: 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

@Kristi637

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The problem here isn't primarily either racism or political correctness, it's lazy and unoriginal storytelling. Especially for both writers and readers who lack much significant personal experience with people of a different race, giving a character a different skin color can be a shorthand way to add some "exotic flavor" to a story, while at the same signaling people to not become too emotionally invested. Like the old episodes of Star Trek where a new character wearing a red uniform was unlikely to survive the episode, the doomed black character can easily killed off without upsetting the writer or reader overly much. He or she is color-coded from the start as peripheral and expendable.

Of course, it feels very different for the black reader who sees versions of himself (or, more rarely, herself) killed off over and over again in story after story. It can seem annoying at best, or like a premonition of doom at the worst, especially when reflected by real life events. This is a specific reflection of the general principle that it is difficult to write for an audience that you don't understand --which is why, for example, the acclaimed new show This is Us has roughly the same proportion of black writers as black characters.

In summary the question you should ask is not "should I kill off my black character," but rather, "why am I considering killing off my black character?" If the reason you made the character black is because you needed someone who would be memorable and interesting, but still entirely expendable, then you might want to rethink how much originality you're putting into this project.

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