Crossing the “Is It Mine” Field: White Authors and Character Diversity

I have a novel that I wrote last summer that takes place mostly in an abandoned theme park. It's a really rough early draft that I'm still working on, but it's one I love and hope to publish one day. The themes and characters are close to my own heart and family, including concepts like interracial families, passing, generational lies, and the burdens of the past. Still, as much as I love it, and as much as it's grown from my own sense of family, I'm struggling with whether or not it's my story to tell. 

There's an issue out there in the world of writing and publication. Okay, a lot of issues, actually. It's basically a mine field of issues where the mines are all covered in smaller mines, but the issue I'm concerned with in this project is the idea of white authors writing characters of color. As a white author, I certainly want to write a diverse cast of characters, and sometimes even center Black characters who flow from my family experiences, based on the needs of the story. What I don't want to do is create a tangled mess of racial stereotypes. There have been so many missteps and offensive books that have been published in the last few years that have caused uproar, and rightfully so, among the writing and reading community. One that always pops up in the discussion is The Help, which gets plenty of well-deserved criticism for not only centering the white character as a savior in the context of the civil rights movement in America, but also making a caricature or stereotype of the Black characters. 

On the other hand, I'm seeing white authors who seem to understand the inherent complications in writing characters of color and not only avoid them, but write spectacular stories in their genre that include either a diverse cast of characters, or completely center the characters of color. Matt Ruff's Lovecraft Country is, to me, a perfect example of this. I started reading it recently because I loved the Netflix series adapted from the first novel, and was sad to see the second season cancelled. While I was watching it, I had no idea that the writer of the original material wasn't Black. The setting, the rich background knowledge of the time period, and the uniquely believable characters gave me nothing but green flags. I wanted to read the first novel, the one the series is adapted from, to get a sense of how different the two versions are (not much, in a good way), and to see if the Black artists involved had to do much cultural repair to the original. Surprisingly, the original is a perfect example of a white author faithfully depicting Black characters, much like the series. One little touch, among many, that caught my eye is that the neighborhood that some of the characters move into in the second part is Woodlawn, the same neighborhood in Chicago where Lorraine Hansberry's family moved into in the 1940's, and which became the subject of the Supreme Court case, led by her father, which struck down (sort of) the neighborhood covenants that kept Black families from moving into white neighborhoods. 

It's touches like this that make Lovecraft Country the kind of work that I want to emulate with this novel, and really several of my other novels as well. I'm committed to writing about interracial families, because that's what I know and live, and I'm blessed to have family members around me to help guide me as I navigate some of these issues that can be fraught with the possibility of harm. The novel I'm discussing here involves a brother and sister, twins, growing up with an abusive grandfather as their only caretaker. Their mother died of an illness, but also of a broken heart over their father, who also died before they were born. One of the revelations (spoiler alert) of the novel is that part of the reason the grandfather dislikes them so much is because they're mixed, although they don't know it, never having known their father. Also, because he's just a horrible person, it's complicated. There's generations of family on both sides, with vastly different experiences in this country, which have culminated in the lives of these two young people, and they're on the verge of discovering how to not necessarily reconcile or solve all these problems, but to pull all that history together within themselves and make peace with both of their parents, through some supernatural means, because that's kind of my thing.

In writing, and now revising and rewriting, this novel, I'm trying to take some lessons from those who have failed to hit the target in the past, either through negligence or just oversight, as well as those who have done it well. One resource I found to help me was Mya Nunnally's article on Book Riot from 2018. You all remember 2018? Such a simpler time, right? In the article, she gives "7 Casually Racist Things That White Authors Do." It's a great resource for me and any white author trying to write characters of color, and I'd like to think about a positive for each of her points, kind of a do for each of her don'ts.

Her first don't is having zero characters of color in the story. It reminds me of the sitcom Friends (which I never found funny, don't @ me), which I'd like to think takes place in an alternate universe where Reconstruction in the South went so well, and reparations were made so completely and promptly, that the Great Migration simply never happened, and Black folks never moved into the northern cities in great numbers. I'd like to think that, but I know it's more likely that the show just didn't want to hire Black writers, let alone Black actors. So the do to this don't is to write the characters we see around us. That might require expanding our circles of friends (no pun intended) and learning more about other cultures, especially those of the people in our own neighborhoods, whom we should be getting to know anyway.

In fact, another of her points is the failure of white authors to do research on the cultures they write about. Think about all the nuances of culture, from language to food to clothing and every other aspect of life. Our characters shouldn't be based on other stories and shows, but real people. Sensitivity readers can help with this, but by the time they see the novel, a lot of it has been set in stone, if not at the publisher then at least in the writer's mind. It's better to run ideas by trusted sources, those who are willing to do the work, during the drafting process. And as with any work, compensate your beta and sensitivity readers, either through bartering or straight up currency. 

The lack of authenticity in the drafting process results in stereotypes, another of Nunnally's points of contention. The problem with writing characters based on the characters you've already seen in other media is that they're likely to be stereotypes, caricatures of people that are often limited and offensive. Even if your character is modeled after another one who seems unique and vibrant, consider that all you're doing is appealing to another trend instead of creating a realistic and fleshed-out person in your story. 

Nunnally makes several great points in her article, but the last one might be the most prevalent - the white savior. This really is a complicated issue. There's been story after story, movie after movie, where the subject is civil rights or racism, but the focus is on the white protagonist's struggle to create change, or their discovery of the true nature of society and subsequent indignation. Again, don't @ me, but To Kill a Mockingbird comes to mind. This approach robs the characters of color of any agency, and reduces them to something like children or underlings, completely helpless in their struggles to free themselves. A cursory look at history, in the United States and around the world, shows that in every situation of colonialism, slavery, and oppression were the subjects of racism and abuse just helpless victims waiting for a savior. Revolt and resistance were not only always the norm, but they also make for great stories. 

However, here's the rub. Let's say I want to write about a particular revolt of enslaved people in America. There's no question that I'm going to do the research and talk to the right people to get perspective on the matter and inspiration for creating the characters. But that still doesn't mean that it's my story to tell, and while I might become very caught up in an idea for a story, I probably have to tread very carefully when it comes to this matter. To return to Ruff's Lovecraft Country, he's done a masterful job of approaching the 1950's, with very realistic and frank depictions of racism, but without centering a white character, much less a savior, and without trying to Forrest Gump his way through the time period either, highlighting all the major events of the time. Instead, he's writing a horror story set in that time period, and it works so beautifully because it seems to make the point that racism is at least as horrific as any of the Lovecraftian monsters we could imagine. In fact the two horrors are so intertwined as to be inseparable, and the fact that he's chosen Lovecraft as a focal point is even more ironic, given that writer's known racism, which is also addressed and deconstructed in the novel.

So, I'm still working on my novel, which is set in two time periods, the 1980's when I was a kid, and the 1960s when the protagonists' parents were falling in love, despite all the obstacles of racism and segregation. I'm threading in my own experiences and those of all my family members as inspiration and a sort of historical mooring. And as I'm writing and refining it, hopefully I'm making it not only my story, but one that belongs to my whole family.

Dilbert Edward Ignatious, Ruiner of Nations

 A relative recently asked my opinion about a speech going around about race and the church, and sharing my opinion opened a whole discussion about DEI and how, in their opinion, it's one strand of the woke rope that's currently strangling our nation to death. 

I get this a lot, for some reason.

It's not the first time a family event has devolved into a heated discussion of DEI or CRT or whatever letters are scaring people these days. In this case, it's the deep concern about what we used to call reverse racism, but what some people today are calling "the only real racism." It's the kind of fear-mongering that happens when people like Charlie Kirk say that they get scared for their lives when they see a Black pilot on their flight, because of their deeply held racism.

No, wait, sorry, I meant, because of their deeply held fears about the effects of DEI on society. Kirk is scared of Black pilots because of that, not the other thing. Apologies.

Whenever this discussion comes up, I'm usually certain that the person just doesn't know what DEI is. They say we fear what we don't understand, and I suppose it's true that DEI could be scary to those who don't understand it. If you think that DEI is just grabbing a random Black person off the street and being like, "Hey, you wanna fly a Boeing 747? Maybe do some surgery later?" then, yes, that might be frightening. That's why, in these arguments, my response is usually to propose three scenarios that a DEI initiative would actually produce in the real world, and ask the uncle or cousin which ones they would disagree with the most.

Scenario 1:

You become the CEO of a large corporation, one that operates in a very stable and lucrative field, with lots of high-paying, probably STEM jobs. Upon taking over, you realize, if you didn't already, that your corporation has a decades-long practice of discriminating against Black applicants. Very few of the employees are people of color, and none of them in those higher-paying, more prestigious positions. Historically, Black candidates have been refused even an interview, and usually their application process ends when HR reads their name on the resume.

You feel strongly that this racist practice should end under your leadership, but, aside from firing the entire HR department, you don't know what to do. You hire a DEI consultant, who advises retraining for all HR employees, as well as a directive that ten of the twenty new employees that the company hires in those coveted positions this year should be Black or persons of color (with proper qualifications, of course, because we're still running a business here). This would bring the percentage of Black employees up to 2% by the end of the year, which is nowhere near 10%, which is the percentage of Black residents in your city, but a move in the right direction.

By the end of the year, it's become harder than you thought to find qualified Black applicants, at least partly because the word has gotten around about your company's past discrimination, so maybe to get the last two positions filled, you send recruiters to nearby universities to repair that reputation and encourage more people of color to apply.

Any objections? 

Scenario 2:

You've been CEO of the company now for several years, and while hiring Black employees or people of color has never been a problem, getting them to stay with the company long-term is. After noticing this, you ask HR for a report, which reveals that while the overall turnover rate and self-reported satisfaction of your employees is above normal, both of those measures are abysmal when accounting only for minorities. In their exit interviews, many Black employees have reported micro-aggressions (whatever those are, amirite?) and hostility as their reasons for leaving, along with the perceived lack of advancement opportunity. You get personally involved, interviewing some of the departing employees yourself, and get an earful of their complaints firsthand. Furthermore, whatever initiatives you might have set into place for increasing diversity and atoning for the company's prior discriminatory practices.

Again, out of a desire to solve this clear problem with morale and company reputation, you hire a DEI consultant, who runs a company-wide study and training program for all employees. This program seems to give everyone the benefit of the doubt, the idea being that nobody was intentionally trying to alienate or antagonize anyone else, but the changing make-up of the constituency has created the need for more sensitivity in the way we talk to each other and hear each other. Black employees feel more supported, and white employees (hopefully) feel supported as well, knowing how to navigate this new situation.

Any objections?

Scenario 3:

That first initiative is really revealing some discomforting things about the city and state where your company is headquartered. One of the reasons that HR is having a hard time finding enough qualified Black applicants to achieve this directive (again, aside from the fact that a lot of Black folks don't want to work for a company with a known history of discrimination and a ton of negative reviews from former Black employees) is that the high schools in predominantly Black neighborhoods in your area are woefully underfunded. Most students leaving those schools have never seen the inside of a proper science lab, let alone had the opportunity to participate in a robotics team or coding club. The facilities and tools just don't exist for them. The Black students at mostly white schools, on the other hand, enjoy campuses with much better equipment, but don't always get into the advanced classes because of educator bias. This causes a real lack of Black university students seeking STEM degrees, which it turn affects how many Black applicants your company sees.

Once again, you have your assistant arrange a meeting with the DEI consultant, who suggests that you take a portion of the charitable funds already in your company's budget and invest them in updating the labs, equipment, and faculty of the schools in the majority Black neighborhoods in your city. This has the double advantage of helping your company achieve its diversity goals and atone for it's past discrimination, as well as creating some positive media buzz. Heck, the consultant even suggests that some of your current employees visit the schools to oversee the updates and mentor some of the students - while wearing their company polos and followed by a photographer, of course. After all, we are running a business here.

Of course, during the planning meeting, one of your executives complains. He asks the consultant why everything has to be about race, and why only the Black schools are getting the money, and why can't we just divide up the money evenly among all the local schools, and don't all schools matter. Ever the professional, the consultant calmly reminds them that the donations are intended to bring the under-funded schools up to the same level as their peers, and that spreading money around evenly wouldn't solve the problem of inequity in STEM opportunities.

Any objections?

If you're trying this with your uncle or cousin, maybe they're still worried about quotas and hiring unqualified pilots or whatever. Maybe they're still convinced that they lost their job at the factory because of some DEI initiative, and not because they got consistently negative evaluations over the last five years.  In that case, please ask them to consider the following:

In the case of our semi-fictional corporation above, having a quota for hiring Black employees is nothing new. The company is not starting a quota in their hiring; they've always had a quota. To emphasize, for decades, the company has always had a set number of Black employees that it hired, it's just that the number was zero. Or maybe one, so they could have someone around to add some color to the company photo so they don't look egregiously racist. 

In addition, the objection that "we should only be hiring the best applicants" is a great idea, but a little disingenuous. Our fictional company never had that as its hiring practice before, so why start now? The rule for hiring at our fictional firm was never to hire the best applicants, but to hire the best white applicants ... maybe, unless the boss had a nephew who needed a job or a favor owed to some other rich person with a knucklehead for a relative. It seems odd that now that our fictional CEO is interested in correcting the discriminatory hiring practices of the past, suddenly several people want to use merit as the sole measurement for hiring a person.

Furthermore, what does "hiring the best" even mean? I know that there are social and psychological reasons why Charlie Kirk hyperventilates when he sees a Black person in a cockpit, but what does he think is happening when he sees a white man in that seat? Does he really think that pilot is the "Best"? That out of all the pilots and all the airlines in America, that he lucked out and got the "Very Best Pilot" in the world to fly his non-stop from St. Louis to Minneapolis? Or is it enough that the pilot is competent, ready to deal with whatever emergencies might arise during the flight, because he or she has the proper training and is approved by not only the flight school that trained them and the airline that hired them, but also the FAA, which regulates these matters? It seems as if Kirk just assumes the competency of any white person he sees wearing the wings, and only questions the competency of Black pilots. Surely, even your uncle can see how that comes across as a little bit racist.