My question is a bit related to the ethnicity based magic question. The setting is zombie post apocalypse northern USA, the protags are mostly poc with mixed heritage (afroamerican/Ethiopian, korean\white, afroamerican/Irish + one white character). They all experience a disconnect to their root's, but when low level magic returns to the world, I want gods close to their personality, NOT their roots, to teach them. I. E. a Norse god teaches a black char & vice versa. Would that be OK?
Cultural Disconnect, Taught by Gods from Other Cultures
>> They all experience a disconnect to their root’s, but when low level magic returns to the world, I want gods close to their personality, NOT their roots, to teach them.
That’s not a “but.” That continues the pattern of them all being disconnected from their roots.
A non-Scandinavian-diaspora girl in the zombie apocalypse being helped by a supernatural figure significant to her own traditions and the same girl being helped by Freya or some other Norse god are two entirely different stories. (Or a Swedish-American being helped by Freya vs. by Venus.) The not-their-culture god just continues the disconnect from their heritage plus serves as a kind of invalidator of some cultures, whose religions hold that the other ones don’t count.
Plus, why is the spirit from their own culture not good enough to help them? I understand what you mean about personalities, but most cultures with polytheism have a variety of different personalities to pick from. For example, if I am kind of a clever trickster outsider I get paired with Loki and if I’m bold and brave I get paired with Thor, but other cultures with lots of gods to pick from would ALSO have a trickster and a brave character.
In other words, there are probably supernatural figures close to their personality AND their roots lurking within world mythology, and readers within the culture may think “Why didn’t they just use Freya?” if your character is of Nordic heritage and you used Venus instead. (Sorry that my examples are so Eurocentric.)
Continuing on the topic of cultural sensitivity, I’m noticing a glaring omission: Natives.
You have to remember that all of the people you’re putting on this backdrop do not actually come from the area they’re living in. So if you start omitting Natives, then you’re basically saying “magic can now colonize, too”.
I get that you’re not going to change around the whole population of an area, considering the Northern USA is a mix of a whole bunch of ethnicities. But it rings really false to me that magic is returning to the land and there not even being a hint of Native people getting their ownership back.
Like, I get that I’ve talked about how exhausting it is to have Natives= land magic, and I still stand by that. But when you consider how intimately Natives and land magic are tied in the real world, it gets a little eyebrow-raising to see “magic returns to the land” and there being absolutely nothing about Natives.I’m not saying there needs to be an all-Native cast here. I’m saying that it would be continuing colonial legacy to ignore original ownership of who first settled on the land under their feet. It doesn’t have to be much, but I would much prefer something.
And please do not “fix” this by having Native religions/deities pick members of your pre-existing cast. Native religions are closed to only those who are within the tribe. If you do want a Native person in your cast, pick somebody who is actively aware of their identity and the responsibility that comes with their identity. Non-Natives should never, ever, ever be the authority over Natives, especially when it comes to their own religion. As Shira said, having gods from other cultures come in to teach people their ways continues disenfranchisement.
Just something to consider.
Please consider the historical and current relationships between the source culture of the character being taught and the source culture of the being doing the teaching. It's unfortunate but nonetheless true that there have existed and still exist power and cultural dynamics between nations and societies that could make such mentor/mentee relationships awkward, to say the least, due to colonialism, religious conversion, or economic exploitation. For instance, if it were me in this position and the "god" or being teaching me were, say, the English image of St. George or something, I can tell you may reaction would almost definitely be "oh boy, an Indian being lectured to by a Brit... again."
There are a billion Indians in this world; we survived and thrived; so imagine how much more pronounced that feeling would be when the mentee character is from a culture who was almost wiped out by people from another nation who worshipped or invoked the mentor character. There are so many ways that it can go wrong.
So there are certain mentor/mentee pairs for which this would be all kinds of nope and others for which it's less off-putting. In those latter cases, think about the ways that exploring the teachings delivered by that god or being might prompt the mentee character to rediscover and connect with their own heritage. I realize it's postapocalyptic and good research material might be hard to come by in-universe, but if a character knows that they are of a certain heritage, they may become curious about the philosophy and worldviews that come from those people. Maybe this sounds a little bit tribalistic but different peoples throughout history have often explored similar ideas, either by way of shared history or cultural contact, or even independent innovation, and learning about ideas in a different culture can be an avenue to exploring similar ideas in one's own, in way that comes off as seeming less contrived and allows the character to reconnect with that culture.
For example, if a Celtic god starts talking about transmigration of souls, it might prompt a Korean character to explore Korean Buddhist notions of reincarnation—it's a similar germ of an idea from a divergent source, but it can be explored from a perspective that is more intrinsic to the character rather that being foisted on them by an outside force. This makes it more of a honest exchange than a "schooling," and gives agency to your characters of color when the "god' in question may be of European origin.
