This post is inspired by a realisation I’ve had when it comes to Oranje.
First off I have to say that the 3 protagonists are all people of colour, and that is a deliberate choice given how under-represented that group is in SFF at the moment. I can’t provide a different cultural perspective on the genre, but I can try and improve diversity in my own way.
The realisation I’ve had, is that in the current draft of Oranje, I’ve only described the skin colour of the characters who aren’t white.
Yeah.
Little bit racist.
Luckily I can correct this now Ive realised I’ve been doing it, I need to do more work on the description of characters anyway, and I’m going to make sure all the main characters have their skin colour described.
I’m sharing this example of a fuck up in my current draft as it is a good example of racism happening where it wasn’t the intention. My goal is to have a diverse group of characters, and to improve the representation of PoC in SFF. Unintentionally I’d done so in a way that was also a bit racist, which I can and will be fixing before the book comes out.
There are a lot of assumptions that come with being part of society, and some of those are about what people think the default colour for peoples skin is. Racism might not be as big a problem as it was in the 60’s or 70’s, but it is still around, often in less overt ways. It happens with the way you see very few main characters of colour in books, TV shows and movies. It’s there in the different stop and search rates for white people v PoC.
As someone who cares about equality, but belongs to the most privileged group in society, white men, it’s my job to make sure to do what I can to address the issue of diversity, and question the assumptions I make. It’s my job to make sure I don’t do something racist even when I only have the best of intentions.
So I’m going to correct my error and make sure Oranje is the best book it can be. I hope this serves as a good example of what I intend, and also where everyone can make mistakes that don’t help deal with complex issues like racism.