Let's Talk About Race

Technically this is getting posted on Thursday because blogger's updated post editor is being annoying.

Long, serious post is long and serious. All opinions discussed here are my own and entirely subjective and totally fallible. Just so's we're clear.

Last week I talked about YA issue books being written (largely) for the teens who suffer from those issues, about representing them so they know that they're not alone and their stories matter. Following on from that idea of representation, as a mixed race reader, I never questioned why I wasn't represented in the books I read and as a mixed race writer I never questioned why I wasn't writing non-white characters. Not until as recently as March/April when the YA blogosphere was overrun with discussions about race in Young Adult books. And now I struggle to name even one black or mixed race character in a book, and I think guiltily of all my own ideas for novels and short stories, none of which came with a non-white face in the cast.

It wasn’t until I read this post on teenwritersbloc that it really hit home that any character who isn’t white is considered ‘other’ in books-- meaning that unless otherwise stated, a reader, even a mixed race reader like myself, can safely assume a character is white. Beyond the story setting up a different expectation, say, by locating the story in deepest Africa, or India, the odds are, if we haven’t been given prior warning, caucasian is the default. This has been so ingrained that I didn’t even question this assumption until I read that blog post. As a mixed race reader, why wasn’t I projecting myself onto the characters?

And I answer myself, because after years of reading, that projection would have been incorrect every time. I assume when the writers were writing their books they didn’t do so with an eye toward their market but if they had been apparently they wouldn’t have been looking at me. As a mixed race writer, does that then mean I owe it to others like me to write non-white characters? At what point does representing other races become writing colour for the sake of being politically correct? And most importantly for me, if race isn’t the issue of the book, does including minorities become more or less important, because isn't writing other races only to talk about race just as bad as glossing over other races entirely?

Honestly, race isn’t the most important element of character for me; I’m not even sure it’s on the list. I don’t give any more thought to skin colour than I would to whether they have blonde or brown hair. Unless it’s going to affect the plot -- which brings us back to writing different races just to talk about race -- then why sweat it? But even to suggest that shows my privilege. For some people, race affects their lives every day. That it doesn’t affect mine, and that that’s still not the universal norm, just goes to show that racial equality is still something that needs to be strived for, including representing other races without having it be all about how they are different.

I don’t know what this means for me as a writer. I haven’t suddenly changed my default character to mixed-race-- my characters still come to me white (and American for some reason?). I don’t intend to make them non-white just because either. The only noticeable change is that now when I make those choices, and they are choices, I'm aware I'm making them. And I’m aware, too, that for the right story, there will come a time when it doesn’t make sense not to represent. And I will write that mixed-race or minority character the same way I would any other-- as a character, not a stock type to fill a quota.


I hope we can all agree that we need to see more diversity in YA literature (and race is just for starters, shout out to the LGBTQ spectrum), my question for you is how do you think this should be done? More race issue books, showing how the other half lives? Characters who just happen to be minorities without it affecting their lives? Characters in the middle where it affects some parts of their lives but isn’t the central story? Is there even a right way, a natural way, to effect this change?

P.S. This is a great post by Claire Dawn about how to treat The Other.