Tumgik
#race/ethnicity
writingwithcolor · 4 months
Text
Characters reconnecting with their ancestral cultures in an interplanetary setting
@pixiedustandpetrichor asked:
Hi! I am writing a novel with three main female characters in an interplanetary setting. They grow up as orphans in an Irish-coded country and as children are mostly exposed to solely that culture, but they leave after becoming adults. Character A is Tuareg-coded, B Mongolian-coded, and C is Germanic-coded. It isn’t central to the story, but I would like them to get in touch with/learn more about their ancestral cultures, especially in terms of religion. A does this by actually visiting the planet her parents came from, but B and C do not. What can I do to depict their relationships with said cultures and their journey to reconnect with them? Would it be realistic for each of them to have different mixed feelings about participating in these cultures and for them to retain some sense of belonging to the culture they grew up in as well? Thank you for your time.
Hello, asker! WWC doesn’t have Tuareg or Mongol mods at the moment, so we're not able to speak to the specifics of cultural and religious reconnection for these particular groups. Still, I want to take this opportunity to provide some general context and elements to consider when writing Tuareg-coded characters, or other characters from groups that have experienced colonization in the real world. My fellow mods will then share thoughts about cultural reconnection in general and with respect to Germanic heritage in particular.
Drawing inspiration from groups that have experienced colonization
As you’re probably aware, the Tuareg are an ethnic group indigenous to North Africa. As with many indigenous groups, they have experienced colonization multiple times over the course of their history. Colonization often leads to the loss or erasure of certain aspects of culture as the colonized people are pressured to conform to the culture of the dominant group. In many cases, it’s near impossible to say what the ancestral culture of a colonized group was prior to colonization.
When coding a fictional culture based on a group that was colonized in the real world, it's important to ask questions about:
Which aspects of culture you're portraying
Where these aspects come from
Whether you're ready to tackle their implications for the world you're building
It’s not necessarily wrong to use elements of coding that draw from cultural aspects influenced by colonization. As I said, it can be very difficult, even impossible, to portray a “pure” culture as it would have been had colonization not occurred–because we simply can’t know what that alternate history would look like, and because so much has been lost or intentionally suppressed that the gaps in our knowledge are too wide to breach. But it’s important to be aware of where these cultural elements are coming from.
Where is your coding coming from and what are the implications?
For example, while the Tuareg today are majoritarily Muslim, this was not the case prior to the Arab conquest of North Africa. Some elements of Tuareg culture today, such as tea ceremonies, are derived from the influence of Arab and Muslim culture and likely did not exist prior to the 20th century. As you’re developing the culture of the Tuareg-coded group in your fictional setting, you have to decide whether to include these elements. There is no right answer–it will depend on what you’re trying to do and why.
Is your setting in our far future, in which case we can assume your Tuareg-coded group is distantly related to today’s Tuareg?
In that case, they will probably have kept many cultural aspects their ancestors acquired through their interactions with other cultures around them–including cultural groups that colonized them. They may–let’s build hopeful worlds!–have reclaimed aspects of their ancestral culture they’d been forced to abandon due to colonization. They may also have acquired new aspects of culture over time. This can be very fun to explore if you have the time and space to do so.
I would recommend speaking with Tuareg people to get a better grasp of how they see their culture evolving over the next however many centuries or millennia, what they wish to see and what seems realistic to them.
Alternatively, maybe your setting is a secondary world unrelated to ours and you only want to draw inspiration from the real-world Tuareg, not represent them exactly. In that case, you need to decide which period of history you’re drawing from, as Tuareg culture is different today from what it was 50 years ago, and different still from 200 years ago or 1000 years ago. You’ll need to research the historical period you’re choosing in order to figure out what was happening at that time and what the cultural influences were. If it’s pre-colonial, you’ll probably want to avoid including cultural elements influenced by colonization from groups that arrived later on.
Finally, if the time period you’re drawing from is post-colonial:
Are you planning to account for the effects of colonization on Tuareg culture?
Will you have an in-world equivalent for the colonization that occurred in real life?
For example, will the Tuareg-coded characters in your world be from a nomadic culture that was forced to become sedentary over the years and lost much of their traditions due to colonial pressure to conform?
Where did this pressure come from in your world–is it different from what happened in ours? If so, how different? And what are the consequences?
Writing about colonization can be quite the baggage to bring into a fictional setting. I’m not saying it can’t be done, but it will certainly require sensitivity and care in portraying it.
In summary: think it through
I’m not saying all this to discourage you, but to point out some of the considerations at play when drawing inspiration from a real-life culture that has experienced colonization. Similar challenges arise for coding based on any other indigenous group in the world.
My advice to you, then, is to first sit down and decide where and when in history your coding is coming from, and what you’re trying to achieve with it. This will help you figure out:
which elements of contemporary Tuareg culture are pertinent to include
How much your coding will be influenced by the Tuareg’s real-life history
To what extent that will inform the rest of the world you’re creating
This, in turn, may help in deciding how to portray your character’s reconnection journey.
Again, I am not Tuareg and this is by no means meant to be an exhaustive list of considerations for writing Tuareg-coded characters, only a few places to start.
If any Tuareg or Amazigh readers would like to chime in with suggestions of their own, please do. As always, please make sure your comments adhere to the WWC code of conduct.
- Niki
Pulling from diaspora and TRA narratives of cultural reconnection
Marika here: This ask plotline could also pull directly from diaspora and TRA narratives of cultural reconnection. Many diaspora and TRA cultural reconnection stories are, in effect, about navigating the difficult process of resuscitating, or renewing ties to culture using limited resources in environments that often lack necessary cultural infrastructure or scaffolding.
See this question here to the Japanese team for suggestions of how to handle such a storyline in a similar sci-fi setting.
More reading: Japanese-coded girl from future
-Marika
Reconnecting with German heritage
Hi, it’s Shira. I’m not sure whether German-Jewish counts as Germanic for the purposes of your post but since German Jews were more assimilated than other Ashkies, Germanness does feel real and relevant to my life (especially because my father worked there for approximately the last decade of his life.) NOTE: when I see “Germanic” vs German I think of cultures from 1500 years ago, not 100-200 years ago, so I can’t help you there, but I’d be surprised as a reader if a character focused on that for reconnection to the exclusion of the 19th century etc.
People in the United States specifically, reconnecting with German heritage, often lean into Bayerischer/Bavarian kitsch, I’ve noticed. Personally, though, what I find most relevant is:
1. The food (although I’ve come to learn that what I grew up eating was closer to veal/chicken scallopini than actual schnitzel because it was drenched in lemon, but I do like the other foods like the potato salad and sweet and sour red cabbage etc.) Your character could try making one of these “ancestral” foods as a way to reconnect?
2. The classical music, because I’m a second generation professional musician – if character C plays an instrument, leaning into that might be meaningful (Beethoven, Bach, Brahms, Mendelssohn, Clara Schumann and her husband Robert, etc.)
3. The nature, especially specifics that I enjoyed during my time there – personally, I loved the bright pink flowers all over the chestnut trees, but there are a lot of choices especially because of the Alps. If C is an artist maybe they can sketch something Germany-related from old photographs they found on the Space Internet?
I think it is VERY realistic for the characters to remain connected to the culture in which they were raised, by the way, whether or not they have positive feelings about it. Culture isn’t an inherited trait. Sure, if they want to completely walk away, they can, but I bet there are still ways it will creep back in without them realizing it simply because it’s really hard to have universal knowledge of the origins of all our quirks. Plus, not everyone feels alienated from their raised-culture just because they’re genetically something else.
P.S. There is also Oktoberfest, which I don’t really get into but is a thing, and beer, which is another point of German cultural pride.
German gentiles, weigh in – y’all have your own stuff, I know! OH YEAH so for German Christians, Christmas “markets” are a whole thing. That’s worth looking up. 
–S
What do you mean by Germanic?
Hello it’s Sci! I had to study German history for my historical fantasy novel set in the late 18th century Holy Roman Empire. I am not sure what is meant by Germanic as that can encompass a variety of things.
Germanic people: from the Classical Period of Roman Empire and early Middle Ages. Similar to Mod Shira, I unfortunately can’t help very much here.
The Germanosphere: regions that spoke German, which includes modern day Germany, Austria/Hungary, Switzerland, Lichtenstein, Belgium, and Luxembourg. I generally define this as the regions captured in the Hapsburg Empire along with Switzerland usually encompassing “Central Europe.”
Modern German national identity (i.e. German): post Napoleon and the Congress of Vienna (> 1815) only including the territory of modern day Germany.*
I ask this because modern German national identity is surprisingly recent since Germany only popped up in 1871 under Otto von Bismarck. Previously, Germany was divided into smaller states and city states as a very decentralized region under the German Confederation and before that, the Holy Roman Empire. Depending on the era, you can see different conflicts and divides. During the early days of the Protestant Reformation started by Martin Luther, the northern and southern German territories generally split along Protestant-Catholic lines. The 18th century saw Austria and Prussia as the foci of global power who warred against each other even though both were part of the Holy Roman Empire.
Other states and city-states like Baden-Wurttemberg or Saxony sometimes had power but it was typically more localized compared to Austria. Post-WW2, you saw the split of Germany into West Germany run under capitalism and East Germany run under communism as a satellite Soviet state leading to more modern cultural divides. Due to heavy decentralization historically, each region had its own character with religious and cultural divides. 
Assuming that the Germanic character is not from the classical period or early Middle Ages but not from the 19th century either, you can include your character reconnecting to classical folklore like that of Krampus (if they’re Christian), German literature and music like the works of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe or Mozart, or German philosophy like Immanuel Kant.
*A major wrinkle: German royals and nobility married into other states and nations frequently with Britain and Russia being notable examples. In Britain, the House of Hanover took over after the Stuart House died without clear direct heirs. When Queen Victoria married the German prince Albert, they celebrated Christmas with a tree and brought the German tradition of a Christmas tree to Britain and the British Empire. Only during World War I did the royal family’s house of Hanover name change from House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha to the more “English-sounding” Windsor. As a result, the German cultural influence may be even more widespread than we think.
However, without more specific descriptors of what Germanic means in the context of your story, it can be difficult to determine which aspects of German culture your character could reconnect to.
-Mod Sci
337 notes · View notes
rebellum · 19 days
Text
Full on saying "sex based oppression isn't real, that's a radfem talking point" seems like way too much to me. Like, it IS real. Every single person who was assigned female at birth, or who is considered to be female bodied in any way (so, including eg trans fems who may be considered female bodied due to surgery, intersex people who were maybe assigned as female later on in life), is oppressed because of that. That's an inarguable fact.
But that doesn't mean every single person who was assigned male at birth oppresses every single person assigned female at birth through the axis of sex. Like, obviously trans people who were amab don't have more social privilege as a group than cis gender conforming women.
Both things can be true at once.
202 notes · View notes
feyburner · 16 days
Text
Tumblr media
I fucking hate DC lol. His race is Villain
182 notes · View notes
dolls-self-ships · 3 months
Text
Tumblr media
had the idea of a human au for my chicken run self insert (and all the characters really, more to come on that) for a while now and I’m so glad I finally was able to fully get their designs out on paper (or I guess screen)
152 notes · View notes
magnetothemagnificent · 11 months
Note
been thinking about this question and hopefully this won't be too awkward to ask. since judaism is itself an ethnicity and religion at the same time, imagine you have ancestors from like idk portugal who converted to judaism centuries and centuries ago and so their descendants are all jewish but don't know about the conversion part. can they call themselves ethnically jewish?
A person becomes part of the Jewish ethnicity when they convert to Judaism. Ethnicity is more than DNA, it's about your peoplehood. As a student of anthropology I honestly don't like how the rise of at-home DNA test kits have put into people's minds their identity is a complicated equation of DNA percentages. People are not math problems. If you were born Jewish you are 100% Jewish. If you converted to Judaism you are 100% Jewish. DNA tests only measure the genes you're more likely to share with certain populations, and even then they're not completely accurate. Ethnicity isn't about blood quantum, at least it shouldn't be.
Here's an example, using myself:
I've never taken a DNA test, and don't intend to, but if I had to guess it would probably give me a result of something like: 58% Ashkenazi Jewish; 25% Northern European; 15% Sephardi Jewish; 2% Northern African.
What does that tell me about my ethnicity? Nothing. It tells me percentages of DNA I have that are most likely shared with certain populations of people from certain geographic regions (haplogroups), but my ethnicity is 100% Jewish and I don't need a DNA test to tell me that, because I know I was born Jewish.
DNA tells you your haplotypes. Peoplehood tells you your ethnicity. And peoplehood is defined by the people themselves.
So yes, the descendents of converts are ethnically Jewish. All Jews are ethnically Jewish.
480 notes · View notes
Text
The audacity to be like "there's a problem with racism in transandrophobia discussions" while also unironically using the term "transandrophobia truther(s)"
671 notes · View notes
100-percential-artman · 3 months
Text
Tumblr media
Mongolian morro anyone?
Messy sketch but I had to rush it on my lunch break so.
117 notes · View notes
munchymunchkin · 10 months
Text
Tumblr media
229 notes · View notes
prussianmemes · 4 months
Text
the glassy eyed 1000 yard western euro stare you get when you tell the people sitting in you and your visibly ill girlfriend's seats that they're in your reserved seats and they go "ach... ja but your reservation is not written here there is no r-"
excuse me you germano-frankish beady eyed cocksucker, we're on a čd train and my čd ticket shows us as having these seats, and your rootless ugly white and black deutschebahn fart app doesn't even have seat reservations because despite your national stereotype you have the same organization and respect for order a gypsy does.
don't give me your "mon dieu et iz not written here" - the train is chronically overcrowded because your third world national rail company can't book properly, you've been sitting for 3 hours from shitggart and have only been looking at your insta stories while pretending to study pierre von shittenlips. i have a visibly ill and weak passenger with me but beyond the former iron curtain, despite your supposed cosmopolitan love for all, you're like the rats in the paradise experiment who actually just viciously serve themselves first above all.
Tumblr media
and the nerve to snicker and chat amongst yourselves once we get off... after very clearly sitting in our seats...: TOTAL WEST EURO CONTINENTAL DEATH.....
i believe now in celto-slavic racial superiority
140 notes · View notes
this-simplefeeling · 9 months
Text
listen. star trek has been my special interest for literally over a decade. All of the characters are so near and dear to my heart in so many different ways, but none of them quite like Mr. Spock.
In him I have always seen myself: A mixed kid wanting to reconcile both my heritages without losing pieces of either one. An autistic kid wanting desperately to find a way to connect to the neurotypical people around me, trying to navigate my emotions and find balance. A mama's boy, a son seeking the approval of his father (but never wanting to admit it). And he made me feel proud to be Jewish; proud of my nose and my dark hair.
And I know so many people who have identified with these parts of his character and more, and I will always be grateful to Leonard Nimoy for making him what he was.
Honestly, I think any actor would be hard pressed to fill Nimoy's shoes. But there is so much more that could have been done to keep Spock... Spock. I think Peck is a fantastic actor, and I know he's at the mercy of the script he's given. But never will I be able to connect to his Spock, not the way they are articulating his character. He's still very much ND coded, still his mother's son. But G-d, they really have neglected so many other pieces.
I just think it's a shame.
TLDR: snw spock is impossible to connect to in the way I connected to tos spock.
Tumblr media
177 notes · View notes
creature-wizard · 9 months
Text
For anyone who needs to hear it, being racist does not require racist intentions. "They can't be racist because they just didn't know any better!" just... isn't how it works.
The whole race change/ethnicity change thing going on in subliminal/reality shifting/manifestation communities is racist, because it's about fetishizing and appropriating from another (often marginalized) group.
Obviously, don't dogpile children involved in this with hate, because kids generally lack the context to understand how and why these things are a problem. That said - kids do need to be educated about racism in a calm and compassionate manner, because they are still absolutely capable of perpetuating it whether they mean to or not.
150 notes · View notes
monkiekidtwt · 3 months
Note
This fandom has an unchecked race and ethnicity swapping problem.
Here’s a fun question:
Do you mean that in a “people are making these Chinese characters white” way, or do you mean that in a “people are making these Chinese characters Blasian, and I don’t like it because I see a visibly black interpretation of a character and I get very mad about it for a reason I refuse to be introspective on” way?
64 notes · View notes
nullbutler · 27 days
Text
Tumblr media
something something identity something something culture
40 notes · View notes
magnetothemagnificent · 9 months
Note
Apologies if this questions sounds stupid or ignorant, but I'm genuinely trying to educate myself. Can Jews be Jewish *and* a different race, so does a Jewish identity supersede another racial identity? Just wondering because a lot of Ashkenazi Jews I know (in real life or online) push back against the idea that they are white. I've heard European Jews say that they are not considered white, do not have white privilege, etc. so they are not white. But I've also seen a lot of Jews of color identify with both their Jewish identity and their "racial" identity (ravenreveals on Instagram explains how she identifies as Black *and* Jewish, and one of my friends identifies as an Asian Jew). So is there a reason many European (Ashkenazi?) Jews don't identify as white/identify as only Jewish? I'm sorry if this is offensive in any way, this isn't my intent :)
Sorry it took me so long to answer, I am swamped with asks haha
Yes, it's possible to be Jewish and a different race, as Judaism isn't a race, but an ethnoreligion, or even better described as a tribal nation.
Now, first I'm going to push back on you equating European with Ashkenazi. Ashkenazi is a specific term referring to Jews whose ancestors settled in the Rhine valley after the Roman expulsion from Judea. Many of these Jews eventually migrated eastward to Eastern Europe and Westward to British Isles, while others stayed in the Rhine valley region. But not all Jews whose ancestors settled in Europe are Ashkenazi.
There are Sephardi Jews, obviously, whose ancestors settled in the Iberian peninsula following the Roman expulsion, and then later migrated to North Africa, Northwestern Europe, Eastern Europe, and West Asia following the Spanish and Portugese inquistions.
There are also Italki Jews in Italy and Romaniote Jews in Greece, all of which are unique communities of Jews whose ancestors settled in Europe and who are not Ashkenazi.
Additionally, not all Ashkenazi Jews are racialized as white. Ashkenazi does not refer to your race, but rather who your ancestors are and/or what community traditions you follow. There are Ashkenazi Jews of every race.
The reason why lots of what-you-perceive-as-white Jews don't identify as white is because Judaism precedes the modern constructs of race (yes, race is a construct, not an immutable science) and because whiteness is highly subjective and fluid, just as non-whiteness is. Because race is a construct, which race a person is perceived as varies by where they are and by which people they are around.
Jewish "whiteness" is also conditional- and as Jews we don't like to leave ourselves vulnerable to shifting statuses. Jewish "white-passing-ness" can also be a tool of violence, either by denying the racial reality of antisemitism, or by being 'proof' that Jews are shape-shifting inflitrators of the white race. Hitler's Final Solution was total extermination precisely because he feared many Jews would pass as white and spread their Jewish blood among the Aryans, and so the total extermination of Jews was deemed as necessary, like one would exterminate a parasite.
This of course doesn't mean that no Jew has ever had access to the privilege afforded to whiteness. In the post-Holocaust era, many Jews have tried to successfully assimilate into whiteness to access even a little bit of privilege in order to protect themselves. I'm not going to lie and say that if I was pulled over at a traffic stop, my lighter complexion wouldn't give me more grace at the hands of the police officers than someone with darker skin would. Because yes, sometimes I am racialized as white and therefore access the privilege of whiteness.
But that doesn't mean I don't feel deeply uncomfortable when I'm filling out a form and the only options for race and even ethnicity are "white", "black", "hispanic", and "asian". Because while at the end of the day I'll check "white", it's only because I don't want to be accused of fraud (even though Middle Eastern or just Jewish would fit me better, but that's not an option). But that's just me. Some Jews are fine calling themselves "white Jews". Two Jews three opinions and all.
Someone introduced me to the phrase "racialized white/black/etc" a few years ago, and I think it makes much more sense. Because race is entirely dependent on perception and how others racialize you. I am not White, but sometimes I am racialized as white. Other times, I am racialized as "not-quite-white-but-we-don't-know-how-to-categorize-you-so-we're-just-going-to-try-and-guess-and-ask-wildly-invasive-questions".
At the end of the day, call Jews what they want to be called, and don't try and push labels on us. If a Jew doesn't want to be called white, don't call them white. Because race, ethnicity, religion, and all that is complicated, and Judaism predates all of that, so naturally Jews are going to have mixed feelings about it all.
272 notes · View notes
fiddlysticks · 10 months
Text
now that I know there's an actual gw2 fandom here. obviously I love this game as much as the next fan but is anyone else bugged by the anti native racism in the game's world building :| like as a native person I am very very aware that this is something kinda inescapable in video games and fantasy in general but still it would be nice if it can be acknowledged lol.
246 notes · View notes
official-oshun · 1 year
Text
You all are so annoying “the Mona Lisa is fake so Helen didn’t accomplish anything!!!1!1!1”
Literally be fucking serious. Is it because perhaps, a common misconception that the Mona Lisa is on a canvas and not wood? Yes I think so!
THE WHOLE DAMN MOVIE IS ABT HOW THE BLACK WOMAN WILL ALWAYS BE THE MOST DISRESPECTED IN A GROUP.
Like why are you belittling the heroines hard work and emotions suffering like that? Why are you hell bent on making the entire movie pointless? If the Mona Lisa was a fake then nothing, AND I MEAN NOTHING, in that movie would matter. Helen won. Deal with it and stop trying to belittle the black woman.
427 notes · View notes