Main character with race/ethnicities and two white love interest?

Rupert24

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Greetings people i hope you're doing well in this time :)

You see i'm creating an interactive online history and the reader will be able to customize the main character in every way he wants as the etnias: asian, african, chinese; features as different eye color, even different style and hair color; in a nutshell, the posibilities are ilimited and the reader will be able to choose between two love interest, one male and one female, or even both female, depending genre preferences. However both love interest are white american people, i do this because this history is based in real events and i want to keep some things intacted; of course the reader can customize hair style, face, eyes, nose, etc etc, but not hair, eyes and skin color

This could be considered racist? i swear i'm not intent to being it
 
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SAWeiner

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I don't think it's racist. I can be an outlier in my thoughts and feelings though.
 

Sage

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Some questions to mull over:

If historical accuracy is so important:

- Why are you flexible on the eye, hair, and skin color or whatever hint about ethnicity the user wants for the main character, but not for the love interests?
- Why are you flexible on the gender and some aspects of the love interests' appearance, but eye, hair, and skin color or anything you've chosen for a "white American" is the line that can't be crossed?

There may be storyline reasons why the LI (and not the MC) must be white Americans, but you haven't given them here, so how could we say? Thus I give you questions.
 

mccardey

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This could be considered racist? i swear i'm not intent to being it

I don't think it's racist.

Yes, but the thing about being racist is that intention is not required. Awareness is not required. You can be a dear little old white lady (me) who, out of a surfeit of politeness and with an intent to create inclusion, asks the non-Euro taxi-driver in multicultural Australia where they are from. In my young days, this was a "woke" thing for white folk to do. The unspoken message was assumed to be read as "I accept you. You have a story that I value."

No intent toward racism, no awareness - until a Young Person mentions it later - that you are probably the thirtieth person today who has said, based on nothing but skin colour or accent something akin to "You Are Not From Here."

Which is - or can be, and it's not for Little Old White Me to judge - extremely excluding.
 
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JJ Litke

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Americans are not white by default. Unless the characters are based on specific real-life people who happen to be white, this choice doesn’t make any sense. And even if they are based on real-life people, you can still make whatever choices you want. The musical Hamilton casts non-white actors, and people love it. As long as you intend to let a few traits the characters be customized, you can go ahead and let all traits be customized.
 

Snitchcat

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1) "Asian" -- which nationality? There are 47+ on the continent.
2) Chinese -- are you lumping in the Japanese, too? And the Koreans? And the Vietnamese? I guarantee this is a no-no.
3) Why are you allowing flexible features for Asian, African, and Chinese, but not for the white love interests? Smacks of racism.

"Intent" doesn't matter when the result promotes racism.

Why do I think this concept is racist? Because the "flexibility" of choosing features for the three named nationalities says to me that these nationalities' native features are not good enough as they are; that they need to be changed to suit Western sensibilities; that they must be diminished or dismissed because they're not Westernised enough; because these features are undesirable by Western standards. Excuse me? My features are dismissable, are to be ignored, because my appearance makes Western people uncomfortable? Why must I, as a POC, as a Chinese person, sacrifice my appearance because certain individuals in the West are offended by my features?

Yeah...no. This is not a concept I can agree with.
 

Rupert24

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Americans are not white by default. Unless the characters are based on specific real-life people who happen to be white, this choice doesn’t make any sense. And even if they are based on real-life people, you can still make whatever choices you want. The musical Hamilton casts non-white actors, and people love it. As long as you intend to let a few traits the characters be customized, you can go ahead and let all traits be customized.

Yeah, the love interests are based in specific real-life people, that's the reason of why i'm leaving them with few customizable traits
 

Snitchcat

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Yeah, the love interests are based in specific real-life people, that's the reason of why i'm leaving them with few customizable traits

Again, why is it okay to "white wash" / "westernise" peoples from the Asian continent, China, Japan, etc. because none are personally known to the OP?
 

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Yeah, the love interests are based in specific real-life people, that's the reason of why i'm leaving them with few customizable traits

But if any traits are customizable at all, you lose the argument of "But they're based on real people, so you can't customize that part."

Like if the fact that the LI is white is an integral part of the story, that seems to be a valid reason to avoid that change (It'd be surprising that the MC's race isn't integral to that particular story, but it could happen). If the character is a historical figure (or a tie-in to a movie franchise), sure, you can make an argument for not changing anything about them...but it can't be anything. But if the unwillingness to change visual characteristics of the LI is because you can't see them that way..but you can see other visual aspects changed, that might be more of a problem on your part.
 

Drascus

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Yeah, I'm in the change anything or change nothing camp for the love interests. They're either based on real people, or there's no reason to stomp on someone else's desire for representation while allowing others to feel represented.

Because it sounds like if I'm of Irish, German, Italian, or Spanish descent I could be represented. I can make my love interest look like someone of my ethnicity.

It sounds like I MIGHT be able to be represented if I'm gay. (You haven't said if same sex pairings are allowed but it sounds like that might be open)

But if I'm Black, Latinix, First Nations, Indian, etc, I can't have a love interest that looks like me.

If you do go the route of letting people change the LI ethnicity, please don't do it with a quick hex code change on their skin texture btw. Painting a white person ochre does not not a person of color make.