So even if an author's story is not affected one way or the other by the character's skin color, wanting to make a character a race/etc other than the author's is a bad thing? I'm having trouble wrapping my mind around this - who publishers decide to publish is just like white privilege - not in the control of the author. I *really* hate to use fox "news" as an example here, but your argument sounds like when they told Reza Aslan he can't write a book on Christianity because he's Muslim...
Asked by Anonymous
The character’s race would be important to the character though, even if racism is never discussed in the book. I just believe in writing about what you know and if you can’t get into the head and heart of a character then it will be mediocre. The motive you mentioned sounds like white savior complex to me. But like I said, I am not a professional writer, editor, or anything to do with creative writing so it’s not really proper for me to answer this.