In the
rabbit hole
a monthly column
by A.C.E. Bauer
July
2008
It’s not like choosing
the color of her hair
by A.C.E.
Bauer
The other day I heard a writer read a work in progress. As we
listened to the travails of the main character, we were told in
passing that her skin was the color of cocoa. I listened some
more. And everything I heard made her sound just like the other
prominent character in the book—sure there were distinct
personality quirks, but every word she spoke, every motion she
took, every bite she ate, every item in her home, everything
sounded white.
When I mentioned that this troubled me, I was told, well, she
was like the white character she met—she lived in the same
neighborhood and had the same socio-economic background. Why
should she be any different? Should the author have included
some racist stereotype? Or insisted that the white character
have some racist reaction? Why couldn’t a white author chose an
African-American character to write about?
And, I thought, of course a white author can write about an
African-American character. But you shouldn’t make her white.
For good or ill, each person’s upbringing shapes the way they
are—in every detail. By personal inclination I live a secular
life, Judaism being something my spouse embraces more strongly
and that my children are trying to identify in themselves. Yet
there is no question that all of us are Jewish.
My kids speak in the same slang, with the same intonation, about
the same subjects as their peers. Yet all the knick-knacks in
our house are called tchotchkes. And, much too early in the
morning, they shlep to school. And among the myriad songs they
listen to, very occasionally a Klezmer tune will creep in. In a
cabinet in our house are candles of different sizes that fit (a)
the various menorahs that are stored haphazardly on top, (b) the
several pairs of candlesticks stored with the menorahs, and (c)
the Jack-o’-lanterns we carve at Halloween. In a corner is a
small ceramic plaque with the artist’s name printed in Hebrew,
and in another, behind a door, is an old tin Passover plate.
Among our multitude of books are the Books of Moses, a Tanakh, a
book about Jewish ritual art, several histories of the Jews, and
a beautifully decorated prayer book received at a B’nai Mitzvah.
Once or twice a year we eat potato kugel. My kids always ask me
if we’ll make hamentaschen this year. An opened jar of gefilte
fish sits in our fridge. Ever so often, much to everyone’s joy,
I bake challah on a Friday. I shrug my shoulders in a certain
way. I think of fate and ill-will the way my parents did. My
family carries certain fears, handed down generation to
generation for hundreds of years. We belong to a synagogue. And
I volunteer for one of their committees.
This long list tells you only a tiny fraction of who I am. If
you look around our home you will also see tables, chairs,
sofas, beds, desks, lamps, rugs, posters, paintings, prints,
plants, and tchotchkes that are just like everyone else’s in our
neighborhood, if perhaps a little messier than some. Day to day
I worry about my children’s education, the laundry, the lawn,
the car, tonight’s dinner, the library books we borrowed, the
weather, whether we should invite some old friends over this
week or next, whether the dog has had her vaccinations, whether
we bought the present for a friend’s sweet 16 party, whether the
batteries need changing in our smoke detector, whether my editor
will like the changes I made to my manuscript, whether this
year’s elections will bring welcome results. And on, and on, and
on.
You could write about me and pick the details that emphasize my
Jewishness. Or write about me and pick the details that make me
a middle-aged, middle-class American in the suburbs. Or write
about me and pick the details that make me a lawyer, or that
make me a writer, or that make me just a wee bit crazy, ya know?
But if someone decided to write about me, I would hope that s/he
would get a bit of all of me.
So when a white writer decides that a character has the skin the
color of cocoa, it isn’t at all like deciding that her hair
should be blond or brown. That character was shaped by her
upbringing—in every detail. And the character’s family would
have been, too. And there would be details, pieces of that
upbringing, in the way she talked, in the way she stood, in the
occasional foods she ate, in the tiny mundane decorations of her
home, in her cabinets, in her family history, in the philosophy
of her world view, that would, very occasionally peek through,
despite the fact that in so many more details she was just like
the white person she keeps company with.
I
believe that when you choose a character, and particularly if
she is your main character, you should have a bone deep
understanding of who she is. And absent that bone deep
understanding—because sometimes it’s hard to get there—at least
a grasp of the salient details. Our job as writers is
impossible: we try to describe people with an insufficient
number of words to get to the whole of them. So we must pick the
details we use with care. Omitting an African-American’s
family’s culture—which, I remind you, exists—is a piss poor way
to go about describing an African-American character. And no,
even if your character was educated at Princeton, those minute
details will not disappear. They shouldn’t. It is as much a part
of who she is as the fact that I shrug my shoulders in the same
way that my aunts and uncles shrugged theirs back a hundred
years ago is part of who I am. It is indelible.
And, to be clear, these details are just that. Details. We must
all be judged by how we act, and the details of our homes and
lives neither make us better or worse, just who we are. To
paraphrase someone I respect very much: you can write about good
people getting along, not judging people by the color of their
skin. But you still need to write about who they really are—not
a whitewash or an everyman or everywoman. At least, that is what
we should aspire to.
