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”

  3. Anthony Horowitz is not allowed to include a black character in his book because he doesn’t have enough eumelanin in the basal cell layer of his epidermis. Interesting.

  4. Is there some reason to expect individual fictional characters to reflect some racial, ethnic, or occupational standard?

    If so, what is it? Which races, ethnicities, and occupations have such standards?

  5. I’m not going to play. If I did, I would, by logical extension, have to avoid writing a submariner’s story because I’ve never even been on a submarine, or a bus driver’s scene because I’ve never driven a bus and can’t be certain I “get it right.”

    Some of the best courtroom scenes I’ve read are written by Michael Connelly, a non-lawyer. As a lawyer and writer of legal thrillers my inclination and practice has been to applaud him, not question his right to write.

    • Silly you.
      How else are you going to make publishers come to you?

      Don’t you know it’s all a zero sum game and to win the favor of the publishing gods in the glass towers you have to tear down your peers and devalue their works. For you to win they *have* to lose.

      Sheesh!

      Next thing you’re going to say you think there is room for great books from both of you!

      Tsk! What world do you live in? 21st century earth? 😉

  6. I was going to post some silly comment, but then I looked up in the coffee shop I’m sitting in and saw a young woman whose experience of the world is almost certainly quite different from my own due to race. This is an issue that has no easy answer, maybe no right answer at all.

  7. I actually recently asked myself this question. I worked on a book where the heroine and her family were Hispanic. I’m not Hispanic. I don’t know what it’s like to grow up in that culture. I’ve been relying on doing research and speaking to our very close family friends because I’d like to try and get things “right.” I don’t want to stereotype or put in anything offensive that would stem solely from my not having experienced it. I think it comes in part because I belong to a religion that is usually grossly mischaracterized both in books and in TV/movies. It’s annoying to watch a show and have a mental list I’m creating of everything that’s being portrayed that is so totally inaccurate. I’ve even sent tweets to showrunners asking them if they’ve ever even spoken to a single person of my faith. I wouldn’t want to be guilty of the same crime.

    And I want to hear stories told by different races and ethnicities about those races and ethnicities. I think there is something so important to gain from living inside the mind of someone who experienced exactly what they’re talking about. Richard Wright changed my life in high school (and I grew up in an extremely diverse area!). I love Amy Tan. And Terry McMillan. Khaled Hosseini. Gabriel García Márquez. (etc., etc.)

    That being said, I do believe that there are so many things that are just universally human, loneliness, desire for love, insecurity, etc. that I can write from a perspective of a character that I have no personal experience with.

    • The thing is, I don’t really think there is a universal Hispanic culture, The Hispanic person living in America we have different experiences to someone living in Mexico, Hispanic men will have different experiences Than Hispanic women.
      Beyond that, I think people underestimate the role that an individual’s personality has probably because we like to put people into boxes. I would like to think I’m more than my race and ethnicity, I am a mixture of different experiences and different cultural forces have moulded me into the person I am.
      And there is also something that is uniquely me.

      • No, there is no universal “hispanic” culture.
        Because there really is no such thing as *a* hispanic.
        That is just a made up term to pigeonhole 22 nationalities, each with a distinct 500 year of history, customs, and culture.
        It isn’t even a “racial” or ethnic thing because the genetics and genealogy of each nationality is distinct.

        There is a lot of talk of the proliferation of tribes in pre-columbian north america but little about the equal abundance of distinct tribes in the rest of the hemisphere. And that is for starters. When Spain’s empire fell apart it gave rise to 20 countries because by then they really were distinct nations. And they have continued to develop in separate ways, each a full-spectrum society with its own class structure and internal divisions.

        500 years of history times 20. And more. Because there are regional variations even in the smallest of latin-american countries.

        For anybody looking to write “hispanics” with any kind of accuracy, they first need to identify their origin, their social class, and their personal history.

        Pretty much like any of the many tribes lumped under that other catchall pigeonhole: “whites”. 🙂

        • echoing Felix. Hispanic is a made up name by the USA federal government for the purposes of census. It is a fake designation.

          Oddly though many of us from Mexico are mestizo, [a mix of native american, african, conquistadore and some carry converso as well, depending on which part of Mexico their near and far back ancestors lived in… some having a ribbon of Irish or German along with Native American because of farmer immigrations/migrations and building of railroad along Rio Grande and down through to Guatemala, and there are also over the last hundred years also Chinese and of course French speaking Mexicans descended from when Maximiliano and his Hapsburg odd invasion of Mexico took over for a while] if one ticks ‘hispanic’ on the usa census, the govt counts us as ‘caucasian’. We’re so far from caucasion it’s laughable.

          I dont mind if people call us hispanic. But that’s not what we usually call ourselves unless a person is ultra assimulted and no longer remembers their tribal groups or antepasados.

          • Absolutely Usaf, Hispanic is a made up term. Even in Spain you have a hard time finding someone who describes themself as Hispanic since there are seven official languages in Spain.
            I think author Alyssa Valdes explains it pretty well here
            https://youtu.be/RtwmRaqBDbU

          • Exactly Usaf, Hispanic is a made up term.
            Even in Spain you’d have a hard time finding someone who consider themselves Hispanic because Spain has seven official languages.
            I think author alissa valdes explains it well

            https://youtu.be/RtwmRaqBDbU

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