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Race-Neutral Writing
"Out of many, we are one."

Senator Barack Obama uttered these words on March 18, 2008 in his insightful speech on race, referring to America’s hunger for a
"message of unity," and, along with his presidential campaign, sparking a national and sometimes emotional conversation on the issue of race,
unlike any since the 1960s.

As writers, we can support racial equality or racial inequality by the way we describe characters, or, as too often is the case, the way we don't describe them. Many white writers will be surprised to learn they are supporting racial inequality by their use of race in describing characters of color, as compared to white characters. These writers never mention race unless the character isn't white. They often use race alone to delineate the character, as if she were a generic stand-in for the entire race, a stock character that can be substituted for any other in the group, and not an individual with a unique set of talents and tics. Worse, by letting a racial category create the largest portion of a character's description, a writer adds the additional underlying message that everyone in the group "looks alike." When more descriptive information is provided and race is still mentioned, it begs the question, why? If a writer does an adequate job describing a character, the reader will know the character's race without being told directly.

Let's look at these examples:

Detective Winn applied the match to his pipe and watched the three suspects enter the room. Through a haze of smoke he sought to size up each man. The leader, Riley, was first through the door, tall as timber, bald head gleaming with sticky moisture, dangerous dark eyes darting to every corner. Behind him was his stooge, Tram. Squat and round and hard like a boulder, his eyes darted too, but without Riley's bold assurance lurking in them. Bringing up the rear was Solomon, a tall black man neatly dressed.

Here, the writer doesn't mention the race of Riley and Tram because the writer is white and these characters are white. The description for the character of Solomon is pretty much summed up by reference to his race. There is a way to actually describe Solomon, to let the reader know he is African-American, without mentioning his race: Is his skin the color of weak coffee, dried clay, milk chocolate, a moonless night, or dark as the devil's heart? Did he have 12-inch Rastafarian braids, or was his hair cropped in a short afro, or maybe one the size of a small planet? Maybe he was wearing a brightly colored dashiki that contrasted with the sour pallor of his black skin, or maybe he used an identifying phrase just as he entered the room.

The train station was empty except for two elderly women with blue tinted hair, their handsome male nurse, an Asian woman reading a newspaper, and a Mexican family sharing a meal out of Styrofoam containers.

Again, the writer implicitly tells us that the two elderly women and their nurse are white by not mentioning their race, but expends no creative effort to describe the other characters except to give their race and, in one case, gender. The writer could suggest that the woman was Asian, by giving information about the Asian characters in the headlines of the newspaper. Or that the family was Mexican by being told one of them was carrying a small Mexican flag, that they spoke Spanish, and were eating a traditional Mexican dish such as carne asada.

But if the writer wanted to use race as the primary identifier, why not apply it equally to describe all the characters and give them equal weight? And since age was mentioned in describing the white women, why not do the same for the Asian woman? The following construction gives equal weight to all the characters. The train station was empty except for two elderly white women and their white nurse, a young Asian woman reading a newspaper, and a Mexican family sharing a meal out of Styrofoam containers.

While the kind of writing discussed here may suggest racism, it doesn't mean writers who do this are racist, just that they have probably never given it any thought. It might seem perfectly natural to do this if you are white yourself. However, when white writers commit this hurtful gaffe they send a message to all their readers, albeit unconsciously, that they believe there is only a single "major" race, and therefore there is no need to mention race because we all know to which race they refer. But if we encounter a character that isn't one of "us," we'll let you know by immediately labeling him.

Another way of thinking about it: whether a character is described with more or less detail should be a function of their worth and weight in the scene, not their race. And all characters of equal weight in a scene should be created equally.

Writers of color should also be careful to avoid supporting inequality by, perhaps, giving detailed descriptions of their characters of color but glossing over white characters with a tossed-off reference to, say, "the white girl sitting at the bar," even when she is in the same paragraph and has the same relevance as the non-white characters to whom more attention is given.

The benefits of writing more inclusively and giving each character equal grist regardless of race are many, but it will certainly make us all better writers: It takes more creative energy and imagination to actually describe that "black man," "Asian woman," "Mexican family," or "white girl," and not use race as a writing crutch. It will make readers feel that you respect them as individuals, and thereby broaden your reader base. It will support racial equality because it treats all races alike, and best of all, this style of race-neutral writing will make a lot of your readers happy. At minimum, putting something on the page that will jolt a reader and momentarily disrupt the flow of information into the mind is something all writers try to avoid.

There are white writers like James Patterson, Tom Clancy, Sara Paretsky, and Lee Child, among others, who let the reader figure out a character's race from subtle "descriptive" clues. But from time to time any writer will find it convenient and constructive to mention a character's race. No one is asking any writer to give up artistic freedom in this area, but as a rule it would be nice if either everyone's race gets mentioned, or no one's does.

By this small act writers can all contribute to America's dream of unity. Who knows, out of many, maybe we truly can be one.

We invite your feedback on this essay.