How Do I Be Representative in My Writing Without Being Offensive?

This is a question I'm still currently trying to figure out. I feel helpless in a way when it comes to my writing because I'm trying to include (not add) minorities to my writing, but I still haven't found the perfect and most respectful way to do this. I write based on my friends' experiences they've opened to me about, and I also research as well to try to be as representative as possible. However, being someone who isn't a minority, it makes me feel as though no matter how I go about it, it'll offend someone. And I really don't want that. That is my biggest fear.

For the longest time, I've had this label-free approach that I've been trying to do with my writing. I've blogged about it before. A lot of readers (but not all) assume a character is white when they're reading about them, so I like to not mention race at all. I like it to be even in a way so I'm not purposefully pointing out a difference that doesn't need to be pointed out. Something I didn't think about though until I heard some different perspectives is that we live in such a world where if race isn't mentioned, a reader may not be able to depict it is someone of a different race. Also, as someone in my English class pointed out in the context of asexual representation, she was talking about how she liked that the main character was labeled with it as it was part of her identity in a positive way.

In my social psych class, we were also learning about the five common reactions people have in situations where they feel different. Denial is one of them where people claim "we're all human beings." It's the very idea I just talked about where people almost want to deny that race is even a thing. Without realizing it, a label-free approach can unintentionally be offensive in certain contexts since race can be a positive thing meant to be embraced.

This is why I think it's so important to always be willing to hear different perspectives and always be open to changing your methods or ways of thinking. I feel like I'm always learning and I love it that way. Now I'm going to go back to my novels and look at the way I represent minorities and make sure I'm not solely using a label-free approach but that I also mention race when it's meant to be embraced as an identity for that character. It'll be more revising, but it'll be so worth it. It's times like these I remember there's no rush to get my novels published because I'm young and still learning about how to write the best I can and how to get the messages across the best I can.

I just want to thank everyone who gives me new ways of thinking because it's so hard to see one way is harmful when you have good intentions behind it. So thank you, now I can improve. I know there will be another thing that comes up some time down the road too, and then I'll just adapt again and that's how it goes.

A lot of days do feel repetitive a lot of the time, but everything I'm constantly learning is something new.