fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2795 ]

[ SECRET POST #2795 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2795 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.

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02.

[Law & Order: Criminal Intent]

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03.

[Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers]

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04.

[Jeeves and Wooster]

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05.

[Yahtzee/Zero Punctuation]

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06.

[Markiplier]

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07.

[Jackie Chan Adventures]

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08.

[The Parent Trap]

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09.

[Alexander]

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10.

[Starsky and Hutch]

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 012 secrets from Secret Submission Post #399.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

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Actually, all the stuff about shadows skin colour, in the start of, and most of the book, comes from people (the first of which being a racist prison guard) all /ASKING/ (Implying the people physically looking at him aren't sure enough about his skin colour to definitive state it) if he has any gypse in him, if he has an native American in him, etc some one actually used the "cream and coffee" expression in front of him about someone else.
All indications of his skin colour are from characters in the book, and none of them can say with any certainty he is not white.

I think I could forgive someone for thinking he is white.

getting asked "what" you are is a pretty distinctive experience of mixed raced people though- and his heritage is a plot point, right?

if he was default white nobody would bother asking

that's still pretty far from "he is obviously and unambiguously stated to be non-white in the first chapter"

it's even further away from "he is obviously and unambigiously stated to be a WHITE character" though

No, it's about the same distance away.

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My husband is "default white" but also fairly swarthy and generically ethnic-looking. His dad is Scandanavian and his mom is Austrian. Go figure.

ethnic-looking, lol

Actually, it's his white heratige that is the plot point.

Also, they don't ask "what" they ask "If" that's how I read it.
That is not unique to mixed race. I recall back when I was 7/8, a teacher asked "Are you an arab?" because, I assume, I tanned like a motherfucker and stayed tanned most the year. My response back then was much the same as shadows "I dunno". I later that day learned what the teacher was asking. I am not, in case you are wondering, an arab. But the teacher asked because it was ambiguous. my ambiguous ethnicity was in fact white.
and as shadows ethnicity was the same level of ambiguous, there is no reason to assume he is POC or PONC

I'm "default white" and I get asked quite a lot actually. A lot also depends on your facial structure, accent and language, he way you carry yourself, the way you dress etc.

Now I agree that in a work of fiction that very likely indicated the author wanted to say something about heritage.

But to the reader, that experience does not necessarily need to convey "he's mixed race".

"All indications of his skin colour are from characters in the book, and none of them can say with any certainty he is not white."

That's not really what I take away from your examples, though. If people are asking, they're asking because they're pretty sure he's something other than white, otherwise they wouldn't be asking. In fact, the examples you cite suggest that if they're sure of anything, they're certain he's not white and they're trying to ascertain what that "other" is.

No one is confused by an obviously white person. If someone has to stop and think about what ethnicity/race you might be, you're not white.

This hurts me as a writer. Why would you keep bringing up his race unless it's important? Why wouldn't he just answer unless it was important? Who answers "maybe" if the answer is "I'm white"?

To assume he's white isn't just defaulting to white, it's also ignoring red flags from the writer.

Clearly, Gaiman should have been more clear, because just bringing up race over and over again isn't enough. If someone is not white, you need to make it very, very explicit (but assuming whiteness does not indicate that the default = white, totally).

HE DIDN'T WANT TO BE CLEAR.

Sorry to yell (okay, not really) but it's pretty obvious that Neil is making Shadow's race ambiguous because Shadow is THE Shadow of America. He represents everyone.

....I hope you're being sarcastic, but since this is the internet, I really can't tell.

Clearly this is the level of explicitness some people need in order to not default to white: http://youtu.be/WFY2kJ96jNY

I think I could forgive someone for thinking he is white.

So, you think it's okay to just assume that someone is white until proven otherwise?

(And yeah, I'm an SA, but it's because it took me a few minutes to figure out what really bothered me about this. Feel free to delete my first comment, case)

da

But don't people form a character in their head that sticks until "proven otherwise"? I mean, I like to envision the characters, and I get hair color and body type wrong all the time, and it is jarring.

I know assuming white does have racial implications, but at the same time, I'm white, I'm from a community that's almost entirely white, if you say "A man walks into a bar" I'm probably going to picture a white guy by default, yeah.

You think white when a man walks into a bar, fine, whatever.

You think white when a man walks into a bar and someone asks him if he's part black? Maaaaaybe you need to re-examine your mindset.

This. A whole lot of people missing multiple points in this thread.

White girl here. No one ever EVER asks me if I have any gypsy/Native American/black in me.

Also, previously married to a pale skinned man who WAS part African-American, but because of his pale skin he was never asked either.

People ONLY ask you those questions if you are dark-skinned.

Not really though? I have very pale skin, but have still had people ask about my heritage because of my eyes, and the contrast between my light skin and darker features.

In a book, yeah, the writer is communicating something, but in real life, some people will respond to various features that don't match their internal idea of what people of certain races look like.

You know, I read Shadow as ambiguous (which, no, does not exclude being white but does reduce the chances), but I really hate this argument. Because it's not just dark-skinned people who get these questions, and I feel like people weaken their own argument when they say it. Now many inclined towards a white-centric view who may have reexamined their thoughts will remember their relative who doesn't fit that mold* and carry on in their ignorance.

*My mother (and to a less extent my sister) are asked about their heritage a LOT. The most common question is if they are First Nations/specific tribe, but it's not exclusive. We have a couple very distant relations who are first nations (like 6 generations back), but they are white for all intents and purposes. Their skin is not dark and none of their features individually scream anything other than our very white-even-by-white-standards European. Some people just have a look to them that screams OTHER for no tangible reason. Shadow was actually pretty interesting in this regard- the part mentioned upthread made me think HE didn't know what he "was" and the unknown element came from his father's side. Which turns out to be true in a way, but not in the way I first thought.

Seriously, unambiguously white people do not get asked 'what are you then'. And on the rare occasions they do it would not be used in the opening of a book to describe the character and the character would not reply 'could be'.

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