Fay, thank you for mentioning Dragonhaven! I had no idea that McKinley had a new book out. Very exciting.

She also has a Livejournal these days!

She also has a Livejournal these days!

Really? *bustles off to look her up*

But when other characters' skin tone is referenced, then you tend to assume the person doing the noticing doesn't belong to that group - so when it's mentioned that some bloke is white, then you assume the noticer isn't.

It just dawned on me, but no. I notice when people are black just the same as I notice when people are white. Perhaps if I were coming from a luxurious position of dominance I wouldn't have to care and could just assume. But I notice, and I know other people notice, just the way every black guy on my floor at work introduced himself to me within my first week or so there.

I'd wager good money they didn't do that to white hires.

There's often a shared moment as you pass a strange black person in the street that is so commonplace it almost makes me laugh.

But when other characters' skin tone is referenced, then you tend to assume the person doing the noticing doesn't belong to that group - so when it's mentioned that some bloke is white, then you assume the noticer isn't.

It just dawned on me, but no. I notice when people are black just the same as I notice when people are white.

I didn't make myself clear - I wasn't aiming to make a general point, but rather a point about narrative. By 'doing the noticing' I actually meant 'making the textual reference'. I mean, maybe that was clear and you disagree, which is fair enough, but I should have made it more explicit that I was talking about word choice geared to draw a reader's attention to something within a narrative.

There's often a shared moment as you pass a strange black person in the street that is so commonplace it almost makes me laugh.

Because, yes - I don't register 'Thai person! Another Thai person! Thai person! Twelve more Thai people' as I walk down the street - I'm pretty much just registering people. Whereas I do actively notice white people (or, actually, any other visible minority people).

In writing, though, my impression is that narrators often don't bother to flag someone's skintone/nationality/religion if they belong to the same group as the narrator. This may just be the books I've read, though.

my impression is that narrators often don't bother to flag someone's skintone/nationality/religion if they belong to the same group as the narrator

I would say that in general it's fairly obvious that most of the people in most of the books I read are white because of a telltale physical description that makes it at the very least highly improbable they're anything else.

As for similar skintone, well, most black people aren't my skintone, so what would I be expected to do as a narrator? And I'm not singling myself out for special treatment--just that with the random mixing there's chocolate this and au lait that and high yellow and red bones and ... we got them all, man. And we will use them describing each other.

And I'm not singling myself out for special treatment--just that with the random mixing there's chocolate this and au lait that and high yellow and red bones and ... we got them all, man. And we will use them describing each other.

And Maya Angelou wrote a poem about just that - about all the ways to describe different shades of skin color among people of recent African descent. I'll link it if I find it on line, quote it if I find it off.

"Is that it? Are we done?"

I'm thinking "yeah". Until the next big book. I DO like having this available if there's some book a large number of Buffistas are going to read (but it can just be closed and re-opened).

Bye bye thread. ::pats thread on its little thread head::