Crossing ‘Color Lines’

I am a “white” screenwriter who is inspired primarily by issues of race and cultural identity, and my blood boiled when I read your article about the “industry skepticism” regarding people like myself, black or white, “writing across color lines” (“Trying to Write Across Color Lines,” Nov. 18).

What is so frustrating about this ignorance-based phenomenon is not so much that it exists but that none of its adherents is willing to talk about it.

Your article was conspicuously devoid of anyone expressing even the slightest discomfort with whites writing black characters and vice versa, and yet everyone seems to agree that the prejudice is real. The idea that writers should focus solely on subjects from their own cultural background would be laughable if it weren’t so insidiously pervasive. It discounts the whole of an individual’s life experience and creative abilities with one superficial observation.

What is most disturbing to me about this phenomenon, however, is that it discourages the very exercise--the process of putting oneself in another’s shoes--that is most needed in our racially fractured society. The efforts of writers to look beyond themselves to build bridges across widening racial and cultural chasms should be celebrated, not questioned. At the very least, the products of these efforts deserve to be read with an open mind.

CHRISTOPHER HENRIKSON

Santa Monica