A had a conversation in my writing class the other day about this idea of default color. By default I mean the skin color we tend to view characters as when we are not given textual clues. In this particular instance the protagonist’s love interest is a black kid, but it isn’t made clear immediately. We all presumed the love interest was white. For my part it had little to do with the fact that the protagonist was white. I suspect I might have thought he was white even if she was black, because I hadn’t been told otherwise. And there’s the rub: White is even my default as a reader.
Its hard to blame me. Most of the books throughout the literary spectrum have male white leads. Almost all of the movies of note do–something Spike Lee recently bothered to point out again. beyond that as a reader I’ve come to expect to be reminded of race unless the character is white. In that case the writer rarely needs to say anything. JK Rowling went through this recently when discussing Hermione. An upcoming stage production cast a black actress as Hermione and part of the fan base went bonkers. Rowling basically told them to get a grip, because she never ever said Hermione was white. She never said she wasn’t so we assumed she was.
When I hear of the decline of racism and the issues that face non-whites globally, this is one that never gets addressed. We default to white unconsciously. This always makes non-white a secondary thing. Maybe that doesn’t create racism or a second class, but it does cultivate a subconscious sense of privilege that allows one to realize they are always in the ‘we’ and those who don’t look like them will forever be in the ‘other’.
I could touch on the Michael Jackson thing–and I will–but that is best left for another time.
Some Thoughts:
- Special post number tonight, because reasons.
- I am absurdly grateful for my job. I have an excellent job that allows me to teach people and to learn from them and to languish in literature and story and essay all the livelong day.
- Shout out to Myrlin Hepworth. Mixtape release party is tomorrow night. Keep fighting the good fight..