So a while ago Undeadcourier made a post about how all of their couriers are Mexican because they never see good rep in media, and that got me thinking about how I've thought about making ocs of Mexican and other underrepresented cultural descent, but I'm always worried about accidentally doing something bad, because I'm a white guy from the middle of America and I'm afraid I may do something insensitive by accident. I'm kinda asking if it's an okay thing to try to do? (Every time I try to (1/2)
(2/2) (Every time I try to send a similar ask to them I feel really anxious and kinda dumb for needing to ask so I delete the ask but I get really anxious when I think about it so I'm coming to you because I've asked dumb stuff to you before and I'm hoping it'll be okay if I send it through you)
Hooboy! I definitely don't mind you asking but it is a complicated subject!
So, I'm also white and I have a number of white OCs and OCs of color. I don't think there's anything inherently bad about white people creating characters of color -- in fact there's a blog here on Tumblr, @writingwithcolor , that's dedicated to the purpose of helping people vet ideas they're having for characters from marginalized groups they don't necessarily belong to and learn more about those groups from people actually within the group, so I recommend checking them out! You can send in questions you have about characterization ideas, or search their blog (I recommend doing that first) to see if someone's already asked and see responses and discussion from people who are actually a part of that group.
That said, here's some things I keep in mind as a white person when creating non-white characters:
1) We have to confront and acknowledge prejudices and racism we've been raised on. As a white guy raised right in the Midwest/the Bible Belt, I grew up around bigotry and racism. As a white adult in the US I'm still bombarded with negative stereotypes in portrayals of poc in the media, not all of which I'm able to recognize immediately because I'm not the person impacted by them. Unlearning that is an ongoing and deliberate process and if we are going to write characters of color, we have to be ready to interrogate our own ideas constantly, ask ourselves "is this a stereotype, or does it carry a negative racial subtext," ask others (and not just other white people) for opinions and criticisms.
2) Not all stories are made equal when applied to other races, ethnicities, and cultures. As a personal example, I tend to explore a lot of troubled parent-child relationships, absentee parents/single parent households, etc with my characters. I do this because I had an abusive father who was absent from the latter half of my life, and my relationship with my mom -- though loving -- has gone through a lot of strain because of the clash between my queer gender and sexual identity VS her prejudice based in her Baptist beliefs. These are very personal topics to me that I externalize and examine safely through fictional characters. Nearly all of my OCs have a complicated relationship with their parents or a parent who isn't around.
But even though I come to it from an honest place, there is a chance of it coming off as some pretty shitty, racist subtext if I apply that to non-white characters without care and analysis.
My OC Ezra Walker is biracial, and his father was a shitty person who wasn't around when he was growing up, because I relate to that. So when I was creating his parents I realized his father has to be white. "Shitty, absentee black father" is a negative racial stereotype that permeates the media and white perceptions of black families and black men in particular. The story of Ezra's family would take on a completely different, completely racist subtext if you changed it to "Black man is a user who tries to swindle his white gf, leaves her to raise his son alone when he's caught and flees, is never a father to the kid." Like holy shit! Oh boy! That'd be pretty fucked up! Yikes!
Instead Isaiah Walker is a white man. Ezra was raised in a healthy household by his mother, a black woman, and her two brothers, both of whom have spouses and children of their own that they're there for as healthy, supportive, fully present father figures, while also being surrogate father figures and role models to Ezra. I went out of my way to avert the stereotype with Ezra's family because I was conscious of how my usual subject matter of Bad/Absent Parents would change subtext when applied to poc even if I was only doing it because it was a personal experience in my white family.
3) We have to accept criticism and feedback, and be prepared that it may not be nice, and it doesn't have to be. If you screw up and a stereotype you didn't realize was a stereotype or some bad subtext slips past the radar, someone might correct you. We have to be ready to listen, apologize, accept the criticism, and immediately work to change what was wrong.
And the criticism may be none-too-polite -- sometimes, although it can be white people doing it, it might be someone from the group you've portrayed badly. It would be nice to be approached with some benefit of the doubt and told in a kind and constructive way "hey that's not so great" but... white people as a whole have kind of squandered what patience many poc are willing to have for us.
And even if it sucks and it hurts to be yelled at, you gotta look at things from their side. You might not be the first person they've seen stereotyping their ethnicity and culture this week. They're worn down, they're exhausted, they're angry, they're tired of us doing this and they have a right to be! And when we're called out, many of us go on the defensive, start making excuses, start shoring up a wall of sycophants around us to protect us and say we did nothing wrong -- so that person may have a lot of bad experiences telling them there's no reason to trust we have good intentions, nor that we're going to be open to acknowledging our mistakes and trying to make it up. They don't have to be nice.
It may hurt but the tone of that conversation may change pretty quickly if instead of denying you could have done something wrong or getting defensive, you respond with humility and open-mindedness. "I'm sorry I hurt you. I did not think about that, or realize I was perpetuating a stereotype. I was not sensitive to that. Thank you for telling me so that I can learn from this, re-examine my work, and start to change, and not repeat this in the future."
If you're confused you may end up having to research what they're talking about. Ask them politely to clarify and help you understand, as someone who genuinely wants to learn and grow and prevent this in the future. Or ask, "would you be willing to give me any resources to educate myself on this, or what sort of terms can I use to Google this subject and do more research into what you've told me?"
Be prepared to make revisions. Don't let "I'll fix it" just be words. Per the above, if you mess up and get called out, be prepared to make changes. Some might seem drastic. You may not even be told -- you may come across information on your own or realize something you created has problematic parts or subtext. You have to be ready to say "okay, this was a bad idea, so what do I need to change?"
4) Do research! Learn about your character's culture, take in content from people of that culture, ask questions, study up. Find out what people of that culture feel white people most often need to start doing or stop doing when portraying their culture and ethnicity.
But always keep in mind that you are not an authority on that culture and you can't speak for it. The goal of researching other ethnic groups and their cultures should be to show that that's their culture, to embrace it as a part of who they are instead of sweeping it under the rug to just have a character who's non-white for the aesthetic. But it should never be for the sake of positioning yourself as an authority who can write about those cultures.
There's a fine line we need to walk between not shying away from letting characters of color be clearly, unabashedly of their own culture -- saying where they're from, leaving nothing implied -- and not trying to write about that culture.
It's the difference between acknowledging your Mexican character's daughter or younger sister has a fiesta de quince años coming up, VS trying to, as a white person, write a story about what it's like to be a quinceañera and to be growing up into a young woman in Mexican culture. One's cute and acknowledges the characters' culture and the importance of their culture in their lives, one's bad and speaks over and for the people for whom that's their lived experience, when it's not yours. Your characters' culture is a part of their lives that should be embraced, but don't position it in the central story or conflict where you're inevitably making a statement about it.
A story where the central conflict is a character trying to save the Mojave when the character is also shown to be unambiguously Chinese and embraces their culture, is inherently different from a story where the central conflict is what Chinese culture represents and means to a Chinese person in the Mojave. If that makes sense.
I hope that helps and isn't too intimidating. It can be a lot but... white people have made a lot of bad art that includes poc. If we want to make good art that includes poc, we carry the burden of responsibility to educate ourselves on what makes the bad art bad and what we need to do to portray poc sensitively.
And by all means, if any poc want to weigh in and add to or correct anything I've said here, you're more than welcome.
