Having a white protagonist.

Something has been bothering lately.

I have a Mexican protagonist. I drew her design before thinking about colors (I didn't color her) and my original idea was making her dark skinned like Katara or Korra.

But when I colored her, many people (including me) like her better as as white skinned and blond.Unfortunately she now looks european instead.

I am worried this could affect the story negatively. I remember people complaining about last airbender's movie only having "white people as good guys" and other Unfortunate implications.

here she is for reference

As a writer do you think this could be a problem?

edited 1st Oct '12 11:08:28 AM by FallenLegend

The primary reason people complained about that movie was because of what was basically a Race Lift. So I wouldn't worry too much about it.

And wouldn't it technically be a Race Lift if the Mexican protagonist is "recolored" to look white?

It's really simple:

• If you want your Protagonist to be Mexican, make her look Mexican.
• If you want her Look European, make her European.

Which one do you want more?

edited 1st Oct '12 11:29:43 AM by SalFishFin

Maybe she is just a mexican citizen?

Or a mixed race?

Not many of those anywhere.

It is quite possible for a Mexican citizen to be pale-skinned and blonde, since Mexico was a popular emigration destination from Europe in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. There's a lot more in the Mexican mix than Spanish and Native. Why do you think Mariachi music sounds like Polka to a degree?

There are a whole range of skin tones that can be found on a hispanic/latina person. If you want her mexican and blonde, I say go for it, but is right to some extent, and it's easy to go too far. If she is stated to have bleached her hair, and if her skin is still the right color (it's more, in my opinion, about the hue than the lightness or darkness. Light pink is very different from light tan, if that makes sense) then you're probably fine. Just don't draw a white person and call her hispanic. Draw a hispanic person and give her blonde hair.

I know of a few Mexicans that are quite white, it really depends on heritage. Of course, nothing wrong with having a mixed race character.

The main reason why people complained about The Last Airbender was because those characters were known as being other races (although it's ironic considering the director). Really, Race Lifts aren't too bad so long as they're done respectfully and are only done if it works for the adaption. Considering your character is original, it's quite all right.

As a side-note of the subject of race lift, I approve of Morgan Freeman being cast as Irish in The Shawshank Redemption.

edited 1st Oct '12 12:40:54 PM by darthnazgul

Thank you everyone it was very helpful :D

Looked at the picture; I really don't see how one skin or hair color would look better than another. Doesn't look like it's drawn to have any specific racial features that would make it look like one race rather than another.

Ultimately, it's your character, do what you want.

SEMANTICS NOTE: Technically, "Hispanic" means of Spanish descent, and Spain is in Europe... So it's possible to be Hispanic and be European. (I know in common parlance the word is usually used to refer to ethnicity, but I just felt like pointing out that it's not technically mutually exclusive to be Hispanic and white. I am also aware of Spain's history, but there are still a number of white people there.)

I actually learned this in the course of writing myself, as I wondered if it was proper to refer to one of my characters (a Brazilian woman) as "Hispanic." Technically, no. I also have a character myself who is technically Hispanic, but has literal Spanish ancestry, thus not really Latina.

edited 1st Oct '12 4:08:58 PM by FreezairForALimitedTime

@Freezair: Desi Arnaz was White and Hispanic.

-hides behind flame wall-

I don't really see anything wrong with just having a white protagonist alone. I mean yeah you should have diversity and we should have more diverse protagonists that's certainly something to shoot for. But you can still have a genuinely diverse cast (and no not just a cast of tokens) still.

The reason the Last Airbender movie was viewed unfavorably was because the Race Lift had no actual point and just a ton of Unfortunate Implications. He made the heroes white and the villain darker skinned when it was the opposite in the movie. also it was just a bad movie in general I watched the show it was based on and I was still lost. My family was completely lost.

I kinda feel like jumping on authors for writing a white protagonist is not really doing anything. If we just make it a rule not to write a white protagonist, we'll eventually forget why it was a rule in the first place and after awhile it will be just there, unnecessary and kind of racist. Instead we should focus on the real motivation, diversity.

edited 2nd Oct '12 11:01:57 AM by JewelyJ

Really, the whole controversy about The Last Airbender was stupid. The characters were based off different races, sure, but Aang wasn't really Tibetian and Katara and Sokka weren't really Inuit. A movie adaption with an all-american cast for an american produced cartoon is nothing spectacular. Look at The Ring or The Grudge: THOSE were cash cows racelifted to bring in money from foreign films without forcing the average american to read. If anything, those were offensive. But no, everyone swarmed to the whitewashed American remake and decried The Last Airbender as racist because the cast were all white. The Last Airbender was by no means a good movie, but the whole "Aang Ain't White!" campaign - that was dumb, and caused the movie to become racist by making the actors of Indian descent the bad guys.

Look, if the character looks better as a caucasian, use her like that. She can still be of mexican descent; as stated above, Mexico was a popular emigration destination for Europe in the 19th and early 20th century.

Don't forget: The looks or race of a character don't alter the outcome of a story.

But the world that the movie takes place in is based on Asian and Inuit cultures, and the actors should have been the right races to reflect those cultures. Except that when the casting call went out, they literally asked for actors of "Caucasian or any other ethnicity." That's what the controversy was about. That's why there was a problem.

Also that second paragraph I quoted makes no sense whatsoever.

Basically, what I am saying is that if you want your character to have a specific background, make them look like they have it.

Because if it gets out and gets read, there are people who will be a lot meaner than me about why the Mexican protagonist is so light-skinned as to pass for European.

edited 2nd Oct '12 12:02:12 PM by SalFishFin

Simple:

Lampshade it. Have the lighter skin tone mentioned by others in story and have the character explain that her features and skin colour are due to the above extremely valid reasons why there are "white" Mexicans.

It could crop up occasionally (don't hammer it to death) when she meets new people and, depending on what you're trying to characterise at the time, her response could vary from an eye-roll (not this again) to a curt "shows how much you know about Mexico" to a short proper explanation depending on what the other character says and how they say it.

Here in New Zealand we have pale-skinned people who identify as Maori - due to their ancestors interbreeding with early European settlers. They have Maori ancestry along with European ancestry, they have been raised with Maori culture as their predominent lifestyle and so they are Maori, even though some I've met are paler than I am.

The reaction to them declaring themselves to be Maori varies from person to person. For the most part it's "OK, you're Maori". We all know that a large chunk of the Maori population has Scottish ancestry due to early interbreeding, so it's not a big stretch to accept that for some Maori, that European influence is going to be more visible than for others.

And culturally speaking, European ancestors aside, they are both "Maori" and "New Zealander".

Conversely, a dark-skinned person with distinctly Polynesian features can claim kinship with Mc Donald or Campbell or a number of other clans.

edited 2nd Oct '12 1:19:07 PM by Wolf1066

Just to drop my two cents on the topic:

While all that Wolf explained makes sense, do remember that sometimes Reality Is Unrealistic. Ultimately, when it comes to fiction, what's most important is what the audience will accept. You can feed them something that is untrue, unrealistic and illogical in real life but if explained and rationalised in a way so that it doesn't break their suspension of disbelief, it works. On the flip side, if something you include, while factually accurate, nonetheless breaks the audience's suspension of disbelief, they won't accept it.

As such, if you think making the character light-skinned, blonde and at the same time ethnically Mexican is something that your audience won't readily accept, you should either reconsider it or figure out a way to explain it such that they come around to it.

If you're going to explain it, make sure it's explained very early, so those following the work from the beginning will know from the outset.

They will be "in the know" when some later character makes a comment on it and so the protagonist's responses (rolling eyes, smart-arsed remarks, sarcasm etc) would have additional meaning for them.

With the very very occasional proper explanation later in the work to catch newcomers up with the play.

If I were portraying a pale-skinned Maori (and believe me, I know a woman with naturally blonde hair, Nordic-blue eyes and fairer skin than I have who identifies as Maori, so the scope for "pale Maori" is quite large), I'd have most people within the NZ culture not batting an eyelid (because they've already met people like the aforementioned blue-eyed-blonde Maori) and only a few making comments - either because they are ignorant of how things are (visiting foreigners or recent immigrants) or because they've got some preconceived notion of what is "real Maori" (and sadly, that's likely to include some darker-skinned Maori as well as Europeans).

edited 2nd Oct '12 2:39:24 PM by Wolf1066