How to Write Characters of Color as a White Author
No thanks
Probably by this point everyone has noticed that J. K. Rowling never engages meaningfully with, well, anyone actually except perhaps other famous white people, like… Emma Watson? I don’t know. Really all I know about her these days is that she’d hop on twitter and come up with randomly generated factoids, like how that guy who played Harry in the films was Chinese all along, Hagrid has joined ISIS, and the snake? She’s Korean now and Joanne K. Whatever doesn’t care if you think making an Asian woman the literal enslaved pet of a Nazi analogue has unfortunate implications. Try the link above: Skim broke it down fantastically (and translated reactions from Korean twitter, if anyone ever thinks ‘oh, the Asians in Asia don’t even care about racism!’).
I would be very surprised if that Joanne woman has ever read a single writer of color in her life.
There is a phenomenon on social media and writing forums where white authors — usually unpublished — plaintively post, ‘How do I write POC characters?’ (even though ‘people of color characters’ doesn’t make any sense as a phrase) or ‘How do I write a character who experiences racism? I don’t want to get this wrong and offend anyone!’ They want simple resources: they want blog posts and easy rules (‘Don’t compare skin colors to food items!’). They won’t read post-colonial theory or race theory, because that can’t be boiled down to ‘Don’t do X, do Y!’ and those texts might force them to confront uncomfortable subjects. They’ll also regard ‘POC characters’ as interchangeable, such that they ask Asian people for ‘permission’ to write black American narratives or they throw Japanese and Chinese and Korean cultures together into an orientalist fantasy mish-mash (the name ‘Cho Chang’, anyone?). Hey, why get specific? The quality of not being white makes a mass of people a monolith anyway — right?
And they will never read fiction by a writer of color. At the very first sign of being asked to do so, they will clam up, disengage, or go on racist rants about being abused.
The primary reason for this is that deep down, they don’t actually see people of color as people. Oh, they wouldn’t ever say they are racist, goodness no. They don’t hate people of color! It’s just that, to them, POC are abstract concepts, meant to be helpless, faceless and most importantly voiceless, so that when a white author deigns to depict us, we are meant to be grateful for the fact. The ideal response for these writers is that readers of color will buy their books, read them, praise them online, and think, ‘Wow, that Becky really gets what it’s like to be an Indian girl in Britain!’ or ‘I never saw a person like me represented in a book until I read this precious tome by St. Jordan McNick!’ The reader of color is supposed to be moved, emotionally uplifted, and maybe even inspired to do great things, like writing their own fantasy book.
So when told ‘Try reading this author of color’, they feel cornered. Minorities are supposed to be lesser, not their equals or, god forbid, more accomplished than they are. This isn’t how it’s supposed to go. Where’s the praise? Where’s the cheerleading? Where’s the respectable token POC to fill their mentions with ‘I’m so glad you will be writing people like me, I always wanted to see Asian elves in fantasy!’ or ‘You’re the first white writer I trust to do it right!’ or ‘Can’t wait to buy 50 copies! Go get them, tiger, you’ll land a six-figure book deal in no time!’ Instead they’re given links after links of writers of color who collect five grand a month on Patreon, who won multiple awards, who’ve had their works adapted into comics, who have 50,000 followers on twitter.
It’s a real blow to the ego. The white writer, unpublished and starved for back-pats, recoils.
There’s probably something to be said about the way fandom has idolized Rowling herself for so long, even though her racism has always been blatant in the text: everyone important in Harry Potter is white, ‘Cho Chang’ is removed from a racist slur by a few vowels and does not make sense as a name in any language, the goblins are an anti-semitic stereotype straight out of Nazi propaganda — none of that has been invented or newly discovered recently. It’s just that, for whatever reason, people wanted to believe Rowling was a great ally, a true champion of minorities, even if evidence for any such thing has always been at best tenuous and at worst outright imaginary. Fans, including fans of color, were desperate and desperation drives people to grab at straws. Some remain desperate and write lengthy rants detailing how Harry Potter could have been black or brown or mixed all along.
No wonder other white writers think they could have a slice of that pie too, if they Nice White Ally well enough. It worked for Rowling for decades; why not them?
Another factor that contributes to these writers’ refusal to read authors of color, I expect, has to do with authenticity or rather lack thereof. Writers like to feel original, profound, insightful, and white authors want the most to feel that about what they believe is their insight into racism. ‘I know what it’s like to be a Muslim girl who fears honor killings,’ they might think, racistly. ‘I can write this, I can sound like an authority on it.’ What happens then when they read a book by a Muslim woman that doesn’t… have anything to do with honor killings? What happens when something they read by an author of color doesn’t at all align with the racist stereotypes they know and love? Pasty Becky insists all Dominican men are wife-beating alcoholics and all Latinas are fiery-tempered in her Young Adult book; books by Latinx authors that don’t follow the same line will of necessity disturb her, upset her racist notions, and most likely she’ll call them inauthentic — that she is more objective, somehow, and knows their culture better than they possibly can.
Strike two, as it were, to the ego.
White authors wish to be seen as authoritative, to pen the next Memoirs of Lots of Orientalism or The Help — on which note, I once spotted a top Goodreads review of a Helen Oyeyemi book that decries how it doesn’t handle race well at all, you should read The Help instead, and yes the reviewer is a Becky — and reap the rewards therein. But here comes the problem of originality: a white author may imagine herself sparkling with creativity when she pens a bildungsroman about growing up in, let’s say Singapore. If fifty Singaporean writers have already published their own bildungsromans that year, what’s left for the white lady to cover? Becky can only pretend she’s charting new territory if she, pointedly, ignore that those fifty (or five hundred, or five thousand) Singaporean writers don’t exist or have never published. She declines to recognize that Singaporean writers know anything more than she does, because conceding to writers of color as a greater authority about their own culture impinges on Becky’s very sense of self.
By simply existing, writers of color pose a threat — we’re authentic; Becky and Chad know they are not, whatever racist screaming they issue on social media. Strike three, and that writer ego’s out.
It’s not that white authors should never write characters of color, period. But if you have to pester people of color for praise and attention? If you refuse to ever read authors of color? If you demand free research and free resources and never actually follow up on doing your own reading? If you aren’t humble enough to recognize that you have a lot to learn and that people of color will always know better than you? If the only thing you can think of is that Pakistani girls are defined by honor killings and Latino men defined by being domestic abusers and black people defined by the ‘inner city experience’ and Chinese women defined by foot binding? If you don’t understand why some stories are not yours to tell?
Don’t bother. You’re not doing anything good and you’re not bringing anything new, and self-respecting people of color have no reason to read your fourth-rate racist sludge.
Further reading:
Dear White Writers by Ellen Oh
On diversity panels and “asking permission” of the marginalized by Tanya DePass
Too White Bread for This Shit: Race and Racism in Laurell K Hamilton’s Urban Fantasy Series by Zina H
