Well, I don't agree with Douglas Blaine, but I'm definitely sympathetic to his viewpoint. Granted this is probably colored (er...) by my own experiences, but I think what he fails to acknowledge is that the reason it *matters* that he doesn't feel comfortable writing a character of another race is, at least in part, fear.
I don't buy his line that "I don’t (can’t) do this for the same reason I don’t write legal thrillers or romance or business books: I know nothing about the true subject." As he points out himself, he could do research on romance or the legal system or business, he simply chooses not to. With the subject of race, though, he seems to feel that the research required isn't possible. I'm not sure exactly what to make of his assertion that the only way to understand black people is to live among black people, except that I doubt he would say that the only way to understand the legal system is to go through law school.
What I can say, though, is that despite those who claim you should "write what you know", every fiction writer ever is forced to write *something* they don't personally have experience with, or they're not really writing fiction. The thing is, most of the time we're not afraid to *imagine* what it would be like. We can extrapolate from our own experience, and sometimes we just make stuff up.
Writers take on all kinds of personas that aren't their own, whether it's a man writing about a woman, or an able bodied person writing about a paraplegic, or someone who's never so much as touched a gun writing about a character in the military. Most of the time, no one thinks anything of it, and if the writer gets it all wrong it's not the end of the world. There are exceptions, of course. If a man writes a horribly sexist book about a woman, he's going to take flak for it. But that's not going to stop men from writing books about women.
For some reason, though, we seem to have a collective mental block over the issue of race, particularly the idea that if you're white you can't write about other races. Not everyone suffers it, obviously, but from what I've seen it's fairly pervasive. What makes it different from most other issues is the fact that writers, like Blaine (and myself, to be honest), are afraid of getting it wrong. Because it's such a sensitive social issue, it's perceived as worse to get this wrong than most things. Here I can only really speak from my own experience, but I think writers are afraid of opening themselves up to accusations of racism if their portray isn't "accurate". LeGuin's statement suggests that maybe it's not as much of a problem as people fear, but I think that's a large part of it.\
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-01-05 07:14 pm (UTC)I don't buy his line that "I don’t (can’t) do this for the same reason I don’t write legal thrillers or romance or business books: I know nothing about the true subject." As he points out himself, he could do research on romance or the legal system or business, he simply chooses not to. With the subject of race, though, he seems to feel that the research required isn't possible. I'm not sure exactly what to make of his assertion that the only way to understand black people is to live among black people, except that I doubt he would say that the only way to understand the legal system is to go through law school.
What I can say, though, is that despite those who claim you should "write what you know", every fiction writer ever is forced to write *something* they don't personally have experience with, or they're not really writing fiction. The thing is, most of the time we're not afraid to *imagine* what it would be like. We can extrapolate from our own experience, and sometimes we just make stuff up.
Writers take on all kinds of personas that aren't their own, whether it's a man writing about a woman, or an able bodied person writing about a paraplegic, or someone who's never so much as touched a gun writing about a character in the military. Most of the time, no one thinks anything of it, and if the writer gets it all wrong it's not the end of the world. There are exceptions, of course. If a man writes a horribly sexist book about a woman, he's going to take flak for it. But that's not going to stop men from writing books about women.
For some reason, though, we seem to have a collective mental block over the issue of race, particularly the idea that if you're white you can't write about other races. Not everyone suffers it, obviously, but from what I've seen it's fairly pervasive. What makes it different from most other issues is the fact that writers, like Blaine (and myself, to be honest), are afraid of getting it wrong. Because it's such a sensitive social issue, it's perceived as worse to get this wrong than most things. Here I can only really speak from my own experience, but I think writers are afraid of opening themselves up to accusations of racism if their portray isn't "accurate". LeGuin's statement suggests that maybe it's not as much of a problem as people fear, but I think that's a large part of it.\
(ctd below)