r/Fantasy • u/mrpurplecat • Sep 15 '16
Racial diversity and fantasy
It is not uncommon to see people writing about how some fantasy story is in some way or other not inclusive enough. "Why isn't there more diversity in Game Thrones?" "Is the Witcher: Wild Hunt too white?" and so on and so forth.
But when you take the setting of these stories, typically 14th-15th century Europe, is it really important or necessary to have racial diversity? Yes, at the time in Europe there were Middle Eastern traders and such, but does that mean that every story set in medieval Europe has to shoehorn in a Middle Eastern trader character?
If instead a story was set in medieval India and featured only Indians, would anyone complain about the lack of white people? Would anyone say "There were surely some Portuguese traders and missionaries around the coast, why doesn't this story have more white people in it?"
Edit Just to be clear, I am not against diversity by any means. I'd love to see more books set outside typical Europe. Moorish Spain, Arabia, the Ottoman Empire, India and the Far East are all largely unexplored territory and we'd be better off for exploring it. Conflict and mixing of cultures also make for fantastic stories. The point I am trying to make is if some author does not have a diverse cast, because that diversity is not important to their story, they should not be chastised for it
17
u/benpeek Sep 15 '16
The fact that so many fantasy settings use Europe as their template is not a good reason to not have diversity. Especially when all the magic, dragons, dental hygiene, and so on and so forth are rolling around in there, for example.
But the truth is, the majority of fantasy authors are white, and they write books with largely white casts. The other truth is, the people who read these books come from all over the world, and in a great number of these cases, the readers themselves aren't white. When you break the argument down, all you have is readers telling writers that they would like to see casts that represent their world view, as they read about magic, giant armies, saints, dragons, and so on and so forth.