I was watching a show on Netflix and I was really interested. I went to the Netflix profile to see if they would do a second season since the show was a success. It turns out that in the comments, several right-wingers called the show woke. I watched it and didn’t see anything woke in the series. The protagonists are black, but what’s the problem with that? Maybe that’s why they said it was woke? The show is new and original with new and original characters. Isn’t that what they wanted? It’s confusing for me, because if they’re going to complain anyway, why are they asking for changes?
I’d suggest you make the characters, and then generate racial background at random to be representative of the population where the story is set. Then, if anyone makes a stink about it, you’ll be able to objectively skewer them for being full of shit.
I don’t know if you’re actually making a story or just wanted to vent about right-wing cancel culture (which, fair), but there you go.
You realize that woke philosophy would criticize the idea that a person’s story can be separated from their ethnicity right?
I mean, “woke philosophy” isn’t an official, unified thing, but there is a school of thought that says that, yes.
I’d say if it’s a story about going on a bender or working an office job, you probably could do it this way. If it’s a story about racism in the US it obviously wouldn’t work. You can add flavour to the story after the fact too, for realism. Like, if a character in the bender story gets thrown in the drunk tank, and this is set anywhere like America, it should be written very differently if they happen to be black.
I’d also emphasise using demographics numbers that are as targeted as possible. A story about an American prison where only 15% of inmates are black would still be problematic, just in a different way, because you’re artificially erasing one of the most obvious examples of modern systemic racism.