Why the fear of people of colour?

[Jabrosky]

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.

 

[psychotick]

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.

 

[ThinkerX]

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.

 

[A. E. Lowan]

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.

 

[Chilari]

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.

 

[Nihal]

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

 

[Shockley]

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

 

[CupofJoe]

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...

 

[Nihal]

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.

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.

 

[Jabrosky]

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.

 

[Legendary Sidekick]

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.)

 

[A. E. Lowan]

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.

 

[Jabrosky]

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.

 

[Michael J. Tobias]

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.