It occurred to me, after reading this excellent post on women in fiction and the Bechdel Test, that perhaps you could construct one to address issues of POC and race. The analog seemed obvious, so I just wrote it out.
1. It has to have two POC in it.
2. Who talk to each other.
3. About something other than a white person.
Now, you see the obvious issue there, right? Yeah, it has to do with number one.
Even in stories that feature prominent POC characters, it is so rare to find more than one present, let alone who know each other well enough to talk to each other, that I came up short on television shows or popular novels that even come close to meeting it.
Obviously, “urban lit” and other books that feature a mostly POC cast will pass this easily. But these books are so well segregated from the rest of mainstream fiction (see: the African American section of your local bookstore) that I wonder how best to include them in the discussion.
So, to make this easier to discuss, I’m going to limit myself to works of fiction or visual media in the science fiction/fantasy genres, since that’s what I read.
So, back to the POC!Bechdel test.
I’m going to list the television shows I can think that pass this test.
– Battlestar Galactica : Dee and Geta had a great friendship that lasted pretty much the whole show. Also, there was the priestess from the planet of black fundamentalists, but I’m pretty sure she was only around to lead the dying white woman to her destiny.
– True Blood: I’m not sure that Lafayette and Tara have a conversation that isn’t about Sookie or Jason, but Tara does argue a lot with her mother. And also with the witch woman about the “devils” inside her.
…
Okay, sorry, drawing a blank here. No Joss Whedon show passes (ha!). Supernatural doesn’t (unless you count “Route 666” a/k/a the racist monster truck episode…which I don’t). Being Human: nope. None of the Star Treks I’m familiar with do, though I’m not close to enough of a Trekkie to be sure of this.
Other shows that do, though they’re not in the SF/F genres (that experiment sure ended quickly!)
– Grey’s Anatomy: frankly, the ease with which this show passes both the Bechdel test and my POC version of it makes me wish that it were, well, a better show. Which is not to say that the first few seasons didn’t have their charms and some snappy writing, but these days it’s just so…lugubrious and self-absorbed.
– Veronica Mars. This show had Wallace, one of the most awesome black characters on TV (until the third season ruined him, at least). It also has Weevil, who was Hispanic, and they definitely had conversations. Unfortunately, they were all about Veronica. However, it passes because Wallace has conversations with both his mom and dad (and, later, with Jackie). Weirdly enough, Veronica Mars has a way harder time passing the actual Bechdel test. I don’t think an honest f/f conversation (not about men) occurs until Mac becomes a recurring character in the second season.
I’m sure there are others. You should let me know about them in the comments!
As for fiction, there must be significantly more in the genre that passes this test. All of Octavia Butler’s work easily passes it. Liar by Justine Larbalestier (now with a much better cover!) passes it a dozen times over (along with every other novel she’s published).
However, I’ll say that when a novel is written in close third or first from the POV of someone who is not a person of color, that makes it extremely difficult to fulfill the second and third criteria of the test, since by necessity the main character will need to be present in all conversations (or, at least, overhearing them). So, the Bechdel test (either version) is hardly a failsafe arbiter of works that are sexist or racist. It’s just a baseline, and something that can reveal problematic trends. Like the fact that I can only think of two genre television shows that meet this incredibly low bar.
So, something to think about. And in the meantime, Bechdel test (either version) your favorite creative works and see how they fare.
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The Bechdel Test and Race in Popular Fiction
I just read “Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus” by Orson Scott Card. It easily scales #1 on the test (lots of POC characters) and #2, but they spend most of their time talking about Columbus so so much for #3.
One thing that makes the POC!Bechdel test a little more difficult to administer in SF than a straight Bechdel is that while almost all of the characters on TV are clearly gendered, they are not always clearly characters of color. Actors of color and characters of color are not always the same thing. It’s possible that two actors of color could have a conversation in character that would otherwise pass, but one of the characters is playing another species or demon or something like that. This happened a lot in some of the Star Trek series. You had actors of color portraying some representatives of species (like Klingons) interacting with actors of color portraying human POCs. I think this also happened at least a few times in Buffy with demons (but they were often talking about Buffy, so that may have failed anyway). This complexity doesn’t show up in Grey’s or Veronica Mars and, frankly, I’m not sure how to account it.
I don’t watch Grey’s Anatomy for the reasons you enumerated but what do you mean by your POC version? Is it a version where there are more POC in the cast?
I completly agree about Wallace although it was kind of annoying how his basketball playing was this informed ability that got tacked on when they needed it for the plot.
Don’t forget in Battlestar Galactica Cylon Model number 8 aka, Boomer and Athena. Who often has had conversations with each other and her other models. Does that count? Or conversations had with her half cylon, half human (also half asian, half white) daughter?
As for Joss, weird that Firefly never passed but I guess Book and Zoe never did have any kind of meaningful conversation. How sad. I wonder if they would have had the show continued longer than 13 episodes.
The show Eureka passes both versions of the test, I believe. Three major characters of color (Allison, Jo, and Henry), two of them women, all of whom are in positions of significant authority and have conversations about why the [sciencebabble] has gone [sciencebabble], no white people necessary.
Of course, the main POV character is still a white male, but he comes to the rescue much less often than I would expect given the way the show is set up.
The only show that I can think of on television that passes that test is Avatar: The Last Airebender, if you count people from Asia as POCs.
In terms of fiction, a lot of Tamora Pierce’s work–Circle of Magic and all of its sequels, the Trickster’s Choice series, and most of her later work has at least 2 POCs, even if they’re minor characters. Since these are all fantasy novels set in mystical times, though, you have to catch the discription of how the character looks. That said, I think that her Circle of Magic series has more POC than not, and certainly more than half of the main and supporting characters are non-white.
Dark Angel.
And I second Derek’s comment. Are we counting Lorne from Angel as white because the actor is white, or is he something other because he’s, you know, green and from another dimension? If it’s the second, then he and Gunn had conversations. Mostly about Angel, but also about other demons, especially in seasons 4-5, but there was an episode in season 3 where Gunn’s friends took over Lorne’s club. Ditto for Illyria. Yes, she was played by a white woman, but the character was blue and a demon.
Excellent post! As far as Star Trek goes, though I can’t site a specific episode, I’m sure that in Deep Space Nine Ben and Jake Sisko talked about Mrs. Sisko (who was a POC), about baseball, and no doubt about Plot Device(s) of the Week.
The new Defying Gravity has a black couple where the husband is an astronaut and the wife at mission control; they discuss various alien- and mission-related things. The show’s creepy focus on women’s reproductive choices (Abortion angst! Animal embryo experiment angst! Aliens taunting you with invisible babies angst!) loses it some serious points, though.
I’d like to mention Fire On The Mountain, by Terry Bisson, who is a white guy. It could well be that as a white person myself I’m more impressed by this book than I should be and that I’m missing problems I should spot–so your mileage may vary. I was surprised that I’d never heard of it until recently. I got a very nice used copy on Ebay…
It’s mostly amazing! Much of the story is a memoir by an old man who was born a slave and lived in Harper’s Ferry. The rest is from the point of view of his granddaughter and great-granddaughter, who are citizens of a socialist republic made up of former southern states–the mother is a media/research type and an activist who’s just gotten back from Africa; her partner was a famous astronaut who died in a failed Mars landing. In this book John Brown and Harriet Tubman team up and then win at Harper’s Ferry. A resistance movement (mostly slaves and POC but with some white abolitionist sympathizers) comes into being; Frederick Douglas urges everyone to take up arms; Mexican and Italian radicals show up to help. Some really terrible things happen which are too spoilery to tell. But they win! (That’s not a spoiler; it’s on the book jacket.) And there’s still problems and there’s still racism and white people still try to maintain white supremacy. But things are better!
And of course, a simply tremendous amount of the book is characters of color talking to other characters of color, generally about things other than white people.
Problems I do spot–the book doesn’t do enough to convey the appallingness of slavery although what comes through is plenty appalling and very wrenching. There’s too much “oh John Brown is amazing”, but John Brown isn’t a major character at all.
Bisson also does something I’ve tried in my own writing and am not sure about: he makes the narrator an unusual person in the household of a kind of half-assed hypocritical Quaker who on the one hand talks about maybe freeing his two slaves and doesn’t act on it and on the other hand mostly treats the narrator and his mother like regular servants. Thus (although the narrator spends a lot of time with other POC (I notice that I flinch from typing “slaves”) and talks a lot about his thoughts on how he is similar to and different from them we still don’t get their story told first-hand.
It’s certainly a flawed book (and I don’t entirely trust my own judgment of it) but there were a lot of things in it that really impressed me. I wish I had read it when I was in my teens and it was new; I always wished for a book like that. I also like it because it’s very clearly a book by a white author who said to himself “I’m going to write a story about this significant historical moment, I’m going to put characters of color front and center as actors, I’m going to write a diversity of opinions and backgrounds, and I’m going to write a future that has the same qualities.” Which for me as a white writer is a really helpful model, even if the result isn’t perfect.
Wallace and Weevil had a conversation in the very first episode of Veronica Mars about snitching and how it got one taped to a flagpole, and that comes back up a couple times until it gets to be old news. There are also multiple members of Weevil’s gang who are named, and certainly talk about things besides Veronica. (Also, in re: the gender Bechdel test, I think a lot of episodes did pass, between Mac, Meg, and Veronica’s mom.)
I’m pretty sure Firefly does pass. And a couple of years ago, I’m sure I could have quoted chapter and verse, but I haven’t rewatched the series in a while.
The mother of Tamoh Penikett, who played Helo in BSG, is a member of the White River First Nation, and while that’s something of a reach, IIRC it’s a fairly important part of his identity. FWIW.
Star Trek” Deep Space Nine passes. Captain Sisko and his son. Also Michael Dorn as Worf, though Michael Dorn plays a Klingon so I’m not sure if that qualifies as poc.
What Derek said, re: Star Trek. If you count any actor of color, then on Next Gen Worf and LaForge talked about stuff like Danger!, the ship, and I believe how to manage engineers.
If you don’t count black aliens, you might need to look to Deep Space Nine, where Sisko and Jake talk all the time, like family do. Alexander Siddig, who played the doctor, is half British and half Arab, so presumably some of his conversations are going to work as well. And they brought in Worf eventually, though his character seemed to me to be reduced to Dax and prune juice (only one of which is not a white person.) Basically, I think having the commander (and important figure in the Bajoran religion) be black makes the test easier for DS9.
I don’t remember Voyager or the few episodes of Enterprise I watched very well. But I don’t think Tuvok (again, black but an alien) and Ensign Kim hung out much.
I think that Star Trek: Deep Space 9 should pass the test. Season 7: Benjamin Sisko and Kasidy Yates discuss how she got pregnant – he forgot the reminder of his contraceptive (nice twist on future family planning, btw) by Dr Bashir. Then: Sisko and his father talk about Sisko’s mother. (By the way: this shows how a POC in a leading role changes sensibly this kind of things.)
Ampersand’s version of the (gender) Bechdel test includes an additional criterion not present in Bechdel’s original cartoon – that the two characters be named. I think that’s a good addition.
Doctor Who (from the Ninth Doctor at least) certainly passes. In one of the “cybermen” episodes (don’t recall which one, there were so many) Micky, meets his alter-ego Ricky in a parallel universe. Although played by the same actor, they were two quite different characters.
Martha’s mother, father, brother, and sister were all recurring named characters during her tenure as companion, who talk to her and at times to each other, frequently about her. In “Utopia” Martha, and Chantho have a conversation about Chantho’s speech affectation. Chanho, an alien insectoid, was to my recollection green. She was played by a Asian actress, and spoke with an Asian-sounding accent, so maybe this counts. There’s a good chance that both Micky and Martha will have had other qualifying conversations with incidental PoC characters .
The two-parter “Silence in the Library”/”Forests of the Dead”, in which neither Ricky nor Martha appears, nevertheless manages to have three strong black characters. Dr. Moon doesn’t meet the other two until the end, and to my recollection never talks directly to them, but Anita and “Other” Dave* were continuously together up to just before the latter’s death. I can’t recall if they had a qualifying conversation.
*The story departs from the convention that no two characters can have the same name. “Other” Dave’s backstory is that he joined the crew later, when there was already a crew member called Dave.
Though not relevent to the POC!Bechdel test, Anita’s characterisation is worthy of remark. She is the most developed redshirt I have ever seen. Heck, I’ve seen flatter leads.
Another possible POC!Bechdel pass might be “Midnight”, if you allow the character of the hostess who was not given a name. In her case, this was a plot element, and not an indicator of unimportance. I don’t recall if she talked with the other black character, the co-pilot.
It’s funny – I was just thinking about this (seriously. Like, two hours ago). Because I was considering Leverage (TV Show), and while it passes the Bechdel Test (Two named female characters [Sophie and Parker] who talk to each other [frequently] about something other than a man) with ease, there’s one POC in the entire cast, and while Hardison generally avoids stereotypes (I think, but that could be my privilege talking), he still seems a little bit “token.”
Also, I’m not sure whether Heroes fits or doesn’t.
#2 and 3 seem like they are going to eliminate a lot of things that are based on a US-centered (80% white) or U.K.-centered (90% white) population demographic: If you assembled a representative group of people and they talked to each other randomly, chances are that most of them would be talking to a white person. And if they chose their subjects randomly, chances are that they would also be talking about a white person.
In that respect it’s quite different from the men/women bechdel test, insofar as women are 50% of the population. And it’s especially different since you are deliberately eliminating the category of shows/fiction in which your own test is most likely to pass.
#2and 3 are also interesting criteria to apply to race. For the sex based bechdel test, the “talk to a woman but not about a man” criteria are roughly aimed to avoid counting women who exist solely as love interests or foils for the main characters. (Frankly, I’ve never gotten the “talk to each other” part, seeing as women can have very important roles unrelated to love interests, even if they never discuss much between themselves. But it’s really just a way of noting that population dynamics would suggest that women/woman conversations would happen all the time, so if not it’s a problem.)
With POC, it’s a bit different. If I had written something with a mixed race cast, I wouldn’t want to have the POC talk to each other if they wouldn’t otherwise do so: in other words, just because two people are POC doesn’t mean they should be friends or even acknowledge each others existence.
Neither does the race of the subject seem to make much sense: Take “24”, for example. When it featured a black president which made up a lot of the show, everyone ended up talking about him. When it featured a white president, everyone ended up talking about him instead. Any two POC characters with the same importance of roles would have passed the test if they were talking about a black president, and failed if they were talking about a white one.
It’s fun to talk about, sure. But gender is simple enough, balanced enough, and (in books and video) generally binary enough that it leads itself to a simple test like the Bechdel. race is harder.
“Lost” passes this test. They have POC who have friendships with each other. Michael and Jin start off on a bad foot, but end up as friends, if I remember correctly.
Star Trek, Deep Space Nine had at least 6 permanent or recurring black characters: Captain Benjamin Sisco, Jake Sisco (his son), Sarah Sisco (his mother), Joseph Sisco (his father), Kasidy Yates (his girlfriend/wife), and Jennifer Sisko (his late wife). Captain Sisco is probably the most important and best developed character on the show. These characters talk to each other about all kinds of things.
Even the original Trek passes, although only one incident comes to mind immediately. In the episode with the alien shape shifter who kills people by draining their bodies of salt (The Man Trap), one form it takes is of a handsome African crewman who tries to seduce (kill!) Lieutenant Urhura.
Yes, I’m a dork.
Television series starring Kyra Sedgewick The Closer passes in both ways–some POC characters and conversations between them not about non-POC characters, and a handful of women characters who have conversations that aren’t about men.
And on “Lost”, 3 of the 5 who escape the island and have to return are POC. I wish they had more black characters on the show, but they do make a lot of headway in pushing back against the idea that the only people who count are white Americans. Killing Mr. Echo upset me a lot, though. He was a great character, a bad guy who pretends to be a priest and then starts to buy into it.
I, too, was going to mention Leverage as at least passing the Bechdel Test for women.
Despite the two white leads, Bones passes both tests: Cam and Angela, both POC women, do have several conversations, mostly about forensic evidence and murder, and Bones (white woman) chats with them both about bones, laboratory techniques and various very pseudoscientific stuff.
On Lost, Michael and Jin had semi conversations about fish, sailing, and making a raft. Since Jin couldn’t speak much English at the time and was mostly communicating via hand gestures, I’m not sure if this counts, but as Jin’s English slightly improved they had a few half conversations about Michael’s quest to find his son. Mr. Eko and his brother had passionate conversations about drug dealing and evading smoke monsters. Hugo chatted with Michael and Rose about food and the hatch. Hugo chatted with Sayid about the Gulf War.
On the women’s side, I’m kinda stuck; most of the women’s conversations were about the Others (male), Jack (male), Sawyer (male), Jin….yeah, I could go on. There may well have been a conversation or two about fishing or needing to find a cave, but I’m blanking on it.
The Wire passes with flying colors — most of the characters are POC, played by damn fine actors, incidentally.
It probably doesn’t pass the gender Bechdel test, unfortunately, but that’s not what this post is about.
Missed this:
It should be clear that Doctor Who also passes the gender Bechdel test.
Turning to literature, my favourite series ever is Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea cycle. As a whole, it passes both tests. The stories are worth commenting on individually.
A Wizard of Earthsea fails the gender test – very few female characters, none of whom talk to each other that I can recall. It passes the PoC test with flying colours. In fact it has only one named white character, so fails the reverse test.
The Tombs of Atuan passes the gender test, but fails the PoC test. This is excusable because the plot revolves around Ged’s (the eponymous PoC lead character from the first book) adventure in a land occupied by white people.
The Farthest Shore is similar to the first book in so far as most of the characters are male PoC. There are a few women, none of whom I can recall speaking to each other.
Tehanu is where it gets interesting. This is a female-centred book, all but one of whom are PoC. I don’t recall whether any of its male characters talk to one another at all. This is also the book which “feminises” Earthsea
Tales from Earthsea (a collection of short stories) continues to explore the role of women in Earthsea, which makes it all the more curious that none of its stories passes the gender test, there being at most one female character in each present at any time.
The Other Wind passes all tests in both forward and reverse direction – the reverse PoC test is the most marginal success – there are just two white characters who do talk to each other about something other than a PoC.
I have not read the Word of Unbinding or the Rule of Names.
Does Dr. Bashir not count as POC? Because I’m sure he and Sisko talk about stuff. Including that whole two-part episode where they got put in a homeless-jobless-concentration camp in the past. Michael Dorn was playing a baseball player in Harlem in “Far Beyond the Stars.” And there are lots of Yates-Sisko conversations about love and going to prison and stuff. How long do the conversations have to be?
I feel like Deep Space Nine was kind of a high-water mark for tv, and certainly for Trek. There were more white than POC main cast aliens, and the whole Sisko family (Grampa, Dad, son, Dad’s girlfriend, Mirror-universe not-dead Mom) was involved in a lot a plot stuff.
Surely Oz passes, whatever else you may think of it. It should pass with a higher score, though.
Wow, Dee, I forgot about that dude in The Man Trap. Haven’t seen TOS in a while.
Trying to think of more DS9 episodes, besides the Sisko ones, and I would assume the ones with Dr. Bashir’s parents would pass too.
Are there any seasons of Law and Order that might pass?
Imho, the POC/Bechdel test is a sign of a _bad_ show. Why? Because it usually means they’re racially segregating the cast. The POC primarily interact with other POC characters… in particular, the POC characters only ever _date_ the other POC characters.
DS9 actually was a good example of what I’m talking about – the first black guest-character to appear on the show is automagically incorporated into Sisko’s personal life.
Don’t get me wrong, I _liked_ Deep Space 9, and how they had a black man as the boss without either obsessing over his race or ignoring it…
but Cassidy Yates annoyed me.
Speaking of LeGuin novels, my favorite is The Telling. The protagonist is South Asian, IIRC, and her girlfriend is Chinese. Then she goes to a planet where the people probably arent’ white, but I can’t remember how they’re described.
Silenced is Foo, you make a good point.
But I love Cassidy Yates. I think she is awesome and beautiful, but I am also always incredibly interested in the non-Starfleet characters, and it isn’t like she was just a love interest. She was pretty involved in the Maquis storyline for a while.
The non-Starfleet thing meant I was amazingly excited about the existence of Travis Mayweather. Almost enough to not hate Enterprise in the beginning. That…didn’t go so well.
Second the recommendation for The Wire – in a more just universe, Wendell Pierce and Andre Royo would be Emmy winners. The show doesn’t do as well when put to the gender Bechdel test but doesn’t fail it totally. The most notable example is the relationship between Kima and Cheryl, but we also see conversations between Kima and Shardene, Kima and Caroline, Tosha and Kimmy, Ronnie and Ilene, Briana and Donette, and Briana and De’Londa (all but one of which would also pass a POC Bechdel test).
Would Homicide have passed at some point?
Voyager does pass, I believe, with four actors of color in major roles, playing a Vulcan, a half-human/half-Klingon, and two humans: Tuvok, B’Elanna, Chakotay, and Harry Kim, played by Tim Russ, Roxann Dawson, Robert Beltran, and Garrett Wang, respectively. I can’t cite specific episodes or interactions, but I do believe that at least some of the conversations between these characters meet #3.
I’m always interested in breaking down media representation by the numbers — meeting the requirements of these tests is no guarantee that the content will be any good, but the very difficulty of the exercise is informative. I recently began trying to create a tally of television shows (of any kind) in which the central protagonist (i.e., the character who drives the plot the most and tends to be impossible to replace) is a woman of colour (preferably played by a woman of colour as well, though there was one cartoon character, Lilo, voiced by a white woman). Even after sending the list out to friends and asking for help, I’ve only been able to find about twelve shows produced in white-dominated countries (US, Canada, and Australia, so far). Not very impressive.
Racialicious also once had a cool thread about adapting the Bechdel test for race representation.
“One thing that makes the POC!Bechdel test a little more difficult to administer in SF than a straight Bechdel is that while almost all of the characters on TV are clearly gendered, they are not always clearly characters of color.”
Also the fact that the race of literary characters is seldom mentioned.
Also, do “races” in the fantasy sense count here?
Don’t forget about Scrubs! Two of the four main characters are PoC and they have families too, plus smaller characters like Nurse Roberts and the Asian head of surgery whose name I can’t remember right now. (I haven’t seen the show in a few years.)
I think that if there’s only one moment we can think of in three seasons, then the show fails the racial Bechdel test.
We should focus on the series as a whole. Is the series structured or written in such a way that there are multiple characters of color who are central enough to the stories that they actually speak to each other? To me, that’s the meaningful test. What you’re describing isn’t meaningful, imo; it’s a loophole.
Sailorman: The US is 75% non-hispanic White. Assuming that the average episode has 10 conversations in it, and that there are 22 episodes a season, and that 25% of characters are non-white, it seems to me extremely likely that if conversations are distributed randomly, then there will be multiple conversations every season between the characters of color.
Also, many science fiction shows are set in the far future, when it is likely that the US will be less white than is today. Also, many shows — in particular, the Star Trek shows — are supposed to be drawing from the entire planet, not just from the USA.
Looked at purely from the Bechdel race test perspective, I think that Deep Space Nine and Voyager are the best science-fiction TV shows I’ve ever seen. Both shows featured multiple characters of color who were routinely included in the storylines of the show.
Red Dwarf is a borderline case. Two of the four most important characters are played by actors of color; Craig Charles, who plays Lister, is multiracial (black father, Irish mother), and Danny John-Jules, who plays Cat, is black.
But I’m not sure everyone watching realized that Craig Charles is a POC, and afaik the series never established Lister’s race one way or the other. (Craig Charles publicly talks about his racial heritage, however; for instance, his autobiography is entitled No Irish, No Niggers.)
Cat isn’t a human; rather, he’s a human-looking person who evolved from cats. However, he isn’t covered in makeup, so he appears to be a black man.
“Heroes” absolutely passes. But this would be an example of how passing the Bechdel test doesn’t exactly make you a non-racist show.
“The Office” had the relationship between Kelly and Daryl, but I can’t really think of many other instances where they’ve passed the race Bechdel test.
In re. Star Trek: in Voyager Tuvok, a black Vulcan (Vulcans are typically portrayed as pale skinned so I’d say he ‘counts’) and Harry Kim, both primary characters interacted on a regular basis. Also, Enterprise featured 2 POC characters, Travis Mayweather who is black and Hoshi Sato who is Japanese, though I don’t recall at the moment whether they ever specifically discussed topics other than white people.
Roshanna, I de-lurked to say “Tamora Pierce! Tamora Pierce!” only to find you beat me to it. She technically writes for teens, but she’s still very close to my heart. (She also passes the Bechdel gender test with flying colors, and writes against classism, and homophobia, and sexual violence, and imperialism, and cruelty to animals…she wins.) The Circle of Magic Books are particularly good — 2 of the 4 main characters are people of color, as are several of their mentors and teachers, and one of their foster mothers (maybe both…I can’t for the life of me remember if Rosethorn is white or multiracial) — complex, three-dimensional characters all.
Sailorman, I think applying this test to science fiction and fantasy is legitimate, because the author has the ability to create their universe in whatever way they want. A person writing realistic fiction set in the U.K. or U.S. might not “naturally” find themselves writing conversations between people of color (although I think it’s legitimate to criticize them if they disappear people of color from their “realistic” stories), but SF/F writers don’t have those demographic constraints. They make the universe, they make the rules. (If Firefly had followed its own rules, for instance, there would have been many more people of color because the human species would be at least half Chinese.) They can write universes where race is a factor in cultural dynamics and oppressions, or relatively “colorblind” universes where characters of all colors mingle without comment. But if they exclude people of color from their universe entirely, or to put them all in marginal roles, it’s their decision and they don’t even have the excuse of trying to be “realistic”.
Also, Sailorman, I do know I’m not responding to your points specifically — I was really just using your thoughts as a launching-off point. Thanks!
I kind of feel like point 3 (or 3a) should be “talk about something other than how stereotypically POC said character is.”
Lilo’s voice actor is white? I feel like that might be disappointing, but I think what’s on the screen counts a lot. That’s by far my favorite Disney movie ever, and my son loves it too. The reason I like it (aside from aliens, which always appeal) is that it’s about a girl who doesn’t have to be a princess. Plus the realistic, identifiable family dynamics/small child approach to life.
I am so pleased you liked the post, and I deeply approve of the Johnson test: *thinks thinky thoughts* Meredith Duran’s The Duke of Shadows passes (not entirely race-issues-free, but PoC hero in a historical romance, interesting!).
Here’s what I’m wondering about. What does it mean that if a show “passes” but passes because the character was talking to or about a family member. I mean it’s good to know that a POC doesn’t exist within a vaccum (as no character should) but is it a bit of a cheat when the character is family so that way there is already this established relationship vs bringing in a second POC who then would develop relationships, possibly outside the matrix of the white charcter (who tend to be the main characters)
Also what about biracial or multiracial actors who, for all intents and purposes are playing white characters. (we never see Helo’s family or hear him talk about them as they all died before the show begins. I know Bashir’s family pop up at some point but I didn’t watch the show closely enough to know what they looked like) If they are coded as white, do they pass as white even if the actor is not white?
Amp, Red Dwarf was my first thought as well, but I am surprised that you say many people wouldn’t realize Craig Charles is a POC. He wore dreadlocks, after all.
(Boy does it ever fail the original Bechdel test, though.)
Reading this thread, I’m reminded why DS9 was my favorite of the Trek series.
Dexter is the television show that immediately jumped into my mind. The main character is white, but his lab partner is Japanese-American, the Chief of Police position is held by first a Cuban and then a Haitian woman and two of the detectives are an African-American and a Cuban man. All of the characters have complicated relationships with each other and there are lengthy sub-plots that focus on parts of their lives that have nothing to do with Dexter.
The L Word passed both tests easily. Two of the main characters are black and they even talk to people of color who aren’t each other or love interests!
Pushing Daisies had a black main character & he had conversations with other POCs and had a recurring sorta-girlfriend character who was also black.
I’m sure that Uhurah and Sulu talk to each other about *something* during the run of Star Trek, although I don’t think either of those characters do a whole lot of talking in general.
I really want to make the POC version of this test harder by adding that they can’t be related or love interests. Because it bugs me to no end when there’s a single POC cast member and you know they’re going to get together with someone by virtue of the fact that they just introduced a single other person of their same race.
Bashir’s parents were both, I believe, Indian. But I could be msiremembering — when I was younger I usually coded people with his skin tone speaking with British accents as Indian though they may have been of Middle eastern extraction. But his parents were not white, I remember that.
Also, as I said over on the ABW thread, I think Worf counts as POC not just because the actor is, but because of Worf’s character. He’s the only Klingon in Starfleet, and the culture there is prejudiced against his people though they are technically allies. He goes through a lot of struggles with assimilation and hyper-compensation for living in his own culture. The fights he has with his son Alexander about how, even though he is part human, when people look at him they will only see Klingon and how he must come to terms with that, paralleled almost exactly the conversations I had with my mother when I was a wee lass.
The Middleman passes the Bechdel test every episode (Wendy and Lacey always talk; Wendy and her mother or Wendy and Ida often do, too) and passes the POC Bechdel test nearly every episode (Wendy talks to her mother or to Noser). Of course, it’s cancelled, but it’s out on DVD and absolutely wonderful!
I was wondering if Dollhouse would scrape a pass via Tahmoh Penikett’s character talking to Agent Loomis, but they mostly talk about Caroline, I think.
lilacsigil – I have heard (but not confirmed) that Miracle Laurie is indigenous Hawaiian. And even though they talked about Caroline a lot, they didn’t talk about her all the time.
But just because an actor is a PoC doesn’t mean a character is (made even more complicated in dollhouse, obviously, because even if the character Madeline is PoC that doesn’t mean Mellie was (her mother lives in Iowa or some such state), or that the bounty-hunter was). Now while I’d really like it if the show established Ballard and Madeline as PoC. I think unless it did their characters are no indication of the show being less white-centred.
Cola – I agree that osmething would be added if whether the characters of colour were related or in a sexual relationship was also analysed. That would probably show crossing a line between “have a character of colour” and “depicting worlds where characters of colour exist”
Tamora Pierce is an interesting example. Because although I really, really, really, really love her, I’ve always thought her racial politics were dodgy (although getting less so). I didn’t like the depiction of Carthak. And while I adore the Tricksters books, I really dislike the way Ali is constantly presented as the moderating force. Her view that the Raka need to be reined in is endorsed in text (and she doesn’t even have to deal with anything difficult after the male heirs are killed).
Which is just as a sign that any Bechdel test is a more effective at analysing fiction en masse, and demonstrating how little passes that very basic test. Rather than an indication of positive value that of stuff that does.
(and one day I’m going to write a blog post abou the portrayal of black women in the wire, because although that show treats any women’s lives and owmen’s work as uninteresting, the way it portrays black women in particular is horrendous).
Maia – I’ve tried to watch The Wire, but the treatment of female characters just kept putting me off. I’m glad it’s not just me!
Thank you for this post!
I only saw the first season of Heroes, but I would say that it passed the race Bechdel test just from the friendship between Hiro and Ando, which was so fun to watch–they overtly valued each other in a way that you don’t often get to see men do on dudebro-saturated US TV. I didn’t watch after season 1, so I don’t know what happened after that.
I only watched the first 2 seasons of Lost, but Jin and Sun spent a lot of time together and also had flashbacks to Korea where you got to see their families– is there some reason that Sun and Jin interacting wouldn’t count?
Finally, I agree that DS9 was the best Star Trek. Again, the relationship between Jake and his dad was just amazing to me: they were physically affectionate! Sisko actually *kissed* his teenage son! And they said they loved each other, often. How often do we get to see that kind of affection between fathers and adolescent sons on US TV? Not much, at least not on shows that I have seen. For that alone I loved that show.
I would mention Dr. Bashir and Keiko O’Brien, but I suspect that the only time they interacted was when they were talking about Miles. And that friendship, Dr. Bashir and (Miles) O’Brien, was *very* problematic about gender, what with all the nagging wife bullcrap.
Neil Gaiman’s “Anansi Boys” has one white character and he’s a bad guy. Flying colors, especially for a white author
Firefly also had conversations between Book and Inara, whose actress is Latina, though mostly they were about (white) Mal. Sadly, I think you’re right that most Whedon stuff doesn’t pass.
Wow is this ever sad.
I have never felt Keiko O’Brian as a nagging wife: she was never “just a wife” – she was a scientist, a woman with an intellectual life, and outside Starfleet – and I think that counts a lot.
And I think that Julian Bashir’s parents were more of Middle Eastern than of Indian origin. But of course I might be influenced by Julian being played by Siddig El Fadil. Which, by the way, has also a very RP-British accent – I wonder what a blind person would make of that…
[Now I have ended up in wikipedia’s page on Siddig El Fadil – and I have found out that the actor is (a) Sudanese-born (b) British citizen (c) mixed race? possibly – his father is Sudanese, his mother English; but of course she could be a non-white English.]
“Snow Crash” by Neal Stephenson has a black/asian protagonist (Hiro) who interacts a number of times with other POC, including the main villain who is a native Alaskan. Hiro’s love interest is Latina, although she’s more of a plot device than a character. Her main job is to explain the plot, so that gives a few more qualifying conversations. She briefly plays a more active role right at the end (I’m trying to avoid spoilers, hence the vagueness). The book just barely passes the gender test, thanks to a conversation between a (white) female main character and her mother.
“Neverwhere” by Neil Gaiman has two black characters: Hunter and the Marquis de Carabas. But I can’t recall what conversations they had.
As for TV shows, I’m quite fond of the live action Highlander. But it fails the POC test completely, and has maybe two qualifying conversations on the gender test (between Amanda and Rebecca, and probably another one with Amanda).
Harold and Kumar go to white castle passes the race test. Fails the gender test completely.
24 passes the test, at least in the seasons that featured the Palmer family. Granted, they all talk about Jack Bauer a lot, but there are other conversations too. I think that maybe both Tony and Michelle are POC as well.
What about Barney Miller? Surely Harris (black), Yemana (Asian) had conversations?
As to Battlestar Galactica, what about Edward James Olmos? I can remember several scenes with him and Boomer/Athena and Dee.
Maia, we should do an in-depth young adult fantasy analysis. :) Sadly, I think many of my middle school favorites would fail — Robin McKinley fails, a lot of Lloyd Alexander fails, C.S. Lewis and Tolkien fail and fail and fail and fail. In fact, the only conversations I can think of between people of color in Chronicles of Narnia are about how to enslave, rape, or kill the “pale, beautiful” Narnians of the north. I realized that on my second or third reading of the books, at about fourteen, and A Horse and His Boy was ruined forever.
It’s interesting, it does seem like Pierce’s writing about race has steadily improved — Circle of Magic is (in my opinion, but I’d love to hear your perspective) awesome, and Carthak is indeed a little dubious (the first time I heard about Carthak, I winced, thinking it was going to be the same as C.S. Lewis’s or Tolkien’s evil dark-skinned nations). It seems like her Tortall books started off with a strong sense of gender dynamics, and only slowly brought in racial dynamics. They do talk about indigenous peoples and imperialism fairly quickly, but in the Lioness books that’s centered on Jon, the white king, becoming the first “Voice of Tribes”, Jon and Alanna ridding the indigenous people’s city of those demon things, and the K’mir Buri and Thayet escaping to civilized, white Tortall. Dubious. I seem to remember the Immortals and Protector of the Small being an improvement on that, and (over in another universe) Circle of Magic being another improvement. I should read them again, though, I read them at a time when I was noticing but not analyzing race in books.
I think the most interesting duo is the Trickster books, probably because they’re strongly centered on the conflict between the indigenous raka (black, for the benefit of anyone reading this who wasn’t obsessed with these books in junior high) and luarin invaders (white). I had definite pangs about Aly’s centrality (also, I’d always pictured her father George as multiracial, so I was actually surprised that she was “pure luarin”), and also pangs about the idea that the white people from the East were represented by the Great Gods and the black people from the islands had a minor, trickster god. I did think the characters of Dove and Sarai were great, and I liked that the raka general, warrior, mage, and cook could all keep up with Aly, especially the general Ulasim. I also thought Pierce did a pretty good job highlighting Aly’s privilege, pointing out when she was being listened to or given special treatment or taken more seriously simply because she was white. Like you, I was uncomfortable with the fact that Aly (and Dove, but less so) were placed in the “stop the bloodthirsty massacre!” role, but I was actually impressed that Pierce acknowledged that the raka had every right to mistrust and fear the luarin — she made Aly work for their trust without falling into the trap of saying “Aly is hear to HELP you, black people, why are you being MEAN to her?” At least, that’s how it seemed to me.
Again Edward James Olmos has brown eyes, but he wears contacts when playing William Adama that make Adama’s eyes blue. This is done so that Olmos and Jamie Bamber, (who is white) who is playing his son Apollo, will resemble each other more. So I think they were trying to code Adama as white.
The thing about these tests is that they’re a floor, not a ceiling – especially for a TV series, where you get multiple topics in a season, having the focus slide of the white men for at least one episode every season shouldn’t be an accomplishment.
(I’d contribute something but it’s been four years since i got to watch adult TV on a regular basis…all of PBS kids’ lineup passes both tests EXCEPT Martha Speaks and Clifford, I think)
How about comics? Bayou passes both tests, but I just re-read McGruder’s Birth of a Nation & I’m pretty sure it doesn’t pass the gender test.
(Online comics post): Dykes to watch out for passes, fairly easily. Hereville does not. Will it in the future? Girl Genius passes, though not by Amp’s stricter test. God and maybe the artist alone know if XKCD passes or not.
I think that if there’s only one moment we can think of in three seasons, then the show [the original Star Trek] fails the racial Bechdel test.
Surely Uhuru and Sulu talk about the running of the ship at some point.
But isn’t Mithros, the greatest of the male gods, black? I think that came up at the end of the last Daine book. It’s been years since I read them, though.
If it runs for long enough, yes.
For those who don’t know, Hereville takes place in a town in which 99% of the residents are white Azkinazi Jews. So it really does fail the racial Bechdel test, although it passes the Jewish Bechdel test (and also the gender Bechdel test).
In the first Hereville graphic novel (coming out in September 2010), there is a major character who is a POC — Mirka’s stepsister Rochel. However, Rochel is the only POC in the book.
However, if the series goes on long enough, we’ll eventually get to see Mirka (the protagonist) leave home, once she’s a young adult. When that happens I’m looking forward to showing a more diverse cast of characters.
I’d like to eventually do a book with Rochel as the protagonist; that book would pass the racial Bechdel test.
Finally, I agree that DS9 was the best Star Trek. Again, the relationship between Jake and his dad was just amazing to me: they were physically affectionate! Sisko actually *kissed* his teenage son! And they said they loved each other, often. How often do we get to see that kind of affection between fathers and adolescent sons on US TV? Not much, at least not on shows that I have seen. For that alone I loved that show.
Not only that, but I loved how fatherly Sisko could be in general. Like in the epidode with the (definitely coded as POC, I’d say) baby who grew up to be a Jem Hadar, he was so taken with the cute little tyke.
Moments of male affection do stand out on tv in general. It’s a line that’s seldom crossed. Adama and Tigh had a really long, intense hug in a late season of BSG, and I was amazed because while that’s exactly what many men would do in that situation, it’s never shown.
I’ve been especially thinking about this as regards kids’ programming. Lilo and Stitch was already mentioned. My son watches Noggin almost exclusively. Little Bill and Gullah Gullah Island pass with flying colors. Dora, Diego, and Ni-Hao Kai-Lan pass but maybe not every episode due to a lack of human character…then again the animals on those seem to be coded Latino/Chinese.
A lot of the cartoons don’t have human characters, but I get the feeling a lot of rabbits and pigs and whatever the hell Wubbzy is are coded white. Most are a bit ambiguous. Max and Ruby has multicolored rabbits stuck in horrible retro gender roles.
@Tamora Pierce:
I think her writing has gotten better with time, for racial politics and for realism. The Alanna books particularly seemed over-the-top, and I found her characterization of the Bazhir in them kind of icky – Arab-ish religious and sexist desert-people. I liked the Carthakis and saw them as based heavily on the late Roman Empire (incredible sea trade, imperialism, instability, wealth, decadence). I didn’t think of the Carthakis as connected to real PoC cultures – just dark-skinned and in a warm climate. I remember Mithros as having dark skin, but given he’s a European-stand-in sun/warrior god, I picture him as deeply tanned, not black.
The Trickster books and the Kel books both had better characterisation, racial politics, and realism than the Alanna books, imo.
Rosa, I think Birth of a Nation does pass the gender Bechdel test, but just barely. Remember the 2 female friends who are in the black power group in the beginning and end up being love interests for the opposing sides? They have one, maybe 2 conversations that don’t involve men.
Geez, I did not remember Mithros as black at all, but I think you’re right — I was so busy being irritated that the Great Gods apparently thought that imperialism was a totally good idea, and allied themselves with the white nations, while the nations with dark-skinned people — the Copper Isles, Carthak, and Yamani Islands — all seemed to have ‘lesser’ gods that I didn’t even think about the color of the gods themselves. Oops.
Interesting thought about the Carthakis being akin to the Romans, Quill — I read the Daine quartet about twelve years ago, and now I want to go read them again. I vaguely remember there being tons of different races in Carthak (which could again be like the Roman empire), and the prince who becomes emperor being half black — is that true? I do remember that the darkest people were the slaves with the animal magic. (On a side note, throughout the Tortall books there seems to be a lot of native peoples and people of color who have forms of magic that come from or relate to nature and animals instead of the more specifically human Gift — I’m not sure what I think about that.)
So that I am not ENTIRELY one note (I know, too late) I’ll also mention the Matrix series — they pass the POC Bechdel, especially if Keanu Reeves “counts” — it always seemed to me like he was coded white, but I don’t think they ever said so, specifically.
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For those who don’t know, Hereville takes place in a town in which 99% of the residents are white Azkinazi Jews. So it really does fail the racial Bechdel test, although it passes the Jewish Bechdel test (and also the gender Bechdel test).
This is not meant to be a criticism of Hereville which is set in a town which is 9% white Azkinazi for good reasons. However, I find that “this story just happens to be in a place that contains only white people” gets used as an excuse to exclude POC. For example, Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Darkover series generally wouldn’t pass the POC Bechdel test because it takes place on a planet settled exclusively or almost exclusively by people of Northern European extraction. So…did she do that because she was interested in Celtic traditions and wanted to explore them or as a handy way of not having to think about race and how racial dynamics might play out in the future? Or “The Thirteenth Child” set in an America in which the Amerind never existed. In any given example the author might well have good reasons for making the choices he or she did, but in aggregate it starts to feel off. Maybe if more POC were being published and promoted by publishers we’d get more examples of fantasy novels set in lands where everyone had black skin and the magic followed African traditions or science fiction novels about the Chinese colonization of space.
I completely agree.
I agree with Sailorman and SiF. I think a straightforward translation of the original Bechdel Test to race is incomplete, because race dynamics don’t usually work the same way as gender dynamics. I’m especially concerned with what SiF mentioned, about how encouragement of this standard could lead to ghettoization of the PoC characters. PoC do often stick to ourselves in real life, and that denying that it happens isn’t good for anything. But I can easily see how for my ethnicity, making more of us talk only to each other on the screen only plays into the worst stereotypes about us.
Personally, when I see an Asian character on TV, here’s a standard I’d apply:
1. Is the character named?
2. Do they actually have a personality? (Here’s a useful rubric. If the first episode when they’re introduced were a 19th century novel that your high school English teacher was forcing you to read, could you write the standard 500-word essay about them? Is there enough material? Characters who weren’t important from the first episode but later got a Mauve Shirt upgrade are alright, but I say “first episode” specifically because I want to avoid including barely-visible bit characters that have simply been around long enough that you could cobble something together.)
3. Do they have lines?
4. Do they have a conversation with a non-Asian person about something besides the fact that they’re Asian? (Or associated stereotypes thereof. Talking about how they’re handling “fitting it”, etc.)
Just my two cents.
It fails the reverse gender Bechdel test – it doesn’t have two male characters who talk to each other about something other than a women.
It fails the reverse gender Bechdel test – it doesn’t have two male characters who talk to each other about something other than a women.
No it doesn’t. The bullies early in the story talk about Zindel. Zindel tells the bullies to let him go. The grandfather blesses Zindel. (Arguably, you could also count the grandfather talking to the male god of Judaism, but since he doesn’t answer I’m inclined to pass that one.) The male characters are distinctly secondary in Hereville, but they are present and they do talk to each other.
That’s one of the reasons that the Bechdel test is so hilarious and pointed-because it is such a low bar that any piece of work should pass it. Yet so many don’t. Whereas very few fail the reverse Bechdel test-even Bechdel’s work.
I didn’t think the bullies were named, but, on checking, I see that one was, so his exchange with Zindel about letting him (Zindel) go does qualify.
I wouldn’t count a blessing as talking “to each other”, though, nor is the Grandfather named.
I understand that.
Hereville is (obviously) deliberately very female centered. One of the things that’s interesting about the culture, to me, is how very separate female and male lives are, especially for those below the age of marriage. Mirka has literally never had a significant, one-on-one conversation with any male who isn’t a close relative.
Both the bullies have names that I know, but I’m not certain that either name comes up in the graphic novel version, so it’s likely the graphic novel will fail the reverse Bechdel test. (The expanded version adds a few female characters — mainly, Gittel and Rochel, two of Mirka’s sisters — but no new male characters.)
At the time I began doing Hereville, I had two projects I was thinking of — Hereville, and an fictionalized autobiographical piece set in a Jewish summer camp. At my camp, the boys and girls were kept fairly separated. So either way, I would have ended up doing an all-Jewish, sex-segregated comic book.
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Roxanne Dawson, who played B’lanna Torres on Voyager, is Latino, and the character’s human half is Latino, plus her mixed race status (human/klingon) is definitely used metaphorically in several episodes (especially the one where she didn’t want her baby to look Klingon!) so I’d say she passes. She and Harry Kim were good friends and talked about a lot of things, so I give
Voyagerthe point.The Janeway/Seven-of-Nine female bromance means almost every episode of the last three seasons passes the gender bechtel test. Janeway also talked to Kes and B’lanna about a lot of things, not all of them men.
In terms of the gender test, obviously Buffy passes a lot, but Angel is surprisingly bad. Even during the two seasons where there’s more than one female lead, they almost never talk to each other. Fred is always with Wesley and Gunn, and Cordy is always with Angel or Connor. The only conversations I was able to find that counted were between Cordelia and Lilah (they may have hated each other, but they did talk about thinks other than men.) Still, that was like, three episodes total. Plus maybe one with Darla and Drusilla where they talked about murder and mayhem.