People who Cry Racist At the Screen

[Hyena Dandy]

Saw this: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1353281/...read/199544035 today and it made me think of this thread. Double-whammy of 'Looking for stuff that's not there' and 'I don't watch this show all that much, but...'

"I don't watch this show, but I know what happens every time there's a black guy!"

I mean, if it had just been "I don't like this show, but I have to watch it a lot because (my wife/husband/son/daughter) watches it with me, and I noticed" could be something.

But if you don't watch it much... I don't trust your opinion on what usually happens.

[firecat88]

The guy is completely wrong too. XD I watch Chopped every week (I have it on DVR), and while, yes, sometimes the black contestant does get eliminated first, it's because they overcooked/undercooked/overspiced/underspiced/double-dipped while preparing/bled on the food they made.

[Ginger Tea]

<snip>
The thing that bothers me isn't people thinking she's not black (though the NUMBER who thought she was white surprises me) but rather objecting when it turns out she is. Also the number who freely admit to seeing 'dark skin and dark eyes' and thinking 'probably a pale white girl then.' If you miss it, that's your mistake.
<snip>

Was thinking of keeping one of the other points too, my quoted post was not about the hunger games, so I don't know if this was a specific reply to me getting her wrong in the book, or just using a post where reader error may be encountered.

I have not read the hunger games or seen the movie, hell I still haven't gotten round to the girl with the dragon tattoo and the other two books let alone the original language movie trilogy.

My post was for authors who skimp on character descriptions, gving you nothing more than their traditionally English name and gender and perhaps intentionally leaving it up to the reader to fill in the blanks.
I mean why go to all that trouble detailing every little aspect if future readers are going to visualise the actor from the adaptation?

But, if said authour mid book then drops a bomb shell* that the character is black and it had never been hinted at pages before, well why not effing say so in the first place.

*By bomb shell, I don't mean finding out the character is black, but how we find out, having someone call your ginger haired scott a nigger, because he is actually infact black and not <fill in the blanks I'm a lazy authour>, you go back to their introduction to see where it might have been meantioned.
Worst case scenareo, it isn't, they just asumed you would picture him thus because his name may sound black, yet it is a common first name for white people too, its just the first/last name that might at a stretch ...

[Silverharp]

I didn't immediately identify Jar-Jar as a racist caricature when I first watched the movie either, but that's because I was 9 when it came out. I began to realize it as the years went on. Honestly, it's the things like "massa" and him becoming a slave essentially which make it difficult for me to watch him (in addition to the difficulty of watching Jar-Jar because he's stupid and annoying)

I think that this says it best

[Silverharp]

My post was for authors who skimp on character descriptions, gving you nothing more than their traditionally English name and gender and perhaps intentionally leaving it up to the reader to fill in the blanks.
I mean why go to all that trouble detailing every little aspect if future readers are going to visualise the actor from the adaptation?

For some it's lazy writing (coughStephanieMeyerscough) for others it's deliberate in that the author wants the character to be just vague enough that the reader will project themselves into the part to make the experience of reading more personal.

[smileyeagle1021]

It's apparently a common thing to imagine a newly introduced book character as your own race unless it's specified otherwise. I think there's even a scientific word for it, but I'm buggered if I can remember what it is.

I wish I remember the name of the book, but I read a really good book a while back for a class, and the author actually used that to their advantage, she didn't reveal the character's race until nearly a third of the way through. The professor would ask us after every chapter to describe the character, including demographic info (where we guessed their age, religion, and ethnicity were)... every single one of us guessed white (the class was 90% white) right up until the moment that the author explicitly revealed that the character was black.

[powerboy]

Whenever I read a book, I will consider the characters white. Unless it says otherwise. And with Jar Jar, I didn't even think of him as black. Hell to me, he was an alien. But oh well, some people will always be racist.

[HYHYBT]

I wish I remember the name of the book, but I read a really good book a while back for a class, and the author actually used that to their advantage, she didn't reveal the character's race until nearly a third of the way through. The professor would ask us after every chapter to describe the character, including demographic info (where we guessed their age, religion, and ethnicity were)... every single one of us guessed white (the class was 90% white) right up until the moment that the author explicitly revealed that the character was black.

See, to me, that's cheating on the professor's part. Because not everybody would even make up things like that in their own mind unless they were asked to do so, and there's no reason (unless reason was given) not to assume, unless told otherwise, that they're pretty much like you. Indeed, seeing yourself as the main character (other than differences pointed out) is a perfectly natural way to read books; it lets you really get into them, so to speak.

And unless it's mentioned (and often even when it is), it *is* irrelevant, and so I can imagine them any way I like, or leave things vague and just get on with the story. I'm thinking now of the Wheel of Time series (and if anyone cares about misspelling, tough; I know that world through the audiobook version, and therefore in many cases have not even *seen* the relevant names.) Absurd amounts of detail in there about differences such as what people from various areas look like, how they dress, what style decorations are popular there, what cities look like, virtually none of which I'll remember or, if I do, where it applies, unless it comes up regularly or is necessary to the plot. I know my mental image of the Aiel is all wrong, because they're described (I'm pretty sure) as light-skinned, which doesn't fit their desert habitat. I let it go, rather than keeping on reminding myself, because it doesn't matter. I was surprised when Shiriam was caught with the "do you have red hair?" question, not because of the tactic or that it worked, but because it hadn't registered until then that she *did* have red hair, even though, on another pass through the series, I saw that it was not only mentioned a few times but had been very recently before that event. Even though people's descriptions often include height, and even though for some characters (Rand, I'm thinking of, though I'm sure there's a short example too) it's pointed out many, many times, in my head everyone's the same size (weight and build too) unless a scene makes use of their being otherwise. Sets, similarly, especially indoors, tend to be modeled on places I'm familiar with in the real world. I *know* this scene takes place in a large, ornate room in a stone palace, but rather than do the mental work of holding the image of such a place in my head once the description's over, I let the action slide into basically Mom's bedroom in her old house, modified to allow for the required fireplace and somewhat stretchy in size.

Anyway, my point is, there is absolutely NOTHING wrong with reading that way, and there *is* something wrong with laying traps for people who do so by forcing them to put those placeholders onto the actual character just so you can then go "aha! You were wrong!" at them later on.

[Lace Neil Singer]

Obligitory "Cracked" article. Scroll down to number 2, ie that everyone pictures Jesus to be the same nationality that they are.

[smileyeagle1021]

Anyway, my point is, there is absolutely NOTHING wrong with reading that way, and there *is* something wrong with laying traps for people who do so by forcing them to put those placeholders onto the actual character just so you can then go "aha! You were wrong!" at them later on.

The title of the class was "Diversity in Literature"... the point wasn't to say aha you were wrong, it was to eventually get to the point of asking why we make the assumptions we do about characters.

[KnitShoni]

Obligitory "Cracked" article. Scroll down to number 2, ie that everyone pictures Jesus to be the same nationality that they are.

Not necessarily. Generally, non-White people in the west have to actively search for or create an image of Jesus that looks like them, as the dominant image is White Jesus. This is assuming they bother to search. Many don't.

It's the same with literature. Everyone in the west has been conditioned to accept White as the default. We all generally picture a character as White unless specifically stated otherwise. The difference is, if a character's race is specifically stated, non-White people will be very protective of that, since we tend to not be the default, if we're represented at all.

[Lace Neil Singer]

Shame really; Chinesus is way cooler than White Jesus.

[Mr Hero]

Sorry for the thread necromancy, but I started reading the Hunger Games trilogy today (Friday). Early on in book 2. I had read this thread prior to reading and at first I figured that yeah, maybe they changed her race, but does it really change the story? Now, I'm seeing they did not change her race. This following short description is of the main character's younger sister.

"Prim got out early from school for the event. Now she stands in the kitchen, being interviewed by another crew. She looks lovely in a sky blue frock that brings out her eyes, ber blond hair pulled back in a matching ribbon."

Blond is associated with caucasions. And since they share the same parents, we can only assume that the main character is also white.

[Ginger Tea]

Never read the trilogy (I got it somewhere on my to read shelf still shrinkwrapped), hell might have posted that more than once in this thread without rereading it.

But yeah, that line there, if they wanted to say she had dyed blonde hair and african/asian/blue skin, where having a uniform black/brown/other hair colour was the norm and anything else required chemicals and dyes, then they should have just used bleached-blonde hair or a similar variant, then again that still leaves the skin tone open to interperatation as anyone can have bottle blonde hair.

[HYHYBT]

True, anyone can have bottle blonde hair. But unless the book is set in the Emerald City, she can't dye her eyes to match her sky blue frock.