Note from an Ignorant White Writer

[Guest dsb589]

Hi everyone,

 

My name is Dan, and I am an ignorant white fool.  I am also a college student who enjoys writing fiction, even though I’m not the best at it.  Over the past couple years, I’ve somehow managed to concoct a strange, rather idiotic scifi/fantasy novel whose major themes include race and inequality.  It's 700 pages of ramblings on things I know nothing about.

 

Even in my laughable ignorance, though, I do believe that the issues I have written about are important.  I study sociology at my college, and I have taken classes, attended talks, and done a lot of reading on the topics in my book - but there are elements of racism and bigotry, I have little doubt, that no class can teach you.  There are, quite simply, feelings I haven’t felt, thoughts I cannot express, and words that read disingenuously when they come from me.

 

My first reader (and a friend of mine) found my nonsensical mess a bit unsettling, and rightfully so.  After only two chapters, she was very frustrated with my protagonist, a quiet black teenager who spends a lot of time in his own thoughts, but who has a hard time putting those thoughts into words.  She found his subdued, fatalistic nature in the face of his oppression unbelievable; she told me that “no one is faced so bluntly with ongoing discrimination and keeps silent” like my protagonist does (the portion she read includes several instances of severe discrimination, both overt and subtle).  His timidity in these chapters, she argues, reads like complacency, and this might lead whoever reads the work to conclude that black people are complacent in/okay with how they are treated.

 

A valid interpretation of what I have written, and not one that I’m in any real position to criticize.  But I did think a lot about what she said, and I wonder, I really do, how I might write my protagonist differently.  If he seems too dejected at the ways of the world, do I make him angrier and more bitter?  Do I make him lash out against the people who harm him?  I could, but I’m concerned that I’d simply wind up paying homage to a stereotype, to an animalistic, angry black man.  

 

It seems, then, that neither of these portrayals is void of serious problems.  He will, I fear, be either too complacent or too militant, too forgiving or too angry, too stupid or too intelligent, too emotional or too cold.  A reflection, perhaps, of the struggles that people of color experience every day, but that I, a white writer, can ignore as soon as I close my laptop.  

 

My dilemma, really, is how I might do my protagonist (and my novel) justice.  It is possible - likely, even - that I can’t.  But I feel that I must try.  I’ve completed one story, and I’m sure I can write a different one if I wanted to - perhaps one about people like myself, about white problems, white concerns, white opinions and white feelings.  But I really am not interested in the woes and weepings of white people.  I have always been interested in people whose lives differ from mine, in uncovering the roots of that difference, and in dissecting how it is constructed.   It is how I, in my feeble-minded, college-aged brain, attempt to make sense of the world.  

 

But no matter how much I ponder it, I still know very little about racism.  There are facets of it that I will simply never understand.  Like all white people, I have grown up in a society that generally values me, that takes my words to be true, that sees my ideas as substantial and my concerns as legitimate.  That is the life I know.  

 

So I write to you for advice on where to go from here.  I have written a book about race that is tinted with my white lens, whether I want it to be or not.  I have written characters that are described with my white words and seen through my white eyes.  Maybe I will rewrite the novel once I get enough feedback, and learn from my mistakes along the way.  Regardless of what happens, I will say that I have learned a lot from writing this story.  Maybe I wrote the book for me alone, to put myself in different shoes, to realize just how little I knew or understood.

 

What do you think?

 

Dan

 

[Pioneer1]

Dan

My name is Dan, and I am an ignorant white fool. I am also a college student who enjoys writing fiction, even though I’m not the best at it. Over the past couple years, I’ve somehow managed to concoct a strange, rather idiotic scifi/fantasy novel whose major themes include race and inequality. It's 700 pages of ramblings on things I know nothing about

Well, if you're an ignorant fool who isn't good at what he's doing.....

The best advice to give you is to QUIT.
Drop out, save yourself some money and a lot of debt....lol.


As far as what type of demeanor you should portray your protagonist as possessing,
I'm not sure but WHATEVER you choose just don't make him GAY.

The movie Moonlight did enough celebrating and promoting gay Black masculinity to last 10 years without anyone else contributing.

If you want a pretty good idea of how to portray a Black man who is angry and fed up with racism but doesn't want to appear "animalistic" or outrageous then get on youtube and watch some footage of Malcolm X speaking and doing interviews.

Perhaps you could model your character's reaction to racism and the injustices he faces based on Malcolm's model of intelligently and articulately dismantling his opponents but in a non-threatening way that is admired by the audience.

Make his character a member of a "debate team" at his school where he can express himself appropriately.

[Guest dsb589]

Drop out?  I wish...it's not like I can do anything with a sociology degree anyway, haha.  

I'll definitely check out some clips of Malcolm X giving interviews.  My protagonist is a very quiet guy at first, so I'm not sure a "debate team" in particular would really suit his character at the outset.  But it's an interesting idea, particularly because his character arc is essentially him becoming confident in himself and assertive/unapologetic about his story and experience.  As he evolves through the narrative, maybe I'll use those Malcolm interviews as a frame of reference for ways he might respond to his environment.  Either way, Malcolm X interviews can't hurt.  

My main character isn't gay, if that was a concern.  But can I ask, just out of curiosity, why you brought that up?  I mean, personally, I just never conceptualized my character as gay.  I'm just wondering if you could expand on your thought.

and one last thing...the best advice is to QUIT?! Ahhh!  I mean, maybe I should...but writing this book has really forced me to learn a lot.  And there's still SO much that I need to learn...so I hope my writing can be a medium through which I can continue (attempting) to understand things and better myself.  

Thanks for the comments, Pioneer1.  

Dan.

[Cynique]

The cardinal rule of taking on a writing project, is to never select a subject you know nothing about, Dan.  Keeping this in mind, you need to interact with a cross section of black people and pick up on their vibe.  

 Spend less time worrying about your protagonist typifying blackness because this is racist. Personality types don't discriminate; They come in all colors because they are human ones. .   .

The trick is to make your main character  a compelling individual who just happens to be black. The real challenge will be to maintain a balance between his subjectivity and objectivity as a black person. (Does the name Barack Obama come to mind?)

You might also want to read "Between The World And Me", a highly acclaimed book on the subject of racism by black author Ta-Hehisi Coates. 

[Guest dsb589]

Cynique -

Thanks for getting back to me!  What I mean when I say I know 'nothing' about racism is that I do not know what it feels like, I have not experienced it, and I am not going to pretend to know these experiences, because I don't.  In a purely academic way, however, one might say I know a good amount about racism.  I've taken black history classes, sociology of race/ethnicity classes, classes based on difference and how it is constructed, that type of thing.  I've done a decent amount of reading by black writers (things like the autobiography of Assata Shakur, The Color of Water by James McBride, Beloved by Toni Morrison), and I do have conversations with black people about race very often.  Every conversation I have, of course, involves different feelings and reactions to our society, which is natural, as we are all different people.  

I am really interested by your second statement, because this is kind of the heart of what my dilemma is (or at least one of them - there are many).  Basically, I wrote this novel in a way that was "aware" (though again, it's me who's saying aware, so take that with a grain of salt) of the struggles that I've learned about through my reading, research, classes, and conversations.  With that in mind, I kind of just conceptualized a person with different traits and flaws that any character could have, and then placed him in the kind of situation that I have heard/read black people describe.  This particular friend who read some of my novel disagreed not with the manner in which I depict racism in itself, but rather with the defeatist attitude of my protagonist in response to that racism.  She told me "no black person would act like this in the face of such intense discrimination."  Now of course, she's one person, so I'll have to see what my other readers say, but it was an interesting comment for me.  I mean, maybe she's right, but then again, it almost seemed to imply that there is a "black" way of responding to injustice.  And the larger implication would then seem to be that black people are different from white people in a way that goes beyond our positions and statuses in society/the way we are treated in general.  At the same time, maybe someone feeling a dismal hopelessness in response to racism isn't realistic unless it is also paired with intense anger/bitterness.  I'm not sure.  

My character's story is essentially him starting out as a kind of down on his luck, despondent young man who is a bit of a loser, but who transforms into someone who is proud of who he is and who stands up for himself.  I suppose I'm just going to have to keep thinking about it and tweaking it, and seeing what people have to say.  

Your note on his subjectivity/objectivity as a black person is interesting to me, but I'm not sure I understand it.  Are you saying that one must balance a character's subjective experience/personality with the way that character is objectively viewed by the world at large?  Or is it the opposite?  Just asking for clarification.

I haven't checked out Between the World and Me yet, but I've heard great things about it.  I'll have to read it - there's so much that I need to learn and so much that I don't know.  That's kind of what I'm getting at when I say I don't know anything about racism - I mean, I've taken classes, talked to people, etc. but it's also not *me,* either.  So the best I can do is try and learn as much as I can, I guess.

Thanks for the response!

Dan