Sidewinder
Ours is the Fury
Well, I'm wondering about the correctness of a situation/description that I'm going to be having soon. I'm gradually introducing a character in my fic, and now that he has appeared to the main two characters I have a small issue.
Basically, one character thinks this new character is someone else, but the other character corrects him by saying it couldn't possibly be him because this new character is of a different race. I'm trying to figure out a way to get into this without offending anyone by being blunt in my description of him in the chapter. The character is black, african-american, and so on. But as I was writing my description of him from the POV of one of the characters, my wife looked over and saw that I used the word 'black' to describe him. She didn't think that was appropriate, but I don't really have a problem with it. Here's the scene in question :
"I'm telling you Shelton, it was him, it was Bernard," Dorian explained.
"Unless he's undergone some sort of extreme skin pigment alteration, it wasn't, the guy that attacked us was black."
Personally, I don't see a problem with that seeing as how I'm just describing the character's skin color, but she does, well, I just think she doesn't want me to offend anyone. I don't think I will, but I can't use the traditional terms for describing races like we do in our world because in my version of the Pokemon world, our continents and countries don't exist. So usually where I would say african-american, I can't. To be honest I don't think calling someone who's black, black in a fic will offend anyone, but at the same time I didn't feel the need to openly say in my descriptions of my three main characters that they were white.
Any ideas/thoughts? lol
Basically, one character thinks this new character is someone else, but the other character corrects him by saying it couldn't possibly be him because this new character is of a different race. I'm trying to figure out a way to get into this without offending anyone by being blunt in my description of him in the chapter. The character is black, african-american, and so on. But as I was writing my description of him from the POV of one of the characters, my wife looked over and saw that I used the word 'black' to describe him. She didn't think that was appropriate, but I don't really have a problem with it. Here's the scene in question :
"I'm telling you Shelton, it was him, it was Bernard," Dorian explained.
"Unless he's undergone some sort of extreme skin pigment alteration, it wasn't, the guy that attacked us was black."
Personally, I don't see a problem with that seeing as how I'm just describing the character's skin color, but she does, well, I just think she doesn't want me to offend anyone. I don't think I will, but I can't use the traditional terms for describing races like we do in our world because in my version of the Pokemon world, our continents and countries don't exist. So usually where I would say african-american, I can't. To be honest I don't think calling someone who's black, black in a fic will offend anyone, but at the same time I didn't feel the need to openly say in my descriptions of my three main characters that they were white.
Any ideas/thoughts? lol