Writing Stack Exchange
Writing Stack Exchange

Questions tagged [racism]

For questions about whether something in your writing could be considered racist.

It is impossible to guarantee that nobody will take offense to a written work, either now or at a later date. Therefore, questions with this tag, and answers to those questions, should focus on minimising the offence that would be caused to contemporary audiences.

Answers to the effect of "People will always be offended, so don't bother trying" are not acceptable, as they ignore the question's intent. Any such answers are likely to be deleted.

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Avoiding racist tropes in fantasy

I'm interested in starting a pleasure project: a fantasy story, along the lines of a witch delivering a prophecy to a king about a dangerous and deceitful foe who will overthrow him, and the king enlists three other witches to seek out and destroy…
user34214
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Writing diversity

I am writing a military sci-fi novel about an international military force facing aliens. My cast is very diverse: the MC is Yemenite-Israeli, his love interest is German, his room-mates are from Georgia (the country - not the American state),…
Galastel supports GoFundMonica
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When your main character is a misogynist or a racist, how do you tell your readers that you don't subscribe to his racist views by merely showing?

When your main character is a misogynist or a racist, how do you tell your readers that you don't subscribe to his racist views by merely showing? The only way to kinda do this in my opinion is to make him learn from his mistake and develop him into…
user36239
14
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4 answers

Should I include an appendix for inessential, yet related worldbuilding to my story?

I'm of the opinion that a story should stand on its own; any worldbuilding that is necessary for the plot and story to function should be part of the story. However, at the same time, the world I write in is an extensive, fully-realised world which…
Matthew Dave
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How can I distance myself from an article published under my name, with edits I disagree with?

I wrote an article for a university newspaper that summarizes incidents involving racism on campus. After edits, the sentence structure became uniformly long instead of varied, straightforward vocabulary was placed with ten-dollar words, and two…
Anonymous Student
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Is the often used black and white symbolism inherently racist?

It is an extremely common trope that white/light means good and dark/black means bad/evil. I thought that - contrary to the appearances - the black/white symbolism is not racist. I believe it has nothing to do with an unfortunate period in history…
gaazkam
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Would this be considered racist?

I am a young author writing a fantasy series. I’m re-reading the manuscript of my first book and noticed something about sun elves. I know this question is a little long but bear with me. Sun elves are one of the eight kinds of elves in my fantasy…
Hello.There
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It seems safer to make everyone white then to be accused of 'racism' if I I make any of my pre-written cultures a different race

I'm writing fantasy stories in different worlds which do not share any history with our own. I was thinking I wanted to move away from the classic 'all white cast' scenario in most games, by picking one of the groups of people and making them a…
dsollen
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Character with strange name that could be racist

My story is set in 1892, and one of the major characters is named Ignacio. The other characters just call him "Nacho" for short. I think this nickname is very silly and I have grown attached to it. How exactly do I write a story with a Mexican…
A.W. Douglas
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Early investment in a character who "learns better"

I'm looking for ways to build early reader investment in an unlikable character who "learns better," but not until fairly late in the book. In particular, I'm writing a first-person middle-grade novel in which, among other flaws, the…
Chris Sunami
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White author using AAVE, is it appropriate?

A story I am writing follows a team of people, but the POV shifts. It’s first person from the point of view of one of the team members, but which team member it is changes each chapter. One member of the team is Black, and I am considering having…
user73891
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How to describe races/ethnicities in setting where corresponding geographic locations do not exist?

In English, the common name for some racial or ethnic groups is a fairly neutral English word (e.g. white, black...). Others, however, are named only by reference to a geographic point of origin (e.g. Indian, East Asian, Pacific Islander...) How do…
Drubbels
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Is the word "coloured" offensive when writing about Apartheid?

I am writing a paper on Aparthied and I was going to use the word "coloured" in it, but I wasn't sure if it would be offensive or not. For context, it was a word used in South Africa to describe people of mixed descent. If it is offensive, what are…
MrHiTech
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Sympathetic Racist

So when designing characters an important part of them is flaws and how they overcome them or rise above them. And so I wanted to make a character(one of the main characters, either supporting the protagonist or the protagonist) that has the flaw of…
Amoeba
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How to convey a character's race/ethnicity clearly but appropriately?

When describing a character I usually provide some indication of their race/ethnicity since a lot of my work has multiracial characters and I tend to use elements of ethnicity in characterization. Most of the time I find a tasteful way to describe…
FrontEnd
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