9:44am August 24, 2014

➸ If White Characters Were Described Like People Of Color In Literature

fucknofetishization:

You need to read this.

And to other white science fiction/fantasy writers (and anyone who cut their sf/f teeth reading white authors):

Be VERY careful when writing your aliens, fantasy creatures, people from exotic lands, etc - just because it doesn’t reference a race that exists in real life, doesn’t mean it isn’t racist.

It’s very, very easy to fall into the trap of using racist (especially Victorian/early 20th century) tropes to describe your aliens or fantasy races.

Just ask yourself:

Does this read like what you’d find in a rich, white Victorian explorer’s travelogue?

Would your writing be racist if it were about actual living people?

Are you actually making your people/aliens/creatures different, or are you falling back on shortcut exoticism tropes? Are you using racist tropes to communicate “alienness” or are you actually making your people alien?

More, are you basing your aliens on an actual human culture?

Depending upon the author and your perspective, it may be racist or it may not be, but nobody’s going to ever argue that it’s lazy writing.

People have lots of mixed feelings about the film “Avatar”, for example (some feel it’s outright racist, while some marginalized peoples wore the blue Na’vi makeup in their protests).

Whether you think it was racist or not… “Avatar” would’ve been so much better if Cameron hadn’t basically lazed out and just portrayed his aliens as “Native Americans IN SPACE!” (via white stereotypes of Native Americans) and written a movie that was basically “Dances with Wolves IN SPACE!” used a million colonialist tropes in portraying them.

** this is for the author perspective. I’m not talking about writing characters who in fact are portrayed as racist. There’s a difference between an individual character being a jerk/an unreliable narrator, especially if theyre not the protagonist… and the author clearly seeing the world that way.