Characters of Color: The New Necessity

“Why is your character black?” asks a fellow student.
 I think to myself at the time, “Wow, what a stupid question.” Then I state the obvious.

This is a question that I was asked many years ago in middle school when writing one of my early, unworkable short stories. I might forgive her now, but growing older helped me realize something. Stupid wasn’t the right way to describe that question, it was more akin to walking blind.
 I can’t completely fault someone for not understanding why a black girl might want to write about someone who looked like her. We’re bogged down in a straight, white, and female demographic of stories even now, and people want to see more characters of color.

Why Write?

All of my writing is based on things I would want to read. Growing up, I managed to ignore the fact that every book I read had a white protagonist. I could still project myself into the role of the main character (female or otherwise) and transport myself into those worlds. The reality of what was wrong didn’t dawn on me until I started writing. Without thinking twice, I wrote the character Arielah, a black girl who would go on beach-side adventures with her West Highland Terrier, Coconut. Granted she lived on Oahu, and I’m not sure how many black people live in Hawaii, but I had no room for technicalities then. I was a dreamer.
 In the back of my mind, I wanted someone like me to take the lead of a story. I’m not alone in this thought, and now black girls are being much more insistent that they get the stories they deserve.

Stereotypes Must Die

An outcry for representation was met with the attempt (sometimes half-assed) to add different races into predominately white novels. We call them ‘tokens.’ I get it, change is hard, it’s uncertain. It’s natural to be comfortable and complacent with tradition. Nothing changes until both people of color and white readers who are bored with the same stories make it clear about what they want. I’m sick of stereotypes. From the loud, neck-rolling black chick to the overly bookwormish Asian kid, or the flamboyant gay guy who tells it like it is. They need to die. It’s that simple.

To Fellow Black Writers (and Creators)

We have to be the change we want to see. It’s easy to get upset at the lack of recognition or representation — I retweeted a quote about the Oscars that was met with some unneeded backlash –and I stand by my feelings. We have to write our own stories in masse, create our own publishing houses and become more competitive on a grander scale. I want our voices to become a part of the standard, not an outlier, and to retain its uniqueness in full.

If I could say to the girl who asked that question ages ago, “Why is your character black?”, I could answer her in a way that just might break her out of a bad habit. The goal is to normalize diversity, with books by black authors and with black characters apart of that mainstream, because when you’re out in the real world, diversity is already there. We just have to put it on paper.

This was originally posted on The Wild Pearl Journey.