Where Is the Line Between Tokenism and Positive Representation, and Who Has the Right to Write?

In response to my article ‘What Does Positive Representation in Fiction Really Look Like?’, a reader posed the question, is it okay for white writers to have a main character of another race?

As questions of representation and appropriation rise and fall in our cultural dialogue, it is of no wonder that we as writers are asking these questions and disagreeing on the answers.

To create a central character, we climb inside their minds and live and breathe them into existence. Can we do that if the characters have a fundamentally different experience and life than our own? Can we walk in a person of another race’s shoes and claim enough understanding to put words and thoughts into that character’s mouth?

On the one hand, definitely not. All too often a character will be added in a tokenistic way, or recently, in an attempt to ride the bandwagon of allyship to garner a favourable response. This is not okay. Neither is it acceptable to assume you ‘know’ another person’s experience.

Everything that has been said about appropriation so far, and every moment of awareness you have had as a result of the news stories of the last year, and the increasingly loud voice of people of colour as they speak out about their experiences, have taught you that there is a huge amount you do not know.

However, one of the reasons you may have found it so hard to understand the experiences of people of colour, or even to feel connected to them in any real way is because you don’t know them well enough, and isn’t that what fiction gives us? We meet a character and walk around with them, inside their minds, and experiencing their life through their eyes. We come to know them as well as ourselves for a brief window of time. Our emotions get tangled up in theirs as we hope and fear for them, and laugh and cry with them.

If our only contact with the other is at a distance, or in short clipped conversations, how can we know each other? How can we break down the barriers to understanding, empathy, and the knowledge that we share more commonalities than differences?

Surely, no matter who we meet on the page, the writer has a unique opportunity to transport us into an experience different than our own. And in doing so has the ability to form and shape our understanding.

As readers, we can prove the publishing houses wrong. They have begun to see that encouraging women to change their names or use initials instead of a feminine first name is no longer necessary and never should have been. Now we have the money power to bring minority writers into the popular domain, elevating their voices and creating a more rich and beautifully diverse feast for our literary taste buds.

Would it be right to tell a writer of colour they couldn’t write white characters? Would it be right to only have characters with disabilities be written by authors with disabilities, or would that be limiting the exposure of the mainstream to the very thing they need so much more of?

I believe that all writing speaks for itself. Characters will remain two-dimensional and uninspiring unless the writer has truly done the work of finding out who they are and translating that life into words. Can a white writer do that? Not easily, but yes, I believe they can.

Just as I believe that with research and care a writer could transport me into the world of a Hispanic character, an Asian character, an LGBTQ+ character, or a character with a disability. Would I prefer to read the words of a writer from that group for a more authentic voice? Undoubtedly, but would I want to cut off the mainstream from their first encounter? No.

Nothing about race is simple. And for many questions, there will never be a straightforward yes or no.

As people slowly start to become aware of the culture we live in and its impact on people of colour and people from all minority groupings, they need to find the path that works for them, that they are able to digest without running in the opposite direction, seeking ‘safety’ from the anger of the hurt and systemically oppressed. The hope is that just as The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air was both a blessing and a curse, the increase of diverse faces and lives within fiction on our bookshelves will provide a safe acclimatisation for many, and a normalisation that aids the entry of diverse writers.

As readers, we have the responsibility of seeking out a wide array of writers of all backgrounds and lifestyles, and we also owe it to ourselves to visit worlds other than those that resemble our own. Our comfort zone can remain in a physical sense as long as we do not hide our minds behind a wall called safety also.

As writers, it is our job to elevate the voices of all through our work. We have chosen a path that if we are lucky will bring us into the most private and intimate spaces of people we will never meet in real life. Once there, we have an opportunity to show them what connects us to each other, to encourage them to empathise and connect, and see their experiences echoed in other’s lives.

Open yourselves as students of the world around you. Drink in all that you don’t know, so that when your characters tell you it’s time, you can write what you don’t know as well as what you do.

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This piece was originally published in The Writing Cooperative in April 2021.