Straying Dangerously Close to a Worthwhile Topic

     I wasn’t going to write anything more related to Hunger Games, but then I stumbled across some nonsense regarding complaints about Rue’s casting. And damned if my English major siren didn’t kick on full-blast and make me write a post.

     As mentioned before, being an English major—especially at a small, private liberal arts college—was more about white¹ guilt than literature. At the undergraduate level, analyzing literature doesn’t mean a thang unless it involves delving into social undertones.

     Here, I’ll save you four years of term papers and break it down for you: all nonwhite characters written by white authors are indicators of some subtle form of racism².

     For example, if you were reading Hunger Games in American Lit 101, you would be talking about how the only overtly “dark-skinned” characters are from an agricultural district, harkening back to the time of slaves working the field. Then the discussion would turn to whether or not the author intended this as some kind of political statement, or if it was just a random detail that implies a much more innate form of racism³. Oh, wait. It already has.

     What really makes me wonder is when I look back at my own writing. I have completed two novels to date, and both of them are rife with nonwhites. Of the four protagonists of Reign of Rezal, one is Japanese and the other is ambiguously “dark-skinned.” Piercing the Sphere is a little trickier since it is a fantasy novel set in a made-up world—there isn’t an Africa, but there is a continent called Tholos that is largely swamp and jungle and located near the Equator; therefore the natives have darker skin. But again, of the four(ish) characters who I would consider top-tier, one is “Asian,” one is “black,” one is mixed, and only the fourth has “pale skin.”

     The big question I find myself asking⁴ is why. Honestly, I never really considered it during the writing process itself. As the characters formed themselves in my head, they just had backgrounds and characteristics that dropped them into racial groups. That sounds like a cop-out, I know, but it’s the truth. I don’t know why I came to envision them the way I did. The name Vincent Yamashita (from RoR) got stuck in my head from somewhere at some point during college, so I guess that set his race. In PtS… well, it was relevant to have some of the characters come from different lands. But, again, this is a made-up world. Hell, Ireland seemed like a far-off land full of a new race of people to the ancient Britons. So clearly I could have “foreigners” without changing their color.

     Really the question we should be asking is: does it matter? Especially in the genres of science fiction and fantasy, where the story is mostly not set in our current world, should we still care about our contemporary concepts of race and nationality? I like to play a game called “Replace the Race,” personally. Take characters from a book or movie you like (or have written), and swap around their physical characteristics so that they could be a different race. Does it change the story in any truly fundamental way? If so, why? If not, why? In either case, who really gives a damn?

¹ Correction: straight white male guilt

² Again, you can substitute for gender, religion, sexual orientation, or whatever other minority you wish.

³ “Well of course they work in the field. They’re black! What else would they be capable of doing?” says the Suzanne Collins’ theoretical subconscious racist

⁴ Yes, I’m asking myself questions.