I don’t know about you, but I don’t usually think of skin color/ethnicity/sexual orientation when I hear the word “Diverse.” What I DO think about are things like genre, country of origin, is it original or trope-ful, target audience, etc. Apparently that’s not what most people think of, however, because they start talking about the ‘other’ things…i.e. color, ethnicity, and sexual orientation. So here are my two cents, I expect most of you will disagree with me and (PSA) I’m not particularly sorry about it. I hope you have your own opinions. I will continue to adore you whether or not you agree with me. Moving on:
- I’m all for proper representation of minorities…white women are becoming a minority (at least where I’m from) so don’t roll your eyes at my white protagonist.
- I have no problem with most people’s sexual orientations. Yes, I said most because there are some orientations that I just can’t figure out or wrap my mind around. However, I don’t want to always read about something I’m not a part of just because it makes me ‘more diverse’
- I do believe that reading across genres and age levels is part of reading diversely.
- I do NOT believe that reading in one genre and age level will allow you to be properly diversified.
- If you don’t think about country of origin for the story and/or characters then the diversity falls a bit flat (in my opinion)
- If a character is NOT specified as being white, don’t complain about “all those white chicks/characters” in literature. Guess what…I know a lot of ethnic people (male and female) with blond or red hair. Welcome to the age of discount drug store hair dyes and cheap(ish) eye color changing contacts.
Ok, this has been slightly rambly and soap boxy…but I did try to keep that to a minimum. What do you think about all this? Am I wrong? (I’m not…but you’re probably not wrong either).
Here there Be Dragons! 