Well, there’s degrees, I think. The worst thing you can do is write other cultures in a way which is degrading, stereotypical and disrespectful to their cultural experience. Just…don’t do that.
Better than that, but still not great, is to essentially write what you know–remain within your own cultural box, and essentially turn a blind eye to everything else. This is, generally, what I tend to do, and what I’m struggling with. While it succeeds in not insulting people, at the same time, it means that I’m essentially limiting myself to the dominant white perspective which, to be honest, can grow boring as fuck. I mean, how many fucking older bears’ selfies in front of bathroom mirrors so they can raise their self esteem do I have to wade through on tumblr to fine one remotely interesting image that might make for a potential caption? Fuck, that’s exhausting.
And when I see a picture of a very attractive black/hispanic/asian/etc. man that I want to use, I always censor myself. How do I insert them into a story, addressing their race, but in a way that isn’t insulting, and I realized that the solution is to use those pictures in the same way I use every other picture that ends up in my caption.
To say that the approach is “colorblind” or something like that isn’t quite right. I don’t want to erase that racial quality from the stories, because that’s counter productive–it erases part of why that picture appeals to me. However, writing the characters born from those pictures in ways that they grow beyond the color of the skin is the goal. That said, I haven’t done this yet–but that’s how it fits in my head I suppose. Hope that makes sense.
Bracken's Corner 