Your thought on accurate racial depiction?

[scythe]

My ex has very noticeable asian-looking inner eye skin thing, but not on the outer part of the eye like Ike up there, and she's white as a cloud. I wonder how common it is.

[dglisson]

I have to say that I agree with @shazzbaa that the "default" race, however vague, does not necessarily have to be white or Caucasian. Your story does not have to be historical or modern fiction in order to tell a story starring a black, Asian, or Hispanic person--you can choose.

As a Hispanic male myself, and having grown up with mostly Caucasian media and heroes, I actually am pretty proud to be telling my story starring a Hispanic male, and I am using a modern "real world" fantasy setting. Manny Marcado doesn't make it a big deal that he's Hispanic (although his background will come into play later on in certain storylines). The second main character in the story is a Caucasian female. So far all of the background extras have been diverse, they have met a couple of Hispanic guest stars, I have a biracial (Asian/black) character waiting in the wings, and later as the cast grows I will be ensuring that there is racially diverse casting. I am going to do my best to be respectful of heritage without making it a "beat the reader over the head" kind of issue, instead I just intend that they see a world that reflects our own (the story is very clearly set in the US, so that is the world I am depicting).

In my opinion, a fantasy world can indeed look like whatever you want it to look like. I just crave more racially diverse stories and when I see one it gets me excited because it tells me that the author wants people of all races to feel like they could identify with the narrative.

[indagold]

My mom's family going back to russia nearly a century ago looked asian despite being white. Had epicanthic folds and very high cheek bones. Might be that they mixed with neighboring Asian minority groups in Russia but they had no idea why. Probably has to do with regional genetics.

[scythe]

Ohhhh, a discussion on accurate racial depictions. What's that I hear under my feet. Eggshells?

I read through the whole thread expecting some light white shaming and I must say, I am a little disappointed. There was a bit, but not anywhere near the 2014 levels I was hoping for.

Maybe people are starting to pick up that 99% of the time, 'racial diversity' is just code for 'white people should be shamed for not filling their stories with people and cultures that aren't white'. Everyone else, carry on. Sorry, I'm not ranting at anyone in particular here, just what's been going on in popular culture over the last couple of years has left me pretty cynical.

One thing I will bring up though is this idea of stereotypes. Here's the thing. Stereotypes exist for a reason. That reason being, across a population, they're mostly true and can be quite useful. What I mean by that is, statistically, Asians really are smarter, and the women really are more socially timid. Black men really are more athletic. White people really do like guitar music. But these sorts of things only apply to large populations, and only on a spectrum, so for every person who exemplifies a racial stereotype, there will be someone else who runs totally counter to it. But that doesn't mean the stereotype isn't true. If it weren't, it wouldn't be a stereotype.

And here's where the honest representation thing comes in. People are want to say that if a person is an example of a racial stereotype, then that somehow isn't an honest representation. Or it's 'lazy'. But that simply isn't true. If you have a rich white guy who can't dance and only cares about making money, that is just as accurate a depiction as a poor white guy who doesn't care about money and can really cut a rug.

The issue as I see it then is the problem of coincidences in stories, which, in case you aren't aware of it, coincidences aren't really kosher. Despite being something that happens every day a billions of times over, they're just not accepted. Your villains can't be vanquished by randomly getting hit by a car. Your long lost lovers can't just be reunited by accidentally bumping into each other in some random city. So despite being entirely possible, coincidences generally just aren't accepted in stories. In fact, they're often scorned. How often do people say, "pfft. That would never happen in real life," when in fact, what they're referring to could quite easily happen?

So to get back to race, people who just happen to coincidentally fit their racial stereotypes aren't technically inaccurate representations, and I think most of the time when people complain about representation, it's because the depiction isn't particularly flattering. But all races and cultures have some range of tendencies that aren't all that positive, and we ignore those tendencies to the detriment of our stories.

Flaws maketh the man, so to speak.

Hey, but we're not writing statistical studies here, we're writing stories, full of individual people, not populations. So yes, it would be weird if all of your characters exhibited all the traits stereotypical to their race, but at the same time, don't be afraid to incorporate certain tendencies into their backstories and personalities. And whatever you do, don't ever let someone shame you into changing your story because it doesn't match their preconceived notions of "cultural sensitivity" or "inclusivity". That way tokenism lies.

[apocryphagraphics]

@scythe, there is no evidence beyond the anecdotal that Asians are 'smarter ', blacks are "more athletic", or that women are more socially timid etc.... There is much more science to support the idea that actual racial differences are mythological-- that the physical differences we associate with race are extremely superficial or largely cultural and that humans are indistinguishable racially unless you look for specific genetic markers for skin color etc... Ethiopians are great long distance runners because they have a great cultural tradition of long distance running. African Americans make up most of the NBA because they start playing competitive basketball at a much younger age than the average white kid and because the game is more culturally valuable to them. White people like guitar music because rock music and its antecedents were invented in the west. Woman may have once seemed timid in public because our societies have traditionally punished women who are outspoken. Asians in Western nations excell academically because western nations have limited Asian immigration to either highly educated academics or rather extrodinary refugees. Asia is full of average intelligences. Africa is full of average athletes. The world is full of socially outgoing women and non whites who dig the guitar. You have to look past the idea that people are the way they are because of their race. A human is a human is a human and so far all the science supports that. Take the human population as a whole and you are just as likely to find a white elite athlete a black genius and an aggressive woman. Love your comic by the way!

[GesuGesu]

my characters are too "anime" stylized to tell/bother with 99% of the time. I don't mind if a character's ethinicity is part of the plot, but I don't expect them to have to look the part. Especially since in manga like One Piece or D.Gray-man, characters are mentioned in bonus info as "Luffy is Brazillian" or "Lavi is American", but you can't really tell and as the story goes on, you don't really care since it's not brought up as part of the story in any way.

[demthorshie]

The world is full of socially outgoing women and non whites who dig the guitar. You have to look past the idea that people are the way they are because of their race. A human is a human is a human and so far all the science supports that. Take the human population as a whole and you are just as likely to find a white elite athlete a black genius and an aggressive woman.

This is probably the best thing i've read all week. :]

[apocryphagraphics]

Well then you are clearly not reading my comic! 😉

[avalonmao]

For minority groups seeing yourself accurately depicted is a luxury that represented people don't understand.
In the US, I often saw racist portrayal of East Asians.My webcomic Motsuro Project is not just for others to read; a large percentage of the characters are characters of color, with fullpersonalities and backgrounds that d on't resort to shitty stereotypes. They are full fleshed. And you sadly don't see a lot of fleshed out East Asian charas in the media.
A lot of creator use this platform as a way to make characters that look like them, black, LGBT, disabled, any other minority group and more. There are some amazrg people (like shazzbaa) who include diversity when she wont be the sole receiver of the benefits of having non white characters with proper and agency and a moral compass
You are free to make your characters howevel you please...its nicer though when the audience and reader are taken into consideration. Matt Damon isplaying in the Great wall. I like my representation clear cut and not in a position where someone will haphazardly assume that the main character is of European descent.

[avalonmao]

It's called an epicanthic fold.

[demthorshie]

That's pretty much the situation. I think it's important for everyone to be able to see positive depictions of themselves through media and that includes comics. I also wish that people would stop accusing creators of being a SJW for having a diverse and fleshed out cast of characters in their comics as well.

My story takes place in an alternate Earth, there's quite a bit of travel that goes on in the story so it's only natural that characters of any varying ethnicity/sexuality will be later introduced along the way. I don't think there's a right or wrong way to portray a character who happens to be an ethnic minority, aside from creating a complete token stereotype. When I dive in to a comic though, i'm more interested in the character's backstory and personality, not so much what their racial background is.

And hey, I love Shazzbaa's work too!

[scythe]

I'm sorry mate, we're just going to have to disagree on this one. Do you know for a fact that that there's no scientific evidence for important biological differences between the races, or do you simply assume there isn't? Because I can tell you that there is. It's not hidden knowledge. The studies into racial differences over a wide field of traits are numerous and varied.

I hate to be so blunt, but I find pretty much all of your assertions as to why certain races excel in certain things to be kind of astounding.

Are you really suggesting that if a population of Maoris or Samoans immigrated to Ethiopia their children would become equivalent long distance runners? No, of course they wouldn't. They're not built for it. Ethiopians on the other hand, are. That's just evolution. And that's not to say that no Maori could ever be a champion runner. It all sits on a bell curve. And the bell curve clearly shows us that more black people are born with what it takes to make great basketball players than white people. Yes, some white people will make it to the top, but never as many as there will be black people.

The idea that race is somehow not biological quite frankly baffles me. The people of the Earth evolved over a hundred thousand years in vastly varying climates and under vastly varying circumstances. This created differences in body types, cultures, susceptibility to certain diseases and yes, cognitive ability. And there's nothing wrong with that.

As for women being timid, I was specifically referring to Asian women, and that is culturally evolved, not biological. But that being the case doesn't make the fact that asian women are more timid than non-asian. Again, I'm talking populations, not individuals.

As to your last point, that was my exact sentiment. Namely, people are individuals, they're not their race. Not biologically or even culturally destined to become a stereotype themselves. But at the same time, it's still fine for us as writers to incorporate what are considered stereotypical racial traits into our characters if our goal is honest, authentic characters.

[scythe]

Thanks! It's always good to learn new words.

[scythe]

Sometimes I really wish that there was a way in English to differentiate between an individual and a population of people. For instance, there's a world of difference between a person who's white, and white people, but we can only say "white people". I really think a lot of miscommunication could be avoided if that existed. It's a huge time and energy waster to have to say "not all" after every discussion point.

[apocryphagraphics]

We know for certain that isolation can lead to certain traits becoming more pronounced, but it's the scale your asserting that is frankly silly. All people of African lineage are apt to be better athletes? All Asians are apt to be smarter? You can't defend those assertions with the qualities of a people isolated in a tiny island environment. The smaller the population and the longer it is isolated the more pronounced the superficial differences will appear. but blacks are an ENORMOUSLY diverse group of a billion people. Asians are an ENORMOUSLY diverse group of 4 billion people. Your argument is they share these universal or largely universal traits? Really? The quantifiable differences tend to be very slight -- molecular-- and there is little evidence for large scale behavioral or physical traits associated with race. People with a certain ancestral historical association with certain regions of Africa tend to have a higher rate of sickle cell anemia. This is worlds different from proving that" black people blah blah blah. "

[scythe]

To be fair, when I say black people, I'm referring to African American men (because we're talking about the NBA here), who for two hundred plus were essentially bred for musculature and endurance. And the Asian thing, I know it's not particularly comfortable to think about, but you can, and many many people have, aggregated and averaged out IQ test results by race, and East Asians consistently outscore everyone else except Ashkenazi Jews (who are avery tiny group so not really a fair comparison).

I'm not saying all differences are purely biological, I'm simply acknowledging the biological component to what makes each race different, again, on average. Of course each individual person's traits and tendencies would reflect an intractably complex web of personality, culture, upbringing and, yes, biological heredity.

[scythe]

Also, I didn't catch this earlier, but given that this is a pretty touchy subject for some, I went to great lengths and took great care to make sure I wasn't misinterpreted to be saying all black people are better athletes, or that all asians are smart. I'm not required to defend assertions I never made. If I were to say Asians are the smartest, yet the dumbest person on the planet might be Asian, I would not be contradicting myself.

[jennula]

For me, I'm always a bit scared of mis-representing since I'm a white person, born and raised in Sweden. I think I've been more into representing women, queerness and different body types rather than race and have probably worked more with that than skin color.

However, in SPEJS, one of the human protagonists has a darker skin tone, because it really didn't matter what her skin tone was to the story, so why not? And besides, it's set in a sci-fi-setting far away in the future, so I thought I didn't have to care that much about nationality (more than "they're human"). So yeah, here are the two human protagonists (there are two more protags too, but they're non-humans, and I guess not relevant to this discussion):

What I'm trying to do is to avoid any stereotypes. They're just two awesome women kicking butt, you know? And I guess I'm not trying to mix in too much earth culture in it since the humans fled from earth 500 years ago, so they've probably built a new culture, and also mixed their culture with the one that exist on the planet they now live on.

I'm not sure if this is a good approach, and I don't feel super comfortable telling on how to work with this (since I only see it from a white scandinavian perspective), but I just wanted to show how I work with it in my comic. I think representation is great, and stories get more fun if there are more variations among characters, like skin tone, body type, sexuality etc =)

[kkitty]

I only choose the ethnicity after I design the color scheme and the outfit. To me it's nothing more than part of the design unless the character is strong in their culture. It's the easiest way to avoid stereotypes.

[apocryphagraphics]

Jewish people win a lot of nobel prizes because their culture puts an extremely high value on western style education. A lot of Asian cultures now put an extremely high value on mathematical proficiency as a way to compete with the West and it's head start economically/ technologically. You're talking about education and culture, not race. The myth that African Americans are superior athletes due to selective breeding among slaves has been thoroughly debunked and falls apart upon the simplest understanding of genetics. For such a program to work during the actual time of slavery it would have to have been immense and well documented--involving the intentional transfer of large numbers of "breeders" and a large number of generations--as humans take up to 12-13 years to become fertile. Your assertion is that not only was this accomplished without any documentation or historical evidence but that the genetic changes to the slave population were so profound that they endure TO THIS DAY despite generations of African Americans abandoning the regime and reproducing at will without any consideration of a desired phenotypical outcome? Not likely. Really not even a little possible. African Americans are good at basketball because a lot of African American Families love basketball and start playing seriously at a very young age. None of this debate has even touched on the absurdity of defining what is "more intelligent?" What is "more athletic?" Michael Jordan has a very high vertical leap. Is he more athletic than a Scotsman who can throw a hammer halfway across football pitch? A group of Japanese grade school children might ace an algebra exam. Is this smarter than a group of Sub-Saharah African children who are practically independent from parental care and constant oversight by the age of 4? On what empirical grounds do you or anyone proclaim this group smarter or more athletic or more timid? There simply are no well defined standards that guarantee you have or even could established those claims to be facts. There's nothing wrong with having an African American character who lives in Brooklyn and loves rap music and the NBA. But those characteristics don't make that character any more believably "black" than an African American character that loves Spider-man and quantum physics. So I'll continue to write the person and not the stereotype. At any rate we are in danger of hi-jacking this thread.