Seriously, that´s low down!

The first time I was faced with the issue of racism in a community when an alleged reader had asked the question whether or not some author had included characters of colour in her series, stated that she or he had only read about light skinned people and insisted on racial emancipation in the author´s novels, or she/he would have to quit reading if there weren´t any representatives of different races. Well, said person certainly had not read the books properly, because of course there were coloured people who naturally played important roles within the novels. And you don´t even have to read that far to meet the first one! A few weeks later almost the same question was asked in a forum, regarding another book. It was a fantasy book, and so far as I recall, was not even set on planet earth, on top of this the characters were all kinds of insects, beetles and spiders, acting the way humans would act. And a few days ago I stumbled over the topic in a blog, when a reader demanded another author of fantasy literature should bring in ethnicities from Africa, or the reader would stop reading said books. Here for the first time the author opposed the one who tried to denounce him of being racist when he would not include other races, telling her/him that it was his fantasy world, a world not located on planet earth, with races not in the least kindred with human races, and that the books were the author´s playground only. Don´t like it, don´t read it, he told her/him, and to bugger off, to get on somebody else´s nerves. Now I have a few questions: If you don´t write dark skinned or almond eyed characters (that´s what one of the readers called them) in a novel set in a different universe, where the inhabitants may even be hermaphrodytes, animal-like or insectile, are you a racist then? Do you really have to write about black beetles, wasps and flies among naturally coloured ones, or would it be better to match specific species to human races, and wouldn´t that evoke bad blood again? I know, sounds funny but isn´t were you an author intending to write a fantasy novel! Most important question is: Could there be some troll roaming communities, causing havoc among the members by blackening the books people are discussing, or is it a coincidence I came across those entries? By the way, I found another one after having written the bigger part of this entry. Same topic, same manner of dressing-down. Not funny at all!