A question that hasn't been addressed -- the -operative- question, in my
opinion -- is WHY a white author might wish to write in the first
person of a black or an Oriental, or make such a character the story's
protagonist.
In my case, it's simple enough: I proceed on two assumptions that I think
almost everyone holds. 1) If we can reach the stars, we'll colonize them;
and 2) if we colonize enough of them, sooner or later we're going to come
into contact with an alien race. I happen to think that Africa, which I
have made my life's study, offers 51 separate and distinct examples of the
effects of colonization on both the colonizers and the colonized, and
frequently to tell these stories I must write as a black. But to do so
just to prove oneself open-minded is a form of PC hypocracy that didn't
exist 20 years ago.
-- Mike Resnick
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