Thoughts on racism in fantasy works?

[MovieNut14]

Okay, so this was prompted by the recent update of a comic I'm subscribed to (which I implore you to check out if you haven't):

Dandelion's Promise | Tapas

Anyway, why is it such a common thing in fantasy/speculative fiction works? (How common, you ask? It has its own dang page on TV Tropes for starters.)

Personally, I'm avoiding it in my own story (though a few less-than-pleasant supporting/minor characters indulge in it), preferring instead to have the human characters learn about the plights the non-human characters have endured and help them find a place amid an unforgiving world.

But what about you?

[indagold]

I like it when its actually works within the universe of the story. I've seen it a lot where it's essentially just contemporary politics with a fantasy reskin and it kinda sucks but stories I think do it right are Last Airbender for one. It both feels like it works within the universe and can do commentary on contemporary politics while still remaining subtle enough for it to feel organic.

For myself, I included some vague references to discrimination within my comic All Broken Gods. It starts out with the MC's mother telling him he's a pureblood and to watch out for those who aren't, him essentially losing his ability to be a pureblood and ending up with a race of demons who hate purebloods. The longer the story goes, the less pureblood really means anything and it gives the feeling that this type of reasoning alienates people.

[joannekwan]

Eh, it exists in real life so it's easy to see it exist in fantasy. People like using allegory.
I roll my eyes when the comparisons are done lazily or are handled clunkily though, since sometimes it could perpetuate stereotypes in the real world. Like the orcs in Bright being coded as Black, that was a little yeesh.

[21stCenturyHero]

If you aren't affected by racism, don't do it, chances are you won't get it right and allienate your readers of color. "Write what you know" exists for a reason.

As a person of color, I find that most cases of "fantasy racism" are extremely poorly made without an understanding of what racism actually IS. Plus, many of those writers have an easier time sympathizing with the struggle of their fake elves or fairies or whatever, than with POC's. It's laughable.

Most writers don't write about their characters dying painfully of dysentery, despite it being overly common in the middle ages. You can ommit the racism, it's fine, I promise, as a brown latino I can ASSURE YOU I don't want to read about it.

[vothnthorvaldson]

I like realistic stories, especially in fantasy, because I have poor suspension of disbelief.
And racism is, unfortunately, very realistic, so it is something I don't mind reading in fantasy, as long as it is not too outrageous or only for cheap drama.

As an author, I rarely discuss racism alone, but very often as one of the facets of the more general theme of discrimination.

My feeling is that it is one of these subjects that is very difficult (and not necessarily useful) to entirely avoid when creating a fantasy universe. We can choose to focus on it, or not, but even if we don't speak about it, some readers may wonder anyway. I know I do. When I read a super positive, escapist story, I sure wonder what is whispered behind the characters' backs.
It's unfortunately difficult to imagine a world, real or not, without racism...

[DokiDokiTsuna]

I don't mind when it's done well...but like @21stCenturyHero said, 9 times out of 10 it's not. ^^;

And even when you get to the ones that have more thought put into them than usual, a lot of those tend to go the 'Malcom X/MLK dichotomy' route...basically, a whole subplot devoted to putting down the 'violent extremist' leader of [ins. minority race] in favor of the 'peaceful, societally approved' leader who shows how all members of [ins. minority race] should behave...

Like, that's a middle-school-level understanding of the Civil Rights Movement at best...and a little patronizing besides. =/ Unfortunately, you have to be pretty lucky to get a 'fantasy racism' story that tries any harder than even that.

[thecrystalrook]

It's important for these stories to exist, but as @DokiDokiTsuna and @21stCenturyHeRo both said, it must be done right. And it shouldn't be at the core of your story either. Racism extends beyond just hatred and bigotry. And it still exists no matter how many black people you know that have good jobs.

What I'm trying to say is, don't write a story where people said nasty things to a brown person and then that person overcomes racism by becoming a VP. That's just a shallow level understanding of the subject matter. Please don't forget, if you are not a person who experienced racism, you are looking at it from an outside-in view. You get to write about it while there are those who actually experience it. So please, educate yourself on this and tread lightly.

[surenlicious]

Lol. I had to do a double-take when I read someone say "when its done well".

I'm mixed black, so this is a theme recurring in everyday life. If you need racism in your work to make the plot go forward its outdated, done and old. Like having queer rep with everybody just being fine with it without needing it to be yet another story based on homophobic bias, you can do your fantasy without the stakes going to bigot borders.

I for one most definitely have no interest in stories continuing the very nonsense I seek to escape from in real life, but hey you do you.

[VibrantFox]

it's always interesting seeing the reasons people use to defend the use or inclusion of fantasy racism especially when it's in the name of realism. like it's called fantasy for a reason you can absolutely create a fictional world or society or whatever without the inclusion of racism or discrimination

also using it as a tool to create conflict never bodes over well because 99.9% of the time it mirrors the opinions of folk in the real world where minorities are painted as the bad guys. this is why i hate most instances of the dark=evil trope because beyond perpetuating stereotypes it influences actual opinions so like yeah its not needed at all

[Kura]

From a minority standpoint, it's almost impossible to not experience it first hand, so it can end up in our writing even passively or without realizing because you're encouraged to 'write what you know' so it's hard not to picture a world without it that sometimes. Though those don't always = a racism allegory. Which is more what this thread is talking about I assume.

For why authors use the racism allegory can be for all kinds of reasons, it honestly really depends on what the story is trying to tell me and how it's handled. There are a LOT of wrong ways to do it, which is why starting new series with this theme can be difficult for me, I can't trust this will be a sincere, careful and respectful handling, or a horrible one where someone has a very vague understanding of just how deep racism runs and the many faces it has, or a just plain racist presentation,

[joannekwan]

this is why i hate most instances of the dark=evil trope because beyond perpetuating stereotypes it influences actual opinions so like yeah its not needed at all

This especially!
Like why's it gotta be dark elves/fae/insert other fantasy race here that are evil or at least not along the good row if we go DnD alignments?
I really don't like how it can perpetuate negative stereotypes or at the very least: colorism. The worst is when these shallow structures are present in series with a younger audience who are impressionable.

[NinaWrites]

I think racism in fantasy works is a good tool to use to ignite conflict in stories. Let's go a step further, it doesn't have to be racism, it could just be simply discrimination.

Discrimination between class, gender/sex/biology and etc.

People fear the unknown and bigotry exist in all shapes and form. Like the previous posters have mentioned, it needs to be done right and you can have a real ol' grand time in diving into the politics and socio-economic of this as well. But, personally, I don't think I could just write a story about racism. I think there needs to be more than the Us vs them trope. It can certainly create conflict and road blocks for the MC having to deal with the characters discrimination against others and it can even be used for characters to self-reflect and grow as an MC.

For example, it could create an interesting dichotomy where you have an intelligent character but because of their bigotry/racism, they make real stupid decisions and choices.

All in all, if it strengthen your story, plot, character, then use it. No need to shy away from the topic just because it's over done". There are many way to tell the "same story".

[vothnthorvaldson]

I can only speak for my case, but for me it is 100% an issue of suspension of disbelief.
I only managed to start reading fantasy on my 30'.
Before, I was getting un-immersed every page by the lack of realism. For eg. f I would be playing a fantasy videogame, I would never play a mage, because magic does not exist, and would try to find logical explanations to the fact my character would meet mages (it's a mind trick, or my character has some mental illness etc).
But at the same time, I saw the incredible potential of fantasy, especially complex fantasy universes, so I did not give up on the genre and slowly got to understand it.
But realism is still very important to me. It is not only for the theme of discrimination, it is for all themes. I need the natural environment, the animal and plants and climate to make sense, I need the social and political system to be flawed and not utopic, etc etc. Otherwise it is like the story is pushing me out.
It's not ideological at all, it is really a failure to suspend disbelief. I learnt it is relatively common with autism, but generally also goes with poor understanding of second degree, which is not my case, but eh, every weird case exists.

[ratscout]

I don't think there's anything wrong with depicting racist people in fictional works. I think it can be quite interesting if done correctly and can be a neat tool to show how some cultures and races are different, and that it's okay for those races and cultures to be different than others. I think it's also okay to have a racist character who has had a been experience with another race due to a single experience, but then when they experience more of those people, they have a change of heart. I dunno, I just like character growth.

[Ranty-cat]

I think it’s a lot relatable, especially to Americans. Not in my country, though. It’s worse here lmao I find dystopian society more relatable.

[BOMB]

It's not an easy thing to do because it's an ugly thing, but ugly things exist, and sometimes a story can feel too soft or coddled if it ignores ugly truths. Every story doesn't need to include racial issues, but I think it's safe to say race is always present, so it should at least come into consideration. If your story is a thousand years into the future, maybe then it won't matter. If your story exists in the modern-day, you can probably get away with subtle things. But if your story takes place in the past, and I'm not even talking about 100 years ago, just 50 or 30 years ago, then racism is most likely there. People judge and divide for all sorts of reasons. Even if everyone in the world were the same color, people would still care about hair color, height, or something else. I don't think there's anything wrong with racism in fiction, just as long as the author has enough skill to include an ugly thing without being ugly themselves.

[Ordinaryaverageguy]

Fiction has always been a place to portray & examine ugly issues & ugly times. I'd say whether it's appropriate is a personal choice and probably depends on how the story is handling it. Not everyone has to like it.

[AmysGames]

As someone who writes about fantasy racism, I think it can be a relatively safe way to examine issues from a distance. You can deconstruct the reasons behind prejudice, what makes it bad, and even potential solutions, without having to be tied down in the ugly details of real-life racism. If you can sympathize with a fantasy creature, why not with another human being who has a different skin color?

That isn't to say it can't be done poorly—certainly there's plenty of examples of that. There's probably flaws with how I handle it in my stories, too. Though it seems to have resonated with a lot of my readers, so I like to think I'm doing something right, haha.

[MShadowlawn]

Ahh, yes. Racism in fantasy. cracks fingers I'm going to be outing myself as a complete psycho today, and I'm going to love every second of it.

Sorry fellas, this might end up being a little bit of a rant. Tread carefully.

'Racism' (and I admit, I'll be casting an awfully broad net on the term as I use it here) is actually a really nice way of adding little shadings of depth to your worldbuilding and story. A relatively "soft" example of this is the animosity between elves and dwarves common in high fantasy works; aside from leading to cool banter (such as a certain, immortalized moment in LOTR I won't mention here) it helps to show two even-handed truths about racism:
1. 'racism' comes in a wide variety of shades and degrees, and isn't always of the incredibly dramatized and hammed-up variety you see most writers portraying it as.
2. Every race is guilty of racism, unlike the typical (and quite boring) oppressor/oppressed dichotomy that most works end up going for.

On a slightly more serious level, racism is also a decent way to bring realism and depth to your world, if done relatively even-handedly. It can even be a good way to contextualize plot events, such as growing tensions between nations or something along the lines of "there's a series of crimes being committed by people of a certain demographic, so people start distrusting a major character of the same demographic a lot more".

Now to the really fun part: When is racism in fantasy stories bad?

Almost every time it's ever been made a big deal of.

"Fuck thinly veiled allegories, fuck watching your every step to make sure you don't piss off SOMEONE, SOMEWHERE on the internet, and fuck one-sided, context-avoidant portrayals of racism!"

Those are words you can repeat to yourself whenever you're unsure of what to do when you want to implement racism into your story.

Thinly veiled allegories. AKA "I refuse to use any critical thinking on the concept of racism and how it fits into my world."

The truth is, I normally detest allegories, particularly poorly done or poorly concealed ones, simply because they tend to suck as stories. Admit it, you're not George Orwell, and you probably never will be if you have to look for advice in this thread. What most people who think writing this way is a good idea fail to notice (or don't care, in more experienced cases) is that trying to push a message will nearly always come at the expense of the story, even—perhaps especially—if you plan around it. So, if you think writing about racism in this way just to "make a statement" about modern culture is a good idea, I implore you to ask yourself this question, honestly: Do you want to write a good story, or do you want to write a piece of propaganda? Because the odds are very good that you aren't even close to good enough to have it both ways.

And I won't even go into how overdone such a parable would be in this day and age.

just writing your racism as a near-carbon copy of racism in America in a medieval fantasy is ironically a very good way to make your work far, far less realistic than never having racism to begin with, and the main reason for this, in my mind, is obvious in hindsight but very easy to miss. It tends to be very, very one-sided because it is looking at racism from a very specific lens, not a wider anthropological or psychological perspective.

How to avoid this? Ditch the oppressor-oppressed dichotomy immediately. In other words, ironically, in order to have better racism you need more racism. Don't just make the white-equivalent race mega racist when the POC-equivalent race(As far as they are portrayed in the story) is somehow not racist at all, even though every encounter a major character of that race has had with white-equivalents has been extremely negative. Hell, why are they even cognizant of the concept of racism instead of just assuming that "they're all like that"? THAT'S FREE CHARACTER GROWTH YOU'RE LEAVING ON THE TABLE!

[Iris-Grimoire]

It gets badly done so often or goes the Zootopia route of bad allegory ("stories where it's literally different species with different limitations are totally the same as the same human beings from different cultures, right???) that I'd be hard pressed to be interested on it as a focus, unless it's OwnVoices and the person knows what they're doing, which is extremely rare.

Even being latine myself, I just don't feel like I have the maturity to put that into a kind of story and the experience is, thankfully, very rare to really have a grasp that's not from other people's articles and whatnot. Even for fantasy races, here's resource disputes, systemic oppression, cultural justifications, the way each group throws its power(and how much they have of it) around, there's how every step of the culture and hierarchy becomes a tangled mess with bigotry. It's a gigantic worldbuilding thing to tackle and you can't just go "brightfins don't like sparklewings but a new threat shows they can work together and put their differences aside!!!" and call it a day unless it's basically a footnote in a larger story. If it's not just one episode and done, it'll end badly or at least very awkwardly.

I do tackle other types of discrimination and bigotry in my comic, but that's something I've got more firsthand experience with, and it's not particularly towards a group. And, it still goes into how people justify themselves into dehumanizing someone else and delude themselves that every problem will get solved once the undesired fellow is removed - not something as black and white as X doesn't like Y for odd reason that's gonna get solved at some point, or angry Y person needs to be taught they can't be violent in their resistance to oppression, actually (ew). Even when it's shunning, it's not a simple beginning or a simple "solution".

(and since OP brought up a specific comic - that page seems fine, but it really could get better or worse depend on how it's done later. Kinda felt a bit heavy handed to go "ugh people of that race, how dare" - microaggressions tend to be more, well, micro, and vile.)

Here's an amazing tumblr that's specifically about this, and depictions of IRL racism and common pitfalls too - they're not the ultimate authority on writing and research should be always very expansive, but it's a damn good start.