Thanks – that’s cool. IRL I try to describe everyone by skin color first (even here where it’s 99% white) so that I am saying the equivalent thing every time – nice to see how he is able to do it in his work.
That seems a lot more racist to me than, like, not doing so.
I suppose it depends on how it’s done, but why?
In Heinlein’s “Starship Troopers”, (not the movie. Forget that POS) it’s slightly alluded to at the end of the novel that Johnny Rico is Filipino. I guess RAH just didn’t think it was all that relevant to the story.
Is Rico a common WASP surname?
Of course not. Unless the book explicitly mentions characters of one race (even by mentioning things like hair colour) and it’s incongruous with the setting.
Otherwise, as long as it makes sense in context, the reader is free to imagine any race on any character. For most people this will be white, now, but that may not always be the case and isn’t true for books in some settings.
Because you might want to describe someone by their non-white race (the Indian-looking bloke, etc) as it’s the easiest way to differentiate them from an all- or mostly-white crowd, but it feels a bit racist to do so while not doing so for other ethnicities.
Or you’re in an environment mixed enough that you might mention race/apparent race or skin colour whatever it is. Or you’re in that environment often enough that the habit carries over even when you’re not.
just my assumption - why else would a character in a small tight-knit group like that be sidelined for two seasons? if he were meant to be a minor character from the beginning, then him being the only black character, standing around with nothing to do, is a bit conspicuous.
What the “problem” becomes, if it can be termed a problem, is when non-white children also see the characters as white, and end up identifying as white - because all of the cool characters are white, and all of the cool movie stars are white, and all of the cool TV stars are white, etc…
How much of a problem it can be depends on the culture and the society.
It is not racist to mention skin color either.
A book is not racist, however, if it doesn’t explicitly mention ethnic characters. It might be a little bit ethnocentric, or most likely, the writer is just writing what they know.
Why don’t we see more minority authors become popular, I wonder?
In the novel, his skin color isn’t mentioned (that I recall) but he is, FWIW, described as having dreadlocks.
That’s why I mention race every time, so that’s it’s consistent no matter who I am describing. Race is a part of a basic description.
Yes. That’s what I said.
Thanks – had to reread!
It’s not, but then again, I think in 1950’s America, most folks would assume he was Puerto Rican, Latin-American, Mexican-American, or of European Spanish descent. Kind of clever, as Filipinos in the US military are a lot more common than you’d expect, in my experience (as in, Filipinos from the Philippine Islands, not Filipinos from LA, though I’ve run into several of them as well).
In any case, Rico is given almost no background regarding his ethnicity or nationality, aside from being from Earth, in contrast to the considerable detail his fellow recruits get. The implication being that Private Rico simply doesn’t consider that his own ethnicity is any more interesting to the reader than it is to himself. There are a few mentions in passing to him speaking Tagalog with someone else in his squad, but no clarification that Tagalog is the language spoken in the Philippines.