Unintentional Prejudice in Fiction

[alchemist]

Re the Harry Potter/ Cho Chang issue, I think it's just as important for allegations of prejudice to be critiqued as much as the works themselves. For instance, Chang (or versions of it) appears to be the 3rd most popular Chinese surname*. Even if it were a rare name, it would still possible for a Chinese character to have that name.

It seems to me that many allegations of prejudice are based on what somebody thinks characters SHOULD be, rather than what they CAN be.



* I still have no idea re Asian girls wanting to be saved by white boys and whether that's a trope or not, or how rounded Miss Chang is

 

[Nerds_feather]

Re the Harry Potter/ Cho Chang issue, I think it's just as important for allegations of prejudice to be critiqued as much as the works themselves. For instance, Chang (or versions of it) appears to be the 3rd most popular Chinese surname*. Even if it were a rare name, it would still possible for a Chinese character to have that name.

It seems to me that many allegations of prejudice are based on what somebody thinks characters SHOULD be, rather than what they CAN be.

* I still have no idea re Asian girls wanting to be saved by white boys and whether that's a trope or not, or how rounded Miss Chang is

I can't really say on the book, but I will just make the general comment that unintentional prejudice and stereotyping is something Asian Americans complain often about--with justification. But, as in the Mad TV sketch I linked to, it's usually not done with ill-intentions. Just ignorance.

Doesn't mean it doesn't hurt when you're the one taking the brunt of it.

In the end, to reiterate something I said earlier, this is a case for better beta reading. And I don't think anyone loses by making the minority characters (or women, who aren't a minority) as well-rounded as whoever is in the default category.

 

[Coolhand]

I soon concluded that in my opinion, it is certainly not an authors job to go out of their way to be overly diverse in their story if it is unrealistic or uncharacteristic of the setting, especially in sci-fi or fantasy. Also, I'd like to make a point due to the earlier posts on this thread... These are just my personal opinions and I really do not want to argue, I'm just interested in yours!

As general rule I'd agree with that. Introducing a strongly anachronistic character into a setting simply to tick a race quota box seems a poor way of creating compelling characters and will poorly serve a story, just as surely as excluding races or cultures who would otherwise naturally occur in a setting simply to remove diversity would also poorly serve the story.

In the case of Cho Chang, I never read past the fifth Potter book so I don't know how her character was treated in the series after, but she struck me as simply a supporting role whose race was pretty much irrelevant. At the end of the day, based on the criteria set down in that critique, Rowling can't win no matter what she did. If Rowling had changed her race to be white european, then Harry's first crush is a white girl and Rowling is a racist afraid of inter-racial relationships. If Rowling had made her a Somali or Canadian First Nation girl, then Rowling has appropriated that culture for a token character to show some token exoticism. You could make arguments for all of the above if you want to, because there really isn't enough of Cho in the book to actually get a genuine handle on who she is. Therefore, it's easy to extrapolate a critique and pin it on the character.

Now Rowling could go back and spend far more time on Cho, but then she has to lose time elsewhere in the story or bloat the book up out of all proportion to make every character a POV Protagonist. And that's usually not a viable choice. At the end of the day, the Cho character is there to hit a plot point and drive certain aspects of Harry's story forward, and that's all. Some characters are nothing more than walk-on plot points, especially in large epic tales. They have to be quick sketches, and that makes them vulnerable to someone over-analysing that sketch (quite probably for genuine reasons related to the real and serious problems of discrimination and racism that exist today and do crop up in the media) and and take offence.

I'll say that again: I in no way mean to downplay the genuine hurt or offence felt by the writers of such critiques or imply that they are in some way manufacturing fake-offence. I'm sure that their motivations come from honest places driven by a concern over genuine issues. I may disagree with some (but not all) of such critiques but I do not doubt the sincerity of them.

But as a writer, I think you have to accept that no matter how hard you try, if you're lucky enough to get published and be widely read, someone out there somewhere is going to take offence at your work and construct an essay containing details arguments accusing you of an -ism of some kind and chiding you for your foolish or possibly malign nature. I guess all a writer can do at the end of the day is examine their own work with an honest and open mind, make an honest decision as to whether they feel that their narrative choices are artistically valid, and if they feel that they are, publish and be damned.

Just my 2C.

...ah CRAP that was intended to be a pithy couple of sentences. Sorry about the text wall.

 

[Gary Compton]

In fiction, characters are bastards, they rape and pillage, shoot, torture and eat their victims. Could you imagine a story without?

In my own WIP my baddy kills and gasses Jews with a smile.

I do this as a writer cos that's what Nazis do. They don't go ballet dancing and support old peoples homes. They are scum and my story/writing shows that.

However, as everyone knows, I am the nicest guy since chocolate shaped men (is that racist by the way?) so people know I am not a Nazi.

It's a story - don't over analyse!

 

[Mirannan]

Regarding older characters, one could quote Sparhawk and, of course, Aragorn. Skua September from Alan Dean Foster's works, too.

Regarding race - I still think that claiming race to be a social construct is nonsense. Compare a Zulu and an ethnic Swede; are the differences between them purely cultural?

 

[Coolhand]

Apologies for the second reply but I've been thinking a bit more about this and there's something else that's troubling me here, a conundrum, if you will, and I'm not quite sure how to square the circle.

I didn't read the book either, so I can't say whether the story is handled well or not. But I'm guessing, based on the information at hand, that it's "demure Asian woman saved by valiant white prince," which would be a trope.

But again, I didn't read it--it might not be tropey at all, for all I know.

I understand why stereotypical tropes can cause offence and pain. I agree they can be harmful.They can be used as propaganda tools, deliberate attempts to portray another race as inferior in fiction, or unintentional "whoops I didn't realise it would come across that way, my bad!" screw ups from an author who owns their mistakes and tries to do better next time.

But here's the problem, and I'm honestly not sure I know the answer.

What if I AM a trope?

There are over 7 billion people around, and I believe people's personalities come in a vast spectrum. I don't think it's reasonable to say that a person MUST have this personality trait just because they are white, or must have THIS reaction to a situation just because they are a women.

But I don't think it's reasonable to say that a person of that race/gender/sexuality/insert group name here CAN'T have that reaction or trait either.

Because somewhere out there, a real person will indeed fit that trope.

So let's hypothetically say that I actually AM a young Korean girl who is demure and shy (seems possible) and actually loves the romantic idea of a boy saving her and genuinely wants of her own free will that sort of relationship dynamic (seems possible). Let's say that the rough sketch of Cho actually sort of does correlate to a minority of Korean girls who sort of roughly fit that rough sketch (in the vast spectrum of human variance, it's possible.)

By saying that this kind of person of this specific race is considered a trope and is Problematic and Racist and should not appear in fiction, you're essentially invalidating me as a person. You're saying that people like me should not be represented in fiction. That people like me are actually HARMFUL when portrayed in fiction. Even if we are seen as a good person in the terms of the narrative, maybe even a hero, the fact that we are shown to possess these traits means that we are Problematic, and invalidates our character, and the author should apologise for portraying someone like me.

So so lets say Rowling removed Cho. And I never got to see someone like me represented as a hero in one of the most beloved fantasy series in popular culture.

In other words, the criticism of unintentional prejudice by use of a stereotype becomes unintentionally prejudicial. It becomes a snake that eats itself. Groups inside a certain race are excluded from media culture because other groups believe they should not be portrayed in fiction as they possess "inferior" or "undesirable" personality traits.

How to square this circle?

 

[Coolhand]

It seems to me that many allegations of prejudice are based on what somebody thinks characters SHOULD be, rather than what they CAN be.

....and in one sentence alchemist cuts to the chase of what it took me a wall of text to say

 

[Ursa major]

Regarding race - I still think that claiming race to be a social construct is nonsense. Compare a Zulu and an ethnic Swede; are the differences between them purely cultural?

But what race is a Zulu? And what race is a Swede?

 

[mosaix]

But sometimes you do get a sense that it's coming from the author.

I think Mouse is right about this. Sometimes, you do get a feel.

But is 'a feel' enough to reach a conclusion? Probably not and maybe some background research is in order.

 

[Nerds_feather]

The problem with tropes isn't their occasional use, but the fact that they are used over and over again--and alternatives are not. That's what makes them tropes.

Take the nerdy math whiz Asian kid trope from the 80s. The problem isn't in the individual use, or even with the notion of being a math whiz, but in the fact that these roles dominates portrayals of Asian kids in 80s films. It was pigeon-holing and stereotype reinforcing.

 

[vanye]

Here I thought we had had the author safely dead and buried for decades and now y'all go and exhume him/her in the interest of political correctness, good taste and just generally the good of us all? I do not know if I think that's a good idea.

(...) I see two kinds of prejudice: intentional and unintentional. However, when we talk about racism, sexism or similar things, there's often an assumption that we're talking about the intentional--i.e. outright, purposive prejudice, like you'd find among KKK members or neo-nazis. (...)

So the general question is, how do we deal with unintentional prejudice in SF/F--as authors, critics and readers/fans? And what other sorts of meaningful distinctions can or should we draw, e.g. the difference between an author's POV and a character's?

You seem to think that prejudice is necessarily a Bad Thing. I disagree. Us humans, we live in a complex, constantly changing world. We never have all the information we need to objectively analyse a given situation, so we rely on past experiences and on what information we have, to guide our action. We practically live at the mercy of our prejudices, they are our coping strategy in a world that demands decisions of us almost every moment of our lives.

And to divide prejudices into the intentional and non-intentional does not make any sense to me. What is it supposed to mean? I would rather say that we have to be aware of the fact that our worldview practically consists of prejudices and try to act accordingly.

But my point is that it's less productive to look for hidden meanings in the text than to interpret the book according to what is right there on the surface. (...)

Naw, I don't think so. Depending what you want to do and the tools you use, a reading against the grain can be very productive, indeed. It opens hidden cracks and all sorts of meanings start to tumble out of them. As a critic, you just have to take care not to take yourself and your findings too seriously. They are valid meanings, if the reading is done well, but they are only a small part of a multiplicity of equally valid meanings. LitCrit/cultural criticism is not a blame-game. It produces meaning but not absolute truth.

Tell you what. If three people don't pipe up to the effect that they value my contributions on this board - I'll never post here again. It's no skin off my nose.

I don't have any great expectations of a wave of approval, I'm packing my backs already. No drama. I'm just not prepared to change my style and not that bothered about moving on.

Not a problem.

While I do indeed wish for you to keep writing here, even if only because I deeply appreciate a guy/gal who knows how to state their points elegantly and clearly, I think that the above - please excuse my French - is BS and carts of it. Why would you let other people make your decisions for you? Either you have got something to say or you do not. If you think that you do, then do. No need to ask others for permission or approval. Your freedom to utter and defend your own opinion is also a responsibility. And not one that you can put on someone else's shoulders!

Anyway, this is not the first discussion of authors and their prejudices. What, for example, do y'all think of the mother of these discussions: Chinua Achebe's criticism of Joseph Conrad´s Heart of Darkness, that "... Conrad was a thoroughgoing racist ..."?

 

[Nerds_feather]

You seem to think that prejudice is necessarily a Bad Thing. I disagree. Us humans, we live in a complex, constantly changing world. We never have all the information we need to objectively analyse a given situation, so we rely on past experiences and on what information we have, to guide our action. We practically live at the mercy of our prejudices, they are our coping strategy in a world that demands decisions of us almost every moment of our lives.

I'm aware of the argument about stereotypes being rooted in the cognitive need to make quick assessments without information.

But we're also clearly animals that have the ability to deliberately affect our impulses and evolutionary mechanisms, which other animals generally do not possess. This is how "the need to assess whether another tribe are friendly or not friendly" turns into the conscious determination that genetically superficial markers like skin tone or phenotype are "important" markers of intelligence, ability and "right to self-rule, and can furthermore be employed to justify political domination and economic exploitation on a global scale.

I'd say the ability to quickly determine to avoid the crackhead across the street who is yelling at everyone is a good thing. The ability to rate people according to how they fit into made-up BS categories is decidedly a bad thing. A bad thing that is, in one form or another, at the heart of nearly every major bad thing humans have done to each other in the modern era, and many from before it. It's entirely possible to recognize that we engage in stereotyping and similar forms of behavior for a reason, and simultaneously recognize that the interaction of our evolutionary impulses, agency and complex, mechanized social structures create warped outcomes--like racism.

Of course, in the very small world of SF/F publishing, where our discussion lies, much of this isn't really relevant anyways. As far as that limited domain is concerned, I'd say it's okay to write characters who are prejudiced, and I'd even say advisable to explore those prejudices. But that's different from writing lame, stereotype-reinforcing characters that add nothing except frustration at the author's laziness. There are superior alternatives.

And to divide prejudices into the intentional and non-intentional does not make any sense to me. What is it supposed to mean? I would rather say that we have to be aware of the fact that our worldview practically consists of prejudices and try to act accordingly.

I'm not sure what it is you don't understand. On the one hand, you have intentional expressions of prejudice. On the other you have expressions of prejudice that the author didn't realize were prejudicial, or things that end up in the story because the author just didn't think about how someone else would think of them. Seems like a pretty clear distinction to me.

 

[Grunkins]

I can't imagine being offended by portrayals of characters in fiction.

Unless that fiction is written very badly, that's offensive. And maybe more so when it purports to have high artistic merit, but is actually bad writing...that offends deeply.

But nothing within a fiction.

 

[Foxbat]

Every single one of us is flawed and I defy anybody to say they can put their hand on their heart and say they have never ever been unintentionally prejudicial in fiction or any other aspect of life.

Fair enough, try and avoid it if you can, but if you think about things like this too much and you begin to disappear up your own backside.

Me? I'd rather look up and see the sunshine with all its faults than the inside of my own rectum.

 

[Hex]

Yes. Sunshine.

re Cho Chang. I read it as quite a nice piece of diversity (although I am not Chinese, nor am I am Korean). Cho is Harry's love interest -- the girl he adores from afar because she's a brilliant quidditch player and clever and pretty -- and then when he finally gets up the courage to ask her to a dance, turns out she's already going with someone else.

There's nothing to say Cho has to be Chinese -- it isn't relevant to the plot. She just is. I think accusing Rowling of using a trope (and I don't think she did -- I don't think there's any evidence that Cho wanted Harry to rescue her, quite the opposite really) misses the point that Cho just behaves like a girl. Rowling could have written her as white or malaysian or nigerian and it would have made no difference at all to the story.

Cho goes out with white boys. She's at school with them. If she waited around for a Chinese boy just because she was Chinese, I think Rowling would have come in for a lot more criticism.

EDIT: oh, and @Gary -- in fact many Nazis went ballet dancing and supported old people. They were also kind to children and loved their wives.

 

[Nerds_feather]

Every single one of us is flawed and I defy anybody to say they can put their hand on their heart and say they have never ever been unintentionally prejudicial in fiction or any other aspect of life.

Absolutely. Many authors I deeply respect have been unintentionally prejudiced in the past. Do I wish it had gone down another way? I do. But are nevertheless they still among my favorite authors? Except in a few exceptional cases, yes. Would they be horrified to have this pointed out to them? In most cases, I think they would.

But this is one of the major points I've been stressing: intentional prejudice is much more rare in SF/F than unintentional prejudice. And by becoming more aware of it, we can create better and more well-rounded characters while minimizing problematic stuff that doesn't even matter much to the author anyways, since it wasn't even given much thought or care in the first place.

As always in these discussions, I'll go back to Joe Abercrombie's reply to criticism of the character Terez. He clearly didn't mean it to turn out that way, but when he saw how some people saw things, he took the time to see it from their perspective, and said he'd handle things like gender better in the future (and I think his recent books do, in fact, handle gender much better than The First Law Trilogy).

 

[Brian G Turner]

I can't imagine being offended by portrayals of characters in fiction.

To add to this discussion, I cannot help but suspect that a degree of character-development criticism comes from "Not writing ME!"

In other words, "If I do not see ME in this character, then the writer is incapable of writing for my ethnicity/gender/sexuality/values."

The Rowling poem I took as the above. Not least that it opens criticising the placement of the character in Ravenclaw.

 

[svalbard]

I can't imagine being offended by portrayals of characters in fiction.

Unless that fiction is written very badly, that's offensive. And maybe more so when it purports to have high artistic merit, but is actually bad writing...that offends deeply.

But nothing within a fiction.

What you said? But then I am not easily offended and might even excuse some badly written piece of literary excellence.

Sometimes I feel that people are looking too deeply into what an author writes and to be honest if I unintentionally insult someone in China because I have written in a minor character that they feel misrepresents the Chinese race that is tough. I am not responsible for what a reader thinks, believes, feels. Emotions are subjective and as I said in an earlier post there are far too many people out there looking to be offended by someone or something.

Now if I do intentionally write something to offend certain ethnic groups(being ginger doesn't count), then that is a different matter and I should be held up for censure.

 

[Foxbat]

Sometimes I feel that people are looking too deeply into what an author writes and to be honest if I unintentionally insult someone in China because I have written in a minor character that they feel misrepresents the Chinese race that is tough. I am not responsible for what a reader thinks, believes, feels. Emotions are subjective and as I said in an earlier post there are far too many people out there looking to be offended by someone or something.

I agree although I think what the reader believes counts for a lot in the sense that the reader is not without his or her own responsibilities.

Take me as an example - a Scot. I look at Star Trek and I see Scotty, a man who likes his whisky and is often used to provide some comic relief moments. I could easily read that as prejudice against my kind but I don't because I know that no offense was intended. And that is simply the end of it as far as I'm concerned. I don't think it merits me writing to the creators and saying that it's unitentional prejudice, it's just not that important.

The other point I'd like to make is that thinking too much about this can neuter your own creative processes and stunt your growth as a writer. I'd rather produce something that some people like (even if more hate it) than something that is sterile, PC right-on and, frankly, boring.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

Besides, um... I think I can say this because I'm from that bit of Norn Iron that looks directly at Scotland. A fair few of the scots I know (and I know a lot) do like whiskey. And are outrageously funny. Just like a lot of Irish people I know drink more than what's good for them - guilty as charged here - and have a tendency to get a little heated in debates. But not all of them do. I even know some Irish teetotallers (and Scottish ones, for that matter) and some miserable Celts.

Bottom line - is it a stereotype or does it represent some Scottish people I've met? Yes, just as much as a staid, hard working Victorian-dad type does. Or a family with three kids and a dog who like to go to the seaside. Or a family with two dads who like going to see Celtic (and the chaps who try, vigourously, to teach them the error of their ways at half-time.) it doesn't matter - Scotty was a warm, believable, character. Whether he was a stereotype is irrelevant - it all comes down to what Toby said - write it well, edit it well, make the pov convince and it'll be all right. After that, you can blame the character.