I identify as a white, cisgender female. I recently turned 20 and am approaching the end of my second year of college. I am studying English with the hope of being a writer of young adult romance novels.
And I want to talk about race.
It seems like such a taboo topic to discuss, which I think is a major part of why I’d like to address it. I’d like for this article to be interactive because this is not just me spewing out information; I have so many questions, and I’d like to know if anything I say is offensive. As a white person, I have always been taught to not be racist. But I have no idea what that looks like. I assumed it meant not making racist jokes (which is very vague) or just ignoring skin color. This is called color blindness, and while it may seem like the solution to racism, it’s doing more harm than good. With this comes lack of attention to the discrimination many minorities deal with as a whole.
While race is oftentimes discussed as an overarching characteristic, it’s important to realize that each person is an individual with a complex personality. No one deserves to be judged based on the stereotypes of a certain skin color. However, there is still truth to the idea that a culture comes out of the interaction with those of the same race, which we call ethnicity. Race does not equal ethnicity; race is the biological aspect, whereas ethnicity has to do with the culture.
The issue I struggle with lies in my role as a creator. I have in recent years become more and more aware of the lack of diversity in television, literature and film, especially after all the attention on #OscarsSoWhite. Roles for blacks are often minimized to historical portrayals or for movies that focus specifically on the African American experience (although typically through a white perspective). Movies with Iraqi or Puerto Rican characters, for example, will often cast any actor with tan skin. There was uproar a year or two ago when a very white Emma Stone was cast in the film “Aloha” as a quarter Hawaiian, quarter Chinese woman. The casting was criticized for being whitewashed. People of other races certainly need more opportunities in Hollywood, especially in the cases in which the script calls for a specific race other than white.
Is it possible that we’ll get to a point where a script doesn’t specify the race of a character and therefore anyone can be cast? Would that be acceptable? Does that not make us colorblind? I want to have diversity in my own writing, but do I even have the right? Do I have the right to write about a racial experience other than my own? Oftentimes I shy away from writing a minority character as a main because I feel I don’t have the right, but am I missing the point of diversity if my main characters are always white? But if I do try to write about a character with another race than my own, am I diminishing a character by writing from a white experience? At the same time, is my experience really that different from someone of another race? So many entertainment mediums portray experiences of white people because they assume these can apply to anyone, but we know this isn’t true. So if those advocating for more portrayal of other racial experiences don’t relate to those experiences, will the ones that come out of this fight also not apply to everyone? These are questions I wrestle with all the time when writing stories of people and of love. I know we’re all just human beings, and maybe this whole thing will have been for naught because the human experience is all that matters and in truth we’re not all that different. But I hope this made you think and that you feel free to voice a response. I’d love to get answers to these questions.
HCXO!