Re some articles on including racial groups in fictional literature

[Traitorfish]

"Cimmeria" historically (eg in Herodotos' histories) is in the Ukraine. Typically (again going by Herodotos and other greek writers) the cimmerians were supposed to have once lived in northern Ukraine, bordering the Hyperborea iirc, and then displaced by other races, finally displaced and/or assimilated by the Scythians who were concurrent with Herodotos.
Not that they have to have existed. Eg one of the races that replaced them had only one eye, while another were literally griffons.

Well this is just blatant cyclops erasure.

 

[Hygro]

Before we start any discussion on diversity, we should agree on the following :

Which group is more diverse?
-three hipsters from Brooklyn, one white, one latino, one black
-three white guys : one a lumberjack from Alaska, one a London banker, one a Greek fisherman.

Well the latter but the value in driving the former is to add archetypes for people to believe in what they can be.

So having a multi color cast of lumberjacks adds example to lumberjacks.

 

[Zkribbler]

-Do you think that it is logical to ask that the writing version/original of fictional stories includes more people who are "non-white"? And can that be achieved without forcing the work, and thus making it stray from any meaning the author had in mind?

A better question is why you would NOT want to include non-white characters.

Listen, I'm a straight WASP Yankee middle-class male. My story has been done to death. But there's a whole world of characters out there who are not me...and they're interesting too. One of the purposes of literature [or of any art form] is to allow te reader to step into someone else's shoes, to view humanity from a new perspective.

 

[Kyriakos]

A better question is why you would NOT want to include non-white characters.

Listen, I'm a straight WASP Yankee middle-class male. My story has been done to death. But there's a whole world of characters out there who are not me...and they're interesting too. One of the purposes of literature [or of any art form] is to allow te reader to step into someone else's shoes, to view humanity from a new perspective.

I don't think it is a matter of wanting or not wanting to, which is why in the OP i provided examples of both main authors who have none, and who have some black characters. Eg Borges has a black protagonist in the story "The Dead", but it was not forced and is authentic, cause so-called 'peon' were often black in Argentina. That is a very good story, and yet it has no relation to adding a minority re skin-tone just so that one can be doing that. The issue is with being asked to do so, not with choosing to do so, which obviously is logical when circumstances make it so (Borges, etc)

 

[Commodore]

Tolkien is a bad writer when compared to them. Dunsany was even his contemporary, and probably also an influence on him (?), yet the gap between the two is massive.

Well it's hard to write fantasy while taking artillery shells in the trenches.

 

[Kyriakos]

Well this is just blatant cyclops erasure.

The one-eyed ones were the Arimaspoi. Supposedly there existed a greek epic called the Arimaspea (or similar), about the fight between the one-eyed horsemen (possibly horse-archers) Arimaspoi, and the Griffons (who were Griffons ), because the Arimaspoi wanted the gold the Griffons were guarding in the over-north.
Herodotos claims that the account they were one-eyed possibly refers to needing to always keep one eye closed so as to help with aiming. At any rate they are not exactly cyclopai, and the latter means 'circular eye', while arismaspoi is argued to be a local (pre-scythian) term meaning one-eye.

Some art depicting the fight between arimaspoi and griffons:

 

[luiz]

Well the latter but the value in driving the former is to add archetypes for people to believe in what they can be.

So having a multi color cast of lumberjacks adds example to lumberjacks.

I see absolutely no value in that, au contraire, I think it's highly counter productive for people to be told they can only identify with folks of the same skin tone. This whole thing is very silly. There are always small minorities who will never be represented in TV shows, and etc. I don't see why that would make them less likely to succeed. It just means they're that, a small minority. I would argue that representing Alaskan lumberjacks or Greek fishermen of every possible skin tone is just condescending pandering.

Nobody would suggest that a movie about samurais or Mayas (or based on their mythology) also has to include a whole variety of skin tones.

What's more, this new habit of counting the number of dark skin characters in TV shows and even video games and then criticizing them if they don't meet some unspecified quota is plain creepy.

 

[Akka]

To rebound on the diversity of cultural viewpoints being filtered out, I just want to repoint at the cretinous criticism of The Witcher 3 accusing it of lacking non-white characters and seemingly completely obvious that slavic mythology is actually pretty rare in video games - the only thing he saw was "WHITE SKIN !!!" and the need to shoehorn non-white people.
People blinded by their own bias trying to teach others to open their mind is always ironic, too bad they have actual influence and participate in adding another layer of dumb marketting stiffling creativity.

 

[Senethro]

Except that the city of Novigrad is not remotely based on slavic mythology. Its a supposedly major world port where the dockside taverns filled with sailors, longshoremen and mercenaries are completely white. It presumably shares a coastline with Zerrikania and someone has to ship the saddles and spices.

 

[Akka]

Yay, another example of some self-blinded zealot trying to bend over backward and split hair to be able to warp reality to his bias and mostly missing the point (because getting it isn't even as remotely important as droning the party line mindlessly) ! I totally didn't see that coming.
(also, Hanseatic League)

Moderator Action: Flaming people is both inappropriate and unnecessary. ~ Arakhor
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[Senethro]

Is it not exhausting to constantly perform being offended all the time?

Ok, if we're going to move from the realm of slavic mythology to history and particularly the Hanseatic league, then I guess it would be more likely that Arab traders would arrive via Volga or Dnieper, rather than by the coast but I still reckon my point stands.

Also I just caught on to how Novigrad almost recalls Novgorod. Think that was intentional in the original Polish?

 

[Akka]

Ah yeah, now I remember why I gave up in the other thread. Silly me.

 

[GoodSarmatian]

To rebound on the diversity of cultural viewpoints being filtered out, I just want to repoint at the cretinous criticism of The Witcher 3 accusing it of lacking non-white characters and seemingly completely obvious that slavic mythology is actually pretty rare in video games - the only thing he saw was "WHITE SKIN !!!" and the need to shoehorn non-white people.
People blinded by their own bias trying to teach others to open their mind is always ironic, too bad they have actual influence and participate in adding another layer of dumb marketting stiffling creativity.

That's one of the reasons why I love that game so much. The standard white template in fantasy media is either Francogerman or Anglosaxon or both. It's a bit boring and doesn't represent me as a diferent kind of whitey.
Witcher 3 has so many small cultural indicators that a non-slav would miss.There's just so much I recognize in the game. Whenever I walk into a house it reminds me of the home of my Serbian grandmother. The decor, the tapestries the patterns on peoples' clothing, the names, the hairstyles, even some of the faces are instantly recognozable as Slavic. It's the first game that made me feel represented.

Except that the city of Novigrad is not remotely based on slavic mythology. Its a supposedly major world port where the dockside taverns filled with sailors, longshoremen and mercenaries are completely white. It presumably shares a coastline with Zerrikania and someone has to ship the saddles and spices.

Not a book reader, but isn't Novigrad based on North German Hanseatic Cities where trade was mostly between the rest of Northern Europe?
Anyway, I agree that such a major trade hub should have more people from different backgrounds. A few dark skinned traders would have been nice. But I see it as a very minor oversight. An excusable oversight with a pragmatic explanation because CDProcect isn't such a big studio and character models cost money.

 

[Traitorfish]

That's one of the reasons why I love that game so much. The standard white template in fantasy media is either Francogerman or Anglosaxon or both. It's a bit boring and doesn't represent me as a diferent kind of whitey.
Witcher 3 has so many small cultural indicators that a non-slav would miss.There's just so much I recognize in the game. Whenever I walk into a house it reminds me of the home of my Serbian grandmother. The decor, the tapestries the patterns on peoples' clothing, the names, the hairstyles, even some of the faces are instantly recognozable as Slavic. It's the first game that made me feel represented.

I think that a lot of American (and let's face it, non-American English-speaking) observers forget is that Europe is a pretty diverse place. To Americans, being Polish or Greek or even Jewish is often something that mostly happened to your grandparents, something that is revived for festivals and family occasions but not really something that structures your day-to-day life. It's easy for Americans to say "Poland? That's just, like, white + perogies, right?", because that's more or less what it means to an nth-generation Polish-American, and Americans are so used to flattering themselves on their cosmpolitanism- especially the kind of Americans who write lengthy thinkpieces about media representation- that running it by anyone from Poland doesn't seem to occur to them.

Not a book reader, but isn't Novigrad based on North German Hanseatic Cities where trade was mostly between the rest of Northern Europe?
Anyway, I agree that such a major trade hub should have more people from different backgrounds. A few dark skinned traders would have been nice. But I see it as a very minor oversight. An excusable oversight with a pragmatic explanation because CDProcect isn't such a big studio and character models cost money.

Yeah, that sort of port would mostly have dealt in pretty mundane local products, like skins, furs and lumbers; markets full of exotic fruit and spices is something that writers or producers use as a short-hand for "this is very wealthy and cosmopolitan". To the extent they were present, people generally didn't ship spices directly from their source to their destination until European colonialists introduced, ah, "vertical integration" into the trade routes, which is only just kicking off at the equivalent-era to The Witcher. Even then, you tend to find these goods being imported into the imperial centre and then re-exported to the rest of Europe, so an exotic trader in the Baltic was more likely to have been Scots or Dutch than anyone we'd recognise as a person of colour.

Ok, if we're going to move from the realm of slavic mythology to history and particularly the Hanseatic league, then I guess it would be more likely that Arab traders would arrive via Volga or Dnieper, rather than by the coast but I still reckon my point stands.

Arab traders were never really a big presence in the Volga, though. The Black Sea trade was mostly carried out by Greeks and later by Italians; the Ottomans had a naval presence but mostly handled commerce through concessions. And either way, you're talking about people who aren't really more than olive-complexioned, so "person of colour" ends up describing little more than a slightly exotic costume, which raises its own set of problems.

The one-eyed ones were the Arimaspoi. Supposedly there existed a greek epic called the Arimaspea (or similar), about the fight between the one-eyed horsemen (possibly horse-archers) Arimaspoi, and the Griffons (who were Griffons ), because the Arimaspoi wanted the gold the Griffons were guarding in the over-north.
Herodotos claims that the account they were one-eyed possibly refers to needing to always keep one eye closed so as to help with aiming. At any rate they are not exactly cyclopai, and the latter means 'circular eye', while arismaspoi is argued to be a local (pre-scythian) term meaning one-eye.

Some art depicting the fight between arimaspoi and griffons:

See, why didn't they make a game about that?

 

[GoodSarmatian]

Also I just caught on to how Novigrad almost recalls Novgorod. Think that was intentional in the original Polish?

Maybe, maybe not. Novgorod means new city in Russian and Novigrad means new city in Polish and Serbocroatian . There are a couple of small towns and cities named Novigrad in the former Yugoslavia, the most famous one being in Istria. It's not a big city, but a popular tourist destination. Btw, it looks like this.

Spoiler :

That does look a bit similar in shape, but if the internet is to be believed Novigrad in the game is based on every large port city from Amsterdam to Gdansk.

 

[luiz]

Most games allow players to choose their skin tones, facial features, etc. Which is great, it means more personalization. But I don't see how that makes games more "diverse". It's just cosmetics. If a game is based on Western European mythology, like most fantasy games, it will still be based on Western European mythology regardless of the presence of darker faces. This doesn't add any substantial diversity, but apparently is all that the "diversity patrol" cares about.

If a game is based on Slavic culture and mythology, that adds a lot more substantial diversity to gaming than the presence of some darker faces. But that doesn't please the "diversity patrol", apparently. Oh well.

 

[Terxpahseyton]

Martin created a literally superior race (can handle dragons) who are as white as it gets (even the violet eyes are probably a reference to the red eyes of albinos), who ruled Westeros, ruled important parts of Essos, were some kind of Atlantic super advanced civilization, and are now going to save the world (Jon after all is at least a half-member of that superior race).
I think it is hard to deny the tone of white supremacy in that. Or in Lord of the Rings.
Lacking diversity is one thing. Featuring supremacy another.
However, this is IMO still, most of all, incidental racism. What I mean by that is that the story elements as such, the superior ancient race, the primitive barbarians, the foreign allies of an evil force etc etc, aren't racist in and of themselves. They are just story elements of a sort of natural attraction within the fantasy genre. Each one of those has IMO something going for it in an entirely harmless entertainment-wise way which just lends itself to be being used, So it is used. And since, as others already explained in length, it is often used by writers who can best identify with a white European heritage, it will be used in ways that are incidentally racist. The superior race will be white, the barbarians will be of darker skin tone etc.
I am fine with making people aware of that. Won't hurt, is an IMO interesting observation, may do some good. But as innonamtu already kinda said, I do not want my escapist fiction to police me or be policed. I want it to intrigue me, that benefits from a writer going with instinct and heart. So I don't really care about incidental racism as long as it is not intentional racism, as long as it is not policing me in one way or the other. Though if it finds a good way to do so, it can always educate me. And if it finds a good way to be politically correct, I am fine with that, as well. But as soon as it feels forced, it is a way to damage my immersion, and that is exactly the kind of thing I do not want from my escapist entertainment. And perfect diversity will tend to feel forced.
On the other hand, cultural, nations, ethnic groups and ways of life beating the crap out of each other feels quit natural.

 

[warpus]

Out of all the sci-fi paperbacks I read, 95% of the time I can't tell what the skin colours of the characters are. 99% of the time it doesn't matter.

If someone wants to write a book and include the characters that they want, and focus on their skin colour, they can go ahead. Nobody will stop you from writing whatever book you want.

 

[Thorgalaeg]

Martin created a literally superior race (can handle dragons) who are as white as it gets (even the violet eyes are probably a reference to the red eyes of albinos), who ruled Westeros, ruled important parts of Essos, were some kind of Atlantic super advanced civilization, and are now going to save the world (Jon after all is at least a half-member of that superior race).
I think it is hard to deny the tone of white supremacy in that. Or in Lord of the Rings.
Lacking diversity is one thing. Featuring supremacy another.
However, this is IMO still, most of all, incidental racism. What I mean by that is that the story elements as such, the superior ancient race, the primitive barbarians, the foreign allies of an evil force etc etc, aren't racist in and of themselves. They are just story elements of a sort of natural attraction within the fantasy genre. Each one of those has IMO something going for it in an entirely harmless entertainment-wise way which just lends itself to be being used, So it is used. And since, as others already explained in length, it is often used by writers who can best identify with a white European heritage, it will be used in ways that are incidentally racist. The superior race will be white, the barbarians will be of darker skin tone etc.
I am fine with making people aware of that. Won't hurt, is an IMO interesting observation, may do some good. But as innonamtu already kinda said, I do not want my escapist fiction to police me or be policed. I want it to intrigue me, that benefits from a writer going with instinct and heart. So I don't really care about incidental racism as long as it is not intentional racism, as long as it is not policing me in one way or the other. Though if it finds a good way to do so, it can always educate me. And if it finds a good way to be politically correct, I am fine with that, as well. But as soon as it feels forced, it is a way to damage my immersion, and that is exactly the kind of thing I do not want from my escapist entertainment. And perfect diversity will tend to feel forced.
On the other hand, cultural, nations, ethnic groups and ways of life beating the crap out of each other feels quit natural.

I think the concept of white supremacy comes in part from the idea of the supremacy of anything white. The last one is an archetype as old as humanity which is closely related to the concept of sin, or lack of it. White is the purest color, white things in nature are clean, snow, milk, moon, stars, flowers, sea foam... therefore "white" people must be clean, without stain, sin macula, sinless, ence must be superiors. I think writers as Tolkien or Martin were thinking in the archetypical idea of superiority of the white color when created the elves or the Targaryen, whitout any direct racial implication, which, in the case of George R. R. Martin at least, was a dangerous game to play.

 

[Kyriakos]

Out of all the sci-fi paperbacks I read, 95% of the time I can't tell what the skin colours of the characters are. 99% of the time it doesn't matter.

If someone wants to write a book and include the characters that they want, and focus on their skin colour, they can go ahead. Nobody will stop you from writing whatever book you want.

That is true. Moreso if one is writing in a society/country that has largely one 'ethnic group'. Eg i obviously never state any skin colour, unless the person happens to be specifically of something not usual. Eg so pale that it makes an impression. Or black, etc. But obviously anyone can read the story as having the narrator or others with other skin tone if they so wish.

Which makes this also a thing about literature which is set on a specific location and context, and done so explicitly, and lit which isn't. Eg Kafka's work almost never even mentions actual location (only in the novel Amerika, and in a couple of short stories; though i suppose it is inferred everything happens in a german-speaking environment). But De Maupassant's stories almost always are specifically set in parts of France, and about french people.