Writing White

I recently read an article that really disturbed me. No, it wasn’t the fact that at least four men have played Superman in the past or that the Great Pumpkin is not coming to see Charlie Brown again this year. It’s far more important to me and to anyone who reads this who is a writer.

The article said that as a white person I should not, under any conditions write a character who was not as white as I was. Read that again.  I had to read it twice myself.  It went on to say that if we had a character who was non-white we were not qualified to write anything about that person since we did not understand who they were or anything about them.  Let that sink in for a minute.

That means, if you ascribe to that philosophy, that you can never have a character from the country of…fill in the blank, or a person who speaks…. another blank unless they are from the English-speaking world for the most part.

Think of all the great literary works we would have lost if that idea had been floated a century ago.  Mark Twain would still be Sam Clemmons working on a riverboat.  We would never had met Atticus Finch.  Gone With the Wind would still be blowing in the breeze and we would never have heard the Tarzan yell.

I resent and reject that idea on a personal and a professional basis. I have two mystery series in print.  I have an African American character in both who shows up in every book and will continue to do so.  One of the series is set in Atlanta, GA in the early 1950’s.  It features a Private Investigator who works out of a pool room. The character is the combination janitor and rack boy.  He is patterned after a real person who held those two jobs in a real pool room.  I write him the way I remember his and the way he spoke.  He had a slight lisp and everyone knew it.  It was a part of who he was and, for me and my novels, he is a very important character.  I write him like I remember him and I don’t feel that I should make apologies for doing so.

If we are true to our characters without intentionally demeaning them do we do them a disservice by not making them a mirror image of us?  If you have a recent immigrant from a non-English speaking country how much credibility will you lose if that person speaks perfect English the day they arrive? We, as writers have an obligation to our readers and to our characters.  Our readers expect us to take them to places they may have never been or have them see or do things they would never experience outside the covers of our books.  By the same token, we owe our characters a chance to be themselves, warts and all.

We have to listen to them speak. Have dinner with them and see what they eat.  Spend an evening with them and see what they talk about and how they interact with others.

It’s not being PC, its being a responsible writer. 

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.