I’m working on a new piece of fiction, and as I was creating the various characters, I wondered what they were like? Were they young or old? Fat or thin? Attractive or ugly? White or black? Italian, French, German, Mexican, Egyptian …. You get the idea.
Unfortunately, the prospect of writing a black character is fraught with difficulty. The woke world wants to make us afraid of so many things. E.g., If I make all my characters white, the woke will say, “See, you live in a white world and you’re prejudiced against black people.” But if I make a black character, the woke will say, “how dare you write a black character? You don’t know what it’s like to be black.”
Right. Like I know what it’s like to be any of my characters.
I don’t know what it’s like to be fat, for example. I could stand to lose five pounds, but I’ve never been fat. And of course I’ve never been a woman.
I think the only way to make the woke happy is to make all the characters me.
(Don’t worry, I have no interest in making the woke happy, and I hope none of them ever bother to read anything I’ve written.)
QUOTE: Unfortunately, the prospect of writing a black character is fraught with difficulty. The woke world wants to make us afraid of so many things. E.g., If I make all my characters white, the woke will say, “See, you live in a white world and you’re prejudiced against black people.” But if I make a black character, the woke will say, “how dare you write a black character? You don’t know what it’s like to be black.”
By your characterization, wouldn’t some noted conservatives be a part of the “woke world”? Seemed it created quite a kerfuffle when it was speculated that James Bond could be played by a Black actor. Rush Limbaugh wasn’t in favor of such a notion and spoke out quite strongly about it. Seems Meghan Kelly was initially quite emphatic that Santa and Jesus couldn’t be any other ethnicity than White.
You’re mixing “actor playing part” with “writer explaining character.” Those are two different things.
There’s a similarity in the sense that the actor has to understand and interpret the character. So, for example, can a white man understand Othello and play him convincingly? Or can a black man understand Robin Hood and play him convincingly?
I would say yes in both cases, because I regard skin pigment as among the most irrelevant of human characteristics.
In each case, the writer or actor has to try to get in the head of the person he’s trying to explain / portray.
In terms of a black James Bond or Jesus or Santa, I think it depends on what you’re trying to do. If the question is whether a black man can internalize the mentality of James Bond and portray him well on the screen, I don’t see how any sensible person can deny that.
However, there is a kind of “I’m fed up with this crap” attitude that I can totally understand.
QUOTE: You’re mixing “actor playing part” with “writer explaining character.” Those are two different things.
I think that’s a distinction without a difference . ISTM, it’s the “reaction” of an audience that’s at issue here.
You said…if I make all my characters white, the woke will say, “See, you live in a white world and you’re prejudiced against black people.” But if I make a black character, the woke will say, “how dare you write a black character? You don’t know what it’s like to be black.” Yet, a similar reaction came from conservatives when a Black author suggested that because Santa is a mythical character that he didn’t have to always be depicted as White . The blow back was like,”how dare you say that Santa should be anything other than white” or “Santa is just White”. The same happened when the creators of “Once Upon A Time” introduced lesbian fairy tale characters into their TV series. Conservatives criticized their work in similar manner as the “alleged” woke. Who can forget the cyber brouhaha when The Hunger Games movie was released? There were sentiments expressed like…”“Why did the producer make all the good characters black” and “Why does Rue have to be Black, not gonna lie, kinda ruined the movie.”
So, if an author, actor or producer starts foolin’ around with perceived sacred cows within a given subculture, people react similarly.
I don’t think that the issue of being black merely has to do with skin pigment. I remember one time when I met a black colleague in a department store and he asked me to speak on his behalf with a salesperson about some merchandise that interested him. It was rather shocking to me that to hear that black people don’t get served by white salespersons quite as well as white people do. That was a long time ago, but on the basis of recent findings the same sort of thing apparently occurs on a regular basis. A white person might assume that the difference between white and black just has to with skin pigment, but the fact that it does NOT makes it hard for a white person to develop a fictional character from a black perspective. One of the great benefits of literature is of course that it enhances the empathy of the reader. All the great authors, e.g. Dickens, Tolstoy, and Dostoevsky, have had an outstanding ability to develop characters from the inside, allowing us to see the world from a perspective other than our own. I wouldn’t say that a white person couldn’t do this with respect to a black character, but I do think that it would be difficult.
QUOTE: I wouldn’t say that a white person couldn’t do this with respect to a black character, but I do think that it would be difficult.
There may be some hurdles to overcome due to historical racial issues. As well, some publishers may be a bit squeamish because they feel the book could be labeled as patronizing or appropriating culture.
Yet, I’m not sure those issues are insurmountable. I suspect a good writer would handle this challenge as he or she would others in which they didn’t have direct experience….do research and employ the help of others who have credible insights. Seems a partnership could be developed with a Black author or panel of Black/minority consultants (given Blacks aren’t a monolith–Biden is finding this out the hard way). Have them review and provide input to ensure a character is authentic and not portrayed in an offensive or harshly stereotypical manner. As well, association with these consultants might provide credibility with Black/minority audiences after the work has been published.
I’m no expert but the linked article seemed to have some practical insights. I suspect it’s not the final word but appeared to be a good place to start.
https://writerunboxed.com/2019/06/04/what-white-writers-should-know-about-telling-black-stories/
I believe that good always draw from others’ experience, but there is no replacement for the individual artistic genius.
*I believe that good writers
True…no matter how much one learns vicariously…if they don’t have the capability to creatively and compellingly express what they know…it doesn’t have much benefit.
Charles Dickens was a master of that art. He was attuned to the fact he was living a world of systemic abuse and was able to convey that fact creatively and compellingly.
In something I’m working on, the introductory viewpoint character is a young Indian woman, and I’m zero for three on those characteristics..
The rest of the main cast is diverse enough to work in a Benetton commercial. This isn’t because I’m secretly woke, it’s cause when I grew up, it was a trope in the shows I watched that if you wanted a really cool team, they had to be pulled from around the world. And that sense stuck with me. If I bought the “you can’t write characters different from you ’cause that’s appropriation” line, there’s literally no one on Earth who could write this story, which would be sad.
Aside: while I know it’s an exaggeration, sometimes it feels like if you want to see interesting black characters you basically have to watch a black-written, majority-black show. Then they’re allowed to be something other than stock tropes (soulful saint, victim, secret genius): they’re allowed to be people.
I don’t see any reason a black actor couldn’t do a great job playing a Bondlike character, but I have to admit it wouldn’t work for me *as Bond*, because I feel like I already know him, and he’s half-Scottish, half-Swiss. I’d probably get over it — in live theatre it only takes a while for me to get past unusual casting — but it’s still a barrier. And for reasons I can’t quite explain I think the nature of theatre itself means these changes work much better there than on film.
Another example would be the genderbend of Starbuck in BSG — I was unimpressed at first in principle, but thought it worked fine in practice. And since I wasn’t too wedded to the original story anyway, I wasn’t particularly invested.
I admit I did give up on Who not long after the first Whittaker episode, and of all TV shows that probably has the best inbuilt excuse for completely changing the main character. I’d have preferred that the Doctor stay a man, but would have dealt with it if the writing — which has been very much stab-you-in-the-eye over the previous few seasons — didn’t reach new levels of awfulness.