Spy author Anthony Horowitz ‘warned off’ creating black character

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From BBC News:

Author Anthony Horowitz says he was “warned off” including a black character in his new book because it was “inappropriate” for a white writer.

The creator of the Alex Rider teenage spy novels says an editor told him it could be considered “patronising”.

Horowitz wanted a white and black protagonist in his new children’s books but says he is now reconsidering.

“I will have to think about whether this character can be black or white,” he told the Mail on Sunday.

“I have for a long, long time said that there aren’t enough books around for every ethnicity.”

Horowitz, who has written 10 novels featuring teenage spy Alex Rider, said there was a “chain of thought” in America that it was “inappropriate” for white writers to try to create black characters, something which he described as “dangerous territory”.

He said it was considered “artificial and possibly patronising” to do so because “it is actually not our experience”.

“Therefore I was warned off doing it. Which was, I thought, disturbing and upsetting.”

Link to the rest at BBC News and thanks to Kris for the tip.

PG remembers not long ago when there were not enough black characters in children’s books.

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76 thoughts on “Spy author Anthony Horowitz ‘warned off’ creating black character”

  1. This is CULTURAL APPROPRIATION and is 99% BS. Read Lionel Shriver’s takedown of this elitist cultural wank in the Guardian. It is the definitive word on the matter IMO.

    • +1

      Also, sometimes it helps to step back and examine these issues from a different angle. I recently read Thomas Nagel’s “What is it Like to Be a Bat?” and came up with a fresh understanding of these annoying identity politics. For all the flack Philosophy majors receive, I believe now is good time for many to revisit the discipline.

  2. Even on A purely practical level, The story doesn’t make sense.
    Surely the PC brigade in America can’t Think all black people everywhere are the same or have had the same experiences?
    Most British black people are Caribbean. For a start.

  3. Some writers are comfortable in writing outside their ethnicity, social class, etc. and are delusional. Others think they can’t and can. Some think they can write romance and can’t. Others think they can’t and can.

    What’s new?

    Personally, I write well as a toad, but blank on insects. Kafka, I will never be.

  4. The PC Brigade are going to have a hard time with my Beacons sci-fi series of 3 novels and two novellas. It’s set in my own invented kingdom in the South Pacific and explores issues of sovereignty and occupation by a foreign group who, while benign, now hold most of the power. I await with interest questions of my right to use characters of varying ethnicity, royalty and for that matter, aliens whose history I have no chance of sharing.

  5. Ummm…yah.

    I’ve been writing my characters as both black and white almost from day one. And while yes, I am white, that does not prevent me from writing black characters (or with my latest, latino). I don’t misappropriate, as I base my characters on what I observe/read/listen to from my circle of friends and co-workers, the majority of which are non-white.

    And I’m pretty sure that no-one has objected to what I write for characters, only content.

  6. After some of the dogpiles I’ve seen online of authors who write a minority character and someone takes offense, I can understand why some might hesitate. I have black, LGBT, brown, biracial characters in a variety of my stories and it’s scary to think of someone finding it and deciding I wrote it wrong and come screaming after me.

  7. It wasn’t until I was half-way through my third Alex Cross book that I discovered he was black.

    When a character is named Abdullah AlGamdhi, it’s easy to let the reader know he’s an Arab. Same with Alexis Khushnov, or Chen Lee.

    But, when his name is Alex Cross or Robert Lawson, it’s much more difficult.

  9. Robert Parker always said the reason he didn’t do a solo Hawk book was because he couldn’t identify with the black experience.

    I thought it was a garbage line of reasoning then, and still do. When you’re writing about people and being true to the “human condition”, if you’ll allow the indulgence, it shouldn’t matter. In the end we all want the same things.

    That being said, I think I’ll write about a black spy dating a white woman just to piss people off.

  10. This is simply a consequence of voting a community organizer into the White House. Twice.

    Now we have millions of flunkies out there utilizing these same filthy tactics. I bet Saul Alinsky has been cleaning up in KDP if he has his own rights!

  11. Three of my books have bi-racial characters; another has a black character. I’m white, mostly Irish, and don’t see the point in avoiding non-white characters if the story isn’t complete without them. No editor even commented.

    • “That’s a real nice little career you have there, Mr. Horowitz. We’d hate to see anything happen to it.”

      And Mr. Horowitz starts wondering if this book would make a good break-out book for him trying that self-publishing thing he keeps hearing about. (After all, the editor of the publisher has already gotten in their ‘first chance to review/reject’ it.)

  13. Those who simultaneously demand non-White characters, but also that White writers not create them, have revealed their REAL goal – that of improving THEIR chances of being published.

    They need to do it the same way the rest of us do – write a better story.

      • Silencing is the main goal. The world is crawling with twisted little souls who have nothing to say themselves, but will fight like wildcats to shut down those who do want to speak. They used to do this by being Pecksniffian moralizing wowsers. Nowadays it’s fashionable to cloak their malice in the mantle of social justice.

        • cloaking their malice…

          I ever want to say to those who drape themselves such: You are wearing the skin of an ass, as in Narnia Chronicles with donkey-ape tries to take Aslan’s place

          I also wish to say but think better of it, you want social justice to deal? Go to any of the southern states were the poor have not enough to eat. Throw yourself into helping those who suffer so, right now. Not in fantasy in some book. But daily real suffering by little ones and elderly, mommies and daddies, right this minute

          I wonder sometimes re living in defense of the past… to note it, even fight for it not to be erased, is one thing..,to say only storytellers of one color or another are allowed.

          Weve been there with drinking fountains, schools, neighborhoods. Was nothing learned. Seems to me to be ‘identification with the oppressor

            • just got back from a mission to Bezoni [GA.] prob poor ed and few jobs, almost half living below pov line. Many mouths to try to feed. Falling way short way too often. If you want to help you could call your local church group and see if they have an outreach to other states such as any of the numerous towns in Miss, Ark, LA, Ala, Ga, and more. Or your own town.

    • It does make one wonder, doesn’t it?

      I have no problem with people writing their own books. And they shouldn’t have a problem with me writing mine. I write whatever characters come with the story. I don’t claim to be these characters, thus I am not appropriating anyone’s culture. I don’t intend to stop writing like this, either.

      I’m about as politically correct as you can be and not be an idiot about it. I want more diversity in stories published. I want people who normally would have never had a chance to tell stories to be out there, available for the world to see. But this thing of saying “you can’t write X because you’re not Y” is going too far.

      >>“That’s a real nice little career you have there, Mr. Horowitz. We’d hate to see anything happen to it.”

      Okay. I laughed so hard. That’s a great line, Kyra!

  14. I’ve always considered myself to be an American, first and foremost. Ethnically, the largest part of my heritage traces back to Ireland. Nonetheless, I write a series of novels featuring a Native American protagonist. In my Author’s Notes at the start of each book in this series, I note that restricting authorship to one’s own ethnic background would create a regime of literary apartheid.

    Well, to hell with that.

    After I was three books into the series, I read that in the mid-19th century, during the time the Irish were being starved to death by their English overlords, a tribe of Native Americans heard of the suffering of the Irish and sent food to help them. My Irish ancestors didn’t arrive in the U.S. until the early years of the 20th century.

    For all I know, my ancestors’ lives might have been saved by the generosity of Native Americans, and that might be the reason I’m here today. In any case, we’re all related to each other somehow, and if that’s not a good enough reason to write about whomever you choose, there’s always good old literary license.

    • would love a link to that history of our people sending food to the irish, do you have one joe flynn?? How could we ever mistake you as other than auld sod with a great name like that

  15. The problem with the idea that white writers can’t write non-white characters is that it assumes a single, monolithic identity (the “white” person, the “black” person) – and is in fact a very racist idea, that people not like us are too “other” to write convincingly about. Yes, I understand the whole appropriation issue and potential cries about backlash, but if you are writing an authentic person (which is the job of the writer) then I think there shouldn’t be fear and trepidation.

    One of the books in my YA series features a young woman of Samoan descent (Marny) as the protagonist. I was a little worried at first about backlash, or getting it “wrong” – but she is one of my readers’ favorite characters and everyone seems to be delighted with her story. Now, if I wasn’t writing future-set SFF and instead was trying to write a searing novel of how it feels to grow up today as a teenage Samoan in our culture, of course I’d be questioned as to the authenticity of that experience. But we live in a diverse world and I think all authors can and should represent that world to the best of their ability.

    • There is no “appropriation” here. No culture in the US has appropriated any other culture; saying so, even believing it, ignores the historicity of shared culture in this country. The use of the appropriation card is a divisive maneuver, as are all other cards in the so-called “identity politics” hand the progressive left continually plays against the rest of us.

      What the Romans did to the Greeks? That was cultural appropriation. The cultural melting pot in the US bears no resemblance to actual appropriation.

  16. I’m white. My first novel Underworld is about two black brothers. They are not just superficially black, nor do they conform to stereotypes, but they do face challenges as a result of their heritage.

    For a literary Indie book, it sells pretty well, and none of my reviews complain or accuse me of any such thing. I target black people with ads, and it’s clear on Goodreads that the majority of my readers are black. We’re not talking about a bunch of clueless white people reviewing the book, but people who would know if I got it wrong.

    That said, I did devote extra time to making sure I nailed my characters, as I was afraid of this exact criticism myself. But I was not crippled by it, nor should anyone else be.

    It’s important that we have more minority representation on every level. From minority characters to minority authors. It helps both readers and writers grow, and it makes the world a better place. Just be smart and sensitive, and you’ll be fine.

  17. If I didn’t include a variety of races/cultures in my writing, I wouldn’t be reflecting my own extended family let alone the world around me. The book I wrote set in Houston (the most diverse city in the US) has characters from an array of backgrounds. I would have to ignore reality to write anything set in Houston with characters of only my own ethnicity.

    Aren’t the writer’s interactions with people of other backgrounds authentic experiences? If writers live in places where their daily lives include seeing a variety of cultures, shouldn’t they be allowed to reflect that? Not to do so would be dishonest.

    • I would have to ignore reality to write anything set in Houston with characters of only my own ethnicity.

      No stories in Houston that revolve around a single ethnicity? Is that reality?

      • Not if you include day to day interactions at schools, in stores, walking down the street. Even if the main story revolved around a single ethnicity, side characters would have to be more varied.

  18. Is it possible anymore to traditionally-publish a story with a fascinating, sympathetic character, or an intriguing and scary villain, who just happens to be [ethnicity or culture]? Or must an author belong to [ethnicity or culture] and show a character who is [ethnicity or culture] first, and everything else second?

    I keep waiting for someone to fuss because one of the characters in the Alexi’s Tale series was born in India, but adopted by a Greek-American family in Chicago and raised Greek Orthodox. She’s married to a second-generation Ukrainian-American who’s Russian Orthodox. Thus far I have not gotten any complaints, but we’ll see.

    • The Special Snowflakes want two things:

      1. Publishers to publish more non-white characters.
      2. White writers not to write non-white characters.

      This ensures that publishers will have to buy more books from non-white writers.

      Simple, really. Just standard identity politics.

  19. This story is deeply depressing. Are authors (or rather, editors) so afraid of offence that stories are left blandly following the middle ground? With no one taking any risks? These are not the stories I want to read.

    • Authors are afraid, too. I’ve heard it a few times over the past couple years in my private groups, where I may bemoan over the dearth of minority characters in X fiction. The writers say they are afraid of getting reviewer and “appropriatio monitors” (my phrase) telling them they got it wrong, have no right, etc. It’s a real concern.

      If so, then do we tell women not to write lead male characters and blacks never to write white characters? Or Jews never to write Christian or Buddhist ones?

      This is nuts.

    • If you put an ‘offensive’ character in a book, a Special Snowflake may murder you.

      If you don’t, no-one’s going to murder you.

      Not a difficult choice.

      It is funny, though. It’s only about a year ago that writers were telling me that no-one would ever complain about white writers putting non-white characters in their book, when I said I avoid doing it because life’s too short to deal with SJWs.

    • TE, if you get on the radar of the peeps who do outrage as a hobby, the risk is way too high. You can get effectively shunned. Ruined. Power of the webs.

      I still say go for it, and that’s probably what will happen in the end in these situations, but we are in this weird inter-period in our cultural evolution where people are giving whiners and foot stampers too big of a platform. Too much cultural space.

      I am optimistic. We are still adapting to mass communication.

      • @ Jo

        “…you get on the radar of the peeps who do outrage as a hobby, the risk is way too high.”

        It’s “The squeaky wheel gets the greese.” versus “The nail that sticks up gets hit.” Or, “Damned if you do; damned if you don’t.”

        So, IMHO, might as well go for it and let the chips fall where they may.

  20. Sounds like it’s time to find a new editor …

    (Waiting now for the calls that that editor/publisher doesn’t think black will sell or is politically correct. Maybe Anthony could make the protagonist ‘orange’ – that’s politically correct this year isn’t it? 😉 )

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