If you’ve read any book review from a liberal outlet or even just paid attention to the mainstream discourse on literature today, you know that straight, white authors aren’t allowed to write about just anyone anymore. Woke pedagogues have turned the maxim “write what you know” into a mandate, insisting writers not presume to use their imaginations to create fiction outside their “lived experience.”
Ironically, we’re also told “representation matters” — and it does — but there are limits to who can represent whom. In an age of “sensitivity readers” and cancel culture, you’d think at least some of the demand for these strict new mores would be coming from readers.
It turns out, however, that this progressive discourse is out of step with what most Americans believe. A YouGov survey published this week found that “more than half (57%) of Americans say they think it is somewhat or very acceptable for a white person to write a racial minority character for TV, film, or books.” More than 60% would accept the reverse, a racial minority writing white characters. This pattern is true not just for race but also for gender and sexual orientation.
The poll, conducted a few weeks ago, surveyed 1,000 U.S. citizens.
Strangely enough, liberals were more accepting in some instances, being more likely to say that a transgender character could create a cisgender character, or vice versa. Though YouGov notes, “Some of these responses could also reflect people’s opinions on whether these groups should be represented in entertainment at all, regardless of who is writing them — a subject not asked about in the survey.” This means some conservatives could mean that they don’t think writers should be creating any transgender characters, not that they think there are limits to who can write about them.
Americans may “accept” stories written by and about various combinations of identity groups, but do they still believe in the ability of writers to create realistic characters they may not relate to themselves? “In most cases polled,” YouGov reports, “more Americans say yes than say no.”
Taking transgender writers and characters out of the mix, half or somewhat more than half of those polled said a writer could create a realistic story about someone outside of the writer’s race, gender, or sexual orientation.
Lest we begin to suspect that the reasonableness of the American people means the literary world is in little trouble, though, we should remember two things: First, the polling numbers are positive, but slightly so, with most of the consensus hovering a little over 50%. Second, this does not mean that identity madness is any less prevalent in the publishing world. “Mostly white” writer Jeanine Cummins was excoriated a couple of years ago for writing a book deeply sympathetic to Mexican immigrants from the perspective of a Mexican woman. This threw literary critics into an uproar, with book reviewers expressing shock and horror that a non-Mexican, despite years of research, would attempt to write a book about a Mexican woman fleeing to America.
If this identity-obsessed dogma had prevailed in years past, these beliefs could have kept Mark Twain from writing The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, or Alexandre Dumas from creating The Three Musketeers. The lack of good literature coming out today is bad enough; we don’t need to be policing artists by telling them whom they can write about. Luckily, a majority of Americans agree.
