politics and religion and so forth, many passive and active factors that create rifts and drive wedges. Even if you're aiming at children, you want to be aware of what racism is all about or it's going to ring false.

Is a caste system based on one or more physical characteristics essential to your story? If a caste system is necessary to the story, why not a structural system based on societal function rather than one based on color (hair, eyes, skin)?

Laneer said:

The grays are raiders. One day they might turn up and burn your village to the ground and take all your stuff. Some of the grays have given up raiding, but not all. So a lot of people resent them for that. Grays are also nomads so everything has to be portable.



I'm not sure what you mean by "societal function". Do you mean money wise? Lower versus upper class?

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Societal function: doctors, lawyers, teachers, scholars, priests, rulers, warriors, traders, artisans and so forth which could be grouped into "classes" according on the value your society places on each class (or caste).

I have written about characters and described them in detail, and I have never mentioned their skin color.
That being said, I would deal more with culture differences than genetic differences.
I know a lot of people call culture in deference racial, but it’s not so you should be fine using the culture.
We all remember he differences of Lilliput and Blefuscu.

Ichabod said:

I know a lot of people call culture in deference racial, but it’s not so you should be fine using the culture.

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What does that mean, please?

Ichabod said:

I have written about characters and described them in detail, and I have never mentioned their skin color.

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Doesn't that mean most readers will default assume they are white, at least with regards to human characters? I believe there is evidence of this, because whiteness is still presented as the normative, default (or unlabeled/unspoken) state in America, Europe etc. Think of all the readers of Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea books (not to mention Television producers) who never realized she'd created a world where the default state (and Ged himself) weren't white.

One technique is to actually mention the skin color of white characters too. An amazing number of white writers still won't do this, even if they are writing from the perspective of a character for whom white skin would not be the unspoken default.

There's nothing inherently wrong or offensive about mentioning ones' characters' skin color or other features that differ between identified human groups or populations, though there are some ways of doing so that can be problematic.

That being said, I would deal more with culture differences than genetic differences.
I know a lot of people call culture in deference racial, but it’s not so you should be fine using the culture.
We all remember he differences of Lilliput and Blefuscu.

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It's complicated, because racial appearance and culture tend to be inextricably linked in people's minds in the so-called real world, even when one does not necessarily inform the other. If the OP's tree world represents nonhuman people within a fairly homogeneous culture, it's moot even if there are different skin tones, color patterns, fur lengths and so on. In a novel set in a more pluralistic or diverse fantasy world, some of the world building will depend on establishing what the actual links between certain aspects of physical appearance and the person's geographic origins and culture within that larger world may be.

Planet of the Apes was rebooted to very clearly show the apes origin story as a result of our genetic arrogance--playing god and tinkering with monkeys in cages--so that's different than racism. I think that's what people mean by you must be very careful.

One possibility is to make the thing that is '-ism'd' about in your world the result of a choice on the part of the characters instead of something they were born with. You could keep the conflict, but instead of fur/skin/whatever, have it more to do with their career choices or how they treat others. In our world, chefs and bakers are generally valued. Teachers, generally (not always) valued. Murderers are not. Lawyers are reviled by some. What are the careers in your world? You can build guilds in your world that individuals enter by choice and which come at classist cost, and you'd still have the inter-guild conflict, but with less risk of, as you say, "getting into trouble."

Laneer said:

I should've mentioned that race isn't the bulk of the story.

The story is about two sisters who are the victims of a horrible crime. The crime is only hinted at but readers will know it's bad. The sisters are taken in by a kindly old woman who lives in a nice village. The older sister runs off, everyone assumes she's dead. A couple years later the older sister reappears. Only now she's batshit crazy and she kills a lot of people. She kills some people the younger sister loves and the younger sister has that "I'm going to kill that crazy bitch" moment. Etc, etc.

So the who racism thing is in the background. The sisters are red furs and so are sort of in the middle of fur hierarchy. The little sister's love interest is a gray, so he's the one who suffers prejudice and it makes their love forbidden which is the best kind of love.

Typical fantasy stuff.

The story is less on the nose about racism than the "Planet of the Apes" movies. It's more about defeating a greater evil with a "don't let others define who you are" theme.

But there are inns who won't serve the love interest because he's a gray.

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Laneer said:

I should've mentioned that race isn't the bulk of the story.

The story is about two sisters who are the victims of a horrible crime. The crime is only hinted at but readers will know it's bad. The sisters are taken in by a kindly old woman who lives in a nice village. The older sister runs off, everyone assumes she's dead. A couple years later the older sister reappears. Only now she's batshit crazy and she kills a lot of people. She kills some people the younger sister loves and the younger sister has that "I'm going to kill that crazy bitch" moment. Etc, etc.

So the who racism thing is in the background. The sisters are red furs and so are sort of in the middle of fur hierarchy. The little sister's love interest is a gray, so he's the one who suffers prejudice and it makes their love forbidden which is the best kind of love.

Typical fantasy stuff.

The story is less on the nose about racism than the "Planet of the Apes" movies. It's more about defeating a greater evil with a "don't let others define who you are" theme.

But there are inns who won't serve the love interest because he's a gray.

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I guess the problem you are going to run into is that your whole fictional society seems to be based on race. In particular, colour. Therefore, you're right to want to be careful. Whether you want to or not, the story is going to reflect racism very much on-the-nose from the sounds of what you're describing.

It's interesting because very few animals base their hierarchy on colour. Most primates, for example, form theirs around gender, size, and health.

Humans, on the other hand, find any reason to differentiate groupings/tribes that suits their power/political/economic purposes. In my birth country of Former Yugoslavia, people literally went to war because one sect believed priests could marry and Christmas was 2 weeks later, and the other didn't. Well, that was what the guys with the guns were sold. The actual war was about power and stealing wealth, and that was driven by the silverbacks at the top.

My feeling is that Marx had it right. All conflict comes down to wealth and power - "the Class Struggle". My long-winded point is that if you want to stay clear of skin colour, pick any other feature, and it will serve your purpose. As long as there is an unequal distribution of power, your Simians (who seem very human-like) can find a way to differentiate themselves with propaganda and dogma in order to keep the status quo.

Take my opinion with a huge grain of salt.

P.K. Torrens is right. People absolutely identical to outsiders can divide themselves into groups that are invisible to outsiders until it's so advanced that it starts to affect social status.
Try the Catholic and Protestant Irish. Try the Irish, the Scots and the English.

You can divide by religion, by place of origin, by the way they speak, lifestyle , etc.
Hunter/gatherer/herder vs. farmer is an old and common one. City vs. country. Swamp vs. Mountain vs. Plains dweller. Desert vs. Fertile fields. Meat-eater vs. Vegetarian. Scholar vs. Soldier.
Vegetarian vs. meateater. Beef eater vs. pork eater.

A group of almost identical beings could easily divide into groups based on all sort of cultural differences. You don't need fur-colour or skin-colour to tell them apart.

lizmonster said:

I think the point is this: If you're doing this as a racial allegory, you're going to have to be careful not to write something seen, at best, as reductive.

If you're not doing this as a racial allegory, a differentiator other than color is maybe a better way not to be misconstrued.

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I agree with this. If the story needs to contain a rigid class system of some kind, maybe make it about something like tail length or shape, or about teeth, or noses, or maybe just make it be about some groups having more control over resources, and a class structure evolving socially from this (like in medieval Europe, the nobles owned land and the serfs were the means of production on said land, and social status was largely hereditary).