We all write from the world in which we know. If you’re a white person like I am, then your characters may start off as all white. I know best how I think, feel, and move through the world. But while that may be true for me, I can’t possibly give my readers the essence of my world if that’s the only lens I portray. As writers we also must portray the world as it actually is which means getting inside the heads of people who don’t look or think like you do. So how do we do this effectively?
Unless your story is set in some science fiction universe with no humans or your characters are a specific cult with only one type of ethnicity for a very specific reason, then your story should reflect the diversity of people that live in our world. Let’s make sure we do our characters justice by portraying them accurately—no stereotypes, no phonetic accents, no describing skin colors as food. Perhaps most importantly, be careful to not present the baseline that all characters are white unless otherwise stated. So, how do we write a world in full color without being insensitive or offensive? And in case you’re wondering, pretending that people don’t have different skin colors is actually more of problem than mentioning their skin color in the first place. We just have to do it right.
1. Do your research. It helps to actually know the culture you’re talking about. Don’t just go off the one friend you have as reference, and never under any circumstances go off the movies or tv shows you’ve seen.
2. Describe their culture—talk about how they dress or style their hair, the food they eat, cultural holidays, important cultural icons and celebrities, if or when they immigrated, from what country, or if they go back to visit family, how they were raised and in what style of household, and the list goes on. Build the world around the characters and your readers will get the picture without you making a social fopaux or inadvertently writing a microaggression.
3. Describe their skin color using real colors—Sand, Seashell, Taupe, Umber, Ebony, Ochre—not food (i.e. black is not chocolate, latinx is not cinnamon, etc.)
4. Read works by authors from the community you’re trying to write about. How do they describe themselves? How do they use setting to enhance their characters?
5. Talk to a friend you trust to learn more. Ask them about their history, what it’s like for them moving through the world, what challenges they face, what cultural traits they’ve noticed that are unique.
6. Read your writing with a keen eye to detail. Ask yourself: Have I made any assumptions based on skin color? Have I forgotten any character descriptions? Can I clean up any scenes with awkward descriptions?
7. Get feedback on your writing from a person in that community. If they tell you something you wrote is offensive, you don’t get to decide that it isn’t.
Elegance Press 