Even the most “woke” of us has an inner racist. No one is born with an inner racist. Our inner racist is created from a combination of media stereotypes and cultural biases.
Hopefully, your inner racist is starving and shrivelled because it can only grow if you feed it. You feed it when you don’t challenge the biases that you discover in yourself. Or worse actively entertain and promote your bias.
If you can feed your inner racist through entertaining your biases, surely the opposite is true? You can put it down for good by rooting out your own bias and challenging them one by one. That is where creative writing comes in.
Some of the best writing often comes from challenging ubiquitous narrative and social constructs. By challenging internalised prejudices, you may find yourself writing some of your best work.
How to use writing to challenge your inner racist
There is no one right way to use creative writing to challenge your own unfounded assumptions and biases. However, there are some techniques that I find work for me. I will share those techniques with you.
First find your bias
Before you can challenge a bias, you must identify it. These prejudices are the life support system keeping your inner racist alive. That level of unfair attribution does not arrive by itself – you learned it along the way.
I can remember as a child seeing old cartoons that had the same stock characters when it came to people of colour. Those caricatures became stock characters in my mind and – without ever realising it – those stock characters became part of my inner racist.
Drag these racial stock characters out into the light of reason and it is easy to see how thin and unrealistic these stock characters are. That is because, rather than building up rich and complex characters or even well-defined character roles, I have fallen back on the racial assumptions I picked up as a child. Assumptions that only serve to weaken my writing.
Sometimes the only way to see your own bias is to set up a situation and turn it on its head. If you feel uncomfortable, if something feels wrong, or if you suddenly see something you are ashamed of – that may mean that you have found an inner bias. Now, you can voice and then challenge it.
Voice your racial bias
Some racial biases are easy to identify because they can be expressed as “all [Racial Group] are [Some (Negative) Characteristic]”. With a racist idea this blatant it should be easy to find ways to voice and then challenge it.
If you ever hear yourself saying, thinking, or agreeing with a sentiment that begins, “I’m not a racist but…”. Whatever comes next, that is your bias. It might feel like “your truth” but it needs to be challenged nevertheless. These are prejudices that can, for example, be voiced by mildly racist characters but only if it is then thrown into sharp relief by the overall narrative.
Another way of voicing prejudicial thoughts include setting them up as situations and showing how they do not stand. You could explore how these ideas only stand to hurt and damage a character. The only limit is your creative mind.
Finally, there are truly hard to identify ingrained assumptions. Maybe they are still part of your culture or so ubiquitous that you never give them a second thought. Like the idea that the hero gets the girl, these ideas can only be found and voiced by asking “why … ?” and “what if, instead of … ?” This is where creative writing really shines.
The creative process itself is the act of finding a bias. A bias that as you find and voice it, you can challenge it – all in one story. that story is likely to change with iterations and edits but I bet it will be writing of which you are most proud.
Rigorously challenge your racial bias
We have talked about finding and voicing our own racial prejudice, now let us look at ways we can challenge those ideas.
A tried and true method of challenging cliches and tropes is to flip them upside-down. Invert them, subvert them, swap them about and make something fresh that parodies, contrasts, or challenges the reader’s assumptions.
Another way to challenge your own racism is to research the history and impact of racism. I can assure you some of it does not make for comfortable reading. If you do not come away from your research with a sense of indignation at man’s inhumanity to man, you did not look deep enough.
Finally, you are going to come to a point where you can no longer write stories that are just you with different hats on. This is where you find yourself expanding the scope of your character creation to include a more diverse range of racial and cultural backgrounds. Here, you will have to continuously challenge your own assumptions unless you want to churn out weak and cliched caricatures.
Avoid literary blackface
Literary blackface is what happens when, according to the description, the character is of a different racial background and yet in all other aspects is just you with another hat on.
The barriers to getting what you want in life may be other people’s attitudes, finances, geography, education, peer pressure, and so on. For each racial and cultural step away from your own background, these barriers will be ever more radically different.
When you write characters of any background different to your own, never assume you know what their daily struggles are like. Especially if you are a white male writer.
Us white male writers probably face the least barriers to life. Therefore, to write a believable character of another race, you are going to have to learn. That means research, that means talking to people.
True research and inter-racial friendships
As writers, we tend to use observations of the world around us to build settings, characters, and plot. The old adage, “write what you know,” might be ridiculous but, “start from what you know,” is spot on.
I do not think it is possible to write characters of any race or background without first having at least one true and ongoing relationship with a person or persons of that racial background. For writers, our friendships are not just social but character research too.
Not only will such friendships enrich your life, but it may be impossible not to challenge racial assumptions along the way.
Use the right beta readers
Not all creative writing is written to be seen by others. However, if your writing is written for others to read you may find yourself looking for beta readers (test readers).
There is only one source of beta readers able to give you a clear view of the authenticity of your racially diverse cast. That’s readers who share a similar racial or cultural background. You will not know how well you have written your characters of colour unless you ask readers of colour (and know how to take on board their feedback).
If you find good beta readers they will further challenge your racial and cultural ideas with their feedback.
Over to you
By the end of this process, you may not have killed your inner racist but you will have critically weakened it. You may have also grown as a person and as a writer. Hopefully, you will have written some of the hardest yet best work you have ever produced.
What recommendations can you add for ways to use creative writing to put down racial bias in yourself?
Have you ever found yourself embarrassed by or challenging assumptions you picked up when you were young? How did you challenge those assumptions? Did you change as a result?
Tell me what you think in the comments below.