a very mixed race future

[Dave]

Some people have always thought that the future must, by necessity, be better than the past. Usually, they call it Progress. One can very easily see that this is not always true. Other people like to dwell on the past, as some wonderful place where all was good and wholesome. Reality is somewhere in between both. Natural Selection is a slow process, we are not going to change very much, very soon. It has pointed out that there is practically no genetic difference between so called "Races", and equally we are just like the cavemen who lived 15,000 years ago, so any change to our behaviour has to be learned - which was why I advocated education as a solution - not as some ideal but as a necessity.

And we have to understand other people's viewpoints in order to counter them - Putin is clearly a crazy man, but the people support him because there is some truth in the idea of a European land grab from their point of view. IS is to all intents and purposes a brainwashing Cult, but if there was no truth at all in the what they teach then they wouldn't have anyone joining them. It is pointless for our leaders to stand on a soapbox and denounce their leaders without doing anything to address the grievances of the supporters.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

Putin is clearly a crazy man

I'm hoping only slightly so, or else we are in for a bad time.

 

[Ursa major]

but if there was no truth at all in the what they teach then they wouldn't have anyone joining them.

I'd agree, except for the inconvenient truth that some people's idea of what the truth is can be very far from reality. Sadly, this seems even more true of what they see as The Truth.

For example, not all religions can be true -- if only because they disagree with each other (and, sometimes, themselves) -- yet there are adherents of just about every one of them that believe their faith to be literally True, even where the tenets are self-contradictory or some (most?) of them bear no resemblance to reality whatsoever.

 

[Ihe]

Putin is clearly a crazy man

I'd read somewhere that some behavioural analysts believe Putin has some degree of Asperger's--high-functioning, naturally. Not crazy, just not "normal", and clinically obsessed with control.
It's scary that he's found out none will oppose him as long as he does it little by little. That fence will continue to spread 100 meters every three months until all of Europe is Russian .

 

[JoanDrake]

I'd think it would be very easy to handle race or ethnicity . Just don't say anything about what they are in the story, and when you're done just go back and mention it, once. If you're treating your characters as individual people it won't make any difference, yes?

 

[Ihe]

I'd think it would be very easy to handle race or ethnicity . Just don't say anything about what they are in the story, and when you're done just go back and mention it, once. If you're treating your characters as individual people it won't make any difference, yes?

Where does that leave character description or development (in case their appearance somehow plays a part in a scene?). The race/ethnicity thing won't go away by ignoring it. In a perfect world, you could adress race/ethnicity and nobody would care. But yeah, readers want a push to imagine the story vividly. They want to put a face to the hero.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

A Wizard of Earthsea

 

[Nick B]

To be fair the social justice warriors need to put the swords down. I agree with Ihe, we should be as comfortable saying what skin colour a character has as we are their hair colour. Why would it be an insult to say that someone is black/white/blue/green?
I hate racism, sexism, and any other form of discrimination and bigotry. I don't flinch when someone is described as ginger/red headed and freckled (which I am). Equaly I don't get my pants bunched up whem Lee Child says a guy is black.
I think this is more a thing that as-yet unpublished writers worry about, being afraid it will affect their future possibilities.

 

[JoanDrake]

There is a tendancy for a strongly ingrained culture to not be assimilated even should they lose their base of cultural identity. i.e. The Jewish diaspora. Though they possess a Middle Eastern origin, they have integrated themselves into many cultures without losing who they are. Another example would be the Rom. They too have spread out culturally but remained who and what they are. The peoples of Acadia were forcibly migrated to the far south, and though they transmogrified to being known as Cajun, their language and culture remain, after hundreds of years.

In this, I believe the signifying factors to cultural survival are; a shared language, a shared religion, a cultural conditioning that includes certain shared behaviorisms and believes. All of which must remain strong enough to supercede the imposition of outside cultural forces.

And a sense by the people of who they are and a feeling that it is important, yes? I have many values because of my religion and nationality but I'm not all that religious or nationalistic so they don't make a lot of difference to me

Where does that leave character description or development (in case their appearance somehow plays a part in a scene?). The race/ethnicity thing won't go away by ignoring it. In a perfect world, you could adress race/ethnicity and nobody would care. But yeah, readers want a push to imagine the story vividly. They want to put a face to the hero.

I think the answer to that question is in the question, IF the character's ethnicity plays a part in the scene then describe it as necessary to describe the scene, I'm just saying it can usually be ignored if it has no bearing on the story. OTOH it may BE the story, and a very good one for that.

 

[Dave]

It isn't surprising that immigrants stay within their own communities. They will naturally want to talk together about the old country, eat their traditional foods and worship together in their own style. The speed at which they integrate is often determined by wealth rather than by religious rules about marrying outside of their faith. Rich men want their daughters to marry the sons of their wealthy customers. In the UK we have never forced foreigners to Naturalise but in the past foreigners were subject to higher taxes, or prevented from joining guilds and companies. There was therefore a glass ceiling for immigrants. Rich people would want to become British as soon as possible. Poor people had nothing to lose by remaining within their immigrant communities because they were never going to reach that glass ceiling in any case.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

Carrickfergus had Irish Quarter, Scotch Quarter
Belfast has or had Little Italy.
Many cities have a Chinatown.
(The Holy Land near QUB in Belfast is purely due to the street names, not people)