Question about PoC characters written by non PoCs

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LJ Hall

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I was reading an interesting selection of quotes from different PoC writers about this issue: are white writers co-opting the voices of PoCs when they choose to write stories about them, knowing that they statistically have a better likelihood of getting published than PoC writers do? Or is ANY good representation of PoC characters to be considered a good thing, no matter who writes it?

I'm wondering what people here think.
 

Sam Argent

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No. Writing about PoCs is not co-opting anyone's culture. I've never seen the logic in that argument because people steal language, music, religion, food, movies, clothes, etc. from each other all over the world. But, there is a legitimate problem with PoC authors getting shelved in back corners in book sections and that problem won't be solved by banning everyone else from touching those subjects.
 

LJ Hall

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Sam - not co-opting their culture, co-opting their VOICE. I'm operating under the assumption that there's a finite amount of books about PoC characters that a publisher will put out or an agent will rep at any one time. How do writers of color feel about white authors taking up so much of that finite space?

Of course the problem is deeper than an author and a book - author diversity is an issue at the agent and publisher level. I just wonder if it's a source of resentment or if people tend to be glad that the books are being published no matter who's writing them.

I know there's no right or wrong answer here, I was just looking for opinions about it.
 

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Most of the discussions on this assume the portrayals will be bad, because it's usually true. We don't really know how it'd impact things if all we had is good portrayals from white writers and portrayals from non-white/PoC.

But in the world we're in, white writers usually get it horribly wrong. That's a much bigger issue to me than worrying about those who get it right. I also think it ignores stuff like erasure, which can as bad or worse than a poor portrayal.
 

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I was reading an interesting selection of quotes from different PoC writers about this issue: are white writers co-opting the voices of PoCs when they choose to write stories about them, knowing that they statistically have a better likelihood of getting published than PoC writers do? Or is ANY good representation of PoC characters to be considered a good thing, no matter who writes it?

I'm wondering what people here think.

It would be helpful if you could bring in some of those quotes for us to discuss more specifically!

It's my personal opinion that any increase in the amount of well-done PoC main characters (not sidekicks, BFFs, and magical helpers) moves us towards a world of literary equality (one in which it's not an issue whether a character is a PoC or not, because all groups of people have good and proportional representation).

But since even well-intentioned white authors frequently do a terrible job representing PoC in their work, it's a problem. I don't think anyone could make a rational argument that they should completely avoid writing PoC. But there's a heavy responsibility to get it right!
 

Sam Argent

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Sam - not co-opting their culture, co-opting their VOICE. I'm operating under the assumption that there's a finite amount of books about PoC characters that a publisher will put out or an agent will rep at any one time. How do writers of color feel about white authors taking up so much of that finite space?

Of course the problem is deeper than an author and a book - author diversity is an issue at the agent and publisher level. I just wonder if it's a source of resentment or if people tend to be glad that the books are being published no matter who's writing them.

I know there's no right or wrong answer here, I was just looking for opinions about it.

Ah. It's just as hard for me to understand stealing the voices of PoC because a lot of writers have different stories. Your examples about limited space for PoC stories show that there is a problem in the publishing industry and not with writers.

I did see a lot of that resentment when The Help became a box office hit. It was funny because I heard a lot of college-aged people tear that movie apart, but my grandmother and other people who spent most of their lives cleaning houses loved it. It wasn't an accurate portrayal and steered away from some of the grimmer aspects of that life, but my grandmother felt like it gave her a voice that reached millions of people.
 

LJ Hall

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It would be helpful if you could bring in some of those quotes for us to discuss more specifically!

Argh, I'm trying. I went link-surfing the other day and found a page that was basically authors of color being asked about the issue and splitting down the middle. As soon as I hunt it down again I'll put the link up here.

I started off my web-surfing at this Tumblr post, which is an extraordinarily good collection of links to articles about problematic writing, writing the 'other' character, avoiding stereotypes, etc. I think this is a good page to send people to if they have general questions about writing groups that they themselves aren't a part of.
 

Kitty27

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I am of two minds about this.

One,it is always good to see more diversity and to see it done well. Most of the time,utter fail happens as seen with The Help,The Secret Life Of Bees and The Hunger Games and countless others.

Two,there MUST be writers of color in the mix and we must be given our seats at the table. It is nice that non POC writers want to bring diversity to the table. The danger comes when it becomes acceptable for ONLY them to do so and writers of color are drowned out or our POV viewed as not needed. Our voices are just as important and needed.

The reason why publishing gives so few writers of color the chance to write about our respective cultures and POC characters is due to racist assumptions that:
a)We don't read aka the book will be a financial loss. Or we only read in very narrow categories. This is especially true for Black readers concerning erotica and urban fiction. It translates into all we want is sex and violence.

b)Non POC readers won't give the book a chance because they can't relate or are uncomfortable with the subject matter. We,as writers of color tend to be blunt about issues our characters might encounter and don't sugar coat shit. That's why the The Help can become a hit movie but Incidents In The Life Of A Slave Girl will NEVER hit the big screen. Part of the reason for The Help backlash is because the story has been told a thousand times and done better by Black writers without the fairytale sheen and white savior trope. Bernice McFadden wrote a very good article about this.

In short,diversity in fiction is needed. But writers of color are especially needed. There is most definitely an issue as to who is writing the characters. My teen-age cousins and all of their friends have zero interest in the latest YA crazes. I mean,none. They were especially pissed at the depiction of Rue and blacks in The Hunger Games. So they don't read the books or see the movies because of how the author wrote the characters and yes,the race of the author comes into play just as it does in what I previously mentioned. They flat out told me the White lady doesn't know what she's talking about and if she writes Black characters like that,it is a reflection of how she feels about Black people in real life.

This probably isn't true,but words have power. How a non POC person writes characters of color will be judged and dissected thoroughly. This is why many writers who mean well and want to try stay completely away from diversity.

Sam,LJHall is completely right. If we cannot tell our own stories and see success,but someone else who has never lived the culture or truly understands it,can,it becomes a problem and that needs to change.
 

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They were especially pissed at the depiction of Rue and blacks in The Hunger Games.

What do they find wrong with the depiction, if you don't mind my asking? I haven't read or watched Hunger Games, and the only color-related issue I'd heard of was racists complaining about the existence of black actors.

Your second to last statement is spot-on. That extra level of judgement often makes me feel I can't write explicitly non-white characters naturally. If I give them flaws, I feel pressure to research those flaws and make sure they aren't part of a stereotype. Too often, that ends up reducing the character to a level of bland I can't obtain otherwise.

I'm not sure what the solution to that is, except maybe with more character diversity overall it wouldn't be such an issue. The extra judgement might be in large part because there are just so few non-white characters to judge, so the personality of each one matters more. If that makes sense.

Undoubtedly more writers of color are needed.
 

Sam Argent

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I am of two minds about this.

One,it is always good to see more diversity and to see it done well. Most of the time,utter fail happens as seen with The Help,The Secret Life Of Bees and The Hunger Games and countless others.

Keep in mind that I haven't read/seen The Secret Life of Bees, and my knowledge about The Help and Hunger Games is only from the movies. The Help was flawed but it wasn't an utter failure. It succeeded in the one piece of advice I always hear: know your audience. In the US, the general audience is squeamish about realistic suffering and over the top violence like Tarantino goes down easier.

I think The Help could have escaped the controversy and still appealed to a wide audience if it had halved its characters(including Skeeter), and spent more time developing Abilieen, Minny, and Celia.

Two,there MUST be writers of color in the mix and we must be given our seats at the table. It is nice that non POC writers want to bring diversity to the table. The danger comes when it becomes acceptable for ONLY them to do so and writers of color are drowned out or our POV viewed as not needed. Our voices are just as important and needed.

The reason why publishing gives so few writers of color the chance to write about our respective cultures and POC characters is due to racist assumptions that:
a)We don't read aka the book will be a financial loss. Or we only read in very narrow categories. This is especially true for Black readers concerning erotica and urban fiction. It translates into all we want is sex and violence.

Yes, I do wish there were was more encouragement for PoC writers to branch out into different genres, and I hate that there are writers I know who are given advice to use pseudonyms if their name sounds ethnic.

b)Non POC readers won't give the book a chance because they can't relate or are uncomfortable with the subject matter. We,as writers of color tend to be blunt about issues our characters might encounter and don't sugar coat shit. That's why the The Help can become a hit movie but Incidents In The Life Of A Slave Girl will NEVER hit the big screen. Part of the reason for The Help backlash is because the story has been told a thousand times and done better by Black writers without the fairytale sheen and white savior trope. Bernice McFadden wrote a very good article about this.

I wouldn't hold my breath on that either. The first difference between the two movies is that The Help is fiction and Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl isn't. Sugar-coated fiction whose darker elements was not letting a maid poop pales in comparison to a biography about real fear and dehumanization. The other difference is that there would be harsher backlash if someone screwed up Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. The only movie production company I could trust to pull it off might be HBO.

I bring up HBO because this isn't a problem restricted to skin color. Movies depicting war and genocide that make it to the big screen water down the atrocities. I couldn't stand the first fifteen minutes of Hotel Rwanda, but I was sucked into Sometimes in April after five. There are always going to be better and and more accurate books/movies that get less press.

In short,diversity in fiction is needed. But writers of color are especially needed. There is most definitely an issue as to who is writing the characters. My teen-age cousins and all of their friends have zero interest in the latest YA crazes. I mean,none. They were especially pissed at the depiction of Rue and blacks in The Hunger Games. So they don't read the books or see the movies because of how the author wrote the characters and yes,the race of the author comes into play just as it does in what I previously mentioned. They flat out told me the White lady doesn't know what she's talking about and if she writes Black characters like that,it is a reflection of how she feels about Black people in real life.

I didn't see any problems with Rue, and if her character was exactly the same in the book, then it sounds like nitpicking. She wasn't a stereotype, and I prefer it if authors don't think that all black people sound/act the same. The other characters weren't developed enough for me to feel anything about them.

This probably isn't true,but words have power. How a non POC person writes characters of color will be judged and dissected thoroughly. This is why many writers who mean well and want to try stay completely away from diversity.

Sam,LJHall is completely right. If we cannot tell our own stories and see success,but someone else who has never lived the culture or truly understands it,can,it becomes a problem and that needs to change.

I don't know how to change it. I know one place to start is with publishing companies. From little things to big things, they influence future writers and one of their continuous mistakes is whitewashing covers. It doesn't send out a positive message to writers or readers.
 

Mr Flibble

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Deleted my message cos I couldn't get it go right and didn;t want to come across as an arse

This is why many writers who mean well and want to try stay completely away from diversity.
I think that's very true, but it isn't really the answer. I wish I knew what the answer was.

Okay, let's try this:

As a white writer, what can I, personally, do to help the issue (other than buy POC writers in say SFF)? Or is that the point, I can't really? Suggestions welcome!
 
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I feel awful about the publishing and movie industry on this issue. As a writer and just regarding writing, I find the situation easier. Of course I write PoC characters, if I know them. Why wouldn't I? They are a huge part of my life, and so it would be very weird to keep them out of my writing.

If I don't know them, I'm not likely to write about them until I do. I'm just more comfortable writing what I know.

If my work got picked over a PoC because I am white, I'd be pissed with the industry. I don't think I should stop telling the stories I tell, though. I think what a writer writes about is kind of a sacred thing, if that makes any sense. You can't stop me from writing the stories I am compelled to tell; I'm a writer! It's just what we do!

Now, there will always be people who criticize every work. I'd be afraid if I got no support from the PoC communities, but I'd also expect lots of different opinions. As long as the folks I know and trust don't think I'm clueless, I'm good, personally.

If you don't know any PoC, I can't speak to that. That's completely foreign to me. I'd have a really hard time writing about you, lol.
 

LJ Hall

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If we cannot tell our own stories and see success,but someone else who has never lived the culture or truly understands it,can,it becomes a problem and that needs to change.

Thanks, Kitty27, I was hoping you'd weigh in on this.

After reading everyone's words so far, I think I'm a little clearer on where I stand on the issue. (Full discretion, I'm of Arabic descent, which on a census is ticked under 'white' but in reality it ain't that easy.)

Anyway, I think this is where I'm landing on this issue: including Black characters in my work is great (provided I show proper respect and do research). But me telling the story of the Black experience with those character would be way less fine. Same with other characters of color from other ethnicities besides my own.

Am I close to the mark there? I mean, having characters of color filling the world of my YA urban fantasy novel is entirely different from writing a novel about the Black experience in Jim Crow-era Alabama.

Then again authors also run the risk of writing flat, tepid characters without any sense of a deeper culture or heritage, and then describing them as Black or Asian or olive-skinned or whatever just to try to give their work some flavor. Then you get PoCs who really aren't, like the author was just tying to fill up some Diversity Bingo card or something.
 

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Am I close to the mark there? I mean, having characters of color filling the world of my YA urban fantasy novel is entirely different from writing a novel about the Black experience in Jim Crow-era Alabama.

I was thinking something similar earlier, but wasn't sure how to express it, thanks!
 
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Polenth

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After reading everyone's words so far, I think I'm a little clearer on where I stand on the issue. (Full discretion, I'm of Arabic descent, which on a census is ticked under 'white' but in reality it ain't that easy.)

Bear in mind some people want to classify Mexicans with indigenous heritage as white, so they'd no longer benefit from anti-discrimination laws. That pretty much sums up what legal whiteness means. Generally speaking, non-white/PoC communities are aware of that and aren't going to put a lot of weight in what the law declares to be whiteness.

In other words, though Middle Eastern, North African, South Asians and some mixed race people are all Caucasian, they're not what people mean when they say white. They're mainly talking about those of Northern European descent.

If you're in a situation where you're treated as non-white/PoC, you're already a step ahead, as you can use those experiences to understand the things other groups face. Though of course, that extra step isn't a guarantee of anything. We can all end up making a mess of it when we write about other groups, which is why it's important to get readers from that group if you can.
 

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I am wondering what would be gained by forcing me to only write characters of my own race (gender, nationality, sex, orientation, religion, age?).

My stories would immediately become sterile and uninteresting.

Or would I be allowed, due to my 1/8 known non-white heritage to have 1/8th PoC characters. And could they be over any color or would they have to be Australian Aborigine due to my family background?

Honestly, I will write the characters my stories call for. If I do a bad job of it, I expect to be called on it. That's the bottom line.
 

LJ Hall

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If you're in a situation where you're treated as non-white/PoC, you're already a step ahead, as you can use those experiences to understand the things other groups face. Though of course, that extra step isn't a guarantee of anything. We can all end up making a mess of it when we write about other groups, which is why it's important to get readers from that group if you can.

I feel a little like I experienced some of both worlds. My life and the things that I noticed about people around me and my family entirely changed after 9/11. So I don't think I could write well (without research) about growing up with any sense of otherness, because I don't feel that it was a major issue when I was a child. But I can talk very much first person about, say, the humiliation of every portrayal of people like me on TV being cartoonish and negative and hateful. Or the nervousness of walking into a place and knowing that you're instantly on the radars of everyone around you.

Then again, from the viewpoint of someone from a different ethnic group those exact same situations might feel entirely different. I think there's way too much danger in complacency there, in missing the subtleties from group to group. Assuming that I know how anyone else feels is a mistake, but I know I have some things to draw from.

I think that complacent presumption is where writers go the most wrong. You get people like Victoria Foyt saying that because she had full lips as a (red-headed, pale-skinned) child, she understands the sorrow of racism and is fully allowed to be a spokesman for it. That's how you end up with a ridiculously racist book that features a white child of privilege who is supposedly a member of an underclass but who behaves and thinks like a white child of privilege.
 

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And when she did that the publisher refused the book, she self-published it and the reading publisher called her on the bizarre handling of race.

On the other hand many authors write diverse characters without any obvious fetishizing or other weirdness.
 

LJ Hall

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I am wondering what would be gained by forcing me to only write characters of my own race (gender, nationality, sex, orientation, religion, age?).

My stories would immediately become sterile and uninteresting.

Or would I be allowed, due to my 1/8 known non-white heritage to have 1/8th PoC characters. And could they be over any color or would they have to be Australian Aborigine due to my family background?

Honestly, I will write the characters my stories call for. If I do a bad job of it, I expect to be called on it. That's the bottom line.

I think that's the bottom line for me, too. There's nothing to stop anyone (and in fact there's a lot to be gained) from writing about characters of every ethnicity, class, sexual preference, etc. But people have to recognize that if they themselves aren't that particular race, etc, then they ought to do some research to make sure they're writing accurately.

I mean, you'd research taxidermy if your character did that for a living and you never did, right? So why would you think writing about someone from a completely different heritage is as easy as describing a skin color and then moving on without a thought? (That's hypothetical, BTW, I don't mean you specifically. :))

And when it comes down to writing definitive stories about the experience of a culture or background that isn't yours...maybe then you step back and let someone from that group let their own voice be heard instead.

That's where I'm coming down on this, anyway.
 

LJ Hall

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And when she did that the publisher refused the book, she self-published it and the reading publisher called her on the bizarre handling of race.

On the other hand many authors write diverse characters without any obvious fetishizing or other weirdness.

Yeah, she was kind of an extreme example. You don't see that level of willful ignorance every day.

Then again there are many PoC on these threads saying that most non-PoCs who write PoC characters miss the mark noticeably. So even if there's no fetishizing going on, there's still something wrong.
 

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What do they find wrong with the depiction, if you don't mind my asking? I haven't read or watched Hunger Games, and the only color-related issue I'd heard of was racists complaining about the existence of black actors.


Rue was depicted as coming from a district where Blacks pick fruit from trees,faced violence and it was based off Atlanta,my hometown, which is majority Blacks. This was NOT received well by them. Unfortunate implications abound with this. Then came the casting. Rue is described as having dark brown skin. In the movie,she was played by a biracial actress. I could go for days about the colorism demons in the Black community.This made them even angrier.

Your second to last statement is spot-on. That extra level of judgement often makes me feel I can't write explicitly non-white characters naturally. If I give them flaws, I feel pressure to research those flaws and make sure they aren't part of a stereotype. Too often, that ends up reducing the character to a level of bland I can't obtain otherwise.

I'm not sure what the solution to that is, except maybe with more character diversity overall it wouldn't be such an issue. The extra judgement might be in large part because there are just so few non-white characters to judge, so the personality of each one matters more. If that makes sense.

Undoubtedly more writers of color are needed.

It makes sense. It's an issue that can be hard to approach and handle.

Keep in mind that I haven't read/seen The Secret Life of Bees, and my knowledge about The Help and Hunger Games is only from the movies. The Help was flawed but it wasn't an utter failure. It succeeded in the one piece of advice I always hear: know your audience. In the US, the general audience is squeamish about realistic suffering and over the top violence like Tarantino goes down easier.

I think The Help could have escaped the controversy and still appealed to a wide audience if it had halved its characters(including Skeeter), and spent more time developing Abilieen, Minny, and Celia.

Very true,Sam. I politely disagree about The Help's appeal being broadened because of focus on Abileen and Minny. These two were nothing but thinly disguised mammies,both in the book and the film. Minny also had a dash of Sassy Neck Rolling Negress to complete the fail.



Yes, I do wish there were was more encouragement for PoC writers to branch out into different genres, and I hate that there are writers I know who are given advice to use pseudonyms if their name sounds ethnic.

It seems as if self-publishing will be the way for authors of color. Mainstream publishing is clearly not ready to provide the marketing,acceptance and cultural understanding to writers of color and their characters. The persistent myth that we don't read also won't die. We know the audience exists for our books and will buy them. So,maybe it's time to hit the digital frontier. E. Lynn Harris became a HUGE author because he took his books directly to his audience. His blueprint might be what POC writers need to follow.



I wouldn't hold my breath on that either. The first difference between the two movies is that The Help is fiction and Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl isn't. Sugar-coated fiction whose darker elements was not letting a maid poop pales in comparison to a biography about real fear and dehumanization. The other difference is that there would be harsher backlash if someone screwed up Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. The only movie production company I could trust to pull it off might be HBO.

I bring up HBO because this isn't a problem restricted to skin color. Movies depicting war and genocide that make it to the big screen water down the atrocities. I couldn't stand the first fifteen minutes of Hotel Rwanda, but I was sucked into Sometimes in April after five. There are always going to be better and and more accurate books/movies that get less press.

True. But this continued portrayal of certain eras with a fantasy gloss and White saviors irks. From Dancing With Wolves to Samurai to The Help,this tired trope will NOT die. It also gets beyond annoying to see Blacks continuously portrayed in two of the worst time frames of our history and readers sop it up with a biscuit. We get a distinct feeling that people love these stories because we were in our "place."





I don't know how to change it. I know one place to start is with publishing companies. From little things to big things, they influence future writers and one of their continuous mistakes is whitewashing covers. It doesn't send out a positive message to writers or readers.

Exactly. They can do MUCH more,especially with the rapidly changing demographics of the USA. There is a huge audience of kids of color waiting to be represented. I have always said that it will take one book to hit Twilight or HP levels of success and show the purchasing power of this group for them to publishing to finally get with it. Like it or not,money talks. The fact that this audience of readers is continuously and repeatedly ignored and when they do show up in fiction-are often completely wrong in characterization- speaks to one factor and that is racism and laziness.

Deleted my message cos I couldn't get it go right and didn;t want to come across as an arse

I think that's very true, but it isn't really the answer. I wish I knew what the answer was.

Okay, let's try this:

As a white writer, what can I, personally, do to help the issue (other than buy POC writers in say SFF)? Or is that the point, I can't really? Suggestions welcome!

Research and respect. If you want to write characters of color,these two things go a long way. Too many writers don't and it shows.

Thanks, Kitty27, I was hoping you'd weigh in on this.

After reading everyone's words so far, I think I'm a little clearer on where I stand on the issue. (Full discretion, I'm of Arabic descent, which on a census is ticked under 'white' but in reality it ain't that easy.)

Anyway, I think this is where I'm landing on this issue: including Black characters in my work is great (provided I show proper respect and do research). But me telling the story of the Black experience with those character would be way less fine. Same with other characters of color from other ethnicities besides my own.

Am I close to the mark there? I mean, having characters of color filling the world of my YA urban fantasy novel is entirely different from writing a novel about the Black experience in Jim Crow-era Alabama.

Then again authors also run the risk of writing flat, tepid characters without any sense of a deeper culture or heritage, and then describing them as Black or Asian or olive-skinned or whatever just to try to give their work some flavor. Then you get PoCs who really aren't, like the author was just tying to fill up some Diversity Bingo card or something.

Thank you. You said it exactly.

If they are writing characters of color,they should remember that in the end,we are all human beings with many of the same wants and drama in common. When it becomes the dreaded issue book is when I get very annoyed. Yes,POC have problems,but that is NOT the sum of our experience as human beings. The same should go for characters.
 
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Yup.

There's a difference between writing PoC characters and writing about the PoC experience.
 

djrashn

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Yup.

There's a difference between writing PoC characters and writing about the PoC experience.

And just because the character is a PoC, that doesn't mean the story has to be about the PoC experience.
 

Satsya

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The PoC experience is a separate topic than what I was thinking. I see it as more of a writing issue rather than a racial issue. It’s the general rule that if one is going to write a culture, they need to know the culture. Whether that means being raised in the culture or doing extensive research, the writer needs to know their subject.

And following on what Kitty said, it isn’t just about the black experience compared to white experience, as that’d be too simple. I could write about a white (European-mutt-heritage), agnostic person growing up in southern California; I don’t know squat about writing a white (German-heritage), Evangelical person growing up in the Appalachians. There are certain worries and issues that are divided along racial lines, but they’re just one part of the experience equation.
 
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