Representation: Not Just for Minorities' Sake
So I grew up in this town I’m going to call White McWhitington City. See where I’m going with this? There were about twenty thousand people in this town, and in my high school years, about three black kids at the high school total, plus a few (adopted) Asian kids. I did not go to the high school, so I didn’t really meet these people.
I believed, as a child, that black people were scary because of their hair and outfits and ‘weird talking’. I was not familiar with the term ‘Ebonics’ nor with almost any black people.
Furthermore, I thought the two Asian (Korean and Filipino-white) friends I had would be friends with each other and exclude me because they 'looked the same’ (they do not look alike at all).
I thought that all Native Americans and Australian Aboriginals were extinct. I didn’t know what Arabs or Muslims were. I thought all the Jews had lived in Jesus’ time and no longer existed as a people because the Christians had come and God didn’t need the Jews anymore.
Why am I telling you how racist I was as a child? Because that racism could have been averted, with representations of ordinary kids and adults who fit in those categories in the media I consumed. As main characters, not the side character who existed to make jokes or fill a quota.
In none of the shows I saw did a black person’s personal life get examined. In none of the books I read did Asian people get to be the main characters, despite my extensive reading of the whole children’s section in my library. A Native American or Australian Aboriginal character was unheard of, other than as sketches in history books. The only book I ever found as a child that examined a POC’s life was the Josefina series, by American Girl.
I really wish I had seen diverse characters in diverse roles growing up, because I had mixed-race cousins (Still do: Black-White and Thai-White) and I could have been a lot less of a dick.
We need to see others in our media to understand them. First and foremost, of course, the benefit is to POCs themselves, in getting to see themselves on screen and on the page, but we can’t pretend it doesn’t better us white folks too. It would be a great place to start, in childhood, to show us that there are other people, different from us, who are not a threat. Because, trust me, we are very malleable at that stage.
And maybe we won’t have little racist brats running around. Because, just because I was able to change, doesn’t mean every child-turned-adult will.
