Are racial issues discussed in fantasy and science fiction?
In my opinion racial issues aren’t really discussed in fantasy and science fiction. I haven’t found many authors who are willing to tackle this task.
Tia Nevitt makes an excellent point in a recent post to her blog.
I don’t check the skin color of the author, but when I crack open the book I invariably find a novel about white characters. To be sure, most of these settings are like northern Europe, in a medieval world, where you would indeed expect there to be mostly white people. I have never read about a black elf (except the drow, which I don’t think really count).
I’ve been thinking this quite a bit and in addition to recent fantasy debudant David Anthony Durham I can’t think of any black speculative fiction 
authors beside Nalo Hopkinson and the late and excellent Octavia E. Butler. Occasionally I’ve seen Nobel prize winner Toni Morrison described as writing speculative fiction. Black protagonist seem as scarce in books by others, of hand I remember only Ursula Le Guins Ged who appeared first in A Wizard of Earthsea. Anyone who can think of any sf books where the protagonist is black or racial issues are discussed or are the main theme of the book, let me know.
It is kinda odd that authors generally go gingerly around race issues, considering that other notable social issues have been discussed in length in sf. 
After all there is fair number of feminist authors like Le Guin and Sheri Tepper who’ve explored the issues of women’s rights in numerous books. Most notably perhaps Le Guin’s Left Hand of Darkness and Tepper’s The Gate to Women’s Country.Le Guin’s book is classic in its own right and I can recommend it to anyone who likes older science fiction. The Gate to Women’s Country is a book I’ve had on my reading list for years, but I think I’ll need some encouragement to read it.
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August 22nd, 2007 at 3:02 am
Thanks for the mention. The only one that I can think of offhand is Tad William’s Otherland, which features two African protagonists. Williams is white. Another series about an African is the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series. But these books bring up African issues, not African-American issues. Otherland especially brings up the death of the Bushman, which is a rare topic to tackle in a novel that you can consider cyberpunk.
Those and Acacia, of course!
August 22nd, 2007 at 12:27 pm
I’ll keep the Otherland series in mind. I’ve read some of his Memory, Sorrow and Thorn series and didn’t have the guts to finish it so I’m a bit biased against him. Then again that was nearly ten years ago so I propably should give him another chance.