Describing CoC
Is it okay to describe black characters as black as long as that's not the only description I give of them and I also describe the white characters as white? I realized recently that I did this with my NaNoWriMo-which is never going to see the light of day anyway, for lots of other reasons-and assumed it was okay as long as I didn't treat "white" as the default, but looking back on it I'm not so sure that it wasn't problematic anyway. I'd really appreciate any input from the PoC on this comm.
This applies to all CoC, I suppose, but in my case I was doing it with a black boy.
Also, what physical descriptions can I use for a character to make it clear (if only to Asian readers) that he's Korean? The boy in question is adopted and has been kept from finding out a lot about his past, so I can't just say that he's Korean, but I don't want readers assuming that adopted Asian = automatically Chinese. Are there any specific characteristics I might want to stress or any phrases that will "ping" Korean? My hopes aren't high for white readers to get it anyway, but it's important to me to at least try. I've found this, but I'm not sure how much I can trust the answers there.
This applies to all CoC, I suppose, but in my case I was doing it with a black boy.
Also, what physical descriptions can I use for a character to make it clear (if only to Asian readers) that he's Korean? The boy in question is adopted and has been kept from finding out a lot about his past, so I can't just say that he's Korean, but I don't want readers assuming that adopted Asian = automatically Chinese. Are there any specific characteristics I might want to stress or any phrases that will "ping" Korean? My hopes aren't high for white readers to get it anyway, but it's important to me to at least try. I've found this, but I'm not sure how much I can trust the answers there.