I Saw A Black Man Holding A Gun: An Evaluation Of Black People In Writing

by Qwayonna Josephs

At nine years old, I participated in my school’s reading program. We’d get a medal for every hundred books we’d read. Being the overachiever I still am, I read everything in sight, trying to be the student wearing the most medals. This program introduced me to The Bluford Series, which consists of many black-led stories. My school had the entire collection available in the reading section of my third-grade class. All the books I read from the series had the same elements, single mothers, troubled teens, violence, incarceration, and Ebonics. ​

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Looking back now, it’s crazy to think that my introduction to Black-led stories was a book with a Black man on the cover, holding a gun, a book that was distributed to schools from Scholastic and praised as honest portrayals of inner city kids. Yet, every one of those books I read came from the mind of Paul Langan, a white man who claims in an interview that his intention behind the idea was sparked by minority students wanting to see themselves in print. I’m sure that drew lots of students to the books, seeing someone who looked like them on the cover―it definitely drew me in―but, with maturity and clarity, I now understand the harmfulness of these stories and characters. While trying to show our “experiences,” the books highlight negative stereotypes, slap on a problematic cover, and end up in the hands of impressionable elementary, middle, and high school kids that are desperate to see themselves in a story. 

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Those books came out two decades ago when Black people in books were scarce. Not much has changed since then; white writers still dominate publishing. In 2018, only 11% of books published were written by people of color. At the same time, the demand for more diverse stories is increasing with publishers and agents. Writers are compelled to write to that demand to increase the chances of getting picked up and published, which can result in some Black stories being told by non-Black writers. I’ll never tell a writer what they can or can’t write; I’m not the gatekeeper of writing Black characters. Shying away from writing characters of different cultures and ethnicities often leads to a disparity in representation, and we’ve been fighting for representation for a long time. However, not all representation is good representation. It’s time we call out writers for creating poorly crafted Black characters and the distributors who release them. 

Writing any character requires extensive research because no one knows all cultures and customs. One cannot limit their research to one Google search that leads to a Wikipedia page. It involves multiple searches, talking to people, and getting out of one’s comfort zone. My writing notes are full of small details that might not make it into my story but help me understand the characters I’m writing and the stories I’m telling. It is painfully obvious when a non-Black writer doesn’t do their research when writing Black characters. Often the same formula is used because it’s what sells, both in print and on screen. They aren’t writing well-rounded people; they are simply mimicking what they believe it is to be Black. Often this means creating characters whose entire personality is based on one stereotypical quality ranging from the funny sidekick to the sassy best friend to the criminal. 

Let’s take the character of Michael Oher from The Blindside, for example. He’s a Black teenager whose size and stature make him valuable to the school’s football coach, so he’s rescued from his impoverished life and drug-addicted, neglectful mother by the white savior. The film received lots of praise for its inspirational depiction of true events, despite Michael Oher criticizing the filmmaker’s decision to portray him as an illiterate whose hand is held throughout the movie. The character is a blank slate when the Tuohys “rescue” him from poverty. The only thing that seems to come naturally to him is violence, which is evident by his blacking out and taking on a room full of drug dealers, who all happen to be Black. Instead of doing the logical thing, which would have been letting Oher tell his own story, the filmmakers took Tuohy’s version and inserted stereotypes to fill in what they didn’t know about Michael Oher. They focused too much on writing a Black person, instead of just writing a person. In doing so, they contributed to the othering of blackness already prevalent in the writing community. 

Ariana Tucker goes more in-depth on the topic in her op-ed on black literature, writing that publishers “claim they want to better represent and diversify the books they produce, but they seem to be more interested in books about racial injustice than books where the fact that the main character is Black isn’t a focal point.” Non-black writers push out one-dimensional, repetitive characters and are praised because that’s how society views black people. Just look at the critical acclaim received by The Help, Django Unchained, or The Blindside. Writing that portrays Black trauma or stereotypes sells the most—and bonus points if they’re able to slide in the white savior trope. Non-Black writers rely on these elements to appear “relatable,” but that’s not reality because there’s no one Black experience. You can’t read The Hate You Give and then call yourself an expert on Black people; that’s lazy research and it leads to lazy writing. 

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I’ve never written a story without a Black protagonist. Although I pull from my own experiences, I also seek more information before deciding the type of people I want my characters to be. Including a Black character just for the sake of adding diversity to a story is problematic and leads to flat characters, something every self-respecting writer should want to avoid. 

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Imagine if writers wrote all characters with the minimum effort in which some Black characters are written, using the same characteristics and repeating the same character arcs. It wouldn’t be well-received. Adding a Black character isn’t enough to get me interested. I look for innovation, and stories of Black people in roles where their blackness isn’t the most important thing about them: the Reluctant Hero, the Chosen One, Antagonist-to-Hero, or even Hero-to-Antagonist. More people need to understand their power as consumers and raise their standards of what’s acceptable, only then, will we see change in how Black characters are written.