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Q&A How far I can write about a protagonist with a different ethnicity of me?

I am planning to write a book about a life of a person. However, the protagonist is a black person. The main plot is not about ethnicity things, but where the plot happens I have to talk about some...

2 answers  ·  posted 5y ago by Vinicius Morais‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T11:22:09Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/43589
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision by user avatar Vinicius Morais‭ · 2019-12-08T11:22:09Z (almost 5 years ago)
I am planning to write a book about a life of a person. However, the protagonist is a black person. The main plot is not about ethnicity things, but where the plot happens I have to talk about some situations. The book is about romance, but the protagonist is poor and goes to a university to study medicine (in my country we have great public universities).

I'm white, and my life is very different of the protagonist; I don't personally know what it's like to suffer hate due to ethnicity. In my mind, if I write a book about this character, I will be committing cultural appropriation, and people won't take my book seriously.

How can I manage this? Do I write the romance ignoring ethnicity problems and suppose this doesn't happen in the story's world, or do I talk about this theme (even a little with a lot of research) and be judged by others people saying I'm not capable write about this theme?

#1: Imported from external source by user avatar System‭ · 2019-03-15T18:26:10Z (over 5 years ago)
Original score: 7