: Re: Is it wrong if I kill off a black character? He is one of two supporting characters that die in my screenplay. My wife says I shouldn’t make him black if he’s going to die. Would it

@Holmes449

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Some phenomena we see are statistical in nature, and racism is one of them. It isn't a single event, it is a tendency. There is a reason why it is so closely related to stereotyping.

Black people die in real life. One black guy dying in a story of fiction is just an isolated event, and not racist in itself. For me, it doesn't even matter if his race is integral to the story - killing the black guy is no meaner than killing the white guy or the Martian alien or whomever else you have introduced.

If you worry about racism in your stories, go through them all and look at all the black guys together. Do they die more often than the white guys, or do they eat fried chicken all the time, or are half of them basketball gods? Also, do they on average have less character depth and more single-track personalities than characters of a group you identify with? Do they get to be the cool guy or the protagonist as long as they also show beliefs and tastes congruent with those of a more socially dominant group? E.g. do you have both black protagonists and black minor villains, but the black protagonists just happen to play polo and mock Bob Marley for being a stoner, and the minor villains are all junkies who love hiphop?

If your writing has any of the featuers in the above paragraph, you might want to rethink how you handle characters and race. And by the way, positive stereotyping is also stereotyping. Avoid it for both literaty and social reasons.

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