Building Character Diversity

Locke said:

So, I sort of feel like I'm between a rock and a hard place; either the MC is "default white" or I'm contriving a race for the sake of diversity (which I suppose I am in fact doing).

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As to the latter, I don't see it as any more "contrived" than anything else you've consciously decided on writing into the book. The fact that it takes place in a city, for example. That's just a choice. If I write a book about a great white shark who goes on a mission to rescue humans from their underwater cages, it's not really "contrived" if I decide that shark hangs out around the Farallon Islands as opposed to say, South Africa or something, is it? I mean, yes, the thing I choose will have implications, and it's worth thinking about, but one is not more contrived than the other, I don't think...

Right? Iunno. Just a feeling.

Kolta said:

This. It's not a cliff people need to gently be steered away from.

Singling out any one writer as a racist for not meeting some special quota would be absurd.

But the providing of encouragement to a writer already showing an interest in the subject somehow being interpreted as a demand for everyone to be more inclusive in their writing, or be branded racist, is just as ridiculous.

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Agreed.

It is, to me, disingenous that someone asks and is worried about how to add diversity/write diverse characters, only to be steered away like a toddler from a hot stove. That they feel the need to expand their skills in this way should be encouraged, because it is something they want to do.

I'm certainly not suggesting white characters aren't valid. They're no less valid then POC, LGBTIQA, disabled etc. characters, but often people say to have a reason for them to be non-able bodied, white, or straight. We don't ask why a character is white, straight, and without disability. Why should we demand a character who doesn't fit the norm in one or more ways needs a reason to exist, when we do not do the same for supposedly "normal" characters?

This entry, from NK Jemisin's blog, does a good job of showing how things that can seem small to some of us will have a more negative impact on other readers (well, her example is re a video game, but I think it applies to fiction too).

http://nkjemisin.com/2014/11/your-groundbreaking-is-not-my-groundbreaking/#comment-24406

buzhidao said:

As to the latter, I don't see it as any more "contrived" than anything else you've consciously decided on writing into the book. The fact that it takes place in a city, for example. That's just a choice. If I write a book about a great white shark who goes on a mission to rescue humans from their underwater cages, it's not really "contrived" if I decide that shark hangs out around the Farallon Islands as opposed to say, South Africa or something, is it? I mean, yes, the thing I choose will have implications, and it's worth thinking about, but one is not more contrived than the other, I don't think...

Right? Iunno. Just a feeling.

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Agree here. Everything we do in writing is contrived.

Have you considered letting chance select for you?

When I began my WIP I couldn't decide whether my MC should be male or female. The character's sex made no difference from a plot perspective since the MC is thrust into a bizarre situation shortly after birth and would have ended up there regardless of sex.

I decided that since there's basically a 50/50 chance of a baby being born male or female, I'd flip a coin. *Flip* Congratulations to me! It's a boy!

You could get some dice, assign whatever characteristics you're considering to the different values, and go nuts. Heck you could even take the demographics of your fictional city into account and calculate the odds of a given individual walking down the street having a particular characteristic.

rwm4768 said:

Write well-rounded characters. Don't make them caricatures. So you have a crazy homeless person. Crazy people have backstories, often quite interesting ones, and their lives aren't completely defined by their craziness, just as people of any race, gender, or sexuality are not defined by that label.

Also keep in mind that some people will complain no matter how well you portray a character like this. Your job is to write the character well enough that reasonable people will see no problem. Don't worry about unreasonable people. You can't please them.

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QFT. The only diversity among characters that really matters is personality, goals, mannerisms, etc. I hate reading books with characters that are carbon copies of each other. Have you written a story with a female character? Did you have any trouble writing her because you are a man? I have written several stories with northern white female protagonist, and I'm a black man from Alabama. Just write your characters as believable people with dreams, goals, emotions, etc.

Your black homeless character with mental illness is believeable already; a lot of homeless people have mental illness. I'd be more worried about accurately depicting a person with mental illness than his or her race. People with schizophrenia act like people with schizophrenia regardless of race. People with hopes, goals, and dreams act like people with hopes, goals, and dreams.

Read books written by blacks for blacks, watch TV shows with black MCs and supporting characters. Don't worry about offending people. Like mentioned earlier, you can't please everybody.

Okay, but while there's been a lot of debate and talk of what not to do, I haven't seen any kind of consensus to answer the OP's question. I've been following and I'd really like an answer.

I've got a short I'm revising, and I could easily make the protag black, or any other race, for that matter, but black came to mind for some reason. She's a teenage driver taking her driving test on her sixteenth birthday, her biggest concern is that if she doesn't pass, some catty classmate is going to text it all over the school, but in the middle of the test, her driving instructor shapeshifts to a human-like chupacabra. It's flash and told in first person.

I, too, would like to write with different ethnicities as my MCs. But I often write in first person, and I've never seen any consensus on how, despite reading many threads on it.

She could glimpse her face in the rear-view mirror, but that's totally cliche. She could see her own hand holding the car keys, but who really notices their own skin color? There's no reason for her to think about being black.

I could have the driving instructor be non-white, but then I'm a white writer with a minority turning into a monster. I would be so screwed.

I would genuinely like an answer to this. I write lots of shorts, and that's typically where I explore new things in my writing. But this has totally defeated me.

How do you gracefully indicate race in first-person shorts? Or even in limited third?

Hmm, how about introducing angst about her race into the worry she feels about failing? Is she at a school where the other students are mostly white? Do they ever tease her about her race? Or maybe her mom and dad are really worried about her starting to drive because of black teens being harassed by cops sometimes. So she's only going to be allowed to get her license if she can get a perfect score. Or maybe she notices the instructor staring at her and wonders if it's because she's black.

I don't know, because it's something you have to build into your story and situation. Not saying you turn it into an issue piece, but it might be possible to slip something in that character thinks about in passing at least.

Or you could just have her look at another character and describe some aspect of her appearance in a way that gets her own normal across.

Mr. Ferguson has that kind of ultra-pale white person skin where you can see all the veins, like blue worms crawling up his wrists.

The real question here is what race is your character and does it impact on their life? Surely you know them, understand them, have every aspect of their personality pinned down. I wouldn't include an MC that I didn't know and understand, including anything about what makes them 'them', even if it's not vital to the story.

Is their race important to them? Is it important to others? Does it affect them in the context of the story? What impact does their ethnicity have? If none of these things matter, then don't bother. If they are vital to the MC and his voice, then they should be reflected.

If you're worrying about whether or not to show diversity, then I'd say you're worrying about the wrong thing. It doesn't matter. Worry about not knowing your character well enough. The MC will tell you whether diversity is important, not a bunch of other writers with varying ideologies about what constitutes racism!

CathleenT said:

How do you gracefully indicate race in first-person shorts? Or even in limited third?

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If race is important to the story, you won't have to struggle to make it apparent.

I've written short stories about street vendors, homeless people, murderers, rapists, businessmen, schoolboys, and more. They all feature Indian characters because that's where they're set. Indian people comprise diverse ethnicities that are often related to their religious affiliations, but I don't think I ever sat down and decided, "This character must be X ethnicity," before I started writing.

A lot of people here have already touched on the truth about writing with diversity. First of all, write real. How do you create believable Anglo characters? Well, essentially, you know them. That's pretty much the rule for writing characters of other races, ethnicity, or ancestral origins.

My son has this wonderful line for people who talk "African Americans are mistreated and African Americans are... blah, blah, blah."
He will ask, "Which one is African American - Beyoncé, Charlize Theron, or Angelina Jolie?"
The correct answer is... Charlize Theron! He loves to point out that Charlize Theron is from Africa, born in Benoni, Gauten, South Africa. She became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 2007. Which makes her... African American!

People tend to look at things like ethnicity with blinders on. They only see them in two dimensions. Like they see ALL A-A people as being black and it just ain't so!

The 'trick', if there is one, is to simply see your characters as people. They all have history and hopes and dreams and disappointments. They have experiences with the people and the world in which they live and that is what molds them. And all of those things make up the person they become, just like 'real' people. Try to see all of your characters as 'real' people and that will help your readers to see them that way as well. And, in that respect, it doesn't matter what their racial background or ethnicity may be.

TheWordsmith said:

A lot of people here have already touched on the truth about writing with diversity. First of all, write real. How do you create believable Anglo characters? Well, essentially, you know them. That's pretty much the rule for writing characters of other races, ethnicity, or ancestral origins.

My son has this wonderful line for people who talk "African Americans are mistreated and African Americans are... blah, blah, blah."
He will ask, "Which one is African American - Beyoncé, Charlize Theron, or Angelina Jolie?"
The correct answer is... Charlize Theron! He loves to point out that Charlize Theron is from Africa, born in Benoni, Gauten, South Africa. She became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 2007. Which makes her... African American!

People tend to look at things like ethnicity with blinders on. They only see them in two dimensions. Like they see ALL A-A people as being black and it just ain't so!

The 'trick', if there is one, is to simply see your characters as people. They all have history and hopes and dreams and disappointments. They have experiences with the people and the world in which they live and that is what molds them. And all of those things make up the person they become, just like 'real' people. Try to see all of your characters as 'real' people and that will help your readers to see them that way as well. And, in that respect, it doesn't matter what their racial background or ethnicity may be.

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Clever son, but he forgets one important thing. African Americans are the descendants of African slaves brought to the US. Nigerians, Kenyans, Jaimaicans etc., they're not going to call themselves African American whether they're citizens or not. Also, the logical and non-trick answer to his question is Beyoncé.

Just to add something extra for the OP to agonize over (), the "crazy homeless guy" is often considered an overused negative stereotype in its own right. To be honest, I'm not sure you have to worry too much about diversity with such a character - both the homeless and the mentally ill are pretty marginalized members of society already. Were I in your position, I would be more concerned with portraying the character in a nuanced and sympathetic way while steering away the old comic stand-by of the insane, cackling bum guzzling down cheap hooch and marinating in his own filth (not saying you are guilty of this, of course, just that its a pretty pervasive image society has of the homeless).

I can understand your dilemma, though. Certain ethnic groups sadly do fall victim to being stereotyped as homeless addicts, but when you find yourself that sort of "rock and a hard place" situation, your best bet is, IMO, just to accept that you will probably be criticized regardless of what you write, and go with your gut. White or black, gay or straight, christian or atheist, focus on making your character and those with whom he (she?) interacts feel like real, sympathetic, flawed human beings in a setting that rings true.

How many other characters are in this story? Are they all mostly other homeless people, or more well-off. If you're worried that, say, an African-American homeless man could be taken the wrong way, then they could always have a unpleasant altercation with a rich, entitled snob who also happens to be African-American. Depending on where the story set, the neighborhood could be almost exclusively one ethnicity or another, or far more mixed - and in places that suffer from serious racial divides, its not unusual for the well-off to be primarily of one ethnicity and those in poverty to heavily comprised of another. Some research on the demographics of your chosen location could go some way to easing your concerns here.