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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/33844
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

I'm facing a similar issue with the book I'm writing. As a member of more than one minority group, diversity in literature is very important to me. But at the same time, I'm very conscious of the dangers of doing it wrong.

I think the key question is **"How many different ethnicities can you write _well_?"** Do you know enough about the Yemanite-Israeli experience to do it justice? How about being black? Or Muslim? If you aren't a member of that community, and you haven't lived with them, and you don't have close friends of that group, and you haven't done extensive research or interviews of people from that background --or at least [read work written by people of that background](https://writing.stackexchange.com/questions/19306/how-to-find-authenticity-in-a-character-of-color/19401#19401) --then what are you writing, other than your own stereotypes of what a person of that background might be like?

I've come to realize over the years that good writing takes hard work, and cutting corners always shows. For too long people have assumed they can write characters of any ethnicity without actually understanding what makes those people's experience different. For me, however, speaking as a (multiracial) black viewer, I can nearly always tell when there are actual black people on [the staff for a tv show](https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/this-is-us-might-just-have-the-most-diverse-writers-room-in-hollywood_us_59b94b29e4b0edff97186815) writing for the black characters, as opposed to people who merely [_think_ they know](https://www.essence.com/2016/06/24/orange-new-black-except-its-writers) what black people are like. So my answer to you is to put the character in **if and only if you're willing to put [the effort and research in](http://afe.easia.columbia.edu/special/china_1900_earth.htm)** to make those characters real, three-dimensional and authentic, whether they are heroes or villains. But get a beta-reader from that culture to check your work.

Original score: 11