Part of being a writer is a willingness to take risks, explore ideas and concepts that get people thinking and talking –good, bad, ugly, indifferent, doesn't matter so long as you poke the bear in the right spot. But a writer being censored simply on the basis of using a character that has a darker pigmentation? I find that difficult to believe.
Have we become so delusional in our plight as a society to be colorblind that skin tone alone denotes racism? If that is indeed the fact, I find it pathetic as fuck.
You heard me.
Speaking on the most basic of concepts here, writers describe the physical appearance of any important characters in their stories, and skin color is merely a physical attribute used in those descriptions. However, using "black guy" is by far the laziest means of describing a character, and if that's all that's given to the reader, then I highly doubt the piece is rejected because of a "black character" but more likely because the writer lacks the basic writing skills for three dimensional character development. Writers are supposed to paint a picture with words, yet a picture can be painted without ever even defining a skin tone.
Some of the best short stories I've read never identify the main character's race, leaving the reader to create their own mental image through assumptions made from dialog patterns, mannerisms, etc. I have identified with characters so strongly I saw them as an extension of myself, therfore white, just to hear another swear the character was black or latino or, and I swear it's true, a Russian Immigrant. It isn't always integral to the storyline that race be identified.
Sometimes it's best to let the reader visualize a character the same way one would when having a conversation on the phone with an unknown person.
When on the phone with the electric company disputing a cut off notice, I saw a snarky, early twenties, ditzy blonde bitch with a daddy-bought candy apple red Mercedes, blowing on her nails and shaking them dry as she dramatically drew out the "exuuuuuse me?" in her tight lipped, eye rolling disgust because I asked to speak to someone, anyone, that knew what the hell they were talking about – a valley girl and, like, proud.
A thirty-something frail Indonesian man with computer tech support because of the rhythmic beat in his heavy accent, raising the pitch on every third letter or so as he spoke – "PleaSe stAy on the liNe to taKe our surVey."
And a tired and angry, divorced, black woman with three preteen grandkids she raises as her own, seriously considering leaving her second job at the collection agency because she "ain't got no time for all yo attitude."
The mental images occur naturally to us all based on our previous social interactions and our familiarity with differing speech patterns.
All that aside, people vary in skin pigmentation from ghostly white and chalky pink tints to a black so black it's almost purple. That's a fact. A biological, physical fact. Humans have varying levels of pigmentation based on gene pools. Period. Matter of fact, the hero of an autobiographical story I'm working on currently is of the darkest shade of black I've ever seen...
Looking in my direction, he immediately caught my eye. I froze. He watched me with a curious, perplexed expression. Easily closing in on 350 pounds, he was quite large and foreboding. Two thick gold chains hung from his beefy neck, one of which carried an obnoxiously over-sized, gold, dollar sign. They were a stark contrast to his skin, so deeply dark it appeared a glistening purple beneath the soft luster of the street lamp.
I could simply have said, "the black guy" and nothing more, but that tells the reader nothing about him, with the exception of his skin color, which literally has no bearing on who this person is or what he's all about, let alone why he's included in the story. It would be the same if I described a professionally dressed, middle-aged woman, with thick, red curls that cascaded past her slumped shoulders, a posture developed during her teens as a way to minimize her extraordinary height of six feet and seven inches, as simply "a white woman."
The example I gave from my autobiographical story is obviously that of my first impression, and in the story I do make a judgment call based on my past experiences with people similar in appearance, only to discover later that my preconceptions betray me. The reader learns of the character just as I did, through my eyes, as I experience it, while fleeing from an abductor in my teens. Had I not been so desperate for help I may never have gotten closer because of my previous negative interactions, and it's damn likely I would not be here today to tell the story. All because of my ideology of "that sort of guy." His appearance is integral to the story because it was a valuable lesson I learned. One I never forgot. One everyone needs to learn apparently.
But here's the thing: all people, regardless of race, are products of their environment. Socioeconomic status more defines a person than skin color. Patterns of behavior are taught and mimicked. You know, when in Rome...
Yet times are changing and a white kid will talk more hood slang than a black senator. It's money that separates, classes, not race. Race is the byproduct of class discrimination because there is a higher percentage of minorities living in poverty. Racism is a man-made concept.
You heard me.
We have all been exposed to the roles blacks in which black or Latino or Italian or Irish or whatever are cast in Hollywood, which more than not adheres to typical stereotypes. We are all a product of our environment.
In my defense, I do the same with people of my own heritage– a thick Italian accent and I see Good Fellas, hit men, mafia bosses, greasy-haired thugs. Every, single, time.
No, I'm not racist. I'm observant. Skin color is no different than hair color when defining a character, but I will use their status in the hierarchicy of American classes in character development. Can I portray a black character correctly. Yes, but only if I have lived a similar life or have first hand knowledge of their particular lifestyle. I could easily create a middle class domestic abuse victim or a highly intelligent university student– see what I did there? 😃–but I couldn't create a hate fueled, reverse racist, black southern Baptist that has been beat down by the establishment and still holds whites responsibe for slavery with an anger handed down for generations because I have no knowledge of that world. I can't understand their anger because I can't identify with their struggles anymore than I can identify with the struggles of a white college kid. Do they have struggles? Or course they do. Every human has a struggle of some kind, but I can't identify with their struggles because I haven't walked in their shoes. However, I have never walked in the shoes of a male but I have male characters in my writings. Almost all of them. Should that be a no-no too?
That's how ridiculous this argument is— it's not a race issue. It's a writer issue. Do your research and create three dimensional characters true to their story.
I want an author to put me in the shoes I've never walked in myself. Show me the other side of the coin through a character in a book. Please! I love learning about different cultures, and I'll venture to bet the easiest way to experience them is through the eyes of a character in a book, but don't write about what you don't know:
Together with black authors who would finally be given a platform in the 20th Century, like Ralph Ellison and Zora Neale Hurston and Richard Wright, white novelists addressed the issue [of race] head on, thoughtfully and meaningfully, thereby leading to a deeper and richer understanding of the country we live in. But all of that changed, as critic Stanley Crouch noted in his 2004 essay “Segregated Fiction Blues,” in 1967, with the backlash to the publication of William Styron’s The Confessions of Nat Turner. Written by the lily-white Styron but told from the point of view of Turner, the insurrectionist leader of a slave revolt, Confessions was a well-intentioned gambit to join the canon of Great Books About Race. But it had the severe misfortune to be published right at the ascendancy of the Black Power movement. Alongside a philosophy of militant political and socioeconomic solidarity, Black Power asserted itself on the cultural front as well. The movement demanded ownership of its turf: black studies, black history, black theater, black art, and black fiction. It was a natural and understandable response to centuries in which black voices had been wholly excluded from the cultural dialogue, in which the story of race was reduced to minstrel shows and white-supremacist propaganda like D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation.
By telling the story of Nat Turner, by assuming to understand the mind of the rebellious slave, Styron had ventured onto the wrong side of the literary tracks.
– Tanner Colby, Can A White Author Write About Black Characters
Writing colorfully should be encouraged, not censored. There are variables in every equation, and they should all be explored.
If a publisher was ever to say to me that my manuscript is being rejected solely on the fact that I included a "black character" then that's not the publisher for me. That is a publisher whipped into submission by society's sensitivies. I would rather be self-published than be represented by a publisher that dares not stir the waters or challenge belief systems, printing mediocre book after mediocre book after mediocre book.
I don't believe the rumors though. A publisher that sacrifices substance and value to appease the weak minded is destined for failure, and I find it hard to believe anyone would censor art simply because it pushes the boundaries. Boundaries are made to be pushed! It's part of how we grow during our journey as humans.
If the rumors are true and these publishers do exist, please find another. Don't destroy your work and rewrite to fit a shallow minded criteria. Don't bore your audience to death trying to appease the overly sensitive masses.
Personally, I will continue to use characters of all shades, in all their weirdness, with all their individual quirks, facing all their individual struggles because I don't write scifi about other worldly creatures. I write about humans.
I will write in color. I will not, however, promote racist beliefs or adhere to racist stereotypes. That's an entirely different thing altogether. And that's what everyone needs to remember.
Write with purpose. Read with an open mind.
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