Avoiding default racism

It troubles me that much of western literature tends to bring up race only when a character is non-white.

That’s race in the sense of geographically correlated appearance traits, not in the socially harmful and biologically irrelevant sense.

Most of the time, western authors treat white as the default. Yet I can think of no reason, other than lazy writing, that there should be one.

I wondered what would happen if, assuming it was important for readers to know any character’s race, the author identified every character’s. And, if it wasn’t important, identified none at all. 

It can be done. I have read contemporary authors who pull it off. Kudos to them. 

I’m trying to do it with my current project. Know what? It takes a lot of work not to let it get ridiculous or, worse, patronizing. I’m not above putting in the work. We are finally coming around to not calling an individual from a mixed gender group “he.” If we can avoid default sexism, maybe we can take a stab at avoiding default racism.

---