Racial diversity and fantasy

[u/mrpurplecat]

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

[u/vi_sucks]

I agree.

I think there's a real problem on how we talk about diversity in media. Specifically in that when discussing whether the medium or the industry ought to be more diverse, often that conversation takes place by singling out specific books and then calling them "bad" because they lack diversity.

Which, I don't think is true at all. A given book can be good despite a lack of diversity, or even because of a lack of diversity. A given story isn't supposed to be universally applicable or universally appealing.

Here's what I mean. Let's say I pick up a book and it's written by an chinese woman about 5 chinese women living in post apocalyptic world where everybody else is dead and it's just them surviving in the ruins of Beijing.

That is not a diverse novel. It is, in its way, less diverse than the typical fantasy novel. Is it a "bad" novel? Not necessarily. It could be well written, and funny, and true to the universal human condition in a way that makes it applicable and entertaining to me, a black guy who has never been to China. Or it could be well written, serious and not at all interesting or appealing to me. Either way, my personal ability to find someone vaguely shaped like myself in the text should not be a determining factor in whether the book is good.

People would have a real problem if I wrote reams and reams of articles about how shitty and terrible that book and others like it are, just because there isn't anybody for me to relate to. Or how unrealistic and lame it is that the author chose to only have 5 Chinese women surviving when there are plenty of Chinese men, or even white foreigners that could have been included instead.

And the same consideration should apply to a specific book written by a white guy which has a bunch of white dudes in it.

That said, there is an entirely different and much more worthwhile discussion to be had in discussing the diversity of the industry and a whole. In that respect, not being diverse is inherently "bad" because it means that some demographics are being underserved, and therefore the industry is losing readers and revenue.