Thoughts on racism in fantasy works?

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.

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.

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.

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!

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 too2 - they're not the ultimate authority on writing and research should be always very expansive, but it's a damn good start.

I think because stories are a good way to teach or inform about something without boring someone or making it sound preachy. Kind of like how a lot of cartoons for kindergarteners slide in moral lessons every episode.... except the moral lessons are about real social issues instead and it's for older people generally.

Fantasy is a popular genre for these types of stories because you can pretty much come up with anything lore-wise, so you can sidestep most of the research you'd typically need to do for something grounded in our reality and you won't accidentally end up saying something offensive along the way (at least, in terms of real life stuff, you can still totally end up fucking up your racism subplot and offending POC because you accidentally spread the wrong message coughs RWBY coughs)

While I'm in full support of racism being discussed in fantasy works, even to the point it's a major theme in my comic, generally they are not... very well handled.

This. This, a million times this. A lot of why racism subplots fail is because the people writing them present it as a clear cut oppressor vs oppressed conflict where one side is very clearly racist and the other is very clearly the victim. The racial minority can be racist - I've had relatives who are racist towards East Asians, despite my family and I being Southeast Asians ourselves. Racism is an inherently complicated topic and has many different shades.

Honestly? Just take inspiration in real life - not just based on Good Old American White Supremacy and Racism - but look on how this works outside of that too. A lot of the way I write my racism subplot is based on my own experiences and thoughts.

These stories aren't easy to write because this isn't a topic that's easy to tackle. You gotta be really dedicated to write something like this, because there is absolutely no easy way to go about it.

It depends, like anything, there can be poor attempts at handling it, but I think there's also no ONE correct way to do it either. You just have to speak from whatever your place of truth is. If you're white, you probably haven't experienced discrimination (unless there's another factor like you're also gay or transgender or something along those lines), so you do have to do some research and talk to people who have, and even then, be careful not to tell their story as your own. To give you an example though, in my fantasy comic, Santa Fae, I'm focusing more on elitism and classism, because that's more akin to what I have witnessed and experienced growing up in Venezuela. It is racism, but I find there, it does more with one's social & economic status than it does with skin color. There is old fashion racism, too, don't get me wrong. But I always saw it came from more from the kind of family you came from, if you had money or not, where you studied, etc. At least there where I grew up.

So, I decided to focus on that when exploring that "Otherness" in my characters, most of which are elves. Dividing them between Highborns and Houseless, and the privilege of magic, which is only afforded to the former. The Houseless don't belong a House, therefore are like a second class citizen, unworthy of the gift magic, and pushed to the side in society. Also, I did have the elves be all races mixed among both groups, because yeah, it's not jsut white people who do racism, and so neither should the elves excluding other just be white. The main character is a Latina elf (which I do establish is from Venezuela like me) and we see Black elves in there, too (one is a criminal the other the literal Queen of the elves), and a Polynesian one and even two main white elves that I show are gay. Cause often in Fantasy you see people take that shortcut and focus on the racism as "Elves don't like Dwarves" which you can have, I also do, but having everyone be white while you do that is....not great, in my opinion. I don't know if this is valid or not, who am I to decide that, I just wrote from my experience of that being like that, and hopefully see that.

In case anyone is curious, you can get the first Issue of Santa Fae now! You can find out how and see the first few pages right here on Tapas at:

P.S: I guess there's also another layer, but I don't know if I would count it honestly. A friend of mine who read it did. For context, I'm gonna have to go into SPOILERS so be warned lol. But one of the main characters is dead, but kept around by the other main character's magic, which in turn is what has made her hated by all the Highborns since it's "taboo" to do that in their culture. Thus this character is black sheep in their community, and the other isn't even considered a person. My friend said he saw that a commentary on gay people being exiled sometimes since the undead character is also gay but...honestly, I didn't intend that lol. I was just creating a set of rules and a reason why my character was ostracized, which you can argue is a commentary "Oh everyone that is different we automatically treat as different and cast them out" sure, that I did intent, but the gay reading is accidental or just one man's interpretation. So I guess my point there is, sometimes will read things their own way regardless of your intentions? Take that as you will.

This became a really long response lol. Sorry about that ^^

I really hate the "write what you know" advice. If I lived by that, I'd have such bland stories. I don't know what it's like to be immensely rich, or in abject poverty, or a soldier, or immortal, or a minority, or LGBTQ+, or experience racism. But, I am an imaginative and empathetic human being, who is good at listening, and somehow manages to write all of these things with nuance and respect anyway. That's what good writers do.

There's also the catch 22 of "don't write about X when you aren't X" and "how dare you not include X, your story is not diverse/realistic enough". A writer will face one of those critiques. You have to choose which you'd rather face, and just steel yourself for it.

The thing most people seem to dislike about racism in fantasy/sci-fi works is that it's often ham-fisted and poorly written. But if it's approached with care, and it isn't pushed at the reader in too preachy a fashion, it can be a realistic and nuanced addition to a fantasy world. Racial issues aren't prominent in my comic, but they do pop up subtly along species lines, as is typical with fantasy/sci-fi.

I absolutely agree with you. Very deep thoughts that respond within me. It is very important in today's world to talk about the problem of racism in all spheres, including the racism that manifests itself in the literary sphere. For me, one of the important symbols of the fight against racism is Rosa Parks. You can read more about her and her activities at https://samploon.com/free-essays/rosa-parks/. Most people have heard of Rosa Parks, the woman who refused to give up her seat to a white man after a long, hard day at work.

I think it can be done well, but I think it often also lacks nuance, which is more than a little cringey. That lack can either be from a lack of direct experiences with it or the discomfort with the topic - i.e. someone may be afraid to make a racist (or a racist stand-in) character have positive qualities because they're afraid of being accused of condoning racism, so they write this complete caricature of a character/reason to be racist, which... doesn't really reflect any of the complexities of the topic in real life. Like, for me personally, I'm white so I don't have experiences with racism, but I am an immigrant and a woman so I have experience with sexism and xenophobia and it... really grates me when it's done in a really ham-fisted "sexism/xenophobia is bad mmmkay kids?" way, because it usually reflects nothing of the real-world experience with it. In those cases, I'd rather the writer just didn't bother at all. It's not illuminating, it's just tiring and it's not changing anyone's mind on anything.

I like the idea of it, especially cause it could show the culture and environment that they live in. Like if the story has elves seem like a 'minority' because they have constantly been beaten in wars, then you could understand why humans/other races believe that they are superior to them, more specifically characters that hold values in regard to value and strength.

But if it's the case of "Oh everyone in this race is racist to this race cause why not. Except the main characters cause they're the main characters." then it's pointless cause why would I look at some paper-thin racism (in the story). If done like shit then for me it feels more like propaganda, especially if the races in question are perfect and all are good are meant to represent other nationalities Cough Orcs being black COUGHING HARDER. It feels like the author is pushing the notion 'this nationality good, this one bad,".

In fact, one thing that I would love if racism is added into a story with multiple races is if there is racism inside those races and to others as well. Like yes, some humans are racist to elves but some elves are racist to their own communities with some seeing themselves as the superior elves or some shit, and then there are other elves who are racist to humans, even have humans are racist to other humans.

Cause imagine this as worldbuilding and subplot with racism (just thought of it now):

There is a slave mine and it not only includes dwarfs who were sold off by other dwarfs (you can choose the reason for racism) and captured by humans. But the mine also contains another nationality of humans who are also looked down upon and were captured by the nationality owning the mine from a recent war. Then while both are there some start to mingle and understand each other which allows some to escape but then others actually become racist to the other slaves, creating more problems for the slaves.

I know this was sprung out of my ass but this could work cause it shows that the races are more complicated than it is 'we are all oppressed' or 'we are all racist. So if you've read this well done, you deserve a pat on the back, or ice cream.

The idea isn’t inherently good or bad, the execution is where it succeeds or fails. Several common pitfalls come to mind, such as …

— Making the fantasy race either a bland stereotype of an existing race or culture (the Khajit in Elder Scrolls, for example, being Romani but Cats)

— Making the fantasy race all pretty white people (maybe the idea of showing what it would be like if it happened to a privileged group is well-intentioned, but the result often just gives them a power fantasy of being an oppressed resistance and never is applied outside that)

— Giving the racists no motivation for being racist except just being mean ( racism perpetuates most when it’s incentivized, such as with chattel slavery ; people make excuses to justify what they’re doing and still serve themselves)

— Giving the racist painfully detailed and sympathetic reasons for being racist (again, the individual dynamics aren’t nearly as important as the systemic motivators )

— Showing members of the fantasy race who stand up for themselves against their oppressors as dangerously unhinged terrorists who’ll kill innocents, as opposed to the “good” members of that race who work within the system to change things (like that ever mattered)

— Ignoring the multiple forms of racism beyond the most violently extreme (this is why modern racists tend not to go directly after things like the color of peoples’ skin, so they can have plausible deniability that they aren’t part of the lynch mob, while still stoking fears around cultural traits that coincidentally overlap with said races, and denying said races as many opportunities for social and economic mobility as possible)

I think I am mostly just frustrated when fantasy stories are used as parallel to racism IRL but framed in a way that there is just one simple solution to solve everything. I think a common one is the "Romeo and Juliet" approach where every one just stopped being racist because two teens were in love. And sometimes things like systematic racism and post trauma are not really mentioned at all.

I think I also have issues with the weird coding of "classic" fantasy races. There have been people who talk about issues with Tolkien fantasy tropes. I think some people may act like fantasy is just created in some vacuum, however I was reading up recently that the mythos around Changlings came from people not really understanding developmental disorders. And some fantasy might be rooted in social bias.

It is REALLY hard to do fantasy racism well, especially when the people who most commonly seem to do it are white creators who have never experienced racism. Too often it ends up as just an excuse for the white-looking protagonist to be an oppressed angel, or it misses the fact that racism is institutionalised and built into unfair social structures, and the creator just has racism as a few bad people saying slurs while all the "good" characters, including rich and powerful ones, are completely above it and then the heroes defeat racism forever! Yay!

The other problem is when people project oppression as it appears in our world onto beings with non-human characteristics, like saying that people's mistrust of the fire-breathing shapeshifters is exactly like the oppression and mistrust of black people.... even though.... you know, black people are literally humans who are a different colour, they're not firebreathing shapeshifters, and it's kind of reasonable that people who can shapeshift and breathe fire might need to be treated differently from ordinary humans in a way that doesn't make them comparable to humans getting oppressed for looking a bit different.

I think its very tricky to write properly.

I disagree with leaving it out entirely if its important to the work. Though if you want to do it well there's a lot of factors you need to keep in mind.

Like how yeah some people could use slurs and stuff but there's also some other stuff you could keep in mind. Maybe one of the fantasy races is far more likely to get blames for doing a similar crime as another race, or a certain sector of them deny/downplay like a huge event that significantly affected another, or maybe there could be a set of people who are willing to act hatefully against the more dominant race (for lack of a better term) and there are people within the same race that disagree with their tactics or maybe there could be a more peaceful variant of it idk.

Or maybe there could be some hate crimes against said dominant group and there could be a set of people who think its alright because its ok to "punch up" despite those people being wholly unrelated to...whatever might be going on in the setting. Or maybe there's a cultural garb that's been bastardized due to it being used by a hate group.

Idk there's a lot of variations and routes that you could go with and its a very complicated subject to tackle. I think what should be kept in mind is to yeah not do the whole "They're being oppressed because they can shoot lasers out of their eyes" thing. Like if you're gonna do sci fi/fantasy differences like that, I'd rather it be something minor like maybe having cat ears or gills or whatever. Not straight up having powers. Unless you're gonna make everyone have powers which has its own set of issues and routes.

Also I'd avoid doing a 1-1 analogy if you're going to do a fantasy or sci-fi universe. Like don't pull a "Bright" and make the orcs a 1-1 analogy for black people y'know? It just doesn't tend to work well and a lot of the time it doesn't really even mesh well with the setting.

Also maybe check out some works that are generally considered to have done a decent job. Like One Piece or The Last Airbender as mentioned before.

But tl;dr: I don't mind it and it can be done well. But its pretty tricky to do properly and its difficult to figure out what angle you want to go for. I'm probably gonna have a hard time myself lol.

Remember how Zootopia did this allegory with the oppressed minority literally being predators biologically structured to eat prey

I prefer something like Beastars where things are so weird and messed up that it doesn’t really map onto any simple analogy

Lots of great new replies, wow. ^^ I'm kinda glad this topic got resurrected~

And since I'm here, I just wanted to comment on this point:

I don't know if it's entirely true that racism perpetuates "most" when it's incentivized, especially with that example...in the U.S. at least, slavery has been taboo for at least 100 straight years, and racism is still very much a problem. =/

I will say that it's true that racism often starts with a clear incentive like slavery or colonization, and it survives through institutions that keep power where it's "supposed" to be when more violent methods go out of style.
But unlike violence, institutions can't be accessed by just anyone...and so over time any real incentive only becomes beneficial to a select few. A billionaire CEO or lawmaker can have their positions and profits directly held up by racist institutions-- those that make their discriminative policies sound attractive, or that keep their exploited workers from finding other jobs, for instance.

But I think the vast majority of racists on the planet today don't benefit from their beliefs at all outside of psychological comfort. =/ Like, it's just tradition; 'the way things are supposed to be'...you could justifiably say they're 'just being mean'.

Take colorism for instance: racism at its most abstract. It's literally just 'lighter skin looks prettier, darker skin looks uglier'. Who benefits from this?? What do you gain by deciding that your skin or other people's skin is inferior by virtue of containing melanin...? Unless you sell skin whitening products, I'd say very little in the material realm.
Many people who perpetuate colorism (especially artists...) don't even really understand why they prefer to draw and consume lighter-skinned characters. If you were to ask one why they, for example, lightened the skin of a dark-skinned POC in their fan art, they'd probably just say they thought it 'looked better' or 'matched their artstyle'.

They could say "conventional beauty standards hold fair skin up as the most desirable, and more people will look at my art, share my art, and buy my art if I adhere to those standards", but (a) that's a disgusting argument, and (b) it probably wouldn't happen because, as I said, ordinary people usually aren't thinking about incentives. To them, most forms of racism are just 'the way it's supposed to be'.

this is a great response and thank you so much for putting the time and thought into it. You’re right that it’s not entirely driven by financial incentives and ignorance and traditionalism plays a big part in it.

What I’m trying to get at is what bigotry offers bigots, because ignorance itself can be treated with exposure. If you spend enough time around people of a group you weren’t familiar with, you may find things about them unusual and even off-putting, but if you just let those thoughts pass and get to know them you usually find most people are decent and they’re much more like you in the fundamental ways that matter than different from you. Everyone has the prejudices that they’re raised with but they can be overcome.

Deliberately going out of your way to hate a group of people isn’t just about not knowing them, though; and it’s not even just about fear. There’s a sick thrill that comes with organizing against people and making them the enemy, and having an enemy. It’s an incentive and it doesn’t even need money behind it to be an incentive. Politicians who run on anti-immigrant platforms clearly don’t have the interests of their voters at heart, but the voters feel like they’re part of something bigger than themselves and they’re taking their country back. They’re high on their lust for revenge, so to speak.

It’s complicated to track all the societal forces that come together to make people racist so I try to track all the different avenues so they can be shut down and stop people from going so far they’re beyond redemption.