I'm here from metafandom: I have to admit, I have been thinking about this more along the lines of there being 4 options. Not write at all, write actively badly, write not badly and write well.
As a white person I think anybody can at least aim for the are between not actively bad and actively good. Of course this opens up a whole new area of kind of bland characters of color, but it seems to me that we still aren't over actively bad/insultive depictions yet, so it seems to me that people could at least start aiming for not getting things wrong even if they are not capable of completely getting things right.
I think the problem comes in where as a white person one writes for oneself (either for ones own peace of mind or out of fetishation or what not) or whether one writes actually FOR the POC. Because there is probably a fairly wide gap between "passable" and actually getting it right in the "OMG, yes, yes, yes, this hits the spot perfectly, this is exactly my experience, this is expressing what I have always thought or always wanted".
In my (limited to issues of history/nationality/religion) experience this kind of getting it just right (as opposed to getting it kinda right or at least not getting it completely, offensively, spreading bad stereotypes wrong) is pretty hard to achieve from an outsidee, though I do think it should be doable (at least based on how it is with some men doing female characters that are popular with women and occasional slash stories written by straight women that appeal to gay men).
Now the easiest way would probably to just give more money and advertising to actual non-white authors/producers/whatever. But it doesn't necessarily completely resolve the issue of the white writer who for whatever reason wants or need to and *will* write a character of color (I'm a fan of character X in canon and I want to write about them or I want to give a honest portrayal of the city or job I'm writing about). [of course the question is if there actually was more funding for writers of color, hence, more books by them, if it wouldn't be easier to just ignore the "nice, but missing the point" white authors because you have a wider pool of stuff you might enjoy to choose from; but since that situation is not there yet, there is still the question of whether white authors can or should try to pick up the slack and what if any positive side effects might come from it (like if influential scifi author X writes a story with a non-white main character, maybe the publishers would be more willing to eventually pay an actual non-white author to write a series around a non-white character, etc. Or maybe they wouldn't. I guess one would have to try and test it.]
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branchandroot
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Date: 2009-02-03 10:37 am (UTC)As a white person I think anybody can at least aim for the are between not actively bad and actively good. Of course this opens up a whole new area of kind of bland characters of color, but it seems to me that we still aren't over actively bad/insultive depictions yet, so it seems to me that people could at least start aiming for not getting things wrong even if they are not capable of completely getting things right.
I think the problem comes in where as a white person one writes for oneself (either for ones own peace of mind or out of fetishation or what not) or whether one writes actually FOR the POC. Because there is probably a fairly wide gap between "passable" and actually getting it right in the "OMG, yes, yes, yes, this hits the spot perfectly, this is exactly my experience, this is expressing what I have always thought or always wanted".
In my (limited to issues of history/nationality/religion) experience this kind of getting it just right (as opposed to getting it kinda right or at least not getting it completely, offensively, spreading bad stereotypes wrong) is pretty hard to achieve from an outsidee, though I do think it should be doable (at least based on how it is with some men doing female characters that are popular with women and occasional slash stories written by straight women that appeal to gay men).
Now the easiest way would probably to just give more money and advertising to actual non-white authors/producers/whatever. But it doesn't necessarily completely resolve the issue of the white writer who for whatever reason wants or need to and *will* write a character of color (I'm a fan of character X in canon and I want to write about them or I want to give a honest portrayal of the city or job I'm writing about). [of course the question is if there actually was more funding for writers of color, hence, more books by them, if it wouldn't be easier to just ignore the "nice, but missing the point" white authors because you have a wider pool of stuff you might enjoy to choose from; but since that situation is not there yet, there is still the question of whether white authors can or should try to pick up the slack and what if any positive side effects might come from it (like if influential scifi author X writes a story with a non-white main character, maybe the publishers would be more willing to eventually pay an actual non-white author to write a series around a non-white character, etc. Or maybe they wouldn't. I guess one would have to try and test it.]