This morning, there was a guest post on YA Highway on Writing Race in YA. As I always do with these sorts of posts, I read eagerly, looking to see how people tackle this issue and what I might learn from them.
Daniel Henney: A shining example of biracial beauty.
I was on board for the most part, although I will admit I bristled at the first point writer Nicola K. Richardson makes:
The “Not Quite Black” Trope
This happens quite a lot in movies and television. A Biracial character will be used as a stand-in for a Black character. This is done because some assume that white readers will be more comfortable with a character who shares half their racial identity and therefore is less Black.
Now I want to stress that there is absolutely nothing wrong with Biracial characters or people. But this tactic doesn’t work with readers of color at all. It also happens to other minorities, too. A perfect example is Taylor Lautner. He is NOT Native American, but because he had some in his ancestry, he was cast in Twilight. What exactly was wrong with giving a Native American actor a chance since Jacob is Native American in the books? The trope is what’s wrong. Readers of color want to see characters that look like them in books. It also does a disservice to White readers. I am quite sure that many of them won’t run shrieking in horror because they see a character of color.
Hold on just one moment. Can I just deconstruct something here? “But this tactic doesn’t work with readers of color at all.” If a biracial person doesn’t consider him/herself a “reader of color”, then what exactly would s/he call him/herself?
Here we come upon the crux of a biracial person’s existential identity crisis. We exist, people. In a world that tells us everything is apparently still “black or white”, our experiences don’t seem to count for much. I’m not discounting what Richardson says; I am sure that many people write biracial characters because it seems easier. You only have to worry about researching one half of the character’s cultural heritage! People can still identify with the white half! (I exaggerate, of course.)
So we can’t play in the “people of color” pond and we can’t play in the “white” pond, where can we play? We are whole people with whole experiences and while yes, many of our existential breakdowns consist of I am not white/colored enough, that is not all either. If the majority of the world looks at me and sees my ethnic half, what does that make me? If I lack the cultural markers of said ethnicity, but possess most of the markers of a white culture, what does that make me?
I’d like to think that makes me a person, thanks. (Forget about Jewish or Catholic guilt–have you ever thought about biracial guilt? I feel guilty I don’t speak Korean as well as I should, I feel guilty that I still feel the need to defend kimchi to people, and I feel guilty that I feel so tall and fat and out of place when I visit my relatives in Seoul.)
I know that this is only a very small part of what Richardson is saying about writing race as a whole. And I know what she meant. But I really wish she hadn’t brushed off a biracial person’s experience so lightly by implying we don’t count. We do. We have experiences that are unique from both a full person of color and a white person. I want to see us written well too. I don’t want us to be used by writers as a shortcut. We are not easy to write either. And I want to see our stories represented in fiction too.
Ahahahahaha yeah, all my Maori characters are so easy to write! After all, no modern Maori are “pureblooded”. They all have Pakeha ancestry, and the reader will just automatically identify with that!
Race, like anything else, lies on a spectrum. There can be a third generation Asian person who has no cultural ties to their great-grandparents’ country. What about Commonwealth countries like the Caribbean islands? Is a white person born in Jamaica, English or Jamaican?
Argh, I know she didn’t mean it, but seriously, race cannot be reduced so simply.
(P.S. YOUR ARCS OF THE SHATTERING. GORGEOUS.)
THEY ARE PRETTY NICE, NOT GONNA LIE.
Despite not having the proper cover on them, they are also pretty sturdy, with all of the lovely typsetting intact inside.
Thanks for this post. I had the same reaction. Plus, the idea that writing a biracial character is *easier* is just as problematic as the idea that writing first person is easier than writing in third. Everything is hard if you’re doing it right. (Right?)
Colleen Mondor has talked about the problem with writing “white” as if it’s a monolithic thing (and that goes for writing any other race, obvs–we’re creating *characters* and they should be specific; anything less leads to bland). Think about biracial characters like Hanna in Bleeding Violet; is she half-white? Sure. But she’s also half-Finnish.
I always think of Psychic Roommate when I think of mixed-ethnicity white people. I mean it in this way: she’s half-Irish, half-Italian. She identifies very strongly as Italian. So yes, there is a problem with writing “white” as monolithic, I agree! “White” encompasses so many different cultures. My own white side is Scandinavian, German, Welsh, and English. But they’re mostly Mormons from Sacramento (which is a culture unto its own, haha).
Exactly.
I know why you’re upset, but I took that comment a little differently. I’m black, but I tend to make some of my major characters biracial–you know, black and white mixed. I know that this population needs to be written about as well, but I have to admit that I feel sometimes it’s a bit of a cop-out for me. I used to figure that white readers would want to read more about a biracial character since they “looked” more like them. Where did I get this idea? From TV and movies. There have been so many times when I’ve seen an obviously biracial actor playing a black character. In fact, one popular TV show changed a character after the first season. In MY Wife and Kids, the teen daughter originally was this dark-skinned girl, but second season, they changed her to a biracial character with long, flowing hair–when both of her parents were obviously black. That’s when I have a problem with biracial characters–and that’s why I’m trying to be more prideful and write about black characters instead of “selling out” all the time.
If a character’s racial identity is affected by external factors (author’s guilt, outside expectations, etc.), then that character will always be saddled by the politics of being a race. Why does the character have to be biracial and not full black? If the answer is anything but “because s/he just is”, then I think writers should reconsider writing a biracial character.
If you consider writing a biracial character “selling out”, then don’t! Most of us hapas can tell anyway when a biracial character doesn’t ring true.
I totally agree, Pam. It’s definitely something that is a well-known slight to Black American audiences. Better to have a mixed girl than a dark Black girl. Now, my parents both embrace the fact that Blackness means they’re mixed race Americans and yes, my siblings and I vary widely as is only possible in our “race” – but I think the point Nicola was making and perhaps should have stayed with was how it has affected our particular group. I think she meant well and was trying to be compassionate and inclusive by making an example of another person of color.
I think the biracial “selling out” may be a little bit more specific to Black readers, although please correct me if I’m wrong. Looking Black vs. looking mixed has value judgments attached, whereas as far as I know, being half-Asian or half-Latino pretty much just means that the majority of people define said person by their non-white ethnicity. I’m half-white, but most people can’t tell. Perhaps my biracial-ness is more internalized than a mixed Black girl’s?
For me, just the fact that we still say mixed Black when it’s clearly repetitive lets you know that the attempt to embrace what we REALLY are is seen as “not being proud” of our Blackness. Unless the rest of the world agrees that I LOOK like my mom’s family is Filipino, for example, then I shouldn’t speak on it. At the same time, we ARE treated like we would be more desirable if we were visibly mixed – we’d get more airtime, for one.
Anything we call ourselves – whether we’re just stating fact or honestly having an understandable identity crisis – is loaded.
I don’t know if I answered your question or just rambled. :)
A good ramble, though! :-)
This is a complete cop-out by Richardson. JJ already said most of what needs to be said, but I’ll add in, I’m a little tired of people telling me what is and is important to me when their opinion of me is based on their own trope. I’m unique far beyond the color of my skin or my hodgepodge ethnicity and I’ll guarantee I don’t fit whatever trope someone may have. And just for the record, at least for me, I don’t base every like, dislike, and value judgment on skin color and I find the implication that I do highly offensive.
And as far as biracial characters in books, I use them not because they are easier to write – which they ARE NOT – but because they are FAR MORE interesting. It is trying to understand the conflict that arises from having a foot in two worlds and not being recognized by either that helps us learn about ourselves whether we’re biracial or not.
“So we can’t play in the “people of color” pond and we can’t play in the “white” pond, where can we play?”
Yup. Not just in books/literature, but everywhere.
Biracial guilt? HECK YES. But that’s a lengthy post all its own, not something I need to go on about here…
Basically I think you’ve said all this very well.
A slight tangent, but Daniel Henney always makes me think of it for some reason: My poor kids are going to be 3/4 Asian genetically, 3/4 American culturally. (My boyfriend is Korean but was adopted as an infant. He’s as American as apple pie and baseball.) That amuses me, but I worry sometimes about how that might affect them negatively. I hope that it won’t — that they’ll be able to take “the best of both worlds” as I (mostly) feel I have done.
But you’re right: race and racial issues are too complex to boil down to numbers and colors. So I suppose there’s no point in my worrying now.
In the meantime, with my writing, I just try to be aware and do justice to each character. As I said in a comment here before, I don’t go in with a mission — “Must show the plight of the halfie immigrant’s daughter!” — but I don’t want to be careless or damaging either.
Discussions on race perplex me. I was born in America of parents born in America of parents born in America and so on for generations. Yet, I am not a Native American, though I do have Native American blood flowing through my veins. Two of my nephews are 1/4 Native American. At a gathering many years ago now, the older brother was asked by a stranger (another Native American), “What kind of Indian are you?” His six-year-old reply: “The white kind.”
My sister is married to a man born in American of parents born in Asia. He is sometimes considered Mexican because of his skin and a slurring of his name, which is Warren (slurred by some slow-talking Oklahomans as Jaun). Their two daughters are fairer skinned than my sons. The older girl attends Chinese school on Sundays to learn language and culture, and the younger will attend soon also. Their paternal grandparents have been their daytime caregivers since birth and teach them language and culture too. One speaks Manderin and the other speaks Cantonese.
One day I asked my five-year-old son what color his skin is (because we’d been reading a book that referenced skin color). He said, “I don’t know, what color is it?” I said, “Most people would consider your skin white.” He peered at his arm and laughed a hearty five-year-old laugh and said, “Paper’s white, not me! I must be sandy blonde.” Our conversation continued as we talked about differences in people. I told him that everyone’s differences are awesome because they all come from a secret code called DNA. I explained that the secret code determines some things about you, like eye color and skin color and some illnesses and some strengths and your height and the texture of your hair, and that the one thing the secret code cannot determine is who you are. He got that differences are all good because they come from a personal secret code. Now, a year later, he still brings it up sometimes.
One strand of my geneaology is traced back for centuries, while very little is known of two strands and some is known of another strand. I come from many peoples. I cannot wrap my brain around the concept of “I can’t read/watch/enjoy that because those people don’t share my skin color.” To me, that’s like a northeastern person saying they cannot read/watch/enjoy something because it involves west coast people or southern people. Or, really any surface matter: As and American I cannot enjoy a book set in fill-in-the-blank; as a Christian I cannot enjoy a book about fill-in-the-blank-religion; as a woman I cannot enjoy a book written by a man or about men; as a parent I cannot enjoy a book by a nonparent or about nonparents. I say this not to make light of race but to say why should any of us feel limited by what we are, where we come from, the commitments we’ve made.
In first grade my best friend April had what I considered the most wonderful hair. She usually wore it braided with beads in it or twisted in wide spirals. The most exciting thing my hair could do was to be braided down my back. To this day skin, to me, is a beautiful thing. It can be so transcendent that it saddens me greatly that anyone would feel shame over their skin color. A younger me wished that my every vein would not advertise purple lines all over the place, wished that sun would turn my skin brown, dreamed of having curly or blonde or braided-with-beads hair, fantasized about changing my hazel eyes to brown or blue or green or any color that was really its own. I have long since made peace with my veins and my skin and my hair and my eyes.
Perhaps I am naive. If so, I sorta wish we all could be.
“I come from many peoples. I cannot wrap my brain around the concept of “I can’t read/watch/enjoy that because those people don’t share my skin color.””
“Perhaps I am naive. If so, I sorta wish we all could be.”
Very eloquent.
I hold that same view, while at the same time realizing that little black girls who only ever see a blonde Barbie, or Asian boys who only ever see Brad Pitt, might never be able to develop a confident self-image the same way as white children. The fact is, when children are young they view the world as a mirror. When they get older and that figurative mirror doesn’t match what they see in the literal mirror, things can get… complicated.
But at the end of the day, I think what you’re saying and what JJ is saying overlap: the world is incredibly diverse, and thus so should be the things that we read and watch.
(Not that I mean to speak for either of you…)
The difference is, some people lean towards the desire for everyone to be more color-blind; while others would argue that’s impossible and thus everyone should be more color-aware. It seems that the end goal is the same for both groups.
I don’t think it’s as simple as feeling shame over the color of your skin or hair or eyes. It’s how many doors the color of your skin will open (or close) for you.
But the physicality of looking like an ethnicity and its implications is a whole ‘nother post. :)
Wow. Whoa. Yeah… that comment was kind of a doozy. Not just that (probably unintentionally bu still!) in one fell sweep it wrote out biracial people from “people of color” (indeed, what ARE they, then?), but that in the following argument, it nearly denied them any sort of actual identity, period.
It is certainly an issue when full-ethnicity characters are represented by actors who are part-white, but Richardson’s article, in discounting the unfairness of this to the biracial characters as well as the full-black or full-anything else ones, does biracial people a HUGE disservice. Yes, it is troublesome that black/native American/Asian/etc people do not have adequate representation. But… that’s not the only reason is troublesome. Biracial people are NOT just-white-with-a-bit-extra-”exotic spice.” They are NOT “black-lite.” Or “any other ethnic group-lite.” They should not be used as stand-ins not just because it doesn’t accurately represent the “intended” group, but because that doesn’t represent them either. By not questioning that part of biracial casting, Richardson definitely seemed to contribute to this idea that biracial experience is something that just gets subsumed into one of the two parts (apparently the “white” part, since biracial characters don’t “count” as people of color), rather than being an identity and experience of its own.
Yeah, I was really offended by this comment, to the point, I almost couldn’t continue reading, even though she makes really good points in the rest of the article.
In her defense, as I said earlier upthread, I think Black writers have a different relationship with mixed race-ness because the value judgments that come with “lightness” and “darkness” within Black culture is something that other lighter-skinned ethnicities don’t have to the same extent. Still. There are many ways to be biracial, and she pretty much just discounted them all.
I agree that a) she made many other valid points b) black persons have rather specific experiences with mixed-race issues that differ from others, but I’ve seen plenty of black/white biracial people mention that they also felt discounted within both the black and white community, and I doubt they’d like to be seen as just mainstream-acceptable stand-ins for “real” people of color either. Not to mention those who are biracial in terms of being, say, half-black, half-Asian… some biracial people aren’t even any-part-white. Those get even less consideration in terms of having their own identity.
Oh this is a big, big ball of wax and I think you’re right to take it on & guess the shape of it. I certainly agree with all your points and allowances & shall simply state that nothing is EVER simple and to imply that it is is, well, not so black-and-white. (Do pardon the pun.)
Of course, I wrote a about a third-generation Mexican-American girl who came from an assimilated family, largely ignorant of her original cultural heritage (a huge point in her character arc) so is that a cop out? Or a reflection of one girl’s experience as a suburban Latina teen? Or something a lot of Americans can identify with, nevermind their ethnicity, race or culture? And who am I to say, anyway, right? I’m a 30+ year old Jewish woman of indeterminate background.
The rule of who can write what to assuage whom is just silly. Every person and their experience has a right to be explored and represented in literature. The story dictates itself and we respond respectfully (we hope) with research and tough questions and therein lies the truth: we’re really writing about the human experience.
So from one human to another, kudos!
Dawn
We mixed folk rock. Those of us that are have parents of different racial groups have an exotic lock that most Black, White Asian or Native do not have. People are drawn to our international looks. We are always used as an escape goat. Yes, we exists and want to be acknowledged as such.