Writing Race
Pitfalls and Anxieties

I remember a call for submission going out from Jolie du Pre on a "Women of Colour" anthology— and I just didn't feel capable or qualified to write main characters of other races. I felt like I would be appropriating— taking someone else's story. Or worse, objectifying someone for their race.

Especially in erotica, I'm labouring under the fear that I'll promote objectification. But, if I truly believe that underneath our skins we're all one (and I do), then where is the problem?

I've never written about Africa. It's a continent I've studiously avoided. For one thing, I've never been there, and it's huge—there are so many different cultures—I'm really hesitant to take it on and write a narrative in that environment. I read stuff from people like bell hooks (yup, she studiously writes her name in lowercase) and it makes me feel like I have no business at all describing an African or African American experience of any sort, much less a sexual one.

I'd be interested in anyone else's take on this subject.   —Remittance Girl

Fiction writing is great. You can make up almost anything.   —Ivana Trump

Interested in this topic? 
Follow the Participation image and share your thoughts with us.

From Keziah Hill
This is such a hard one. I agree that the cultural context of characters is mostly the interesting bit, but I don't entirely want to avoid a physical description, particularly if the race or look of the person in question is to me exotic or unusual or otherwise important to the erotic desire of the protagonist who may be desiring them (god! does that make sense?)

I quite like people being described as food. Some one described as having skin like dark honey (to use a common example) sounds both erotic and lickable to me which may be the effect the writer wants.

From Joel A. Nichols
To me, writing is fundamentally description: a writers tries to describe stuff to a reader to evoke an emotional response. And it's easier to describe stuff when you've actually experienced it. So it's not your own racial/ethnic identification that qualifies you [a white person] to describe a Black person or experience, but rather the experiences you have had with African Americans or among African Americans...not how dominant media describes those experiences and people, not how American society defines them, but rather through real interactions with the people/things/ideas you are trying so hard to describe as clearly and originally as possible to evoke an emotional response.

I'm not saying that you have to literally "see" everything you write about and only write about what you know. The concerns are somewhat different in speculative fiction, where the writer can exercise absolute control over the world. So describing a made up "race" or culture doesn't necessarily rely on the rules of our society, but rather one the writer has made up. But if you can't describe what you are writing about as specifically as possible, you aren't evoking an emotional response as effectively as you could.

From Ellen Tevault
I have written some stories with other races in them. In fact, Jolie rejected my story. Hopefully it wasn't because I didn't develop my characters beyond their race/ethnicity. I don't know if I missed the mark in developing my characters or if the editors shied away from the obvious racial tension underlying within the story.

The funny thing is when I share my stories with my friends of color they sigh and say they wished more stories were available with characters like them in them. They say the only stories with black characters are too far one way or the other. Too gangster or too upper class. There aren't enough stories for those in the middle, who may struggle to pay their bills, may not always do the right thing, but are good people, etc. It's a shame.

I do have trouble finding the right words to describe the skin color. My African American characters are always cinnamon, mocha, or chocolate. Like someone else said "Food." The chicana in Houston Heat Wave, which will be published in Lesbian Travelrotica from Alyson, is described as olive skinned.

In a local writing group one time, an African American writer read a story of hers, and I was so impressed at how she described the various shades of skin color. When I complimented her on it and let her know that it was a weakness in my own writing for my characters of color, she became offended. I meant it as a compliment, but that isn't how she took it. 

Race is a tough issue to write about. I'm a white chick who grew up on welfare in a poor, racially diverse neighborhood, and I still struggle with it. I have friends who run the gamut in colors, class, educational backgrounds, etc, but it doesn't make it any easier.

From Rose B. Thorny
I wouldn't touch writing about another race with a barge pole.

Why, you ask? Is it because I'm white and couldn't possibly imagine what it's like to be anything else? Nope. Is it because I don't believe that the gamut of emotions and emotional experiences are the same for all homo sapiens regardless of race? Nope. Is it because I don't know enough people of other races to feel qualified to include them in a story? Nope.

The reason I won't include, as a major character, anyone who isn't white is because I am utterly afraid of inadvertently insulting someone and being labeled at best an insensitive idiot and at worst a racist bitch. 

I feel like I'm between a rock and a hard place when it comes to race, so I think I'll just stick to white people as main characters. No one ever seems to take issue with generalizing, stereotyping, and insulting white people in books, so I feel a lot less stressed about anything I say (either positive or negative) about anyone in my stories as long as they're white. If I make a character of another race positive, I'll be called patronizing; if I make that character negative, I'll be called a racist; if I make them a mixture of each (like myself), I'll be probably be advised that I'm not cognizant of the ethnic differences. I mean there are even black celebrities who are accused of being "too white," whatever that means. I don't even know what that means. If I don't know what that means, how can I do anything but walk on eggs if I choose to write about characters who aren't exactly like me as far as race is concerned?

I don't know if anyone else feels this way, but when it comes to this particular issue, I'll just stay with what feels safe, rather than risk having myself labeled as ignorant and racist. 

From Kathleen Bradean
I prefer to describe a character on a cultural level. After all, a person of Japanese descent who grows up in and goes on to become the President of a South American country is not culturally the same as a person of Japanese descent who lives his entire life in Japan. And it's possible that the ex-President's political rival is of mixed Spanish and indigenous people's ancestry, but has a skin color similar to the ex-President's. Both can have black hair. Both can have brown eyes. Beyond that, what does skin color tell you? Not much. 

Education, religion, intelligence, pure luck, personality... these are the things that make a person. Which I suppose means that I believe that even culture doesn't explain the wide variation in who we are. People are people are people - my universal human. But every person is absolutely unique in thought and perception and experience. I'm rambling. Too much philosophy in my mental diet lately.

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