Race related question

[Pen]

If you are reading a fiction book where there has not been any explicit indication of race for the main characters, what race, or skin color, or features along those lines, do you imagine in your mind?

 

Is the race (or similar) that you imagine like your own? Or different? 

 

 

[Joker]

I imagine my own race for the characters unless there are descriptions. I actually just realized that this week. I was reading a book and halfway through there was a race related incident with a character. I had imagined he looked like me until then. It’s funny you asked this question because it’s given me pause the past week. 

[Guest]

I usually imagine them my race unless there are descriptions or other hints (like if the name of the character is asian-sounding, for example). Sometimes I picture someone a certain way even though the description was different, because it reminds me of someone IRL. Like, if I had a good friend named Sonia with beautiful blonde hair, I might think a book character named Sonia has that hair, even though the text said she had red hair. 

[SereneHome]

That's an interesting question. I can't think of a book that I went into reading not knowing the race of the characters....

I also can't think of a book that had a main character's race different than author's. I would love some examples I think.....

[J-rap]

Interesting...  My imagination must not run that deep, because I can imagine a vague figure and personality type, but not a race.

[klmama]

I usually imagine someone who seems to "fit" with the name or location.   

[Slache]

I would say mine unless I tied them to actual people. James and Elyse are always black because my friends James and Elyse were. Once I read a book and found out about halfway through that Elyse was a redhead and I was very irritated.

[Jentrovert]

I don't imagine main characters in detail until those details are given, which usually happens fairly early. Like, they're kind of fuzzy figures and I gradually add details. 

I don't tend to create detailed images at all for transient characters.

[Ausmumof3]

I don’t tend to visualise strongly because the thoughts and motivations always seem more interesting to me than the physical attributes.  I have had disconcerting experiences where I’ve realised part way through a book that someone looked completely different or was a different race or gender to what I had in my head.  

[Junie]

I tend to imagine characters based on my own race (white).

 

[maize]

I'm another with poor visualization ability but to the extent I ascribe racial characteristics to characters where they are not otherwise signaled I think I do imagine them as more or less white though my default is more olive skin and dark hair than fair skin and blond. I have some kind of mental bias against blond hair--characters in my head never have blond hair. Even if they are described as having blond hair.

I've wondered how authors could best signal race if they want to. Especially in a fantasy or science fiction kind of setting where clues like location, name, or dialect might not be available. More specifically, how do you talk about things like hair type if you want a character to have African-type hair?

I've actually thought about this a lot because one of the ongoing stories in my head that may someday become a book involves a world with very distinct ethnic groups similar to our races, and the descriptions would matter. I found this as one source for writers:

https://writingwithcolor.tumblr.com/post/113627509260/words-to-describe-hair

Edited June 4, 2020 by maize

[Garga]

I start off automatically assuming they are white unless I know the author is another race.  Then, I assume the characters are probably the race of the author, until it’s clarified in the book.

[Ellie]

I imagine someone similar to myself. 

Some authors, like J.K. Rowling, go into great detail each time a new character is introduced. Others, such as Tolkien,  don't (although it seems that most of his characters have grey eyes, so there's that). If I'm not given specifics, I just imagine them more like me than not.

[Ellie]

1 hour ago, Danae said:

I also never once have seen a movie depiction of a book character and thought, “that’s not how I pictured them.” 

Oh, I have. When the miniseries "Anne of Green Gables" came out in the 80s, and it was announced that Colleen Dewhurst had been cast as Marilla, I was horrified, becaus Colleen didn't look *anything* like the way I pictured her in the book (the author did describe her some). As it turns out, Colleen was perfect, and now when I read the book, I see her instead of the author's description. 🙂 Also, I'm sorry, but Viggo Mortensen will never be Aragorn. Not too crazy about David Wenhams' Faramir, either.

[Jean in Newcastle]

 I don't know.  If there is a picture on the dust jacket or pictures in the book (most common of course with young adult books and younger) then I guess I see those.  I can't remember how I picture them otherwise.  I will say though that I hear books in my head.  And I hear them in different voices and accents, that are not at all my own voice.  So maybe I'm more auditory? 

[Chris in VA]

My daughter and I were talking about this very thing a few months ago. I realuzed my default is always to picture someone as white unless the author has indicated they are not, or unless I know the race of the characters based on the setting (story set in Japan would have Japanese characters, for instance). It kinda took me by surprise to see my own bias. 

[EKS]

11 hours ago, SereneHome said:

I can't think of a book that I went into reading not knowing the race of the characters....

Generally, books written by white US authors won't explicitly mention the race of a character unless that character is nonwhite or there is some sort of racial theme in the book.  Other things might point to a character being white--such as having blond hair and blue eyes--but more often than not, whiteness seems to be assumed.  Here's an article that dovetails with this issue.  And here's another.

Edited June 4, 2020 by EKS

[Xahm]

Usually I do assume whiteness, but there was a book I read to the kids recently, I can't remember which one, that I was sure had a black main character until there was an illustration part way through. I didn't notice the assumption until I found the illustration jarring. I think it was because of some word choices indicating a southern dialect. I live in the South, but in a more urban area, and middle class black families are more likely than middle class white families to have clear "southernisms" beyond "y'all." Overall, I don't really picture characters in detail, but I imagine them to be "like me" unless I know they aren't. Kind of like how I picture all of you to be like me except when I know otherwise. Lots of 30 somethings in my mind until someone mentions remembering the eighties.

[TheReader]

I will admit that, if I do picture a character (and I don't consciously do this, but I *have* had those moments of "wait, he didn't look like that...." when watching movie adaptations, so I must on some level do this...), I picture them my own race unless given clues otherwise.  

The first time I realized this was in reading various of the books about Lincoln Rhyme, and watching the movie, and in the book he was just described as having black hair (or that's all I had noticed) but then in the movie of course he's Morgan Freeman, and I thought, "Wait, what...??"  And then was a little horrified that I thought that. (and then scoured the book again to see if it ever *said* he was Caucasian, or I just thought that b/c of the 'black hair' aspect, and then acknowledged, "huh, okay, my mistake...") 

It was an alarming realization, honestly. 

[Meriwether]

Mostly like me unless something about the setting, physical description, name, lifestyle, or cover of the book would indicate a difference.

Speaking of the cover of the book, does anyone else notice that sometimes the person on the cover of the book doesn't match their written description?

[SereneHome]

2 hours ago, EKS said:

Generally, books written by white US authors won't explicitly mention the race of a character unless that character is nonwhite or there is some sort of racial theme in the book.  Other things might point to a character being white--such as having blond hair and blue eyes--but more often than not, whiteness seems to be assumed.  Here's an article that dovetails with this issue.  And here's another.

Hmmmm....but aren't people reading up on authors (or at least looking at the book cover) before starting a book?  I guess I "assume" that authors make their characters the same race as they are. Is it the same thing?

[EKS]

1 hour ago, SereneHome said:

Hmmmm....but aren't people reading up on authors (or at least looking at the book cover) before starting a book?  I guess I "assume" that authors make their characters the same race as they are. Is it the same thing?

I think the point that the people were making in the articles I linked is that white authors generally don't mention what race their (presumably) white characters are, but they will mention the races of nonwhite characters, even if the races of those characters have nothing to do with the storyline.

[Jean in Newcastle]

3 minutes ago, EKS said:

I think the point that the people were making in the articles I linked is that white authors generally don't mention what race their (presumably) white characters are, but they will mention the races of nonwhite characters, even if the races of those characters have nothing to do with the storyline.

Do non-white authors do the same?  Either don't mention race of presumably white characters and do mention those of nonwhite ones?  Or don't mention the race of characters who are the same race as themselves but mention those of the characters who are a race different than themselves? 

Do non-white readers read undescribed characters as white or the same race as themselves/

[SereneHome]

5 minutes ago, EKS said:

I think the point that the people were making in the articles I linked is that white authors generally don't mention what race their (presumably) white characters are, but they will mention the races of nonwhite characters, even if the races of those characters have nothing to do with the storyline.

I took both of those articles to mean that readers simply assume that characters are white, unless told otherwise.

 

[Guest]

14 hours ago, SereneHome said:

That's an interesting question. I can't think of a book that I went into reading not knowing the race of the characters....

I also can't think of a book that had a main character's race different than author's. I would love some examples I think.....

I would guess that isn’t common because what writer would presume to be able to speak for someone of a different race? Most good writers stick to what they know. 

[Tanaqui]

52 minutes ago, Jean in Newcastle said:

Do non-white authors do the same?  Either don't mention race of presumably white characters and do mention those of nonwhite ones?  Or don't mention the race of characters who are the same race as themselves but mention those of the characters who are a race different than themselves? 

Do non-white readers read undescribed characters as white or the same race as themselves/

 

In more recent books I've read, non-white authors and generally authors of non-white characters have gotten very good at specifying everybody's race when they're first introduced. Some readers do seem to find this a little jarring at first if comments at Amazon are trustworthy, or accuse the viewpoint characters of being "fixated" on race when, indeed, all they did is mention race. However, since a large percentage of readers do seem to view any characters not stated to be non-white as white (and sometimes do this even when the character IS written as non-white, see the explicitly racist drama over the Rue casting in the Hunger Games movies) and encouraging those people by only marking non-white characters is problematic at best, I don't see another solution.

[Tanaqui]

2 hours ago, SereneHome said:

Hmmmm....but aren't people reading up on authors (or at least looking at the book cover) before starting a book?  I guess I "assume" that authors make their characters the same race as they are. Is it the same thing?

 

I would be amazed if most people look up authors to see their race before reading. As for looking at covers, covers often lie. Books with non-white protagonists are very likely to have a cover that doesn't show the protagonist, or that shows the protagonist but only in such a way that their race is hidden (say, in silhouette or in a crowd of people) or, in extreme cases, that shows the protagonist as being white or "ambiguously brown".

While it is, of course, common for people to write characters of the same race they are it's by no means universal... especially, of course, if you are writing a book with multiple viewpoint characters.

[Garga]

5 hours ago, Meriwether said:

 

Speaking of the cover of the book, does anyone else notice that sometimes the person on the cover of the book doesn't match their written description?

Yes, this annoys me soooo much!!!  I know it’s petty, but...it does.

[Spy Car]

Not trying to be snarky or confrontational here, but my sincere belief is that as long as we think we belong to different "races" that we will perpetuate ongoing problems.

We are all members one one "race," the human race.

We do of course have ethnic, national, cultural, linguistic, religious, geographic, class, and gender differences. And histories as "groups" that should not be papered over. For sure.

But we are all members still members of the human race. Ethnic differences and cultural differences are NOT racial differences.

My 2 cents.

Bill

[katilac]

17 hours ago, J-rap said:

Interesting...  My imagination must not run that deep, because I can imagine a vague figure and personality type, but not a race.

This. 

17 hours ago, Danae said:

I’m one of those weird people with no internal visualization capability. Since I don’t picture anything I can hold things like race in limbo until/unless the author gives me some clues.

I also never once have seen a movie depiction of a book character and thought, “that’s not how I pictured them.” 

And this. 

4 hours ago, SereneHome said:

Hmmmm....but aren't people reading up on authors (or at least looking at the book cover) before starting a book?  

No? I don't know that I've ever intentionally read up on an author before reading their books. I'll read the blurb on the book cover, but ime they lack an author photo more often than not. As a non-visualizer, lol, an author photo makes no difference to me. idk about strong visualizers. 

[vmsurbat1]

17 hours ago, SereneHome said:

I also can't think of a book that had a main character's race different than author's. I would love some examples I think.....

One I can think of is McCall Smith's The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series....

[gstharr]

I apply the same rule I use for for news reporting.  If no race is mentioned, then the suspect is caucasian. 

[Condessa]

If the name gives a hint or if there is a cultural flavor to the writing style, the characters match that culture.  (So, maybe a character named Michelle looks French, even if she is not mentioned as being French.  Most fantasy that feels middle-ages-European-ish, they look European.  In Chakraborty’s books the characters look like a variety of peoples from Egypt to Persia to southern African.  In British literature they always look like varieties of British). If the story feels American and there are no descriptions or name hints, I picture them as the nondescript European mix that is so common here.

[Condessa]

I don’t think it is a bad thing, really.  I mean, I don’t think it’s a symptom of racism or something to imagine a character as having the most common demographic of the setting the story is in, or to generally tend to imagine a setting to be similar to one’s own until told otherwise.

[SereneHome]

58 minutes ago, katilac said:

No? I don't know that I've ever intentionally read up on an author before reading their books. I'll read the blurb on the book cover, but ime they lack an author photo more often than not. As a non-visualizer, lol, an author photo makes no difference to me. idk about strong visualizers. 

That's really interesting. I always look up books and authors on Amazon and Goodreads and get some info before deciding if I want to read it or not. Also, I am trying to think back to last year when I started reading "grown up" books again and I think all books I read had author's photos on the back.

 

[Guest]

1 hour ago, StellaM said:

That's like saying blokes can't write women - but many do (!), some suprisingly well.

Fiction is not a place to stay in one's lane.

Fiction is not a social justice exercise.

 

Well, I can’t say *I* would presume to do so. I would expect a lot of blow-back on that when people find out a white chick wrote that story from a black boy growing up in the deep south in the sixties. 

I remember hearing that the authors of “Thug Kitchen” have been spurned by some people, furious to learn they were lily-white and college aged. I’ll see if I can find an article about that. https://atlantablackstar.com/2015/10/30/white-founders-of-thug-kitchen-attempt-to-downplay-backlash-over-their-use-of-the-word-thug/

Edited June 4, 2020 by Quill

[Guest]

3 minutes ago, StellaM said:

Art doesn't thrive under a form of cultural authoritarianism that silos the imagination.

The  logical end point of this approach is that we replaced fiction with fictionalised memoir.

Nothing wrong with memoir, fictionalised or otherwise, but why on earth would we want to narrow art to memoir?

Is it only race you believe should be siloed? What about sex, sexual orientation, class? Do we picket the middle class author who dared write a poverty-stricken character? A straight woman for making her main character a lesbian? 

God, how dispiriting. How utterly tedious. 

Writers should give up now if what is demanded of them that they write only what they know and no more.

It's advice sometimes given in writing class 'write what you know', but it's very bad advice.

Better advice would be to start with what you know, and write your way outwards.

It's also an approach that inadvertently reinforces 'isms' - the idea that other is so utterly unlike you that you cannot approach them, not even in imagination.

 

Well, I have to think about that for a while. Thanks for giving me something to examine. 

[Tanaqui]

1 hour ago, StellaM said:

Not saying this in a snarky way, but black is a variety of British, and has been for a long time.

 

It's also a variety of French, etc. Black people live in those places too.

[Rosie_0801]

22 minutes ago, Danae said:

I think that when writing a point of view character that is a different race, or gender, or culture, there is extra work necessary to do a credible job. And if you’re not willing to do the extra work you shouldn’t write it. 

 

Or neurotype!

[Melissa in Australia]

21 hours ago, J-rap said:

Interesting...  My imagination must not run that deep, because I can imagine a vague figure and personality type, but not a race.

Same

[Condessa]

3 hours ago, StellaM said:

Not saying this in a snarky way, but black is a variety of British, and has been for a long time.

 

I know that many British people are Black, as well as many other races, but there are historically British races.

[Janeway]

I picture people the race of the people in my life who are like the people in the book or that I would imagine that character.