if you’re white and wanna write a poc character and feel awkward about it i implore you to ignore any twitblr stuff treating it as a massive ethical burden and instead come in more with the same mindset you’d have if you wanted to write about idk firefighters but didn’t know anything about firefighters so you do... research. Like fuck off with the weird kinda creepy calls for spiritual introspection you’re not writing about god damn space aliens you’re writing about humans and if you think you need more perspective of different life experiences just read?
If I were writing about firefighters I'd also, in addition to just reading about them, take advantage of Our Blessed Internet to ask actual firefighters about how shit works. I'd do the same for a minority I'm not a part of.
I remember when there was this LiveJournal community where you could just ask about anything you needed for your novel - medicine, professions, vehicles, how things function in country X - and people who knew something about that would answer.
We need to bring this back.
And apparently just this summer they DID bring it back - it's called Little Details and it's on Dreamwidth!!!!
Remember, a world where everyone stays in their own boxes and only writes about their own narrow demographic is straight up a goal for racists. If you ever find yourself attempting anti-racism so hard you've looped back to "functionally the same thing racists want", stop, take stock, and ask yourself where things went wrong.
