LadySeshiiria
Calling all races and ethnicity's. I would like to do a social experiment for writing.
Your goal is to describe all the races below without using offensive or politically correct terminology. For each word descriptor you use that is neutral/positive you will get a + and for each one that is a potentially offensive one a - , we will add them all up at the end. -'s will dock from nuetral/positives in your overall score. So whoever comes out with the most positives win figuratively.
When the game is done I will close it and open it for discussion. In order to honestly tally up words they will be judged by your peers. The idea is to stay civil and loving while doing this exercise. If someone posts a word that is offensive quote the word usage and and simply state why but please don't argue, get defensive, belittle others, or start fights for their word choice because you may not realize yourself to be guilty of a slur or negative descriptor. The idea is to be open and fair and tolerant while we play with this experiment. I also expect people to be honest in why they find a word offensive and not reach or stretch for a reason. For this to work we need complete love, trust, and honesty.
If you need a more concise idea to play with in game use ethnicity but specify so we don't confuse. (Example Chinese and Japanese don't actually look the same despite what many people think they have a lot of genetic differences.) If there isn't one listed feel free to list your own as well. I will welcome it. Also it is good to be aware since many countries many have a dominate race or ethnicity it isn't the end all of who actually lives there. There are actually white African's or Australia's skin color palate varies as well.
Caucasoid (White) race. Example: American or British
Negroid (Black) race. Example: African or African-American
Mongoloid (Oriental/ Amerindian) race. Example: Chinese, Japanese, Korean, or Taiwanese
Australoid (Australian Aborigine and Papuan) race. Example: Australian
Taken from https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_(sociology)
This post is inspired from all of the posts out there created from writers who want to describe characters from other ethnicity's or races and worry about offending people. Also inspired from bloggers and articles online about cultural appropriation and racism in the world. My own personal inspiration as well since in my universe an Asian culture is going to be meeting a Western Culture for the first time. So I have a personal vested interest in seeing how other races describe my own as well.
My theory is that no matter how hard we try we are damned if we do and damned if we don't and people fixate way too much on the PC and offending others instead of just writing and producing a story for all to love.
My hope is that this will help people become more familiar with available word usage for writing, as well as perhaps educate them for character/world development, and help people become more comfortable with writing and worry less about politics or agenda.
Also some food for thought, what if you want to write about a racist character and have a development arc on his/her racism? When is it okay to use negative impacting words or slurs? Is it ever? Do you create your own? Tell me what you think!
And remember no politically correct terminology.
Have fun, and wish you much success in your character development and world development!
Love LS