: Re: In modern Sci-Fi/Fantasy, does real world racism need to be addressed? I have read through a lot of questions regarding questions of a similar nature, but all of the questions I looked at involved

@Connie138

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It's not enough to consider your character's present - you must also consider their past

People (and characters) are shaped by their experiences in life. Even if your characters are not dealing with racism during the course of your story, if they have experienced it in the past (and I dare say that any modern American of mixed heritage has experienced racism) it's going to shape how they react to their current events.

To use a simple example: Upon escaping kidnappers using the powers they gained during experiments, a black person is (in general) going to be much less inclined to call the police for help than a white person would be. The revelation that the police are siding with the kidnappers and declaring the escapees to be dangerous monsters will be much less shocking for them, because that experience is very much inline with their community's previous experiences with authority.

Now, obviously I am speaking in general, and this doesn't necessarily apply to your characters specifically. But it is something that you as the author need to examine. For each character, you need to ask "How has this character's experience been different from my own, and how will that make their reactions differ from what mine would be?"

You don't need to explain or explore these root causes in the story if that's not what the story is about. But understanding them will help make your characters feel more unique and more realistic than if you failed to consider their past experiences when designing their personalities.

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