In Which I Ask A Question About Race

OK- race is a topic I don't like talking about, because 1) it's stupid and 2) it's a minefield. But there are times when ignoring it can really blow up in your face, and this is one of them. So, here goes. This is for the sci-fi story I'm writing.

First, a little background:
There's a police force called the Nomarchy Civil Police Caste. They form the police for several solar system, under the umbrella of (obviously) the Nomarchy. The thing is, they're all clones, built from the genetic template of a single individual. They undergo rigerous training (and occasionally plastic surgery) to present a front to the public of absolute uniformity. They're also extremely badass.

So, my problem is, what race to I make them? They're all physically identical (adjusting for age) but the problem is that, no matter what attributes I give them assholes Cyberwulf certain individuals will go out of their way to choose the most negative interpertation. If I make them Asian, for instance, it will be seen as Yellow Peril because they look alike and know martial arts. But if I make them white, it will be seen as Mighty Whitey because they're authoritative and kick tons of ass.

I'm currently dodging the question (having a dim audience surrogate is very helpful here) by having them described as "sort of turkish, I think." I figured a balkan-ish origin would be good because it's heavily mixed and has milder ethnic stereotypes associated with it, at least in this country.

Help?

One idea would be to skip the issue by never saying; you wouldn't even need to keep physical description to a minimum, just skin color and maybe one or two other characteristics. Would the characters in the story even care so much? If not, then it becomes an entirely unnecessary detail. Either way, by not mentioning it, you put the emphasis elsewhere, onto something more important.

Make them a generic mixture of all races like the Future People from that one episode of South Park!

It's a shame you already started, 'cause you might have had them wear full-body armor, and use electronic voice modules. If they all wore the same design, that would create a sort of stormtrooper effect (legions of identical drones)

unskilled78 wrote:

It's a shame you already started, 'cause you might have had them wear full-body armor, and use electronic voice modules. If they all wore the same design, that would create a sort of stormtrooper effect (legions of identical drones)

I was thinking something similar. If you have them mostly covered up by uniform, helmet, gloves etc, and then never use any attributes, you might get around it. I.e. if you say "his eyes narrowed" as opposed to "his blue eyes narrowed" and so on.

Uhm, or the individual who they were all cloned from could be unique - a strange genetic abnormality themselves... And therefore, of no discernable race.

:/:

Fuck all those suggestions, pin it on the gingers.

Go for the double whammy: make 'em Turkish, but then kit them out in body armor and face masks. Make the body armor some weird, unassuming neutral color--tan, beige, blue-gray, whatever--and then when your modern Earth person sees them, he has trouble thinking of them as menacing. Then they curb-stomp him.

Do you even need to touch on the subject at all? That is, if you're meaning "race" in the terms I think you're talking about.

Why not just describe them as completely uniform, maybe talk about one or two prominant/unusual characteristics, and let it be? The audience can imagine what they want.

[x] - Other (Unspecified)

If you specify it, you'll always be playing into some sort of baggage. Badass authority figures? If they're white, they're Aryan Supermen. Clone army? If they're black, they're a law enforcement Slave Caste. Space Warriors? If they're Asian, they're Magical Ninjas/Gundam Pilots. And so on.

Narwhal wrote:

Fuck all those suggestions, pin it on the gingers.

Oi!
Dixie, aka Flamin' June, a nickname which refers to my red hair, not my online posting habits.

They need to all be female because females and science fiction go well together. Science fiction is a utopia where we can get away with anything.

Penguin wrote:

[x] - Other (Unspecified)

If you specify it, you'll always be playing into some sort of baggage. Badass authority figures? If they're white, they're Aryan Supermen. Clone army? If they're black, they're a law enforcement Slave Caste. Space Warriors? If they're Asian, they're Magical Ninjas/Gundam Pilots. And so on.

Ooh! Make them Greek! I see no possible way that could be a bad idea.

Make them all white with blond hair and blue eyes, because they are prefect human beings.

Make them green.

Yeah, if they're the police force for several solar systems, why do they have to be human?

Miss Prince wrote:

Yeah, if they're the police force for several solar systems, why do they have to be human?

There is a very long piece of backstory which explains this. Out of story, it's the only way I could think to 1) establish a significant human presence in the very non-human galaxy and 2) showcase the alien-ness of the culture. It's one thing to have aliens behaving like aliens, but when the main character runs into humans behaving like aliens (relatively speaking; to them, he's the alien), it's going to throw him.

I'd go with minimizing the physical description, and if you do include it, perhaps make it not consistent with any conventional modern racial group. Why couldn't they have golden-tan skin, tightly kinked white hair, and emerald green eyes? The individual they were cloned from was perhaps a fortunate combination of multiple races, or maybe genengineered to look like that, whatever fits your world.

Put me in with the minimal physical description group. If you don't really need it, don't use it.
Gaijinguy, your police force sounds a bit like the Clone Troopers from Star Wars. Maybe you could make them all Maori? (J/K)

Full body armour and face masks? Maybe have only their eyes showing, to show that they're human... and make the eyes brown or something, that's probably the most common eye colour throughout all races as a whole.

Thanks guys, the input's really helped. Here's what I'm tentatively going with:
The only physical features I'm mentioning are black hair and orange eyes. The eyes in question are actually amber, but the ambient light isn't adjusted for human vision and has a lot of red wavelengths as a result, making them look bright orange. Amber eyes do appear naturally in humans, but are so rare as to be useless as a racial trait.

Melissa wrote:

Put me in with the minimal physical description group. If you don't really need it, don't use it.
Gaijinguy,
your police force sounds a bit like the Clone Troopers from Star Wars.
Maybe you could make them all Maori? (J/K)

Well, I'm trying to go after a lot of the dumber cloning tropes that get used in bad sci-fi. A little later on in the story, we meet some exiles- clones who were expelled from the group for an unacceptable degree of nonconformity. One thing I want to illustrate is how the clones' conformity does not exist because they're clones; it exists because it's been drilled into the heads essentially from infancy, and only then as a public facade. The clones actually deviate wildly in personal habits, but that's not important in their culture; what's important is the face they present to the general public that they police. Despite sharing the same face and culture, each of them is an individual, not a product of a plot-convenient Cannon-Fodder-O-Matic.

Basically, I'm writing them this way because the "clone troopers" subplot in the Star Wars prequels pissed me off more than I can say.