This is a jar full of major charactersĀ
Actually it is a jar full of chocolate covered raisins on top of a dirty TV tray. But pretend the raisins are interesting and well rounded fictional characters with significant roles in their stories.Ā
Weāre sharing these raisins at a party for Western Storytelling, so we get out two bowls.Ā
Then we start filling the bowls. And at first we only fill the one on the left.Ā
This doesnāt last forever though. Eventually we do start putting raisins in the bowl on the right. But for every raisin we put in the bowl on the right, we just keep adding to the bowl on the left.Ā
And the thing about these bowls is, they donāt ever reset. We donāt get to empty them and start over. While we might lose some raisins to lost records or the stories becoming unpopular, but we never get to just restart. So even when we start putting raisins in the bowl on the right, weāre still way behind from the bowl on the left.Ā
And time goes on and the bowl on the left gets raisins much faster than the bowl on the right.Ā
Until these are the bowls.Ā
Now you get to move and distribute more raisins. You can add raisins or take away raisins entirely, or you can move them from one bowl to the other.Ā
This is the bowl on the left. I might have changed the number of raisins from one picture to the next. Can you tell me, did I add or remove raisins? How many? Did I leave the number the same?
You canāt tell for certain, can you? Adding or removing a raisin over here doesnāt seem to make much of a change to this bowl.Ā
This is the bowl on the right. I might have changed the number of raisins from one picture to the next. Can you tell me, did I add or remove raisins? How many? Did I leave the number the same?
When there are so few raisins to start, any change made is really easy to spot, and makes a really significant difference.Ā
This is why it is bad, even despicable, to take a character who was originally a character of color and make them white. But why it can be positive to take a character who was originally white and make them a character of color.
The white characters bowl is already so full that any change in number is almost meaningless (and is bound to be undone in mere minutes anyway, with the amount of new story creation going on), while the characters of color bowl changesĀ hugelyĀ with each addition or subtraction, and any subtraction is a major loss.Ā
This is also something to take in consideration when creating new characters. When you create a white character you have already, by the context of the larger culture, created a character with at least one feature that is not going to make a difference to the narratives at large. But every time you create a new character of color, you areĀ changingĀ something in our world.Ā
I mean, imagine your party guests arrive
Oh my god they are adorable!
But before you hand them out you look right into the little black girlsās eyesĀ and take two of her seven raisins and put them in the little white girlās bowl.
I think sheād be totally justified in crying or leaving and yelling at you. Because how could you do that to a little girl? You were already giving the white girl so much more, and her so little, why would you do that? How could you justify yourself?
But on the other hand if you took two raisins from the white girlās bowl and moved them over to the black girlās bowl and the white girl looked at her bowlĀ still full to the brimĀ and decided your moving those raisins was unfair and she stomped and cried and yelled, well thenĀ she is a spoiled and entitled brat.Ā
And if you are adding new raisins, it seems more important to add them to the bowl on the right. I mean, even if we added the both bowls at the same speed from now on (and we donāt) it would still take a long time before the numbers got big enough to make the difference weāve already established insignificant.Ā
And thatās the difference between whitewashing POC characters and making previously white characters POC. And thatās why every time a characterās race is ambiguous and we make them white, weāve lost an opportunity.
*goes off to eat her chocolate covered raisins, which are no longer metaphors just snacks*
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