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[bloodyrosemccoy]

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I want to go on a long Blog Against Racism rant about a subject I know—fantasy and science fiction—but as always kittikattie says it best.

 

I am so relieved that she acknowledged the shyness of well-meaning majority writers to write minority characters—I thought it was just me, and I’m glad to know it’s not. We definitely need more minority science fiction and fantasy writers, but us white dudes also need to get over our own squeamishness and realize that honest attempts at writing minorities are better than no attempts at all. I’m trying to, but it took me a long time to get over my nervousness and realize that all writing is about characters with different experiences from you, so why worry?

 

I may try to talk more later about this as I think of things, but so far everything’s scattered and mostly consists of me carrying on about my experiences with my own minority characters, the few books I’ve read that seem to get it right, and the fact that even a whitebread middleclass uberculture kid on the east side of Salt Lake City can be frustrated with the lack of diversity in these genres, so I can only imagine what someone who doesn’t have the privilege of ignoring racism would think.  But so far, I think the best thing I can do is point you over to kittikattie and tell you to read what she says, because she is good.

 

It’s a start.

Comments

[jadewing.livejournal.com]

I have every intention of actually moving into a project where one of the two main characters is a short, slightly dumpy little woman who is of a darker-skinned indigenous race. (She's also a bit unbalanced, but that's not the point.) One of the underlying plots actually deals with the covert and forced ethnic purge of her people by the now-dominant white race.

Needless to say, I'm looking forward to it. Huzzah for actually talking about/dealing with race! It's almost sad how much potential there is that's left unexplored.