Game of Thrones Author Comments on Lack of Racial Diversity in Series

[C.S.Strowbridge]

White Guy Defense Force.. they.. yeah it was a thing

The White Guy Defense Force makes me embarrassed to be a white guy. Also, as a white guy, I hate being surrounded by a sea of white guys in movies, on TV, in video games, etc. I don't see how ethnic diversity is anything but a positive, unless you are racist.

 

[C.S.Strowbridge]

We get an answer, but he issue gets pressed like people are trying to get a different answer. "come on, admit you didn't think about it. Admit you're a racist / sexist / homophobe you fucking bigot."

That says more about you that people asking for diversity.

 

[Remus]

I'd actually really like to see more POV people of different cultures outside of Westeros. One of the neat things the POV system can do is show events from the perspective of different people of different cultures. We get alot of that from the different individual areas in Westeros but not a lot from places outside of it.

It doesn't matter that in the real world a lot of black people were slaves. How does that have any relevance to the fictional world of Game of Thrones where dragons and ice zombies exist? Dark skinned people being the "stock people" for slaves isn't exactly an encouraging thing to see in a series.

Were the Unsullied black? I always made them out to be more Middle-Eastern (since most of the Africa analogue seems to be the Summer Isles). May be wrong though.

It doesn't matter that in the real world a lot of black people were slaves. How does that have any relevance to the fictional world of Game of Thrones where dragons and ice zombies exist? Dark skinned people being the "stock people" for slaves isn't exactly an encouraging thing to see in a series.

But it doesn't make it any less accurate. I'm sorry that Game of Thrones couldn't fit your ideal, where all the slaves were white people, or maybe that there weren't any saves at all, thus cutting out a major plot point that easily fills at least a third of the show.

I never said that all white people were slaves or there shouldn't be slaves at all. You're making a very huge assumption right there. I'm saying why do most of the slaves need to be black/dark skinned and why do all the black/dark skinned characters in the show have to be servants or criminals? It looks odd, and the justification you give it doesn't make any sense. Why can't there be more diverse dark skinned characters?

Context. Again, it has to make sense within the context of the story. It makes sense that the 3 "free" dark-skinned characters, in a medieval setting, are 1. A freed slave, now a general of an army, 2. Again freed slave, now a teacher/cultural advisor, and 3. A pirate. You are the one making huge assumptions as to the type of setting George R.R. Martin is presenting us with. This is not a modern or postmodern idealized equal society. This world is a society that is cruel, often unjust, where the most barbaric tribes are separated from the most civilized by a giant wall or an ocean.

I would just like to point out as to prior posts, EGYPT is not a part of EUROPE. So using that as a reference as to the nationalities present therein at the time of the War of the Roses, an event wholly taking place in ENGLAND is a falsehood. Again, present me with a historical record of Egyptians, Libyans, Afghanis, Prussians within the noble houses fighting during this period and I'll consider myself corrected. Until then, the namedropping just doesn't help your argument. Martin is not going to rewrite his books for the sake of being PC and I suspect that we'd be having this exact same argument if HBO started including diverse characters purely for the sake of diversity. Read it, don't read it, watch it, don't watch it, I don't care. There's still millions of us out there that will gladly.

 

[DugMachine]

Aren't the people of Dorne POC? At least that's always the vibe I got from them, sort of middle-easternesque. Black people aren't the only POC to my knowledge. Or is it because there are no POC Lords?

 

[Remus]

Aren't the people of Dorne POC? At least that's always the vibe I got from them, sort of middle-easternesque. Black people aren't the only POC to my knowledge. Or is it because there are no POC Lords?

That was the impression I got too, light clothes, thick accent, not really dark, but very tan with dark hair, chiseled features. Pretty much the atypical Persian as presented in media.

 

[tzimize]

FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK racial diversity. He's not writing a politically and socially correct story, he is writing HIS FANTASY STORY. Why the holiest of hell should anyone care how many black, hispanic, japanese or ANYTHING ELSE people there are? Are really other races/ethnicities or whatever the hell the term is so fucking insecure that they cant bear to watch white people?

I dont complain when black people are cast in anything because I want there to be more white people. Why the hell should anyone else complain that there are too many white people? How about just seeing us all as PEOPLE...isnt that the point? We dont need reverse racism, we need zero racism.

 

[Lethos]

Aren't the people of Dorne POC? At least that's always the vibe I got from them, sort of middle-easternesque. Black people aren't the only POC to my knowledge. Or is it because there are no POC Lords?

Pretty sure they're supposed to represent the Spanish. Don't quote me on that though.

 

[Tiamat666]

I...

Are you serious?

I'm going to pretend that you're joking.

It's funny how including someone "for the sake of it" only ever comes up in relation to the inclusion of minorities.

Yes, sorry, I'm totally joking and you are absolutely right. If I ever make a movie about Zulus I will definitively include a blonde, blue eyed dude with a spear as the best friend of the warrior-hero, an Indian guy as the wise man, an Asian as the smart Zulu underdog and a native American as the wife of the chieftain Shaka. So we can have all the racial diversity in there.

 

[wadark]

As something of an amateur writer myself, as well as someone who is supportive of diversity, I think I can say pretty conclusively that its actually somewhat detrimental to the cause to force creative individuals or groups to be beholden to a certain set of 'diversity requirements. The question is where does it stop in terms of how many people/groups get to claim inclusion.

Does your show/book/movie/etc. have to have:
A black character
An asian character
A middle-eastern character
A gay character
A trans character

Do you have to include a male and female of all of these for it to count?

It smacks of a similar question asked at a World of Warcraft panel at Blizzcon a few years ago, asking if more LGBT were to be included in WoW. Ultimately, I think its counter productive sometimes, because it helps no one to have token characters (South Park created an entire character NAMED Token to satirize this), who exist only to tick off that check box.

The short version is, if you want to see more characters of color, or whatever demographic you think needs more representation, then be the change you want to see. Write your own story (and I dont say that cruelly or mockingly, I'm being genuine) and make it happen.

 

[Nikolaz72]

What's with people claiming the coloured have no positions of power? I mean... Dorne is full of pretty brown people and they are pretty powerful. The Free Cities show plenty of non-servant masters who clearly aren't white. Then theres Daenarys who in her harmy (Harem/Army)has a darkskinned eunuch serving as one of her generals, sure he was initially a warrior but still.

I mean you can complain that the kings and queens of Westeros at large aren't very racially diverse but, to be quite honest. Westeros and a lot of the conflicts and history in it was based around the rich history of medieval england. House Reyne being House Montfort, and Tywin inspired in part by Edward the First of England who killed the guy. Starks in general being Yorkists, Lannisters being Lancasters. Baratheons seems to have been inspired in part by the Tudors. What with the conflict between Lannisters and Everyoneelse being prevented through a marriage which created a coat of arms which was a mix of the Lion of Lannister and the Stag of Baratheons instead of the Red/White rose of the Tudors in the War of the roses.

Tyrells/Stannis seem pretty inspired by the French relations with England at the time. Allying sometimes but always being through marriage and pretty temporary things. You can bet your boots the Tyrells are going to turn on the Lannisters at some point, they likely already are. Through court backstabbing and the like.

Dorne seems pretty spaininspired. Though that may just be because Dorne is being filmed in Spain and they are getting the local actors to provide most of the faces to the thing.

The Free Cities/Braavos seems to be inspired by a weird mixture of the East-Roman Empire (Byzantium) the former roman colony city-states in North Africa and the Italian city-states of.. Italy. What with them being the remnants of the once great Roman Empire, being racially diverse merchant nations and having lots of banks.

Targaryans obviously being based on the Romans. Bringing civilization everywhere, mostly through fire and blood. Fire in this case meant to be taken quite literally as they, instead of tactics and technology had dragons. And Dragons beat, whatever it is the Westeros Kings had before the dragons arrived.

TLDR. What I'm getting at is that Westeros seems very much inspired from mostly England but furthermore mostly Europe, Western Europe in particular. There weren't exactly a whole lot of Africans/Asians around there, and if George was inspired to write from reading European history and mythology like certain others (Tolkien comes to mind) Then I'm not exactly suprised that his cast is mostly white. What with West/North European history and mythology mostly containing white people.

The U.S is very racially diverse and has been throughout the last hundreds of years. I suppose that could cause some people to be confused that a TV-Series/Book-Series doesn't feature a diverse cast and see it as deliberate racism.

 

[DEAD34345]

White Guy Defense Force.. they.. yeah it was a thing

The White Guy Defense Force makes me embarrassed to be a white guy. Also, as a white guy, I hate being surrounded by a sea of white guys in movies, on TV, in video games, etc. I don't see how ethnic diversity is anything but a positive, unless you are racist.

Ethnic diversity in real life? Sure, that's never a negative thing, as far as I'm aware.

We're talking about forced ethnic diversity in fiction though, and of course that can be a bad thing. Forcing fiction to conform to any specific quality whatsoever is a bad thing as far as I'm concerned, as all that it is doing is limiting the amount of stories that can be told. Fantasy stories can be good, but I would never demand that all stories must be fantasy because then I'd miss out on all the realistic stories, or Sci Fi stories or whatever. Happy, light hearted stories can be good, but I would never say it "really hurts" when a story is dark and miserable, because those can also be good. Ethnically diverse stories can be good, but there's nothing wrong with ethnically un-diverse stories either, and saying things like "must all black people in the series be servants, guards, or charlatans?" is... Well... Stupid.

Maybe all black people in the series must indeed be servants, guards or charlatans in this totally imaginary world[footnote]I wouldn't say they are in ASOIAF, but that doesn't really matter to the point I'm making.[/footnote]. Maybe this is important to the story he wants to tell. Maybe he just felt like making the world that way. Maybe it's based on a real life ethnically un-diverse setting. Maybe there's no reason at all. It doesn't really matter, inequality in a story does not create inequality in the real world, it's entirely harmless.

The person who was quoted in the OP is being entirely unreasonable as far as I'm concerned. It's fair to dislike parts of a story, and it's also fair to complain about that. If they had said "I think ASOIAF would be a better story if more of the cast was black." I'd have understood the opinion, even if I wouldn't have agreed necessarily. What they actually said though was that the lack of diversity "hurts", and "must all black people in the series be servants, guards, or charlatans?", as though the author was making some sort of attack on this person, or his race because of their lack of inclusion in the story. It's just ridiculous.

 

[Nurb]

This political correctness is getting as absurd as it was in the 90's, trying to force art into a mold of acceptibility and non-offensivene blandness.

Tokenism and checklisting is bad, stifles creativity, and not a responsibility of the art or artist.

It's funny that this is what gets him walking on egg shells though...
People are worried his age and health will leave the series unfinished: "Fuck them!"
People are anxious for the next book: "Fuck them!"
A few people demand answers on diversity: "Fu-... Uh, let me calmly explain."

Spoiler: Good thing Tolkien didn't write his books in this era

 

[C.S.Strowbridge]

We're talking about forced....

Nope. Someone asked a question about the lack of diversity in the book and a bunch of... fill in the blanks ...freaked out about it. There was nothing about force involved.

 

[Colour Scientist]

Inb4
Anecdotal examples of a few notable non-Caucasians in medieval Europe

Yeah because Westeros is so true to medieval Europe.

Dragons? Fine.
People coming back from the dead? Makes sense.
More people of colour in important roles? Don't be so unrealistic.

Nice false equivalence there. So you're going to fault them for creating a world inspired by Medieval mythology and Medieval culture? Last time I checked, shit like dragons were part of that and make sense in the context of the world. As does magic and other fantastical shit like that.

I'm not faulting the books, I'm just saying that being historically accurate is a pretty weak defence in this context.

Commenting or questioning lack of diversity doesn't equate with accusations of racism/sexism or demanding the author change the content of the work, it's the same as any other kind of critique. When you create and publish a book/game/film, you open yourself up to critique. Literary criticism is an entire discipline, people analyse prose, themes, character development and imagery. Scrutinising ethnic/sexual diversity can be part of this. No one is forcing Martin's hand but, having read and loved the books, the question posed in the OP is a fair one.

I still don't get why people feel so threatened by this.

 

[Lil_Rimmy]

You're forgetting the fictional universe he created was heavily inspired by the Medieval period. Sure, he could of just said fuck it and created a universe where every race and sexuality is equally represented but he wanted to make a world that was the same as the real world but with fantasy elements added in. Hell, the fantasy elements aren't even that widespread and the world would have basically been Medieval Earth without them. As people mentioned, Westeros is basically England and Essos is inspired by a whole mish mosh of different cultures.

So making Westoros populated by something other than the lily-white brigade would ruin the realness? Considering Westeros has several significant differences to England, skin tone should be the least of anyone's concern when it comes to depicting Europe, but with some fantasy thrown in.

Not that it matters, my point was that the post I was responding to was ridiculous in its comparison, because I don't care how heavily inspired you are ("I was heavily inspired by" also sounds a lot like "I'm not creative" after a certain point), you're not beholden to history. That said, heavy inspiration doesn't really absolve him of "fantasy-Europeans in the west with their ideals of honor and nobility, and the savage, slaving, sleazy, heretic-burning, amoral everyone else over in the east" thing.

And in the exact same way as he is not beholden to it, he is not beholden to put people of any race in his story. He could make the entire cast black or white or have them all wield giant metal dildos. He doesn't even have to use humans because he isn't beholden to it!

The thing is, he chooses to. And he has every damn right to do so. Martin wanted to write a story that was based on Mediveal Europe/England around the time of the War of the Roses and also use the mythology of the time. And so he decided to be beholden to it because he wanted to.

Also, that last sentence.... holy shit. Seriously the last few episodes I can recall involved a man torturing someone so much their mind broke and then got him to serve them. After that, he used said man against his own people to get them to surrender then flayed them all alive. I believe a certain someone ended up in a duel with a man who had raped and murdered various people but was still being championed as a knight and... well... we saw how that ended up. I recall a variety of betrayals and even a lovely murder or two. There was that kid, remember, who was gonna be king? Yeah. He was... a touch insane. But where did this all happen? "in the west with their ideals of honour and nobility"? Yep. Honour and nobility alright!

 

[Olas]

You know, I used to think it was a progressive idea that artists should be free to create what they want without having to worry about who they anger or offend, and a regressive idea that that artists should alter or censor their work to conform to certain societal values. But it increasingly feels like things are turned upside down. It's wrong to use nasty words like "retarded" liberally and fiction writers should have their work scrutinized to see if it's in any way offensive to certain groups or doesn't include the full checklist of diversity we now expect from every work of fiction.

I guess it's just easier to judge things by these simplified standards than to actually critically evaluate the messages and ideas the author is trying to convey and judge those.

 

[endtherapture]

This is why we don't need social justice warriors.

Who cares if there's no black characters?
1. There are black characters
2. It's a primarily medieval European setting, why would there be black characters in medieval europe?

 

[Genocidicles]

Yeah because Westeros is so true to medieval Europe.

Dragons? Fine.
People coming back from the dead? Makes sense.
More people of colour in important roles? Don't be so unrealistic.

Westeros has a European climate though, so the people there would be white skinned (aside from Dorne). The technology of the setting doesn't allow for easy immigration like we see today either.

Now, lets look at the fantasy elements: Dragons, zombies, evil snow creatures and a little magic.

How would they effect how difficult it is to immigrate with medieval technology? They wouldn't, unless a load of them clung to the underside of a dragon or something.

So, like other people have said, it's realistic to only see a few brown faces in the major trading hubs, if that.

 

[Loonyyy]

I really don't 'get' this kind of stuff.

Maybe it's because I enjoy learning about history, or most of my friends/(ex)mates aren't white, or something else...

But how can you ***** about Egypt being whitewashed in Hollywood films, given, real history of who lived there.

Then, without ANY irony, ***** that there's a lack of 'diversity' in a historical piece, set in the whitest of the white lands.

I mean...the hell?

Yes, I always loved the blood magic, Dragons, and zombies in my history of the middle ages class.

I mean, the hell? Did you attend Mr. Garrison's class or something? I guess we'd all better be ready for Magneto's rise to prominence, along with Transformers falling to earth and Dinosaurs being resurrected. And I guess these are all more likely than any form of diversity.

 

[A-D.]

You're forgetting the fictional universe he created was heavily inspired by the Medieval period. Sure, he could of just said fuck it and created a universe where every race and sexuality is equally represented but he wanted to make a world that was the same as the real world but with fantasy elements added in. Hell, the fantasy elements aren't even that widespread and the world would have basically been Medieval Earth without them. As people mentioned, Westeros is basically England and Essos is inspired by a whole mish mosh of different cultures.

So making Westoros populated by something other than the lily-white brigade would ruin the realness? Considering Westeros has several significant differences to England, skin tone should be the least of anyone's concern when it comes to depicting Europe, but with some fantasy thrown in.

Not that it matters, my point was that the post I was responding to was ridiculous in its comparison, because I don't care how heavily inspired you are ("I was heavily inspired by" also sounds a lot like "I'm not creative" after a certain point), you're not beholden to history. That said, heavy inspiration doesn't really absolve him of "fantasy-Europeans in the west with their ideals of honor and nobility, and the savage, slaving, sleazy, heretic-burning, amoral everyone else over in the east" thing.

Actually, it would ruin the realness. Not for the sake of color though but for the sake of geographic reasons. Notice that most of Westeros is essentially in a northern european climate. The further north you go, the whiter the people get because the areas are colder. I mean compare say anyone from the North, for the sake of argument lets compare Sansa Stark to Margery Tyrell who is from the Reach which is further south. Sansa is very pale where as Margery is more fair-skinned, white yes but there is a difference in pigmentation. Now go a little further south to Dorne which is alot of desert and sun, suddenly you have people who have an even darker complexion compared to their northern brethren, cultural differences we can leave out because it doesnt really matter there.

Now go even further south, Basilisk Isles, the Summer Isles, now you get really dark-skinned people because the areas are tropical, alot of heat, sun and jungle. Essos is in between these two to a degree as the northern-most part of Essos is never seen which would include Ibben which is about on the same hemisphere-level as the Vale, so we could argue the climate is colder there potentially. The Dothraki are steppe-people, they are essentially a mixture of Cumans and Mongols who live in the steppe regions of Essos which is warm and dry and sunny. If you took all the people from westeros and placed them in the Dothraki Sea, or the Summer Isles, what do you think would happen within say 5 generations? Would they still be the same white as they are now? Its alot more about the conditions of the area they live in, rather than anything to do with culture directly. Lets consider for a second here also the Unsullied who are essentially a Slave-army from Slaver's bay, which true to its namesake buys and sells slaves and of course raids its neighbors for them.

Who are the closest neighbors to Slaver's Bay geographically? Basilisk Isles, Ass'hai and so forth, they dont get their slaves from Westeros, or Bravos, or Lys even. Hell most of the post-Valyrian Freehold is directly based on Zoroastrian Persia, which by the way was the first monotheistic religion in the world. So not having black people in Westeros unless there is actually a reason for them to be there makes sense. And im not just making this argument specifically against you, but if i had to quote everyone who argued that Martin was lazy or something because he didnt include more people of color the post would be so long that Kross might have a heart-attack.