Worrying About The Race of my Villains

Well I started worrying about this when I decided to make my Mad Scientist in my Superhero comic an African-American man since I figured there weren't many Black Mad Scientists. That got me worrying about the Good/Evil race balance in my cast of characters. I really don't want to offend anyone so I'm just going to list my characters with the race and role and hope someone tells me if there are any Unfortunate Implications Main Characters

• Main Heroine: Italian with some Japanese and a bit of German
• Her Muggle Best Friend: English/Welsh/Russian
• Main Villain/Actually more like a reluctant Anithero sorcerer: English/Roma

• Child prodigy thief/Higher up in a criminal organization:Jewish/Polish
• Ex-Agent in an organization possibly thawed out from the cold war: Probably Russian/American/Something
• Crime Boss: Japanese woman
• One alien
• Ex supermodel turned supervillain: Chinese with some French and a bit of Spanish

• Southern Priest: possibly of Irish decent, still deciding
• Alice from alice in wonderland:Should be obvious
• Gunswoman who dresses up in Victorian clothing: African-British

Comments are appreciated

Honestly, I'm seeing far too much ethnic disparity amongst your cast to dismiss it as Evil Foreigner-bait right off the bat. From this point onwards, it's all up to how you write your characters. don't take the lazy route and give them stereotypes for personalities, and you should be fine.

Yeah, they sound quite varied on both sides. It's good that you have ethnic minorities as both heros and villains.

Oh, and mixed-race people seem to be unusually common in your cast, as well.

edited 5th Oct '10 9:48:27 AM by Ettina

Yeah, I was wondering about all the mixed races. It makes your cast seem, not biased, but statistically improbable.

It makes it seem like you are incredibly concerned with not offending anyone. Who cares? Just have him be black. If you make him a multidimensional, believable character, it doesn't matter at all.

And to be honest, people will complain nonetheless. Ignore them.

I guess I should point out that most of my cast is American (except when there British, not English)and there ethnicity is what there descended from. American being the melting pot that it is it should make it a bit more feasible

My advice is to not obsess over race. Don't make everyone white, but it's even worse to make a cast so diverse that there's one of every nationality and race, or everyone's of mixed heritage, because that strains credibility and makes it feel like you're trying too hard to be multicultural.

If you give a character a race, don't make it incidental. Make it part of the character. If a character is developed enough, it's hard for them to fit offensive stereotypes, because stereotypes are generalizations that don't work for developed characters.

Conversely, you can make your character's race irrelevant - a race is a race, nothing wrong with that. Don't use expectations, treat them as raceless.

From a guy whose works feature a sociopathic Indian, an obsessive murderous South African, an insane dwarf and a villainous Englishman, dont worry bout it. Give them strong character and it won't really even matter.

... what ethnicity is the dwarf?

He's American. I just included him for the lulz