I really want to write Black Panther fanfiction.
In fact, I want to enough I've got about fifteen hundred words written right this second, and while self-indulgent, it's not completely terrible.
Elevator Pitch: Erik (as per the comics) has an unnamed son. Wakanda will not fail him as it did his father.
I want to take this as a starting point to illustrate what kind of thought needs to go into what should be a really simple idea. After all, there are hundreds of Naruto is adopted by X, or Harry Potter is adopted by Y and the focus tends to be both on the adopter and adoptee and whatever, it's a sappy, feel good fic where the strength of the fan response comes from how much you want to see Z character be happy, healthy and strong, and see the adopter mete out justice to petty crooks or the abusive home life or whatever.
For Black Panther, right away, you have to ask (and answer!) why this kid? Why not other ghetto girls and boys? And while we're at it, isn't it kind of gross to be doing this pseudo-white savior bullshit while pretending you're not white (in my case, CBC) through characters in a story? And wait, who's to say that Erik Jr. (or whatever his name is) had a terrible home life? Maybe he got adopted into money the same way that Creed's Adonis Johnson got adopted.
So, in order to write this fairly standard fanfic plot (Character A is adopted by Character B) I have to take into account the long and storied history of R2P, presentations of race, the whole white savior industrial complex, come up with a coherent plot and make it seem 'authentic' - aka, not just white people playing dress-up.
And that last point is what a lot of people are scared of. Sure, it's easy to tell people 'just make X character black or brown.' But, to take a rather common metaphor, there's a difference between white toast and brown bread.
To talk about dialogue alone without involving any other cultural trappings (music, clothes, what have you): can you code switch? Can you make two people in a room who don't have to perform in front of a white audience sound natural? NPR has a podcast called codeswitch, there are TED talks on the subject, and, truth be told, if you're not black, you are intimately aware that you have to rely on stereotypes. 'Black people talk like X'.
This ends up with a bit of a problem with self-selection from those who aren't black because either you are getting:
A) People who know enough not to dare to try until they do the research (they probably don't know how to do the research)
B) People who know enough and don't care
C) People who know enough to hire a black person for part of the writing task
C is useless: Here on SV, we can't just throw money at our problems until someone else addresses them.
Those who fall into category B tend to be assholes and so you get your athlete/criminal/etc. boxes for black people to fit into because that's how their minds work when it comes to black people. But why do the people who fit in A dare not try, even after they've done the research? Let me quote Donald Glover: "I'm black, making a very black show, and they're telling me I can't use the N-word! Only in a world run by white people would that happen."
If you care, it is intimidating as fuck to write about black people. How far do you go in the name of an authenticity you yourself know mostly through TV shows and literature (which are probably racist anyway?)? Does the fact that I'm making a reference to Creed in my fic via Erik having written a cheesecake rap that's briefly referenced humanize him a little, or does it sound unbelievably stupid? (Probably both) Does the fact that T'Challa cannot recognize what a match is in the same way the average person not recognize what a flint looks like make Wakanda seem more like a supertech marvel or does it make T'Challa look like a clown - which is its own stereotype of black person? (Probably the latter)
Writing white people is easy because stories of white people have made deep, easy grooves for you to slot yourself into. They are the universal human being, they are the generic whitebread, they are the common denominator.
These are the lies we tell ourselves.
The common denominator isn't common at all, it just pretends it is by virtue of being able to impose its common sense on the world and for the rest of the world to have to take it. I live in Shanghai where everyone lives in an apartment that's at least five floors tall and yet if you ask small children to draw a picture of their home, odds are, a hefty proportion (though not all) will still draw a generic two window, one door house. Some might even include a chimney.
All without having ever seen a real house or a real chimney.
That is power.
And power tends not to be very understanding. Why should it? It doesn't have to understand anything. Understanding is for the weak which have to navigate the corridors that power creates.
In our neck of the woods where fiction tends to be fantasy and science-fiction minorities get written out in favor of fantasy races and while you might look at it and say 'weeeeak', take a second look. Legend of Korra Season 1 with its non-benders, RWBY with its faunus, vampires in urban fantasy somehow representing racism minorities feel despite the fact they are super strong, super fast, cannot stand exposure to the light and literally drink blood... as a someone once pointed out, they far better represent those in power than those who are oppressed.
These are professional writers (well, RWBY it's debatable) being completely shit at writing fictional minorities that they invented.
Even Terry Pratchett is guilty of this. I swear by him. I quote him often. I think about his writing all the time. I have read basically every book he has ever written and will re-read them at the drop of a hat.
And yet, I cannot get past the first few chapters of Interesting Times where Rincewind travels to 'fantasy China.' To me it's completely stupid, starting with the 'smart' Chinese character greatly admiring the English writing system for having a letters represent sounds (because that's exactly how English works what with bough, cough, dough all rhyming, right?) as opposed to the dumb way Chinese people write things and while I'm sure it has its redeeming points, to me, basically everything in it is awful and made worse by how much I love Terry Pratchett. Now, he's probably poking fun at how fantasy China is generally portrayed, but as someone of Chinese descent, I found it appalling. To his credit, he didn't make these fantasy Chinese people elves or something, but, nevertheless, his parody of what was already an extremely racist portrayal of Chinese people somehow not racist.
Basically, this imaginary problem is hard as balls to solve because people who don't write what they know, don't know what tf they're writing about.
