# Why the fear of people of colour?



## King_Cagn (Mar 9, 2014)

As a african and amateur writer I often as myself why other writers fear putting in protagonists of colour. What're'ya thoughts on this matter?


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## Steerpike (Mar 9, 2014)

What makes you think anyone fears it? There are all kinds of reason people might not include them - some originating in bias, and some not - but it seems a stretch to leap to the conclusion it is fear.


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## A. E. Lowan (Mar 9, 2014)

Well, first I would like to welcome you to Scribes.

I am pleased to say that the landscape of speculative fiction _is_ changing.  This is a topic that we discuss here on Scribes from time to time.

I'll link a couple of threads and articles here.

http://mythicscribes.com/forums/writing-questions/10373-what-im-saying-search-equality-pretty-messy.html
Racial Diversity in Speculative Fiction

Diversity, not just in presenting characters who are persons of color but who are women, who are disabled, who are gay, who are anything but the default setting of the white male farm boy/prince, is generating a great deal of discussion and attention within the genre and the industry these days.  I'm glad you bring it up.  Be aware - we're all thinking about it.  I think linking it to _fear_ is a bit inflammatory, though.


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## King_Cagn (Mar 9, 2014)

Well I see it this way, if a character isn't of Caucasian descent a product doesn't sell, this has been done countless times and is still happening. Rarely does a character of colour get the spotlight... So, I assume it's fear because nobody does it and when they do, they get heavily criticized for it.


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## A. E. Lowan (Mar 9, 2014)

King_Cagn said:


> Well I see it this way, if a character isn't of Caucasian descent a product doesn't sell, this has been done countless times and is still happening. Rarely does a character of colour get the spotlight... So, I assume it's fear because nobody does it and when they do, they get heavily criticized for it.



Well, why do you think the authors get criticized for having a person of color as the main character?


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## King_Cagn (Mar 9, 2014)

Ignorance... It's as simple as that. People are quite strange because they have the inability to seek diversity, nobody ever views it from a perspective of another race, sex or culture... People would rather go for :"Oh, it's the king, because he's a respectable white man", but than you get so bombarded by negativity if he was a person of color, than people go "But no, because he's african he should be a chief, it's more tribal, more suitable"...

It's this ignorance that sets caucasian character higher than characters of color... Not being racist, just being truthful.


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## Steerpike (Mar 9, 2014)

I don't think the assumption of fear is supported by evidence.

I also think we need to take a step back with regard to the premises stated. I agree that we need better representation, but I'm not seeing all the criticism the OP is talking about. Where, exactly, are people who do include diversity being criticized? There are lots of authors who write other than white, male, cis, hetero characters. For example:

Octavia Butler
Angela Carter
Sherri Tepper
Caitlin Kiernan
Steven Erikson
Kristin Cashore
Ursula K. LeGuin
Storm Constantine
Paolo Bacigalupi
Nalo Hopkinson
N.K. Jemisin
Mercedes Lackey
Ellen Kushner

and so on. I don't see these authors being hammered over it.


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## A. E. Lowan (Mar 9, 2014)

That's not what I asked.  You said, "Rarely does a character of colour get the spotlight... So, I assume it's fear because nobody does it and when they do, *they get heavily criticized for it*."  That is a very interesting statement.


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## King_Cagn (Mar 9, 2014)

But than why aren't their works as equally publicized by the media?, why can't the media place in characters of color in similar settings as caucasians instead of either giving them the role of sidekick or second best?... True it may not be 'fear' per say but than I don't see this equality the very same media keeps preaching about.

Maybe I'm just rambling utter nonsense but all I'm saying is that if I were to write a story and made the protagonist caucasian and I wrote the very same story again and the character 'of color', you'll admit that more people will go for the caucasian character than the one of color, no?...


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## Jabrosky (Mar 9, 2014)

1. Most writers in Western countries are white people writing what they know. Demographically speaking, it actually makes some sense for authors from predominantly white countries to write predominantly white characters.

2. Some writers simply don't like to describe any aspect of their characters' appearances at all. Either they prefer to leave such details to readers' imaginations or they're deliberately aiming for a lean or tight writing style without much decription. Personally that kind of style doesn't appeal to me so much, but if that's what they like for themselves, more power to them.

3. Ironically, political correctness may also contribute to the relative rarity of non-European characters and settings in fantasy. It actually used to be pretty common for adventure stories to take place in exotic parts of the world where so-called "people of color" demographically predominated. However, since the protagonists still tended to be white visitors and the non-white characters either secondary or antagonistic, this kind of fiction has (understandably) received a bad rap. Nowadays you have white writers so afraid of racism/stereotyping charges that they choose to sidestep the issue by avoiding non-European characters altogether.

For my part, I have no problem writing non-European main characters. If anything I do it more often than not.


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## Steerpike (Mar 9, 2014)

King_Cagn said:


> But than why aren't their works as equally publicized by the media?



Not being publicized to the same degree isn't the same as being criticized. What I want to know is where people are being criticized for writing this sort of thing. I don't see it.

I think to a large extent, media is driven by what has sold in the past, and they're looking for the next hit. Big fantasy phenomena have been Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, and Twilight. White, cis characters. When publishers, studios, and so on look at the marketplace to see what has made a lot of money, because they want to make a lot of money on their next project, what does that tell them? It tells them that's what is selling.


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## psychotick (Mar 9, 2014)

Hi,

I personally try not to describe my characters in terms of colour at all if I can, and I suspect I'm not alone in that. My theory is that if my character can be black, white or red then my readers will imagine and identify with him in terms of their own world view which may be equally black, white or red.

To take this a couple of steps further - one reason that is occasionally given for the success of the glittery vampires is that the main character is only vaguely described. Therefore every teenage girl reading it can imagine that Bella(?) is just like her.

So my question would be how many main characters in fiction are actually white versus how many are in actual fact completely colourless and readers just assume they're white?

Cheers, Greg.


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## Nagash (Mar 9, 2014)

That's a good point Greg, and I'm guessing we assume most of the time the character to be something close to some conception of our own. Having done some pretty extensive world-building, however, and imagined nations of differently-skinned people, I actually ended up with a bunch of colored people. Of course, most of my MC's are... well, more beast than humans, so the question of skin color is moot (unless blue scales count), but I found my work to offer a rather diverse set of characters. Not that it was done on purpose, but at some point, when using more than a dozen characters, you end up - hopefully - with a rather various mix of characters. 

This being said, skin color shouldn't matter, and anyone reading the book, should be able to identify to the MC; I'm positive it really doesn't solely rely on appearance. For instance, five of my MC's are lizard men, who, while being extremely anthropomorphized and definitely belonging to the category "humanoid", widely resemble saurians rather than men (scales, claws, sharp teeth, wide and long jaws, spinal thorns, tails, reptilian eyes...). Yet, despite this superficial gap between them and the reader, I believe one shouldn't have any trouble identifying to said MC's for the simple reason that they talk, behave, think and act as humans do. They have a civilization, a well structured state and government, a functioning economy and highly evolved technology/military, thus resembling humans on a spiritual level, despite all of these differences.

Point is, one should be able to see a reflection of him/her self in any character with a psychologism shaped with humanity, regardless of physical differences.


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## Penpilot (Mar 9, 2014)

As said above, there could definitely be more representation, but I don't think the lack of it is out of fear. I'll add one author to the list Neal Gaiman and his book American Gods. The main character is black. It has won awards and praise out the yin-yang and has a huge following around the world. There are even rumors of it be made into a HBO mini-series.

According to this publisher's weekly article it sold over 40k copies in ebooks alone in 2012. The Bestselling E-books of 2012


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## Legendary Sidekick (Mar 9, 2014)

I agree it's not fear.


Jabrosky said:


> 1. Most writers in Western countries are *white people writing what they know*. Demographically speaking, it actually makes some sense for authors from predominantly white countries to write predominantly white characters.


I also agree with this^ and will admit to being one of these guys.


My WIP has protagonists who are white, Asian and female. My three children are also white, Asian and female. (That's three daughters of mixed race. The characters in my story are either white or Asian.)

I would like to see more diversity in fantasy fiction, but the catch is that it can't be forced. (And that comment is NOT directed at Jabrosky, who has a genuine interest in African culture.) For me, I have a genuine interest in bringing more women into the fantasy world because I want my daughters to be able to read my books and see heroines, not the female lead (a.k.a. love interest of actual lead, who is male) or the damsel in distress or the hooker with a heart of gold.

My thoughts on this matter is to write the characters you want in your story, and write your story well. The color of the MC's skin shouldn't make or break the story.


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## Feo Takahari (Mar 9, 2014)

psychotick said:


> To take this a couple of steps further - one reason that is occasionally given for the success of the glittery vampires is that the main character is only vaguely described. Therefore every teenage girl reading it can imagine that Bella(?) is just like her.
> 
> So my question would be how many main characters in fiction are actually white versus how many are in actual fact completely colourless and readers just assume they're white?



As a follow-up question, to what extent does colorless tend to become white? I deliberately wrote Price with a very vague physical description--all readers are told at first is that she's physically fit. But both of her parents have European last names (Price and Shores), and some of the jokes I wound up writing about her indicated "white" features. (For instance, she has straight hair that would be capable of growing to knee-length if she didn't trim it.) By the end of the book, the reader's picture of her is probably of a "white" character.

Come to think of it, how confused might readers have been if, instead of a joke about straight hair, I'd done a joke about dreadlocks? I really surprised readers of another story when I confirmed halfway through that Dan Park was of Korean descent, despite no indications to the contrary. And in a third story, I had to insert a mention in the first chapter that a research assistant had dark skin, because readers were picturing her as pale. It reminds me of the "Dogs and Smurfs" essay, although that's about sex rather than race. (Warnings: strong profanity, moderate self-righteousness.)



Penpilot said:


> As said above, there could definitely be more representation, but I don't think the lack of it is out of fear. I'll add one author to the list Neal Gaiman and his book American Gods. The main character is black. It has won awards and praise out the yin-yang and has a huge following around the world. There are even rumors of it be made into a HBO mini-series.



Gaiman's had some trouble with this, actually. According to TV Tropes:



> [H]e was approached on an adaptation of Anansi Boys. Y'know, the book where the main characters are the children of African deity Anansi, and thus they (and a lot of their acquaintances) are black. The first question asked was apparently, "Is there any way we can make them white?"



Actually, that can probably be tied into when TV _does_ whiten folks up. Let's start with this infamous pic regarding _The Last Airbender_ and its adaptation:








(Then again, that movie was just _weird_--the main character's from a culture based on Tibet, and the movie cast a Native American actor.)

There's also Kensei Takezo in _Heroes_, who turns out to actually be a British guy because . . . I dunno. And Mazer Rackham in _Ender's Game_, who goes from Maori in the book to white with Maori tattoos in the movie because . . . Again, I dunno. (Maybe they couldn't get a Maori actor? I know Cliff Curtis is Maori, and he made it into _The Last Airbender_--as a villain.)

If my post seems like a jumbled mess, it's because my thoughts are, too.


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## Caged Maiden (Mar 9, 2014)

I had a similar question a while ago, where I asked something like this:

"If I wrote two airship captains, both thieves, and not nice guys, basically supplanting a dark-skinned one for a white one, would it be ignorant of me to have them talk the same or would it be racist of me if I changed the dialogue to suit their proposed backgrounds?"

basically, I'm more afraid of being called on having my dark-skinned hero talk too "white" than writing him in the first place.  Does that make sense?  Because for me, I'd want my dialogue to sound like me... not like some terrible version of what I think he should sound like, making things up in my head because I have no real exposure to how people of different cultures might speak in a common setting.


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## Steerpike (Mar 9, 2014)

There is no right or wrong way for a character to talk, regardless of race. This is true in a general sense even of stories set in the real world, though background will influence it. In a fantasy setting there is no reason to go one direction or other apart from the author's desire to do so.


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## A. E. Lowan (Mar 9, 2014)

Caged Maiden said:


> I had a similar question a while ago, where I asked something like this:
> 
> "If I wrote two airship captains, both thieves, and not nice guys, basically supplanting a dark-skinned one for a white one, would it be ignorant of me to have them talk the same or would it be racist of me if I changed the dialogue to suit their proposed backgrounds?"
> 
> basically, I'm more afraid of being called on having my dark-skinned hero talk too "white" than writing him in the first place.  Does that make sense?  Because for me, I'd want my dialogue to sound like me... not like some terrible version of what I think he should sound like, making things up in my head because I have no real exposure to how people of different cultures might speak in a common setting.



We write urban fantasy, but I avoid dialectic speech, regardless of the character's ethnic or regional background, mostly because it comes across as awkward.  Try just writing them as individuals.


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## Caged Maiden (Mar 9, 2014)

I wrote a character in another WIP recently, who is a sort of Oliver Twist character.  I relied on dialect to color his character and while his inner thoughts are all written properly, his speech shows his low status.


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## Jabrosky (Mar 9, 2014)

Reflecting upon an Internet experience I had back in my high school days, I think King_Cagn isn't completely wrong when he says there are people out there with a vested interest in suppressing diversity in media.

I once visited this message board dedicated to the old _Empire Earth_ computer games, which purported to be about human history yet focused on Europe and to a lesser extent Asia. The second game did have an expansion pack introducing the Zulu and Maasai as playable factions, but none of the larger African kingdoms appeared (unless you counted the predictably whitewashed Egyptians). I went to the forum to rant about what I felt was a misrepresentation of African history, and to my surprise I found the posters there opposed the mere presence of non-Eurasian factions in the game, even famous ones like the Aztecs and Inca. Their argument was that any civilization located outside Europe or Asia wasn't "historically significant" (whatever that means) enough for inclusion in the game, never mind its world-history pretensions. It was quite an unpleasant shock for me to bump into such sentiments.

To be fair, literary communities such as this seem to have much more progressive cultures than this gaming forum. There's debate over whether diversity should be forced on writers and whether you should bother describing it at all, but I've never seen anyone actually say diversity doesn't have a place in literature.


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## psychotick (Mar 10, 2014)

Hi,

First up Civ is a better series of games than Empire Earth and they do use a far wider selection of cultures.

Second about the accents. I remember a long time ago when I was first doing post grad micro papers I had a lecturer in bacto who was ethnically Indian. The first day I sat down with him I was absolutely stunned when what flowed out of his mouth was perfect Oxford educated English. In another class - psych I think - there was a lab assistant who spoke with a broad Jamacan accent with all the trimmings, and he was a blonde haired white guy who'd just been raised there. So while languages, colloquialisms and accents may give a hint as to a person's skin colour and feed into readers' prejudices, they are no guarantee of anything.

Cheers, Greg.


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## ThinkerX (Mar 10, 2014)

This thread reminds me of the rant LeGuin made over the movie adaptation of her 'Wizard of EarthSea'. In the book, the hostile Kargs were white, while most of the other folks were brown skinned.  The movie folks inverted (white-washed) this.  LeGuin was more than a little ticked off.

Same thing with 'The Last Airbender'.  In the graphic books, the various clans encompass a range of skin colors - all of which, save those of the Fire clan, were transformed to white in the movie.

This pertains to culture in the movies and television as well.  I've been without television reception for a couple years now (don't miss it, either), but I do pick up the odd pack of DVD's.  Years ago, I was enthralled with 'Babylon 5', but didn't watch the sequel 'Crusade' because it was on cable and I didn't have it.  Been watching the DVD's lately...seems that almost *everybody* in the cast, apart from a few token characters is a good looking white person, be they alien or not.  Not only that, the characters express a sort of idealized US 20th century mentality as something to aspire to.  The series is very blatantly targeted to the US middle class.   This sort of thing stands out to me much more than it did in the past.


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## A. E. Lowan (Mar 10, 2014)

psychotick said:


> Second about the accents. I remember a long time ago when I was first doing post grad micro papers I had a lecturer in bacto who was ethnically Indian. The first day I sat down with him I was absolutely stunned when what flowed out of his mouth was perfect Oxford educated English. In another class - psych I think - there was a lab assistant who spoke with a broad Jamacan accent with all the trimmings, and he was a blonde haired white guy who'd just been raised there. So while languages, colloquialisms and accents may give a hint as to a person's skin colour and feed into readers' prejudices, they are no guarantee of anything.



These right here are two excellent examples of why dialectic writing doesn't work well, in my opinion at least, as an indicator of skin color.  Here is another one.  In linguistics there is a phenomenon known as "code switching."  It is when people change their speech patterns depending on their surroundings and their audiences (basically).  I never studied linguistics, but my partner did.  The most impressive instance of code switching I have ever witnessed occurred one summer I was at college attending a research seminar.  I was helping one of my then-room-mates cook.  She was a second generation African American girl, by which I mean her parents immigrated from an African country and she was born in the United States.  She was talking to her parents on the phone, to me (an American woman who speaks Standard American English with a mixed West Coast and Midwest accent), and to a few of our fellow students who were African American.  In the course of a single 30 minute conversation she code switched between 3 dialects - Standard American English to speak to me, the African dialect of her parents' home country, and a very urban African American dialect to speak to the other students in the room.  And she did this each and every time she changed who she was addressing and responding to.  It was amazing to watch!  I could not reproduce that in writing if my life depended on it (and truth being stranger than fiction I'm not sure who'd believe it, anyway).  And while it could possibly tell a story about her history, _it would tell you nothing about her skin color_.

So, I absolutely agree with Greg, it would be far too easy to use dialectic speech to feed into prejudices and I will take it one step further and say writing it clouds the water and makes characters difficult to relate to.  It is far too easy to get caught up in trying to make a character "sound" ethnic.  At best this parrots a stereotype and at worst it loses the reader's interest in what they have to say by forcing them to sound out their dialogue to understand them.


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## Chilari (Mar 10, 2014)

We're writing fantasy. Why should people have accents which reflect modern Earth accents anyway? Giving a character a dialect which reflects what someone of their race might sound like on Earth is fallacious, because our cultures and the languages that contributed to the dialects don't exist on fantasy worlds. Plus all it does is reinforce stereotypes.

For my WIP, I've created a world where there is natural mixing of peoples from a wide region, because there's an inland sea with key trading hubs, lots of travel, historical invasions and population displacements and all sorts. This means that the characters of my story, on a penal colony set up by the main city at the centre of the the trade network, come from a variety of heritages and cultures, but because they're all from the same city they all speak roughly the same (with changes in vocabulary to reflect their class). In terms of skin colour, the characters I have described are pretty varied. I haven't had a chance yet to mention what my protagonist looks like, but she - like a great many others on the island - is mixed race. Because there's this trading hub and there's been generations of cultures mixing and meeting and moving around.

It is possible to insert a bit of variety into fantasy. It's easy if you think about it. Okay, so the main events of my novel occur on a single remote temperate island, but the characters come from a culture where there's a wide network of trade routes, a lot of wealth, and a history of populations being displaced and relocated - the result of which is that my characters can be of pretty much any skin colour I want them to be. Thinking about the world the characters live in - thinking about the climate of key locations, the geography of the land, how easy it might be to travel, how conflicts might displace populations, how trade might open up regions, how politics might enable marriages between distant countries where there are peoples of different skin colours for the sake of mutually beneficial trade agreements - all that means that diversity isn't difficult to include.

It's stupid to have an all white cast, or a mostly white cast with one single non-white character who was born far away. A lot of people claim it's about historical accuracy, but Europe was never like that. There were Carthaginians in Britain during Roman occupation. Legionaries from all across the empire - north Africa, Judea, Spain - were part of the legions that occupied Britain, France, wherever. African Muslims held half of Spain for a few hundred years in the middle ages. Traders from all over the place could find themselves hundreds of miles from home. There were Chinese sailors in Kenya at the same time Shakespeare was writing his plays, and giraffes and other African animals sent as gifts to the Chinese Emperor. There might well have been a bunch of Romans in China a millennium before that. A Macedonian general fought in India another millennium before _that_.

Only a culture cut off from other civilisations and other parts of the world for thousands of years has an excuse for monoracialism.


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## Nihal (Mar 10, 2014)

I have this conflicted character who uses mostly no contractions in her speech save for tense or otherwise exciting occasions. Nonetheless, she thinks using contractions; her change in her speech pattern is intentional, it corresponds to how the older and wiser people of her homeland talks and expect to be addressed to.

I don't think that tactic in particular works—I'm not able to pull off this, at least. I can't help but frown when I'm writing her, it feels contrived. This change is a personal characteristic of hers, but even if I used it to indicate her place of birth I don't think it would work as expected. Using certain synonyms instead of far common ones or going to lengths to describe something that was uncommon in her homeland and which name fell in disuse is far more effective to distinguish her from other characters of other places.

Note that I'm referring to changes in speech stemming from social aspects, not merely skin color. Living in a place where I have contact with descendants of many different ethnic groups, where everyone has mixed heritage and different skin colors I can assure you that no magical change in the speech occurs due your skin color alone. =P


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## Shockley (Mar 10, 2014)

Nihal: I think a more immediate problem with that character is that not using contractions is a pretty good sign someone is lying/fabricating their account


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## CupofJoe (Mar 10, 2014)

Shockley said:


> Nihal: I think a more immediate problem with that character is that not using contractions is a pretty good sign someone is lying/fabricating their account


I know some psychologists that would love to debate that with you.
and my mother... She rarely uses contractions to this day. When, where and how she was educated, contractions were seen as sloppy and slovenly uses of English and were only to be expected in the speech of lower classes. Properly educated "English" speakers did not use them. 
This might not be true of all languages...


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## Nihal (Mar 10, 2014)

Shockley said:


> Nihal: I think a more immediate problem with that character is that not using contractions is a pretty good sign someone is lying/fabricating their account



Might be, but I don't think that would be the only reason.



CupofJoe said:


> I know some psychologists that would love to debate that with you.
> and my mother... She rarely uses contractions to this day. When, where and how she was educated, contractions were seen as sloppy and slovenly uses of English and were only to be expected in the speech of lower classes. Properly educated "English" speakers did not use them.
> This might not be true of all languages...



That was my intention with that character in particular (but she's also a bit of a liar, heh, so she's twice as formal to get someone to trust her). I can think in an additional reason to someone avoid contractions:

You see, this might not be true of all languages because many languages don't have contractions at all. As a speaker of one of these I'll tell you: Contractions might be useful, but they're odd. I can use the most common fine, but I won't stop thinking they're a strange concept and I'm simply unable to understand dialect speech that relies too heavily on contractions. I'll spend the double of the time mulling over it and I'll get only half of the meaning.


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## Jabrosky (Mar 10, 2014)

Chilari said:


> It's stupid to have an all white cast, or a mostly white cast with one single non-white character who was born far away. A lot of people claim it's about historical accuracy, but Europe was never like that. There were Carthaginians in Britain during Roman occupation. Legionaries from all across the empire - north Africa, Judea, Spain - were part of the legions that occupied Britain, France, wherever. African Muslims held half of Spain for a few hundred years in the middle ages. Traders from all over the place could find themselves hundreds of miles from home. There were Chinese sailors in Kenya at the same time Shakespeare was writing his plays, and giraffes and other African animals sent as gifts to the Chinese Emperor. There might well have been a bunch of Romans in China a millennium before that. A Macedonian general fought in India another millennium before _that_.
> 
> Only a culture cut off from other civilisations and other parts of the world for thousands of years has an excuse for monoracialism.


You touched on the major reason I like to base some of my settings off the ancient Mediterranean and surrounding areas. Transcontinental crossroads are wonderful for juxtaposing fundamentally different cultures next to each other.

However, it may have helped that both the classical Mediterranean civilizations and the Ming Dynasty Chinese had nautical technology that allowed them to sail great distances around the world. Not everyone had that. For example there is little if any evidence of Native American civilizations having extensive contact with the Old World before Columbus, and frankly if they did they probably would have evolved protection from all those Old World diseases earlier. Which is a shame in my opinion, as the eccentric claim that ancient Egyptians or West Africans encountered the Olmecs does have a certain appeal to me.


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## Legendary Sidekick (Mar 11, 2014)

Nihal said:


> You see, this might not be true of all languages because many languages don't have contractions at all. As a speaker of one of these I'll tell you: Contractions might be useful, but they're odd. I can use the most common fine, but I won't stop thinking they're a strange concept and I'm simply unable to understand dialect speech that relies too heavily on contractions. I'll spend the double of the time mulling over it and I'll get only half of the meaning.


I don't know if you noticed Hanako never used contractions, but the "common tongue" being her second language was the reason. Languages that don't use letters can't have contractions.

The concept may still exist in Cantonese, Mandarin, Japanese, etc., but it can't be displayed in the written form. For example, I _think_ some Japanese words are spoken without sounding out the final vowel, like when you count jumping jacks in karate class… but not every Japanese friend seems to agree on this point, so my shoddy research in this has a questionable conclusion. (I can never have those minutes of my life back. Wah.)


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## A. E. Lowan (Mar 11, 2014)

Legendary Sidekick said:


> I don't know if you noticed Hanako never used contractions, but the "common tongue" being her second language was the reason. Languages that don't use letters can't have contractions.
> 
> The concept may still exist in Cantonese, Mandarin, Japanese, etc., but it can't be displayed in the written form. For example, I _think_ *some Japanese words are spoken without sounding out the final vowel*, like when you count jumping jacks in karate class… but not every Japanese friend seems to agree on this point, so my shoddy research in this has a questionable conclusion. (I can never have those minutes of my life back. Wah.)



This is an accent/dialect thing, the difference between Kyoto and Tokyo, specifically (at least that is what my Japanese professors from Kyoto and Tokyo told me lol).  Tokyo dialect tends to drop the final vowel in some words, being less formal, while Kyoto dialect, being more formal, sounds out everything very crisply.


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## Jabrosky (Mar 21, 2014)

Allow me to play devil's advocate for a moment.

A major reason given for stressing non-white characters' skin color and other racial traits is the fear that, without such descriptors, illustrators and Hollywood casting agents would portray these characters as white. I feel this same concern all the time, but if Feo's examples show anything, it's that Hollywood and related industries will whitewash even characters explicitly described as non-white. That is certainly not the only example of Hollywood taking liberties with their source material.

Besides, most books that get published don't get adapted into movies unless they're bestsellers.


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## Michael J. Tobias (Mar 22, 2014)

Huh. My WIP features several races, which all correspond to earth races, more or less. The MC is the progeny of what amounts to an African father and Native American mother. Race places a large part in my story, particularly mixed race children, as well as class and religion. The core characters are 7 teens, all of whom are mixed-race kids. 

Note, however, that I didn't set out to create some politically-correct fable about race or race mixing. I just had an idea about a society which makes judgments based on appearances...superstitious choices about those who are "different."

It will be interesting to see if I receive criticism for it. As you can see by my avatar, I'm quite caucasian.


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