This is sort of how we feel when we talk about race - like big goofy socially awkward octopuses. (http://www.flickr.com/photos/35237098983@N01/131810048)
Last week I wrote a short post with a call to action for everyone to continue talking about race because that’s the only way we’re going to stop feeling weird about talking about race.
The comments floored me. There are only a few, but they totally emphasize the very base of the problem. Our lack of ability to talk about race in any meaningful way.
Let me take you back to the 90s to a 15 year old Sommer. I grew up in what everyone fondly referred to as our “ghetto.” I didn’t really understand that term even though I grew up in the area. I knew most people in my neighborhood were poor, like us. I knew that most of my classmates were not white, but I never actively sat around thinking, “Wow, all of my classmates are black. Isn’t that interesting?” I had black friends, but I had mostly white friends.
So, 15 year old me. I’m sitting at lunch watching a group of black girls at a table near mine. They were very loud and extremely verbose. They seemed thrilled about everything. One of the girls opened her jacket and said, “Check it out! They are finally coming in!” (Hint: She was talking about her boobs.) All her girlfriends applauded and congratulated her.
I, on the other hand, was wearing a sports bra a size too small to make mine disappear. My mom was riding me hard those days that I was getting bigger in that area and that I needed to watch what I was eating and maybe I shouldn’t be in so many sports because it was making me look stocky. I would never have shown off my curvy body to my girlfriends and even if I had, they would have given me looks of sympathy, not high-fives. What I really wanted to do was stop that girl in the hallway and ask her what made it ok for her to have her body but wrong for me to have mine even though they were pretty similar. I had no idea how significant this question actually was, I just knew that I had boobs and was told to get rid of them immediately, and she was made gorgeous by hers.
So why was it so hard for me to talk to this girl? Why couldn’t I sit down and have an honest discussion and learn if there even was a difference with how we were raised that gave this black girl permission to love her boobs, but I was supposed to be ashamed of mine? Did her mom support her? Was it a cultural thing or just two individuals with very different parents? Does it mean something that most of the white models I saw in magazines had the bodies of a 12 year old and the black models looked more like women? Why couldn’t I find the language to have this conversation back then?
And I think that’s the key. We don’t have the language needed to bridge the subject. We’re taught that there’s something negative about drawing attention to the color of a non-white person’s skin like this is something we’re supposed to pretend isn’t real. (Funny enough, we do the same thing to fat girls.) I remember having anxiety over whether I was supposed to refer to someone as “black” or “African American.” If I chose wrong, would that make me racist? Did wondering these things make me racist?!?!?! Would that make me a bad person? Would they hate me and be offended by me?
The color of our skin should not be something we wring our hands over. And yet if we can’t even find the appropriate words to articulate our differences and similarities, how will we ever get down to the task of actually talking about them?
There’s a confusion about being diverse in our novels and a knee jerk reaction to force diversity for the sake of being fair. That’s not what the discussion should be about. Stories have characters and there are no guidelines saying 20% of your characters need to be something other than white. It’s just we need to not revert to our starting position and make a character white just because that’s our baseline. There are lots of different types of people, colors and ethnicities and sexual orientations aside. The world is a diverse place and we do our books a disservice by not exploring these possibilities.
For example, off the top of your head, how many books can you name where the white average (but pretty) main female character of a book dreams of being a writer and frequently has either a Salinger or Austen or Bronte tucked under her arm at some point in the story? Have you ever wondered why there are so many of these female characters flitting about our YA lit? Could it be because this was the teenage life so many authors had? It’s our baseline. We need to challenge ourselves to dream beyond what we already love.
There’s nothing wrong with picking up a book and imagining the main character looks just like us, even if they aren’t. This is not racism, it’s escapism. It doesn’t matter what color hair or eye or skin you pick as the author, the reader generally makes the main character a better version of themselves. I think authors sort of do the same thing. But stopping for a second and exploring the possibilities of a character can offer a complexity to a story you didn’t even know existed. You don’t have to talk race issues in your story just because one of your main characters isn’t white. That’s only their skin color. It’s who they are and what they add to the story that matters. But that’s true no matter what color, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or gender they happen to be.
In summary:
- Step away from your baseline, whatever that might be, and open yourself up to all the possibilities that exist in the world.
- It’s ok to ask questions, even if you don’t know what the right language is. Starting the conversation is the most important part.
- If someone asks you a question and they are nervous and don’t have the right language, be patient and talk to them. We’re going to sound stupid and flounder about like social octopuses for a while, but in time we’ll get the hang of it.
- Talk to people on your blog. Ask questions in Twitter. It’s ok to be nervous, we’ve got a lot of years of people telling us not to talk about race to fight through. This is not something that’s going to change overnight, but we have to start somewhere. It’s ok to be a social octopus!!!
- KEEP TALKING. Keep talking. Keep talking. Don’t be afraid. We are all in this together. And also? Have you ever known anyone to ever NOT want to talk about their life and experiences? We’re bloggers. Talking about ourselves is in our blood. I guarantee you ask one question and the first hand accounts of growing up <fill in the blank> will come pouring in.
Do you have any questions you’d like to ask but were afraid to? Be gracious, and ask away. We’ll see what we can do about getting them answered.
Sommer
My name is Sommer and I'm a writer from the Midwest. I am currently working on a YA novel about superheroes, reading as much as I can, blogging, and saving the world.
[...] The Language of Diversity by Sommer Leigh at Sommer Leigh [...]
YES. This. I grew up in a very small, very white town where I didn’t go to school with any minorities until high school, and even then it was like we had one token family of each. Somehow, despite this upbringing and lack of exposure, I’ve never been racist in the sense of thinking negatively of them as “other”. However, I am very conscious that they’re not white like me (or, in the case of the local family of midgets/dwarves/little people, not tall like me). The fact of their difference didn’t bother me because it was a small enough school that everyone knew everyone and I knew they were normal people just like me, but not knowing whether I was allowed to mention their difference if it somehow arose in conversation (whether with them or with a third party), or how I should refer to it, made me really uncomfortable. It still makes me uncomfortable.
I think part of my discomfort, too, is that I’m a slim, average white female, and I worry that if I make an observation on someone’s weight, for instance, they’ll look at my body and think I share society’s disapproval of being fat; or if I mention someone’s coloured skin, they’ll eye my whiteness and figure my words are a veiled prejudice. Because we’ve been, as a culture, avoiding saying anything for so long that if someone speaks frankly about a person’s physical traits they’re assumed to be passing judgement on them. And not, you know, stating a fact.
I believe it’s okay to be physically (/sexually/whatever) different. We’re all just people inside. But not everyone shares this belief (a LOT of people remain prejudiced and many of them openly so), and until that becomes the cultural norm, I think we’ll always be struggling with talking about our differences.
Thank you for starting this discussion in your last post and continuing it here. This is so fundamentally important to understand and yet, yes, I find myself NOT asking questions out of fear. But if all I have to draw on in life is the events of a middle class white girl from the farmlands of a flyover state, that’s not very much. I’m missing an alarming amount of lifestyle/cultural differences simply by the way in which I was raised.
A lot of the hurdle that people have with race is simply trust. People don’t trust people that look different. Whether this is cultural or instinctual…I have no idea. But it’s a fact. I’ve witnessed it myself. My best friend Tomeka (when she hangs out with me) causes people to exit elevators and things like that. I’ve seen it myself…people passing on the elevator that we are in because (I think) she’s black. My mind is not meant to understand such things. But this opinion comes from the guy that just got called a blasphemer in a book review. Yep…one dude read my book and said the ending is pure blasphemy. He probably hopes that god will strike me down. Funny…I’m atheist.
My apologies for this ramble in advance:
As the project kid from an all black neighborhood who got transferred from the run-down mostly black ghetto elementary school to a mostly white, really nice elementary school due to integration, learning about “black and white differences” happened in a much more stark way. I wish it was a matter of language difference. It was, and for many still is, a BIG cultural divide.
BIG language difference.
My tendency toward being the nerdy kid stuck me in the middle of this divide where I got to see things in a very odd way. I didn’t understand why the young white girls wanted to wear very tight jeans, really big hair that stood up three feet and stuff on their face that made them look way older than they really were. Not when the girls in my neighborhood barely wore lip gloss at that age.
I didn’t understand why it took having white kids with wealthier parents get their kids shipped to my old run-down ghetto elementary school for the cries of school repairs, structure updates and textbook updates (we mostly got the hand-me-down books from other schools) to finally get some response. And finding out it was due to the threats of many of the wealthier parents to yank their kids from public school to get this done, yeah, BIG cultural divide. BIG questions in my young mind of why was this case?
Back to me being in the middle. Not sure if anyone else ever experienced this, but I got the “you’re the exception” statement enough times that if I got a dime every time I heard it, I’d be financially secure right now. I didn’t understand what that meant though it confused me because I didn’t feel like an exception. Yeah, I was the only project (another way of saying ghetto) kid in the advanced courses. I was the only project kid who preferred reading a book to sitting around talking about stupid boys who did stupid things. The people in my books went on adventures. And yes, I had Jane Austen and other classics to refer to. But not so much in the way of books about black people who went on the same type of adventures. They were historically slaves. What fun was there in that???
I fell in love with Tolkien and Lewis without an emphasis on the color of their skin. I loved what they experienced. So when it comes to cultural diversity, especially with fantasy and sci-fi, it does become an bit of an “unnecessary issue” for some because fair-haired and blue-eyed was the standard. Often is in many books. Not out of some need to put this descriptor of person on a pedestal, but because that is what readers have identified with since, like, forever. So when I write my story with a black main character, I don’t do so because I’m consciously working on the diversity of fantasy and sci-fi, I do so because I can and do identify with a black person period. However, having read sooooooooo very many books where the main character is white, I have the reader-knowledge to do that if I decided to.
In the end. yep, a big cultural language difference because there is a BIG cultural divide. Can it ever be crossed, joined and understood…who knows?
Yes to “you’re the exception.” Variations include:
“But you’re different.”
“You’re so articulate.”
“You don’t sound black.”
“You’re not BLACK black.”