White Writers and Using Minorities to Shape Fantasy

 

Welcome Back, Booklovers! This is a topic that has been on my mind since earlier in the month when I read City of Villains by Estelle Laure. While I hadn't read much fantasy lately by white authors it was interesting to see how white a world could feel while simultaneously borrowing history from people of color. For a little backstory, City of Villains is an urban fantasy about the origin stories of Disney villains. It at times feels like Descendants meets Gotham. And like the Descendants franchise it does that thing I don't like where it uses real life issues POC deal with to give the story depth.

In Descendants 3 there's this parallel to immigration in the US which I couldn't gel with since many of the characters being compared to immigrants were white and those are not the immigrants facing struggles in real life. I just disagreed with making a blonde haired, green eyed white girl the face of immigration reform. 

With City of Villains the story is contemporary and set in the US instead of a complete fantasy world. Throughout the book their a little parallels to the Legacies that mirror Black history in the US.  So the villain group called Legacies(those born of magic descent) live in an area of the city that was once beautiful but has since been run down and is in the process of being gentrified by the Narrows(those of non magic descent). Narrows often try to copy their style of dress. There's a politician character whose slogan is "Make Monarch great again!", references to a march that draws parallels to the Black Lives Matters protests, and mentions of police brutality. I can't recall one character even being described as brown on the rare occasion we got descriptions of character's features. 

One could make an argument about white groups like the Irish being treated badly in the US but it would be a pretty weak argument. The Irish were stereotype but not oppressed. They were never slaves and they never experienced racism. They were not targets of extreme violence nor did they have to march for their rights. 

Why is it that a white author can use the struggles of POC in fantasy to inspire their stories without including POC in their story? People don't want to read about Black pain but will read that same Black pain if it is used for a fantasy character who comes off as white. How is it they can understand racism when it involves a vampire and a human but act oblivious when it involves two people of different races? 

Why do people praise authors like Rick Riordan and Casandra Clare for serving bare minimum diversity? Granted in Riordan's case his imprint does publish much needed diverse fantasies for a Middle Grade audience. Why do authors get praised for having biracial characters or token bipoc who are undeveloped set amid their lily white worlds?  One thing we need to acknowledge in the book community is that having a bunch of  diverse side characters with no actual characterization is not diversity.