CREATING CHARACTERS OF COLOR
When constructing characters of color in a mimetic mode — i.e. in our real white supremacy-sotted world — I always like to understand:
— what’s my character’s relationship to their racio-ethnic identity
— whether or not their identity plays a determinative role in the story (which will be addressed in another post)
RELATIONSHIP
When it comes to my character’s relationship to their racial identity — which we will call their racial relationship for the purpose of this discussion — there are countless possibilities to draw from.
Usually, a writer’s own racial relationship is a good source of inspiration — followed by family and friends. In my own family, for example, there are at least a dozen different racial relationships for me to extrapolate from.
Some of these racial relationships will be cool, some hot, some distant and aloof, others personal and close. And while there are always racial relationships that are outre as fuck, radioactive with trauma, extremity, and dysregulation, it is vital to keep in mind that the preponderance will be mundane and undistinguished to the point of trope-ishness because, in truth, many of us have racial relationships that are mundane and undistinguished.
Worth remembering our relationships with our racial identity are dynamic sites of negotiation and struggle; and ways of seeing / doing the world; and sources of knowledge, resistance, creativity, community, love. Doesn’t mean your character’s relationships will resonate with all that complexity but just, you know, FYI.
FACES OF RACE
When I’m cooking up my protagonist characters I often like to complicate their racial relationship by giving it two faces: an internal face and an external face. A side they show to the world, and a side they hold to themselves. Which, at least in my experience, more accurately represents how those of us who are raced experience that reality, from without and within.
Sometimes these faces agree; sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they are in a permanent détente despite their obvious contradictions, and sometimes they are in a permanent machete duel in spite of their similarities.
When a racial relationship’s internal face emerges, becomes public, that is often a rich source of drama, character, and conflict.
EXPRESSION
Remember, just because a character has a racial relationship doesn’t mean that relationship will dominate the story; you don’t even have to represent the relationship on the page at all if that’s your bag, though I figure if you go through the process of creating a racial relationship for your character you might as well express it somewhere in the narrative. In many of my stories the character’s racial relationship manifests as a token or small flourish, but you might be surprised how resonant and telling these inferential traces can be.
A SHORT LIST OF RACIAL RELATIONSHIPS
For your consideration:
— characters who never think about their racial identity at all — it’s either a source of avoidance, or thought to be completely irrelevant, or completely naturalized, or simply a comfortable given.
— characters who only consider their racial alterity when forced, and have some akido-like techniques of avoiding the issue even in the midst of full-blown racial crisis (a specialty in my family).
— characters who bluster confidently about racial politics all day long but who in their own deeper thoughts are more ambivalent or troubled.
— similarly characters who profess external nuance but harbor all sorts of inner stringencies.
— characters who are troubled by or ambivalent about their racial identities (or at least some of its features).
— and other characters who are quite pleased with their racial identities to the point of treating them like a valued possession.
— characters who are comfortable with their racial identities, but white supremacy’s endless bullshit has made them wary or flinty (a lot of Octavia Butler’s protagonists fall into this camp).
— characters whose racial relationships mobilize them to war against the racial order, either subtly or on some straight-up Killmonger shit.
A Yunior Example: when I first pulled my narrator-protagonist Yunior together I assigned him a far richer, more satirically internal take on his racial identity (and racial politics in general) than he shows externally. As a character organized around profound silences this additional aporia made sense.
Again, the combinations are endless. If you’re a person of color who grew up around people of color (or had a family of color) chances are you could sketch out twenty of these in a bandung minute.