White Men, Black Women, and Fictional Stereotypes

I am a white male. Like it or not, both those things — white and male — say  volumes about me. Of course, some people make them say more than they should. Which is the downside of living in our hypersensitive, politically correct age. But I am also a novelist. Those two things — white male + novelist —  can, if not careful, become a tightrope. Especially as they relate to the opposite gender and other ethnicities.

So what happens when a white male novelist chooses to write about a white female protagonist? Even more to the point, what happens when a white male novelist chooses to write about a black female protagonist? Wow! Talk about a minefield. Even riskier than writing in the opposite sex, is writing in another ethnicity.

Back in 2005, when I was writing The Resurrection, I posed this question to my then-critique group:

In my WIP, there’s a cross-section of different ethnic characters: a Hispanic priest, an Asian servant, a Nigerian doctor, etc. Question: Must I articulate these characters’ ethnicity or can I leave it up to the reader’s  discovery? For instance, instead of describing one character as “a black man,” I am tempted to not even mention his skin color, just background info like: he’s Nigerian, he has an accent, he wears unique clothes, and let the reader fill in the blanks.

Ideally, it would be cool to not have to attribute race to every character. She is Hispanic. He is Middle-Eastern. They are Chinese. However, I’m discovering what C.S. Lewis suggested, If readers are given the chance to misunderstand, they will. Which is what happened recently with one reviewer.

Katherine Coble, who visits this blog (and graciously permitted me to cite her), recently reviewed The Resurrection on Goodreads and had trouble with the book because of what she perceived as a racist undercurrent.  She wrote:

My main objection to the book is that I felt it flirted a bit too much with racism. I actually said “Oh no!” out loud when the Magical Negro made his first appearance. Then, as he monologues his villainous intent and it becomes clear that he is a Black Magical Negro I was fairly upset. It seems that a lot of the negativity in the book is (accidentally, I trust) The Fault Of Ignorant Coloured People. I may be reading too much into that, but it does trouble me.

Well, after I read this, I was the one who was troubled. Who was the Magical Negro in my story that Katherine was referring to? And am I unconsciously a racist? This is not an inference to take lightly. Which I didn’t. That night, I tossed and turned, trying to get a handle on Katherine’s observations. Then, about 1 AM, it dawned on me:

Katherine mistakenly thought my antagonist was black.

This was partly my fault. Why? Because I didn’t say he wasn’t. In fact, I never specified his ethnicity. I did however say he had an afro. And apparently this is what misled Katherine. It resulted in an interesting exchange between us, which you can find in the body and comments section of THIS POST. But the whole incident has caused me to ponder the issue of handling race in our fiction. These are some of the questions I’ve been asking myself lately.

Have readers become hyper-sensitive to the portrayal of race, especially when that portrayal is done by writers of a different race? In other words, have we developed a knee-jerk suspicion of white men writing about black men (much less black women)? Are we overly-cautious against racial stereotypes (like the Magical Negro)? And could this be due entirely to a monocultural publishing industry (like the CBA)?

Secondly, what ways do authors unintentionally employ racial stereotypes? Katherine’s observations made me think about the ways I employed characters of color in my story. Perhaps I had subconsciously made my antags Ignorant Coloured People. In the aforementioned comments thread, it led to a rather uncomfortable defense of sympathetic characters of color in my novel. Frankly, I don’t put this type of latent or subconscious stereotyping past myself or anyone. So, even if I denied the “charge,” it is definitely worthwhile thinking about.

Thirdly, is it safe to assume that when an author does not specify a character’s ethnicity, that character is the author’s ethnicity? In other words, when an Asian author writes characters, the default race of her characters is always Asian. When a black author writes characters, the default race is always black. Etcetera, etcetera. One of the reasons I resisted attributing race to every person of color in my story was a feeling of pandering to multiculturalism, as if I was populating my story in order to meet some demographic quota. Either way, it seemed to have come back to bite me. So is it safe to assume that when an author does not specify a character’s ethnicity, that character is the author’s ethnicity? In my case, the answer was “no.”

Anyway, the whole affair has been instructive and caused me to reflect deeply on this issue. I’m interested in your thoughts. Do you think we must attribute race to all characters not of our own race? Do you think we pander to a multicultural mindset and are overly-sensitive to the portrayal of ethnic groups in fiction? Or do you think this sensitivity is important for an author to develop and nurture?