Your thought on accurate racial depiction?

[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.

[scythe]

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.

This I agree wholeheartedly with.

The rest. I think you think I'm saying genes are the only factor that goes into making one race or culture excel at certain things. I'm not. Like I said, it's likely a rich, complex web of a whole range of things, that I believe includes innate, inherited biology in the mix. And when it comes to that biology and the aptitudes it preferences, I'm willing to cut down with a very fine scalpel to the tenth degree if necessary. I'm not making any sweeping generalisations here.

Oh, and happy to leave it here if you think we're hijacking the thread. Such debates don't really go anywhere in forums like this anyway.

[apocryphagraphics]

Yeah, it's a very interesting and important topic, but I think we are hi jacking it a bit. Time to let the rest of the community have their say.

[isaacfriedman]

Do the people in this picture:

look like they are of a different nationality than the people in this picture?

Note: these were drawn almost exactly a year apart, so my style has developed quite a bit.

Also, is it racist to depict Japanese, Chinese, and Korean people with slightly narrower eyes and rounder faces than they actually have in order to contextually imply that they are east Asian? If it is I'm in trouble because that's kind of what I've been doing for the past year.

[joannekwan]

I suppose there is a slight difference in the eyes, the old man on top clearly passing as asian. I think you were going for more rounded eyes for the guy on the bottom. I looked at random pages from your work on Tap and once I got a sense of your style it's easier to tell them apart.

As for your other question, I don't think it's too racist unless you're treading into offensive caricature stereotype territory. Yes many east asians have rounder faces, but I've seen plenty of round-faced people from other backgrounds as well. For eyes, I usually angle them slightly and make them more almond-shaped. But for me it's all about noses apparently. In my experience (I'm Chinese btw) most east asians will have soft sloping noses (of varying lengths). Here's a quick sampling of my east asian characters.