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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/41577
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/41577
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

You as an author must be aware of race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability, and other issues that exist in the real world. You as a _person_ need to be aware.

How (or if) you depict these things is up to you. But it needs to be an informed decision, one where you decide how best to deal with the issue.

Some authors make their entire world lily white and ignore all issues of race or racism. Don't be like that.

If your story is set in the real world (past or present) then, yes, racism is a part of that world. You can show it directly or not, but don't write as if you're unaware of it.

If your novel is set in the future, an alternate Earth, or another planet, then issues of race will be potentially very different. Humans as a whole make distinctions and then rank them. I don't know any society where that never happened. Race isn't always one of those distinctions (and in places where there is only one race, as we would label it now, ethnic distinctions may or may not be a factor). There will always be something. Gender and social class being popular choices.

Look also to your source material. How does it deal with issues of race? If older mythologies, it might not deal with it much, if at all, though people of the world interacted a lot more than many think.

How does your source material deal with _difference_? In what ways did they classify, judge, and rank people? What about people not as individuals but as members of groups? Groups they were born in to and can't change?

If your book is already dark and has elements from a wide diversity of racial and ethnic groups, it would be odd not to include racism, even if it's something that happens outside the story.

Original score: 10