I had another thought on this topic since the last post, so I’m extending the series to three parts. Basically, it deals with the difficulty concerning a strictly politically correct approach to race and the fact that any piece of literature will deal with a finite number of major characters. And by finite, I mean small.

Much literature consists of a protagonist and an antagonist and a variable number of supporting characters. In more recent years, we have seen the rise of multiple major characters. One of my favorite examples is the Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan/Brandon Sanderson. There are probably close to a dozen major characters in the series, maybe even more. However, that was a series spanning fourteen books and probably around 10,000 pages, giving the authors plenty of room to flesh out all the characters. Anyway, my point is that unless you intend to write a behemoth of similar magnitude, you will probably be limited to a handful of major characters in your story. Let’s say five.

How many races are there on planet Earth? There’s African, Caucasian, Hispanic, Asian, Indian, American Indian, and, I’m sure, a good many more. If we are going to take political correctness to its anal extreme, we should have representatives from every race among our main characters. But, clearly, that is impossible. There are too many races involved. We only have five characters and the incomplete list of races above has already reached six. We didn’t even include pygmies or Aborigines, and who knows who else.

Still, despite my harping, political correctness has (or at least did have) a point. Back in the 1950’s or so, most of the movies in the U.S. featured almost entirely white casts. And, I think if you take such in the aggregate that can be a problem. I’m sure it leads to a kind of psychological apartheid (as well as a more literal societal apartheid), particularly when there are large segments of the population who are not represented in the movies at all (i.e. blacks, American Indians, etc…). However, I think nowadays, we are so preoccupied with race and “diversity” we are going off in the other direction, insisting on diversity where it might actually do a disservice to the story in question. I must object when political correctness is used to justify an inconsistency with historical truth, such as in the movie “Thor” of my first post on the subject (not sure “truth” is the right word there, but I think you get my point—the gods of Asgard should have been white for historical reasons, not mixed for politically correct ones). Anyway, I think we have reached the point where, on an individual basis, we can set aside politically correct concerns and just tell good stories. There may be times when an all black or all white cast may be called for, and I don’t think the artist should be penalized for such. The needs of the story should determine the characters involved, not the latest trend in contemporary politics or literary groupthink.