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| B A Binns, Miranda Paul, Chris Raschka, Laura Park |
But looking back, I'm afraid we failed on one particular question. One librarian asked if any of us had ever been asked to change a character's race or ethnicity. We all gave quick, and technically correct answers: No, nothing like that had never happened to any us. Then we went on to the next audience question.
It was only after the presentation ended that I realized the answer was too quick and too literal. No, none of my editors has ever asked me to change a character's race. But they have done other, sometimes more sinister things.
Before I was published I had someone explain that my black male character did not talk like a real black man. That person gave me a list of books featuring black characters to read as examples of how African-American males talk, books written by white authors that featured stereotypical black characters. My brother and I had a laugh when I told the man I used as a model that he did not talk like a black man. I had one editor who looked at my first published novel, Pull, claim the heroine was too smart. I still get the "I just can't feel this character" kinds of comments from editors looking over my books; something that I never hear from readers. And right now, one of the editors looking at my most recent manuscript said the dialog "needs a lot of work."
No, they didn't exactly ask for a change in the race of the character, but I do get comments that would never happen if the character were white. Like the suggestion that I was wrong having the mother of a boy recently released from juvenile detention feel ashamed because that kind of behaviour is normal in neighbourhoods like that. Or that it was unrealistic that a ghetto school would have a thriving music program. When I mentioned that I never said the place was a "ghetto" just that the student body was predominantly black and latino, the response was to tell me that if it was not a ghetto area I needed to say that in so many words.
So no, I've never been asked to change a character's race in so many words. I just get the push backs because of their race.
It's not just me. Some authors censor themselves first. I know one black author who writes white characters because that's the way she can get published. CCBC statistics show that many Asian authors do not create Asian characters. ( See the numbers on books by and about different races as compiled by the CCBC - the Cooperative Children's Book Center - http://ccblogc.blogspot.com/2015/09/the-numbers-so-far.html) At the same time I have seem a middle grade book whose publishers decided to "shade in" (and that's a direct quote) one of the characters and call it diverse.
This is the real answer to the question.
