|
|
The importance of inclusionary writingAre you unwittingly saying more than you mean to in your treatment of characters of other races?
Published:
September 13, 2010 "Out of many, we are one.” Before he became president, Barack Obama
uttered these words in 2008 in an insightful speech on race, referring
to America’s hunger for a “message of unity.” His campaign sparked a
sometimes emotional national conversation on race, unlike any since the
1960s.
As fiction writers, we can show support for racial
equality—or inequality—by the way we describe our characters, or, as is
too often the case, the way we don’t describe them. Many white
writers, for instance, will be surprised to learn that they may be
inadvertently supporting inequality by how they use race in describing
people of color, as compared to white characters.
These writers, you see, will not mention race unless the character they are writing about isn’t white.
Then, they usually use race alone to delineate the character, as if he
or she were a generic stand-in for the entire race, and not an
individual with a unique set of talents and tics.
Worse, far worse,
is that by letting a racial category create most of the description, if
not all of it, a white writer adds the historically degrading,
underlying message that “they all look alike.”
When more
description is provided for people of color, and race is still
mentioned, it makes the reader of color (like me) think: You just
described your white characters with no mention of race. Why are you now
telling me the race of the only character who is not white? If a writer does a professional job constructing a character, readers will know the race without being told directly.
Whether
characters are constructed with more or less detail should be a
function of their worth and weight on the page, not race. All characters
of equal weight in a scene should be created equally, meaning that when
a writer is describing characters, all of them should be described.
While
the failure to use a racially inclusive approach to character
construction may suggest racism, it does not mean writers who are guilty
of this are racist, just that they have probably never really thought
about it. It appears that in the unconscious mind-set of many white
writers, there is only one race on this planet; they seem to believe
they don’t have to mention the race of white characters because it’s a
given. But when they write about a person of color, anyone not white,
they give short shrift to him or her by labeling the person, with little
or no other substantive description provided. A racial label tells the
reader little about the individual.
The benefits of writing more
inclusively when constructing characters are many, but most important is
that this approach will make us all better writers: It takes more
creative energy and imagination, dare I say talent, to actually
de-scribe the “black man,” “Asian woman,” “Mexican man” or “white
woman,” and not use race as, essentially, a crutch.
There are
white writers who let the reader figure out a character’s race from
subtle descriptive clues. Others don’t bother with clues but still
manage to convey the information. And from time to time, any writer will
find it convenient, even constructive to the story, to simply mention a
character’s race up front. No one is asking any writer to give up
artistic freedom. But as a rule, it would be nice if either everyone’s
race gets mentioned, or no one’s does.
Copping out with a label
Here is a good example of what I’m talking about:
Detective Winn applied the match to his pipe and watched the
suspects enter the room. Through a haze of smoke he sized up each man.
The leader, Riley, was first through the door, tall as timber, bald head
marked with the scars of a fight he almost lost, dangerous eyes
searching every corner of the room. Behind him was his stooge, Tram.
Squat and round and hard like a boulder, his small glasses sat awry on
his mean face. Bringing up the rear was Solomon, a tall black man.
The writer does not mention the race of Detective Winn, Riley
and Tram because the writer is white and these characters are white. The
description for Solomon is summed up by a racial label.
There is a way to actually describe Solomon, to let the reader know
he is African-American, without mentioning his race. For example, is his
skin the color of weak coffee, dried clay, milk chocolate, a moonless
night, dark as the devil’s heart, or the same color as Denzel
Washington’s skin? Maybe the skin was ashy. Maybe he was wearing a
bright dashiki that contrasted with his dark skin, or maybe he used an
identifying phrase as he entered the room. Et cetera.
Ask yourself: If you were in a room with several tall black men, how would you pick out Solomon?
The answer is that you couldn’t, because the writer has not given you
any real description of Solomon, the individual, who happens to be
black. Another example:
The train station was quiet at that time of day. Waiting on
one bench seat were two elderly women with blue-tinted hair, holding
hands. Beside them was their male nurse, who looked like he could be a
model and knew it. On the other side of the waiting room sat an Asian
woman, and two Mexican men.
Again, the white writer implies that the elderly women and their
nurse are white by not mentioning race in their descriptions, but
expends no creative effort to describe the other characters, who are
people of color, except to give their race and gender. They are
merely generic stand-ins for Asian women and Mexican men. If, however, a
writer decides to use race as a construct, it can be applied equally to
describe all the characters and thereby give them equal weight in the
scene. Something like this:
The train station was quiet at that time of day. Waiting on
one bench seat were two elderly white women with blue-tinted hair,
holding hands. Beside them was their white nurse, who looked like he
could be a model and knew it. On the other side of the waiting room sat a
young Asian woman with dyed red hair, chain smoking in a no-smoking
area, and two middle-aged Hispanic men dressed in white suits, speaking
Spanish quietly.
Unfortunately, the kind of exclusionary character constructs I’m
criticizing seems to be nearly ubiquitous. The top literary journals,
the very finest commercial magazines that also publish fiction, are
routinely guilty of the problem. Recently, I read a story in a respected
2008 “best of” compilation that originally ran in The New Yorker.
In the story, when two police officers enter a house, the white one is
described without resorting to race, while the other is labeled “a
Puerto Rican cop.”
Exclusionary character construction is even being “taught” as
correct: A writ-er friend of mine submitted to the Pacific Northwest
Writers Association a story that had been published in a literary
magazine, seeking a critique the magazine had not provided. One person
scored her 99 out of 100. The second gave her a 62 with comments that
the story was confusing. The story was about an African-American family.
The writer revealed their race with clues as the story progressed. This
critiquer questioned a phrase used in the story—“acting white”—stating
that until then she “had thought they were white.” The critiquer, who most likely is white, scolded the writer for not labeling the family as black at the start!
The benefits of inclusionary writing
Writers are supposed to look at the world and blend their
observations into their prose. To do that well, white writers have to
start really “looking at” their characters of color. If the creator
can’t see the person, how can she describe that character to the reader?
This enlightened writing style will make readers of color feel respected as individuals,
and thereby broaden a writer’s base. It will support equality because
it treats all races alike. Best of all, this style of character
construction results in inclusion, which is what the majority of
Americans of all colors say we want.
At minimum, putting something on the page that will jolt a reader
and momentarily disrupt the flow of information into the mind is what
all writers try to avoid. But as a person of color, and after talking to
other readers and writers of color, I can tell you that that is exactly
what happens when we encounter the kind of writing I’m talking about.
If you’re a reader of color, the inequity of this practice zaps you
each time you encounter it, because it is a historical extension, albeit
unconscious, of white society’s inability to really “see” the black,
brown, red or yellow citizen as a fully developed human being—an equal,
and not an “other.” Exclusionary writing diminishes any character who is
not white. It adds to the negative array of inequitable patterns and
practices that make it easier for society in general to discount the
value and contributions of its citizens of color.
Writers of color, for their part, must also be careful to avoid
supporting in-equality by describing characters of col-or but only
labeling whites, as in “the white woman at the bar,” even when they are
in the same scene and have the same relevance as non-white characters.
By making subtle changes in their prose to become inclusionary,
writers can contribute to America’s dream of unity. Who knows, out of
many, maybe we truly can be one. |
To gain complete access to our Web site and the many available writing resources,
subscribe today.
|
|
Subscribe today and get 12 issues of The Writer magazine PLUS these great
online benefits:
- Research more than 3,000 markets for your work
- Read timeless articles on writing from 120+ years of The Writer
- Access links to hundreds of top-rated literary publications
- Read exclusive online-only articles on craft and freelancing
- Post your work for critique by other Writer subscribers in our forums
- Make friends and discuss writing issues in the Writer community
- Receive our informative biweekly e-mail newsletters
- Manage your account
|
|
Welcome to WriterMag.com!
Free Newsletter
Get our free newsletter
|