No. That wasn’t what I said at all.
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Do you think there is some singular answer to that question? Or that living in a racist society that constantly centers white straight cisgendered men and others the rest of us is merely “an influence” when for many people is shapes almost every aspect of our lives, not because of OUR choices, but because of the choices made by people a while ago and by people now we keep thinking that having a magical negro character is an acceptable thing to do?
So yeah… a white person writing a character of color DOES need to take into account the experiences of the character they are writing which include what it means to be Black. Ignoring that is a much worse problem than facing it head on. Because the reality is that Black Americans have no choice but to face it head on and that WILL have an impact on people’s identities. 
TLDR, ignoring a problem does not fix it.
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And of course - when a white guy drafts a “generic” character it is influenced by that person’s background and experience.
They just think it’s a universal experience informing that character.
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I did not mean to imply that you were saying that race defines or does not define a character’s emotional core. I merely meant that questions about a character’s emotional core necessarily raise further questions about what makes up an emotional core and whether that is dependent on race.
I never said otherwise. Indeed, we are saying the same thing. The only difference is when. Should it be the first thing that the author decides when coming up with a character or should it be something that the author decides after the character is already somewhat fleshed out as a person?
When a white guy drafts any character, that character will be influenced by the author’s own background and experience. That is just as true for a Black character or an Asian character as it is for a “generic” character.
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It’s a lack of empathy that lead to some white men believing that their experiences are universal while those of others are particular and specialized, generally speaking. One doesn’t have to directly address the issue of race to work to get inside the head of a character whose life is shaped by race, too.
I don’t know… other than that Key and Peele sketch mocking the trope, I wonder if anyone has written a short story or book that takes the magical negro trope and flips it? Like, what is the view from the POV of the character being pressed into that trope? 
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You may be conflating “race” with the experience of growing up under a racist, homophobic or transphobic culture etc - and the experience of growing up in those subcultures.
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And these are experiences that a white cis male author cannot possibly be expected to fully understand.
Are you suggesting that white authors should not even attempt to write POC characters? I do not believe that you are suggesting this. Are you suggesting that the emotional core of POC is nothing more than the sum of these experiences? I do not believe that you are suggesting that either.
I think that you are suggesting that white authors should make every attempt to understand and sympathize with POC characters as much as possible while incorporating this into how the character is developed, and, if that is what you are suggesting, then there is really no major difference between what you and I are saying. I am merely saying that they should do that a bit further along in the character development process rather than building from Black or Asian as a first step in developing a character.
I have never suggested that authors ignore all of those experiences entirely. I have suggested that authors should attempt to create characters who are more than simply the sum of their experiences, and on that we may differ.
Are you seriously asking that question?
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No, as I said, I do not believe that to be what you are suggesting.
note to mindysan33–this reply to your comment above is not intended as a criticism of what you said. i used your comment as springboard for what i ended up saying. since i found myself becoming rather passionate in my commentary i did want you to know what was what.
to be anything different from white, straight, and cisgendered in the u.s is to be an “other”. in some contexts even to be a white, straight, cisgendered female is to be an “other”. this is also true for large swathes of europe. this has been going on to a greater or lesser extent since the arrival of europeans on the north american continent when the native inhabitants were othered. this constant undertow of othering cannot help but create an emotional or psychological burden on those who are not part of the basis group of a society. some wypipo make the claim that they and their offspring should not have to consider, much less change or reduce, that burden because it creates within them a sense of discomfort. to which i have to ask, politely, “what level of discomfort do all of these othered groups have to feel in order for you to avoid discomfort?” less politely, “what the actual fuck are you talking about you selfish fucking fuck? does your fucking “discomfort” count for more than the goddamn oppression and slavery and abuse and murder all of these othered groups have experienced for more than five centuries? you can go fuck yourselves!”
getting back to what all of this means for the topic at hand, if a good writer is going to be including characters from a different race, ethnicity, gender, or socioeconomic status than their own then they need to have a handle on what it means to be a part of such a group within the society they have placed them in. if a writer is simply writing trash then they can knock themselves out and do whatever they want to but if the writer has any pretensions of quality then they need to really carefully consider those factors mentioned above before they commit that character to print. they absolutely have a responsibility to do this.
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So - it wasn’t in good faith?
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It seems the way to avoid this, is an author who researches as best they can what living like a person of a different race, sex, sexual orientation, or gender is like and then finding someone like the character to beta-read and point out the mistakes and inevitable insensitivities. So for a successful white, male, heterosexual, cisgendered author like King, that means getting to know other kinds of people, reading autobiographies by different kinds of people about their lives and struggles, reading fiction by people from marginalized populations, and then finding beta readers with experiences like the character to provide critique and criticism. So a Black queer character needs a real Black queer person, or ideally more than one, as a beta reader. A Black woman character should be critiqued by Black women.
I don’t read King, but if he has been failing to do this for the last decade or so I’d really question why. He’s famous, he’s rich, and he’s been both for a while. Finding people to help him create realistic characters who are not white, male, heterosexual, and cisgender should not be difficult. If he is still relying on tropes, he doesn’t care. Which means he is either lazy or racist or both.
Edited to fix the capitalisation of Black. It’s not yet as much of a habit as I would like.
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That is not the difficult, honestly… and plenty of writers have figured that out. Writing is not a solitary endeavor, it’s a medium of communication (unless it’s like a diary). You want to get feedback often when your goal is to communicate with others via the written word.
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Fuckin A; this isn’t rocket science, it’s really not that hard to understand.
Writing as if one were “colorblind” doesn’t fix the problem of ingrained personal bias and deeply entrenched racial prejudice.
FUCK, it gets mad annoying having to have this same conversation, over and over again, ad nauseum…
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Building from Black or Asian as the first step does not have to be a limiting first step. It can instead be undertaken by a white writer after they do some research into understanding what life is often like for such a character, and how that may well influence or shape who that character is.
Maybe you think that a white writer who sets out to write a Black or Asian character can only do so on the basis of stereotypes?
Anyway, for a white writer to start out writing about a character’s emotional core, or inner true being or something, and then adding on “Black” or “Asian” later, is basically going to result in a Black or Asian character with a white core.
As @navarro just wrote, and as I think @anon23281680 would agree, “if a good writer is going to be including characters from a different race, ethnicity, gender, or socioeconomic status than their own then they [first] need to have a handle on what it means to be a part of such a group within the society they have placed them in.”
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No, I am genuinely trying to understand your objection. It is very easy to misinterpret people in text, and to be misinterpreted, so I want to be clear. I feel that I am being misinterpreted as saying that authors should ignore race, when I am saying nothing of the sort. I do apologize for not being clearer on that in my initial posts.
As far as I can tell, we are simply dancing around the issue of when an author should make a decision concerning the race of a character. I believe that we are in agreement on how the race and experiences of a character should be addressed once decided.
Committing a character to print is a lengthy process that goes through countless revisions. This does not all need to be considered before an author writes down the first word of Chapter 1, but it does need to be considered before the work is given to other people to be read.
I find it very odd that people seem to think that, in order to write authentic POC, then their POC status needs to be the very first thing that the author decides about that person. All I am saying is that it does not.
No, I just think that stereotypes are more likely in this case.
I believe that you will end up with a Black or Asian character with a white core no matter which order you proceed with the process unless you do what @navarro and @anon23281680 said. Given the number of drafts and edits that a work goes through, I see no reason why you cannot do what they said later on in the character development process.
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All I know is if I had a one-size-fits-all solution for writing fully realized POC in massively popular fiction I’d sell that formula and make a killing. I reckon a lot of people would.
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i will tell you as a long-term reader of king that, while he has made use of the “magic negro” trope, he has found ways as he has developed as a writer to extend and refine the trope. ii think the best example of this was the difference between the character speedy parker/parkus in the talisman compared to the same character in the sequel black house which was a much more 3-dimensional figure in the latter book. now how much of that was king and how much was straub might be a good question if there were no other stories with which to compare it but king also wrote what i consider one of the very best african-american characters ever written by a white man–susannah (odetta holmes) walker dean in the dark tower. there may have been times when king was inexperienced or lazy or both but at the top of his game his fame is justified.
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Excellent example. It was very much a relief to see how he had rounded out the character in Black House, but your point that it might have been more Straub than King is a good one.
Also I have to play the pedantic and nit-pick here;
By the end of TDT, Susannah’s name was Susannah Dean; as a healed whole person, she was no longer ‘Detta Walker’ or ‘Odetta Holmes.’
Her evolution as a character made it easier for me to overlook the many other missteps King has made when writing POC.
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