White Authors and Topics to Avoid/Tread Carefully
Tragedy exploitation, often call tragedy or disaster porn, is something not a lot of people realize is racist.
What exploiting tragedy means is basically a fixation on bad scenarios, writing about them again and again— for profit. It’s exclusively writing about a group’s pain because you believe the most worthwhile narrative is the most painful one.
Tragedy exploitation covers:
- Slavery in all ethnicities
- Colonization from any and all groups (includes things like British occupation of India, Japan’s rule of the Pacific in WWII, and colonization of the Americas)
- Genocide (including cultural)
- Segregation (yep, like the 50s in America)
- War and refugees (all modern wars and WWII, both Atlantic and Pacific included)
- Undocumented immigrants (historical and modern, around the globe)
- Trafficking (includes agricultural, sex,maids/spa/nails/massage…)
- “Forbidden romance” (like: Nazis and Jews, slaveowners and their slaves, Japanese occupiers and Chinese prisoners, Natives and early settlers/colonizers)
- Anything involving a lot of death/struggle (including: Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, high suicide/ homicide rates in PoC communities, chronic illness, poverty, etc)
- Identity stories
Why do you have to write stories that focus only on the dark parts? Sure, there’s “inspiration” within them… but isn’t there just as much if not more inspiration to be had from writing about narratives that aren’t built on the suffering of PoC?
Identity stories deserve special mention because some topics are extremely nuanced and cannot be researched. See Why do you need to tell this story right now?
Romances also get special mention.
Yes, interracial relationships are fine… to a point, and there are degrees of appropriateness. Jewish readers aren’t clamoring to read gentile-written WWII stories about Jewish characters, but if that’s what you want to write, and one of them has to be gentile to make your plot work, at least please make them a righteous gentile (i.e. someone who was helping) rather than an actual Nazi. Romance between modern Native people and white people are fine.
Same with romance between a Black person and a white person – but in both those cases, not if the white person is actually a white supremacist! It’s not okay when one half’s entire philosophy revolves around killing/assimilating/owning the marginalized half. See the difference?
The only time it’s not fine is if one half has a vested interest in killing/ assimilating/ owning the marginalized identity.
We’d also caution against lovers moving into white savior positions. They can most definitely help and defend them, of course, but if the relationship’s heavily based on saving the poor Black woman from her oppressors, there’s a problem.
Grey areas writing topics also include:
- Activist/rebellion narratives when the issues are PoC centric (yes, it’s wonderful to see groups “winning”, but: 1- it perpetuates the myth the problems are over, 2- most of the things people are freeing themselves from are on the first list)
- Escape narratives (what are they escaping from? Usually things on the first list)
- Survival narratives (including things like survival sex work; what are they surviving, and do they get a happy ending?)
- Immigrant experiences (what are they immigrating from, how legal is it, etc)
Of course, GIANT note that if you personally experienced stuff on either list, you’re of course allowed to write about your experience. But white writers (or even any writer part of a group not directly targeted) should apply caution at best for the grey areas list, and seriously question why they want to write a story about stuff on the first list.
Important note: We realize Hidden Figures is an activism and segregation narrative written and and directed by white people. It was also adapted from a book written by a Black woman, which is where some personal experience comes in. That being said— there were a handful of white saviour moments in the film that were historically inaccurate and should not have been included.
Writing so exclusively about these stories shows, to us, that people don’t see a value in PoC narratives unless there is a disproportionate degree of suffering involved. White people get silly romcoms with two middle class individuals. Black people get starcrossed white/black lovers when interracial marriage was illegal. Why is our pain so important to you?
If the first thing you think of when you decide to start representing PoC is slavery, refugees, colonization, and general hardship/death… rethink why you first think of that, and start to work on seeing us outside of our suffering.
— WWC
P.S- we didn’t call it tragedy porn because porn isn’t exclusively built on exploitation, but that is the common name for what we are discussing here. Should you research this topic, “tragedy porn” or “disaster porn” is what will yield the most results. We just find it more accurate to say “tragedy exploitation” in this situation.
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