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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/34284
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/34284
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

> Is it possible to make a sympathetic and likable character that has this flaw?

## Perhaps, it depends on the type of racism and how you balance it.

In modern culture overt racism and race-hatred is shunned, particularly by people (like editors and reviewers of popular fiction, or TV producers and studios) whose livelihood depends on the approval of thousands to millions of people.

It creates a knee-jerk reaction; like the comment of @NomadMaker above: Readers running into racist thoughts or derogatory words stop reading; or in some cases go to get their money back, to specifically NOT support the author that wrote it. Bookstores don't care, they will tear the cover off and get **their** money back. The same is usually true for me. Yes, it is intolerant, akin to my intolerance for men that punch their wives.

The point is, racism, bigotry and prejudice in your characters can have significant commercial impact on whether you GET published and whether you SELL what you published. In general, **this is the information age,** and the more lives ruined and people beaten or killed because of a bigotry, the less tolerant the information crowd becomes. (The lifelong consumers and users of online media, and the younger they are the more likely they are to be so.)

Thus you see a major cultural shift away from bigotry over heritable physical appearance, gender or homosexuality. A super-majority of modern readers feel that way, and like it or not, do not want to be exposed to it, and people that need to make money from your book **_know this_** and no matter how they personally feel **_will protect their bottom line._** They have plenty of submissions to choose from.

It would literally lose them fewer sales if a villain is a serial killer and cannibal, like Hannibal Lecter, than an overt racist. As long as your serial killer and cannibal is an equal opportunity type of person. (Hannibal's first kill is specifically OF a racist; he is adopted by a Japanese mother, avenges his sister's death, etc.)

Over the top evil does not resonate with the day-to-day evil of racism that actually happens IRL constantly to people we know and love, and IRL is literally killing people we know **are** loved. For the same reason, it is very difficult to make a racist _likable,_ I think almost nothing an author does can overcome the reaction of anti-racists, the portrayal of the racism in a friendly light (a good guy, the MC's sidekick) will drop such readers out of the world of imagination into the real world.

One way to get around that in fiction is to start out with the racist looking like a villain. Racism is evil, it can be accepted as part of villainy.

### Types of Racism.

However, one must still be careful with the **type** of racism, which exists on a spectrum from mild (great-grandma's racism she only expresses privately) to physically violent and even "hunting" racism, to find and beat or kill or torture people. In-between is character assassination (promiscuity, criminality, laziness) racism, "I don't serve blacks", or "I don't hire Mexicans", or "Private school" racism or "don't let them vote" racism or cops "rough 'em up on arrest" racism, cop and vigilante "teach them their place" racism for perceived transgressions.

All of these are negatives, some are life destroying and unforgivable, even in a villain they may be enough to cause a reader to send the book back.

### Balancing Racism.

The other issue, is **balance**. If you want your villainous racist to be tolerated by the reader, they need some very large positive trait to counter their racism. For example, the character may think it true that blacks are mentally inferior and lazy, but the character values justice and truth above that, and if they find out a white guy is the criminal instead of the black guy, will go full bore after the white guy: i.e. the character may be a shallow thinker taught that racial differences are glaringly obvious, but that doesn't make those he regards as "inferior" automatically worthy of punishment: **Racism does not trump their sense of justice or morality.**

There are types of racism a character, without surrendering their racism, can still rise above.

By analogy, I believe people vary in their intelligence. Not by race or gender, but by chance, I think some people get lucky and are born with high functioning brains into environments that let them develop that high intelligence: Environments with good nutrition, sanitation, shelter, safety, discipline, absence of abuse, good education and resources (none of which an infant chooses, thus it is their good luck). But I can believe this without letting it infect my sense of justice and fairness. I could be a cop that believes most criminals are truly stupid, but being truly stupid does not make someone a criminal.

### To answer your specific question,

NO, I don't think there is a way to make a MC supporting character a likable racist, if they **begin** a supporting character. It will make the protagonist and anybody else accepting the racist people that tolerate racism, and thus racists. Down goes the book. If the supporting character initially looks like an antagonist or on the side of the main villain, and the supporting character is not a physically violent racist and does not advocate for that, **then** they might become a supporting character by balancing their racism with some overwhelming positive trait that gives the MC (and audience) a reason to accept the help of this flawed supporting character. I might have sympathy for such a character, but I don't think I would like them. It would take something extraordinarily positive, like the racist being killed in the line of fire protecting a member of the race he despised, because his sense of justice overwhelmed his racism.

Original score: 4