A Writer’s Responsibility
As writers we have a responsibility to produce work that carries a social conscious when delivering it into the public sphere. We should not only be imaginative, creative, and original but also responsible for what our writing contributes to the greater discourse of ethics, justice and race. Our open forums and public discourse of race, inclusivity and diversity strive to propel accurate and much needed representations of minorities in movies, TV shows and writing. In essence, media and published literary works are highly valuable not only consciously but also subconsciously, infiltrating our minds, both young and old. The power of representation is significant as we have witnessed in minstrel shows and caricatures of African Americans and Natives. Literature has delivered its’ fair share of negativity, popularizing stereotypes, as the abolitionist book Uncle Tom’s Cabin can attest to. We form or reinforce opinions based on what we see at the movies, on TV and what we read. For this reason, Claudia Rankine insists of writers who ask, “can I write about another’s point of view?” to consider “why and what for, not just if and how?” A writer may wonder why they need to ask this question before writing from the perspective of an ethnically diverse character. To answer this question they only need to look at history and understand the long lasting effects of representation as good intended as they may have seemed. When writing it is important to consider the significance of a representation and the stereotype it might perpetuate. It is also important to consider the individuality of the character that isn’t entirely the person’s race. The character shouldn’t be used as a prop to be discovered by a white character for their own personal growth but rather represented as a human and an individual.
The problem with white authors writing about black or ethnically diverse individuals is what these characters symbolically represent within the text. Characters of color are often used to regale readers with the author’s perspective on the manner of race— to show that they are on the right side of things, which in essence can translate to the real life equivalent of “hey, I have a black friend”. In this sense, the author is telling us two things: that they are indeed aware of the history of oppression and hatred of black and brown bodies but at the same time have taken a narrative and reduced it to a superficial representation meant to convey their own feelings and not to deliver a greater message of racial inequality. So it is not that they don’t see race or that they don’t acknowledge the history but rather the race is used as a prop, a token of their own goodness. A writer can argue that creativity is stifled when we begin “policing” it in this manner and that imagination knows no race but rather desires to tell a story, to which Rankine would argue, “for that unknowable portion of the human mind is also a domain of culture—a place crossed up by culture and history, where the conditions into which we were born have had their effect”. As conscious individuals, writers have a responsibility to develop and portray characters of color as people and not solely as a mass representation of race.
It is not enough to simply be represented in a physical sense or even a historical sense but also necessary to develop the individual. Writers have to consider the reason for that character’s existence in a book—is it to develop this character as a complex individual with ancestors who suffered at the hands of racism or simply to have a one dimensional “black person” to check off a list of diversity? This is what Ellison’s character in the Invisible Man feels as a black man in a society dominated by white figures, “when they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination—indeed, everything and anything except me”(3). And what Hurston describes as the “first day I became colored”. Seeing one’s self singled out and viewed in a particular manner because of the color of your skin is a burden generations strong. The individual does not exist in racism, color and a history of attributions is all that matter. We cannot simply be “behind the writing” or believe that creativity and the imagination drive us blindly, we must be aware of the individuals we are creating through writing and how they resonate with readers and society at large.
I think that it is important to acknowledge that the power of imagination has undeniably produced some of the most impressive works of literature throughout history. Undoubtedly, without literary works we would not have some of the greatest stories ever told—rich in culture, history and understanding of the world that surrounded the author at the time. As writers aware of the real issues in our communities and the world, we have a duty not just to deliver our imagination and conscience to the public but also bring something with a greater message. As creators, we are responsible for representations and our characters. One way to be conscious of our writing is to ask, as Rankine suggests, why we want to write from the perspective of a Hispanic, African American, or Native American? We need to focus on what our representations bring to the greater discourse of race, not just what our readers will think about our one-dimensional propriety about race.
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