Hii! I need advice for a new story, where I’m trying to expand diversity. I haven’t written a story in a very long time, and I’m trying to start again with a new style, with more diversity, better plots, subplots, and themes. You can answer if you’re not African-American: but please don’t speak for them!
Usually, I let the reader customize MC and their best friend, so I just write the dialogue as I want, with no representation of other cultures, because I don’t know what the reader chooses the ethnicity of the characters of. I’m very cliche, and I always put a funny, sarcastic, sassy, sometimes a little rude, bold, not scared to say what they want, best friend, but I don’t mean it in an offensive way. In my new story, I want the character to only customize MC, so I can include an African-American best friend who actually has a plot and character development, instead of just having them there for “diversity”. I wrote a little of the story, without even realizing it, I made the best friend sassy, because that’s what I usually do, but I want to know if this is okay. Some people stereotype black girls as sassy/bold/not afraid to say what they want/etc, and I don’t want this looking like me stereotyping them. I don’t believe in that stereotype at all, black girls are amazing and full of love, so I’m 100% open to changing my story and deleting what I’ve written so far if it’s offensive in any way.
Please let me know if you think this is bad, because of force of habit, I might accidentally put something sassy and snarky, and I really don’t want this to be a stereotypical story. I want the black best friend to have a good character development, with a good love life, with a good future and everything, with lots of diversity, not the other way around of me stereotyping them. I would never put ghetto dialog or lots of fighting or the very deep stereotypes, I just want this story to be 100% stereotype free and not offensive in anyyy way.