Not having any white MC's?

Just want to add to @xyn's excellent answer, it isn't necessarily out of any bad will or intent that white people might be alienated. The more different a character is from me, the more difficult it is to relate to him or her. This goes for almost any aspect of characterization. Having a different colour of skin is just a slight "dent" in being able to relate to him. Meant with respect. It just depends on the fact if that is everything the character is. If he is just a character with a different ethnicity, and that is all he is, I will have difficulty relating to him. If he is from a different ethnicity, and has many other aspects that influence his character, I almost certainly won't notice.

Think of Jules Winnfield from Pulp fiction. He isn't different from Vincent Vega because he is black, but because his entire character is different. I can relate to many aspects of his character, because he has so many things that make him interesting. Him turning religious after him apparently being part of a miracle. How he handles it. What that means for the story. Him being or not being black barely changes his character.

Think of Captain Holt in Brooklyn Nine-Nine. You would think he would be the most box checking character there is. He's black and homosexual. But it doesn't feel like that, because it isn't the only thing he is. He's tough, a hard worker, very precise, all things people can relate to or aspire to be. His sexuality or ethnicity influence his character, but don't dictate who he is. His character dictates how he deals and shows those things.

So what I'm trying to say is, good characters don't rely on what they look like or what they represent. They rely on their interesting aspects, the things that breach the stigma. What it means for them, and makes them who they are. How they handle it. In the end were all just humans with similar problems and struggles. And these problems come in many different packages, but often are the same deep down in the core.

So you shouldn't worry too much about your characters being non white, worry more about who they are as a person.

posted about 5 years ago

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Derion‭

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Don’t worry about it. Race is a very minor consideration when it comes to characters. Focus on character traits, not skin colour.

If you offend someone because you do not clearly state that character X is white and therefore they can relate to them, those are the readers who would have complained because War & Peace was full of Russians and French. You do not want to pander to those.

As others have said, write what makes sense to your work. It is your world.

If you decide that Day and his dictator father are white and oppressing these mutants who are also people of colour you might be making an unintended political statement. Of course, you could explain why the dictator of your country is white when the population is not.

What tools you use to understand your characters need never make it into the finished work. There are things I know about each of my characters that will never be stated in the book, but the knowledge colours my treatment of certain scenes and such details could be inferred by a discriminating reader.

In my current work, I have a character who is of Irish descent but was born and raised in Columbia. If readers choose to see her as a Latina who chose an Irish code name, so be it. As long as they are interested in her, I am pleased.

With most of my characters, I am silent on race. If a reader chooses to see themselves in that character, they are free to so do.

I do not see my character as you do. It was not until a cousin of mine who is much more visual wanted to know what actors they looked like that I gave it any thought. Who would I cast as my MC? That made me wonder what he looked like. Until that moment, I only knew his eye and hair colour.

If it works, don’t fix it.

posted about 5 years ago

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Rasdashan‭

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Speaking as a white person, I can't imagine that I would be offended that a story contained no white characters. Depending on the setting, it might or might not seem odd. I mean, if the story is set in a major city in Sweden and there are no white people in sight, that might seem peculiar. But if it's set in Africa and everyone around is black, or it's set in Japan and everyone is Asian, well that's pretty much what I'd expect.

If the story is set in some diverse place, like 21st century America or Europe, and all the main characters are non-white but they run into white people now and then, that would also seem totally normal to me.

I've seen some movies where the main characters were black and while I guess I'm race-conscious enough that I noticed, it didn't stop me from watching the movie or affect my opinion of it.

Are there racists out there who would say, "I don't want to read no story about a bunch of n----rs"? I suppose. I'd tend to not worry about it.

posted about 5 years ago

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Jay‭

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This started out as a comment, but got too big and I decided to change it into an answer, focusing on the OP's last question:

But is it, I don't know, somehow alienating or offensive to white readers that the characters aren't white, and that no main characters are white?

Being white or dark-skinned depends a lot on culture. I'm from Southern Europe and I consider my skin rather light. While in the UK for a spell, I was told my skin was dark and my first thought was 'are these people colour blind?' - if you draw your face and paint it using a light coloured pencil, then the skin isn't dark, it's light. It makes no difference if you're from China, Mexico or Norway. The skin is light coloured.

Anyway, I feel the obsession with breaking down people by race (Hispanic, black, Chinese) is annoying, whether it's done in a racist or an inclusive way. Do we really look at a person and the first impression we get is their race? Yes, I admit that I notice skin colour, much like I notice hair colour, but race? We're not in the 19th century anymore to talk about races like they're a real thing! The only reason I notice skin colour is because it's a distinguishing feature on par with hair colour and length, or eye colour, not because it makes someone a different race.

To answer your question, to see light skinned people called non-white (in films or TV) is annoying to the point of pulling me out of a story. It's one of the things I most hate in a lot of American based story-telling: everything boils down to white and non-white, with non-white being specifically termed Hispanic, Arabic or whatever. How can people even tell where one (or one's parents or grandparents) are from? When I'm reading a novel, having characters described as Hyspanic does feel alienating because even within an ethnic group there is a wide variety of appearance, both in skin tone and hair colour.

It is so, SO refreshing when a story ignores all that and simply treats characters as normal people, even if they're described as having light or dark skin (because of visualising their image, not because they're part of a race or a mixed race or whatever).

Do write a refreshing book in that aspect, please. Especially if the story is not supposed to focus on racism.

Edit in reaction to some comments:

I'm very much aware of racism, make no mistake. I know that people will discriminate based on skin tone and ethnic background and I do not think that particular reality should be ignored or overlooked in fiction. However, if a story is not supposed to tackle racism, then why must characters be characterised into 'races'? That was the point I (may have) failed to make clearly.

Allow me to present it in a different view: if we have a story set in current day USA and if the characters are 'racially categorising' each other, then it makes sense to present a character as Hispanic because that is how the world within that narrative sees the character.

But if the story is set elsewhere or in a futuristic post-apocalyptic world where race is not a thing anymore, or even in a present day location where locals do not do racial profiling, then presenting a character as Hispanic will be inserting the racial categorisation that doesn't exist within the fictional world.

The reason why the constant 'racial profiling' annoys me is that it expects me, the reader, to see the character first and foremost as the race they supposedly belong to. Tell me a character's family is Mexican or that a character is black as a way to physically describe an individual character, not as the moniker I'll remember them by. To use the OP's example, I do not want to remember Analise as the Hispanic or Poet as the black person. I want to remember Analise as the one who makes silly jokes and Poet as the one who is always on the look out for old books.

Again, even though I live in a sheltered area, I am still much aware of racism around me, so I have to wonder: if one wants to diminish racism, why keep on using race as the main descriptor or identifier of a character. Let them be individuals we can relate to despite skin colour.

And my appologies for the long rant.

posted about 5 years ago

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SC for reinstatement of Monica‭

350 reputation 5 43 66 0

Novels are not a visual medium. Your readers never actually see your characters.

So unless the racial background of your characters is relevant for your story, you can easily get away with never actually telling your reader their skin color or eye shape. You said that you had "forgotten about their races because it wasn't important to you". When it isn't important to you, then it likely isn't important to your story and it isn't important to your readers either.

So just never tell the reader what race your characters are and let them insert whatever they feel their race should be. In the unlikely case that anyone then gives you feedback asking "why is there no character of [ethnicity] in your book?" ask them back "why are you so sure that [random character] isn't [ethnicity]?". When they give you a good reason why they think that's implausible, then there are two possible reasons:

1. The reader has racist preconceptions and applies them to your characters (like "someone of [ethnicity] would never have [job] or do [action] or hold [opinion]"). Some people just are that close-minded. There is nothing you can do about that.
2. The reader is actually right and you did write the character as a racial stereotype. In that case, make sure your characters are not primarily defined by their race.

posted about 5 years ago

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Philipp‭

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But is it, I don't know, somehow alienating or offensive to white readers that the characters aren't white, and that no main characters are white?

Yes, some people will be offended, just like people are offended when there aren't any BAME characters in shows or movies - but this is your world, and you choose what happens there.

But, to give you some more arguments to keep going with your lineup, remember that a group of 5 with no white person is not "unrealistic" and wont look like you're intentionally leaving white people out of your story.

If it would be, say, an earth-like scenario where no white people exist at all, I would have my doubts - but a group of 5 where coincidentally no one is white is a completely normal thing.

Also, I actually doubt that anyone will notice the "lack" of whiteness at all if you don't rub it under the readers nose - of course, if your first sentence is "It was a group of five, of which no one had white skin" that wouldn't be very sensitive.

posted about 5 years ago

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Flying Thunder‭

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There are thousands of books with no black characters, no Asian characters, no Hispanc characters. How is this different? You don't have to include white characters when many white authors have included only white characters in their books for centuries. Representation of other races is important. White representation is everywhere, and therefore not important.

posted about 5 years ago

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QuerimoniousQuerist‭

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The answer I'll give you here is the same as the ones I've already given you and others: write what works for you. If these are who the characters are, then that's who they are. If you're forcing diversity, then it will come off as forced. That includes making some characters white just to be diverse.

Will you alienate or even offend some white readers? Yes.

But this is not the type of offense to worry about. Some people are so used to being in the mainstream everywhere and for everything, that they loudly protest when suddenly they're not. If they don't like your story, they can go literally anyplace else to find beautiful, stirring, authentic depictions of all sorts of white people. Even within works about people of color.

Some people will argue that this is exactly the same as novels only including white people. But, no. It isn't. Because representation isn't just about a single work. It's about the entirety of our culture. Americans (and most Westerners) find white people so central to their understanding of the universe that they insert them in places they might not otherwise be and tell entire stories set in nonwhite worlds from the white character's point of view. (I just watched The Last King of Scotland which does exactly this...they invented a white character for this very purpose...in a movie about real events in Uganda.)

Write the story that matters to you.

posted about 5 years ago

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Cyn‭

1130 reputation 25 439 215 0

My answer is somewhat similar to the ones already given, even from a slightly different perspective.

I had forgotten about their races because it wasn't important to me and I had not noticed while I was writing, because the story isn't about their racial backgrounds

You already got the hang of it. If it's not important to you as you're writing it, if it's not the focus, it ought not be important at all.

Your job as a writer is to make your audience care for your characters, showing their personality and their struggles. Racial and ethnic labels aren't needed, and in fact they might even be detrimental.

Think of it from the opposite point of view: do you want your book to be liked by hispanic people because the MC is hispanic? Do you want black people to root for the three blacks in your cast?

Or do you want this to happen because they are well-rounded, interesting characters, caught up in a compelling plot?

The real offensive thing nowadays is the underlying assumption, in many medias, that the audience won't be able to empathize unless given a token character of the same demographic. We're humans before being black or white.

posted about 5 years ago

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Liquid‭

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