Race and Ethnicity

Here's a more unconventional topic; what do you think is the most predominant race or ethnicity in RPs? I don't mean RP-specific nationalities, I mean real-world based ethnicities (for example you character may be from Sinnoh but looks like they're South American). Which races or ethnicities have your characters been?

Caucasian characters are definitely the most prominent and I have to say that my list of characters reflects that for the most part. I don't do it for any reason, but most of my characters just happen to be white.

Majority of characters are Caucasian/white, and mine tend to be too simply because I am white and it's easiest for me to describe someone my own skin tone over another because it quickly becomes unrealistic and I end up romanticizing it. The same goes for body shape. When designing a character I find it easier to just have them be an average slim or slightly muscular type rather than going into detail about an overweight or chubby character because there's more to describe with it and it turns from being "x is slender with a six pack" to "x has thin heels, slender calves and plump thighs along with a size 22 waist, a roll that sits on top of their pants button and etc."

aeternum said:

Majority of characters are Caucasian/white, and mine tend to be too simply because I am white and it's easiest for me to describe someone my own skin tone over another because it quickly becomes unrealistic and I end up romanticizing it.

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Exactly this.

The default setting for me when I make characters seems to be white, because I'm white. However, the char I'm making in Dust now is "dark skinned". I guess I did it mostly on purpose just to be different. I just hope I can make it believable.

Pikachu said:

Exactly this.

The default setting for me when I make characters seems to be white, because I'm white. However, the char I'm making in Dust now is "dark skinned". I guess I did it mostly on purpose just to be different. I just hope I can make it believable.

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I mean... skin colour doesn't really have any effect on personality. So it shouldn't be that hard, should it?

There's two major reasons why my characters tend to be Caucasian more often than not.
1 - Unless the RP is specifically tailored to "the real world", I see ethnicity as a sort of blurred concept that doesn't really exist. Since most RPs don't really to talk about the topic, outside of simple setting consideration there's no way to judge the worlds ratio in terms of ethnicity. I don't really like when characters have a majority difference such as skin colour, but it's just overlooked by every other character and NPC.
2 - Have you tried finding a decent face claim for anime ethnic minority? It ain't easy.

gimmepie said:

I mean... skin colour doesn't really have any effect on personality. So it shouldn't be that hard, should it?

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Shouldn't, no, but I'm just saying how I'm usually thinking.

Pikachu said:

Shouldn't, no, but I'm just saying how I'm usually thinking.

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Fair enough! Don't mind me I'm just sort of thinking "out loud".

Disclosed said:

lol anime ethnic minority, das funny

Nothing to be nervous about when writing a character of a different ethnicity. Rosalina's Hispanic, just because I imagined her to be. I think the rest of my active human characters are white. Not for any specific reason, just because I never visualized them as any different. And I think that's how it should be.

I remember on this other site these writers were discussing how to write non-white characters "without sounding racist". It was hilarious. I think one person was afraid of describing a character as having "dark skin"... even though they had dark skin. People are too sensitive about not seeming ignorant these days, honestly. Just write 'em, and if you feel you have to, do some research.

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I loved this too much to not respond. Your point about fearing ignorance was pretty accurate. I think people begin to fear ignorance so much, that they become ignorant.
Not just where race is concerned either. I've been guilty of doing the same thing in my studies too.

People should RP whatever they want. Ethnicity is only what you make of it. RPing is just for fun and people shouldn't feel self conscious about the ethnic variety in their character portfolio. If this was mass media however, my opinion might differ slightly since we're talking about role models and things, there.

White/Caucasian characters seem to be predominant in roleplays. My own characters vary, really. I tend to develop a picture in my mind's eye of what a character looks like and they remain that way, for the most part. And because I prefer to play in fictional settings rather than real world settings, it's easier to assume that cultures and ethnic identities haven't developed in the same way they have in our world. In that sense there's less need to be concerned with ignorance/insultingly romanticising someone's race or ethnicity. It's more that the character I've created simply looks this way because that's who they are.

On a whole, I think one should visualise their characters as they appear. Roleplay is for fun, and we can safely assume no one is going to be intentionally insulting. If I ever do get a touch concerned with my portayal of something, a quick bit of research can help to reinforce or inform my writing of said character.

I play Caucasians a lot. It's a bit of a default because of my own ethnicity, which is Northern European, but there's reasoning behind it too. My Titans character was an unaging WW2 spy from Britain, and with that history it seemed logical for him to be white. My Venice character was Venetian, and had added paleness from vampirism.

I've planned to play other races before, but every time the RP didn't work out, or I found out I didn't have the time

Ice said:

I play Caucasians a lot. It's a bit of a default because of my own ethnicity, which is Northern European, but there's reasoning behind it too. My Titans character was an unaging WW2 spy from Britain, and with that history it seemed logical for him to be white. My Venice character was Venetian, and had added paleness from vampirism.

I've planned to play other races before, but every time the RP didn't work out, or I found out I didn't have the time

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I think a lot of this comes into play when I do my own roleplays. Most of the time, it just doesn't make sense to throw another ethnicity in there. Whenever I dream up a character, something about them always makes more sense to have them being Caucasian than anything else. My character in Railways is an educated street performer, and it was really only the white class of people who were educated in America in the early-mid 1800s, which the roleplay is a fantasy mirror of.

A lot of it for me comes down to what kind of pictures I can get for the SU. I always like to have some form of a picture to work with, and the easiest pictures to find or work with are usually from anime or something like that. Its just generally easier to find Caucasian pictures than others.

I think about 50% of my characters are caucasian, and the other 50% are asian. But I play characters of a handful of ethnicities and nationalities within those two denominations-- usually mixing the two in such a way that it's easier for me to play them based on what I know. A lot of the time I'll have a character who is descended from a country I know very little about-- but they'll have been born and raised in a country I know well enough to portray i.e. someone whose ancestry is entirely Indian but was born and raised in America.

I think in my written RPs the tendency to favor caucasian characters is more prevalent because I can only see the character in my head-- but I feel like it's a little harder to justify it to myself when I draw my characters out and literally only use one skin color palette.

I make a lot of ambiguously brown characters of different shades, as well as a few Asian characters and some white. I'd say the only one that is specifically African-American is Godot from the SAO RPs, but that's only because he's based off of me. But generally I don't think in race, more in colors and shades. This much comes from me being a gamer, because more often than not color is a purely aesthetic option and can often be independent of race.

Not that I have any sort of problem with approaching race or even it being an actual functional factor, it's just that color's a state of mind for me and, unless the race is actually going to play a part in the RP somehow, it's generally not going to come up.

*revives oldish thread because discussions about race are interesting*

While it is obviously a personal choice, I feel that RPs themselves somewhat encourage Caucasian characters. Part of it is probably because most RP settings, especially historical ones, are based on Western settings. Race is never addressed either way in an OP because the (accurate) assumption is that most people will play a White character. So in some RPs it sometimes is just too annoying to try and figure out race politics; especially the ones that are based heavily on the real world.

Interestingly, while most Caucasian RPers I know say they play White characters because "it's what they know", most people of other ethnicities on PC (including myself) also play mostly White characters. And I've never heard any of them say that they're scared of playing a Caucasian character "convincingly" lol.

Another thing I find funny is people saying that they can't find any good "face claims" other than Caucasian ones, and they're referring to anime... which means they're actually pictures of Japanese characters lol. (I could go on a separate tangent here but I'll refrain xD)

I myself have played one South Asian and one African-American, plus a couple ambiguously brown characters, I think.

What do you think is the most predominant race or ethnicity in RPs?
Race? White, from what I've seen. Ethnicity? Not really sure. I've seen a lot of Americans and western Europeans, I guess.

Which races or ethnicities have your characters been?
/me pulls up character list
Russian-American, Guamanian-American, Mexican-American, American, Russian-English, French (Kalosian), Canadian, Salvadoran, Chinese, Japanese, Indian, and a number of characters from fictional regions with no major similarities to real-world ethnicities.

As far as race goes, I think that most of my characters end up white.

Green-skinned people are predominant

Kidding aside, I think race is of minor concern when making my characters. I'm brown-skinned but I find myself playing Caucasian characters more simply because they are easier to describe. Also, it depends on the RP itself. I wouldn't want to play a Caucasian in an RP set in the desert, shall I?

It all boils down to personal preference and what the RP is asking for really. Since there are abundance of Pokemon RPs and the majority of people in the games are Caucasians, it's really not hard to see why the majority of characters being played are also white.

I definitely think that Caucasians are the predominant race/ethnicity in the RPs. I find myself habitually picturing my character as white, just like me, simply because it is easier to relate then. More specifically, i typically think of them as American and born somewhere in the Midwest. I don't necessarily try to do that, just happens instinctively, without much thought about it.