writing characters of color is hard

December 1, 2022

podcast audio

episode description

transcript:

Hi, guys. Welcome back to my podcast, Jumble. Today’s episode is titled writing characters of color is hard.

I myself am a person of color. I’m a black woman. And it’s hard for me. Like, it’s kind of ironic. Like, why is it so hard for me to write about myself or people like me?

But it is hard because we grew up in a culture where the people we saw were white. And so it’s in some twisted way easier for me to identify, in some sense, with characters that are white to some degree. Of course, there are limits to what I’m saying.

The semester ends for me soon, in about a week and a half, which means more time for writing, hopefully. Hopefully I get my act together and can write a couple of pages or a couple of thousand words, because it is my long term goal to become a published author. I’m well aware of the lengthy process and the nose rejections that you have to face along the publishing journey. I know this can take years, decades, all of that.

And lately I’ve been experiencing kind of a writer’s block. I don’t even want to say that word. I don’t want to curse myself like that. But kind of some form of that where I struggle to write, because I’ve put this pressure on myself to write something, like, amazingly mind blowing that I can’t even, like, get my first draft, my rough draft on.

And I try to tell myself, I try to say, just write whatever you want. Just write whatever comes to your mind. Just get it all down on the page, on the computer. But it’s not really that easy. I think about every sentence I write, and I go back and like, oh, I need to change this, or I need to change that. And I just can’t let myself write in that unfiltered way.

And I think it’s because it’s kind of a longer form. This is my first time trying to write a novel, and I think writing in that longer form makes it that much more difficult for me to just get it all on the paper. Because when I write short stories from my college classes, I get on the paper, it’s done, and maybe eight to ten pages.

And then I go back and revisit it, and I write it in one sitting. And with a novel, you can’t write you can’t write a novel in one sitting. At least, I can’t. Not as a student.

And even if I was a full time writer, I still couldn’t write a novel in one sitting. And so having to keep going back to that draft makes me want to go back to what I’ve already written and revise it. And I know there’s no one correct way to write a novel. Everybody has to find works for them. But I listen to all the advice, and I feel like I need to just get that draft, that first draft down. And I know finishing it is the hardest part, especially if your first endeavor writing a novel, finishing that story, that concept, those characters, arcs, is very, very difficult for a lot of first time writers of novels, including myself.

So I’ve been kind of dealing with that. And I’ve kind of decided that at least during the semester, when I don’t have enough time, I’m just going to write whatever inspires me to want to write more whatever I feel pulled to write, instead of just focusing on one story, one draft, getting it done, I want to focus on whatever makes me feel more excited about writing. When I was younger, a young reader, a young black reader, I was obsessed with reading books. At some point, I don’t really even know what happened, but I read any book I could get my hands on, and I honestly did not notice the lack of representation and diversity in the books I was reading. I had no clue. I don’t even think I noticed until people told me to notice.

Maybe like when the Princess and the Frog movie that came out. That’s when we were like, oh, my gosh, the first black princess. And I was like, oh, for real? Basically, I was like, oh, shoot, you’re right. That is pretty cool, I guess. And then there was this whole big thing where all the whole black community was going to movie theaters, and everyone was so excited. It was the first black princess.

And I guess I was kind of along for the ride. I enjoyed the movie, obviously, I had a great time. But I don’t think that realization or that whatever intense, euphoric feeling that I feel like I’m supposed to have, I don’t think I had that. I think the first time that I truly felt like represented in media was when Barack Obama was elected as president. And I saw his daughters on the screen, and I saw little girls that look like just like me. And I was like, oh, so little girls who look like me, have their hair like me, dressed like me, have a mom that looks like mine, can be on TV and in that spotlight like that. I think that was the first time I really felt represented in the media, which is really interesting, is kind of an unconventional way to see representation because they’re just the daughters of Barack Obama. It’s not like they themselves achieved anything. But I truly felt like I was seeing a version of myself on TV.

So when I was in middle school, I continued to be an avid reader, and I was really into the Dystopian series, like a lot of people were at that time. The Hunger Games. We’ve got Divergent. We’ve got all of these different series that were coming out at that time, even things like the selection series. And I again, didn’t realize that these characters didn’t look like me.

But I think also another unexpected effect of me consuming all of this media of white protagonists, white female protagonists specifically. Kind of like the y/n type of protagonists that we talk about a lot on when we’re referring to wattpad and stuff like that.

But I think an unexpected side effect of this was that I got so used to reading descriptions of white characters that I didn’t even know how to describe black characters as an adult writer, right? So if we’re talking about even if something as simple as blushing, I didn’t even know how to describe it in a way that makes sense for a black person. Because if you think about it, say, okay, for example, like if an author said in her embarrassment, her cheeks tinted a rosy red, right? Or something like that, as a black person, your cheeks don’t really tint a rosy red. But oftentimes when my characters are embarrassed, I feel like saying, her cheeks tinted red. And really, that’s not how it works for me. But because I consumed so much media with protagonists that were white, a lot of the times I default on these things that are familiar and comfortable to me because I read that. So that’s just another thing that can make writing characters of color difficult. Not only for white people who also read those same books growing up, white writers, me as well as a person of color struggles because the majority of literary content that I’ve consumed for fun has a white woman, mostly, protagonist. Which is something that’s really interesting to think about how obviously how the media we consume influences us, but also how it may have unexpected effects down the line as your relationship as a reader has to your relationship as like, what the relationship you have as a reader to your relationship as a writer, if that makes sense. I’m not really sure if that makes sense, but that’s the point I was trying to bring across, thinking about how these things affect us long term and short term affect what I consider beautiful at the time when they were using all of the descriptions of characters that were supposed to be beautiful.

And then also long term as a writer, now that I want to write characters of color, characters like myself, how I struggle because of the unintended consequence of reading all of those books like that. Not that those books were bad. I love them. They still have a special place in my heart. But it wasn’t until, like, the book called Winter in the Cinder series, I forgot the actual… Oh, The Lunar Chronicles, right? So winter was snow white. Snow White was a black character. And that was one of the first type of books in the genre that I like to read as a middle schooler that had a black character. And it was nice. I know earlier I talked about how I didn’t really feel anything when I noticed representation, but this instance in particular felt nice to envision a princess. A princess that’s supposed to be so, so beautiful as a black woman.

Another thing I want to talk about is recently I saw this TikTok, and I will link the TikTok in the podcast description that was talking about Dork diaries. And now this is a book that I read a lot. It was kind of like the female version of Diary of a Wimpy Kid. I mean, I read Diary of a Wimpy Kid, too, and I like those books, too. But that book that Dork Diaries and Dear Dumb Diary, those two were, like, top tier. I was like, I was reading all about that. The book fair comes in. I’m ready to buy those books, those Dork Diaries, Dear Dumb Diaries books, and I just really fell in love with those books.

But anyway, as I was saying, I saw this TikTok maybe about a couple of weeks ago or something, that was about Dork Diaries. And I was talking about how is this person, I guess, who were related to the author of the book? Was talking about how the author was black. And I was like, what? So the main character of Dork Diaries is black? Like, how could I never know that? And if you look at the Dork Diaries, you can see all the characters are drawn with pencils, similar to how Diary of a Wimpy Kid. There’s no skin color. He’s just like, it’s just a doodle. But I just assumed that they were white, because, to be honest, the default for all characters is to be white. I just assumed they were white, and that was the end.

So I was looking at the picture, I was like, oh, my God. They were like, dina know the main character of Dork diaries was black. That’s so crazy. I wish I had known about that. That book would have hit so much harder. But I started to look more into this, and I was like, there’s no way. There is no way. The character is black and I just, like, missed that, right? And so I looked at the TikTok comments under the post, and one of the comments says, “does this mean that Nikki and her family are canonically black?” And that comment has, like, 31,000 likes. And then the creator, the person who made it, said “if a movie were made, she would want Nikki to be cast it as a POC,” a person of color. And I’m like, okay. And someone’s like, “gag the people saying Nikki was white.”

And so I’m like, okay, so she must have been black. She must have been black. And then someone was like, “I’m mad. I’m just now finding out she was black. No wonder I loved these growing up.” And I’m like, all right, Dang, so she’s black. Like, that’s so crazy. How did I not know?

But I was, like, not really satisfied. So I did some more digging, and I found this article from, it seems like about the it seems like the Washington Post posted this article, and it’s from 2015, and the author says that Nikki’s two best friends are ethnically diverse. And this is the quote. It says “Nikki Maxwell is Caucasian, Zoesha Ebony Franklin is African American, and Chloe Christina Garcia is Latina.” Okay, can we talk about these names for a second? I’m sure there are people who have these names and are these races, but it it feels almost like a caricature, these names. Zoeista Christina Garcia. You know, like, that’s very that’s very stereotype. These are very stereotypical names. How come Nicki gets, like, this name that’s not really attached to race? And Zoesha Ebony. Zoesha Ebony Franklin. Let me repeat that one more time.

Zoesha. Ebony. Franklin.

So you’re just going to put that she’s black in the name? Like, that is so crazy. I don’t know how I feel about that. Honestly. I feel a little some type of way. I don’t know what type of way. Some type of way. I don’t know if I like it. And here’s the thing. I’m not saying anything’s wrong with those names. I’m not saying giving black people those names or black characters those names are wrong. I’m just saying for the one black person in this book, that name is very driven by stereotypes.

It aligns with stereotypes for even, think about white girls that are reading this book and they’re like, oh, the black character’s name is Zoesha. But then we get mad when white girls today are like, adding -sha to a bunch of names where when they’re mimicking black people or black women in general, even like, white men, other races out there, even within the black diaspora, people are adding -sha to the end of names when they’re mimicking stereotypical characteristics of blackness, right? So it’s just something to think about. And then Christina Garcia like, name a more Hispanic name, more Latina name, right?

So anyway, the point of me bringing all of this up is that the author herself in this 2015 interview is saying that Nikki is Caucasian. So I’m like, okay, so the TikTok is wrong. I mean, the TikTok itself never says that Nikki is black. She just says that the author is black and that the author would want, if this movie, this series of books were being made into a movie, she would want them to be cast as a black girl, right. The main character Nikki.

So, I mean, I’m like, okay, so technically, TikTok didn’t lie. But it’s not like the creator said like, actually, no, she is white. She’s not like, dispelling the rumors. She’s letting them snowball. And people like myself or people who didn’t take the time to do more research are going to be like, oh, going around saying to other people, oh, Nikki is black. The main character of Dork Diaries is black. So I don’t really know how I feel about how that whole situation went, but to make this even more interesting, I did even more digging, right?

The illustrator of the Dork Diary series, at least from, I believe the second or third book, is the author’s daughter. And her name wait for it, guys.

Her name is her name is also Nikki.

So, okay, let me get this straight. Nicky is white. Nikki Maxwell, in the book, is white. Nikki Russell, the illustrator of Dork Diaries at some point, is the author’s daughter and is black. In this 2015 article, it also goes on to say how the main character, Nicki Maxwell, the events that happened to her in the series is based on the author’s daughter’s life. So Nikki the black illustrator of this series.

So if the story is based on her black daughter’s experiences growing up, why then was Nikki not black to begin with? Nikki Maxwell, right. Okay. So logically, we know that it has something to do with the atmosphere of the publishing world and all of that. You know, being diverse and inclusive wasn’t yet in, to say the least. Right. 2020 hadn’t happened yet. And these initiatives for diversity and inclusion weren’t really ramping up the way they are now, which, you know, we’ll talk about the effectiveness of all of that and another episode that could go on for hours about that. So it’s just very interesting to me how the author was very adamant, at least at this time, about ten years ago, that the main character was white, when in reality, almost all of her experiences are based on a black woman’s experiences growing up. It’s just very interesting to me. She could have so easily have been just, like, said back at that time that she was black because there really was no need for her to, you know, have color versions of her characters on the on the cover in the same way that Dear Dumb Diary did. You know, all of the covers had the main character in color. There was no doubt she was white because, her cover showed a white girl, right? Even if in the inside, the drawings didn’t show any skin color. So it just really begs a really interesting point for me.

I assumed that the character Nikki was white when I was growing up. And then I had some type of whiplash, and I was like, oh, she’s actually black. Like, that’s kind of legit, kind of cool. And then I did some research, and I was like, Actually, she’s not black. And then it was like, more research. And I was like, well, technically, I guess she is. She’s based on a black woman’s experiences but was whitewashed or gentrified or something and turned into a white person because of the climate of book publishing and consumer wants and desires. At that time, people weren’t really well, not to say that people weren’t really wanting the black perspective, but the book market as a whole didn’t really show a type of hunger for diverse perspectives in the same way that it does today.

Now let’s talk about my experiences as a writer. I talked about something interesting that I heard about another writer, and I’m going to link both the article and the TikTok that I’m referring to in this podcasts and the podcast description. So as a writer, in the beginning of college, when I first started on my creative writing minor, I did not mention race at all in any of my stories. In fact, in the very first, I don’t even think I described the tone of the skin tone. I didn’t describe it at all. I just focused on personality and events and plotline and all of that. And then I started to kind of gravitate towards more explaining the skin tone being I’d be like, he’s just deep. His deep skin tone was olive toned face or something like that. It was really vague.

And my reasoning for this was that, well, if I don’t pick one race to give my characters, then everyone who reads my story will be able to relate to the character because they don’t have a race. And I’m not alienating anyone and I’m not focusing on anyone. I’m being so inclusive. I’m just so smart. I’m just blowing my own mind with how intelligent I am right now. That was literally how I thought.

But as I started writing during the pandemic, especially going through these classes, I started kind of trying to want to write about black people, and it felt kind of like political, like I was taking stance within myself. This is not like anyone else told me this, but this journey to write about black people was like, something that was difficult to me, especially, you know, I’m a black woman from the suburbs. I don’t speak in AAVE. As my default. I mean, I didn’t in the past. I’m starting to more and more as I embrace who I am as a black person, but that wasn’t a part of my identity for many, many years.

So blackness is something— and embracing my blackness is something that I had to work for, which is true for a lot of black people. But even as a writer, I had to learn how to do it, which is why writing about characters of color was hard for me. So I took this dive into writing about black people, and first I was like, I don’t even know.

What do black people do? I’m here sitting in front of my blank computer screen about to write my creative writing the story for my creative writing class. I’m like, I don’t even know what to write about. What do black people— I don’t want to write something stereotypical. What should I write about? How do I, as a black person not know what kind of story to tell about black people? Let’s think about that for a second because why was I struggling? What part of my life has led me to this part where I am struggling?

And when I finally started getting some ideas down, I defaulted to religion and talking about church on Sunday and getting dressed in your Sunday best and kind of thing. Like I was grasping for those pillars of my culture that I was kind of familiar with. And I had this constant itch this urge to remind the reader that the characters that I’m writing about was not white. Every other sentence I’d be like, by the way, this person is black, by the way, this person is black. I mean, I wasn’t literally saying like, by the way, this person is black. I’d be like, and her braids and her mahogany skin and her deep eyes and her I would just constantly give you those cues like, did you forget the character is black, by the way? Because I know the default is white. I hope you didn’t forget. If you did forget, by the way, here’s a descriptor, a physical descriptor that reminds you the character is black.

And it was just like I couldn’t stop saying, I couldn’t stop reminding the reader that the character is not white. And it felt really even it felt unnatural writing it, and it felt like unnatural reading it, too, probably. I’m sure they told me in workshop they were like, but maybe also didn’t want to say anything because it’s, you know, critiquing cultural pieces is sometimes difficult for people who are not of that culture, specifically white people, because there’s this uncomfortable atmosphere created around white guilt. And I don’t know why that’s my problem, but it is my problem because they make it my problem.

And another thing, I struggled with when writing characters who are not white and specifically black characters. I mean, I’m going to focus on that for the majority of this episode because that’s my experience as a black person is I struggled not to describe the physical features of my black characters with food descriptors. I really, really wanted to say chocolate skin, honey brown. You know how the makeup things go. Honey brown. Coco. Really getting into those food connotations because you’re trying to think of descriptors to describe brown without it being something gross, like thinking of like mud or dirt or poop, right? So you’re trying to think of something yummy, like chocolate is delicious. But I for some reason feel like I shouldn’t be using these food descriptors to describe my characters. It feels almost like commodification and fetishization of blackness. So it’s difficult for me. And even now I have that knee jerk reaction to be like honey brown, like cocoa. That urge to be like, brown is beautiful, brown is beautiful, brown is delicious through these food descriptors. And it’s just hard for me to not lean back on that crutch that I’ve seen so much in media, and I honestly, to this day, have not found a solution to this problem. I use more descriptors like mahogany and oak and different things from nature references, but it still is unnatural for me to not fall back on those food descriptors.

A part of the solution to this would be to read more stories where black characters are the main character and see what those authors are doing to really hammer home that they’re black without every second saying that they’re black and without using those food descriptors to describe the beautiful aspects of what blackness is. Did we find a solution? Kind of. I already kind of knew that solution, but it doesn’t make it any easier, really. You know, you as a writer, you want to go out and write. But, you know, you have to read more to become a better writer, but you just you want to skip that step sometimes, and you just want to go ahead and write.

But another thing I struggle with writing is characters of color that I don’t identify with. So we’re talking about Asian people, Muslim people, Latina people, all kinds of people that are not black, that don’t have the black experience. I really want to be careful when I’m writing these characters because obviously I want their presence in my story because they’re present in my life and they’re present in the world, and I want people, other readers, to be able to find themselves in my book, right, like all authors do. But it’s not as simple as it seems. You have an Asian character, and you say stuff like upturned eyes. Is that okay or is that not okay? Why should you be mentioning their eyes every second? And I read authors who are writing about Asian characters and Native American characters, and I see what they’re doing. And a lot of the times I notice that they use names as an indicator to kind of remind the reader and put the reader back into that space and that connotation of their culture. This character’s culture is not what does that work? This character’s culture is not the standard, the norm. It doesn’t align with straight white men kind of WASP, white Anglo Saxon. It doesn’t align with that. And I think that way is very interesting to the note that the character is not white. It’s an interesting way, but then it also begs the question, like, how do I choose a name for a character of a different background than me, a different ethnic background than me? That’s not like Zoesha. But that’s not like falling back on these stereotypes.

And I want to also want to talk about that debate between Sarah J. Mass. I mean, I guess it’s not really a debate. There’s some groups, some groups in the book communities are talking about this debate that Sarah J. Mass’ books don’t have enough diversity. And I love Sarah J. Maas’ books. They got me out of a reading slump. I mean, they took me on a while to ride. Half the time I don’t know where this series is going and I ended up somewhere completely different than where I thought we were going to go. But, I mean, I’m down for the journey. But this might be a me thing because, honestly, didn’t I just say earlier that I didn’t even notice the lack of diversity in children’s books when I was growing up? But I personally didn’t notice, didn’t have a problem, didn’t feel like those narratives, those perspectives were missing from her book.

And then I also have this problem about people forcing authors to write about perspectives that they are not familiar with because then they’re going to get backlash, right, if they don’t do it correctly. But they also get backlash if they don’t do it at all. So you get backlash if you don’t attempt and you get backlash if you attempt to make mistakes. It’s just this double edged sword where you’re like, either way you go, you’re going to be wrong. And I don’t think we should be putting this pressure on authors to include voices that maybe are marginalized or not as uplifted as other ones because there is that danger that they could do it wrong or they could make accidentally microaggress a community, a whole community of people. And that’s a scary feeling. As an author, your name is attached to that book, even the editors and stuff. And I’m sure it’s going to go through a bunch of sensitivity screenings and all of that. But it’s just such a risk to take, especially when you’re trying to create characters that are relatable and deep and pull at your heartstrings. It’s just that having that additional thing to think about is kind of stressful as an author.

I mean, I can speak from personal experience. It’s stressful. It like it takes you out of the writing zone and you can’t write your quality of writing. It’s from that where your attention is deviated, trying to include these diverse perspectives. This is not to say that authors shouldn’t attempt to do this. I think Sarah J. Maas, it would be great if she says, you know, I heard what you’re saying. I really want to include these perspectives. You know, how can I do that? You know, if she’s seeking help from the community. I mean, I don’t know what Sarah J Maas is doing. She’s wildly successful. I’m sure she might be doing something like this.

But if she wants to take that leap and try to include these perspectives, I think that’s wonderful. I think that’s amazing. I just think that the community then, the reading community, needs to be ready for her to make mistakes and guide her through those mistakes instead of criticizing those mistakes. Right? Because this is what we asked for. We asked for diverse perspectives, but we’re not willing to allow that person to make mistakes and learn from them to have better characters in her writing. And I’m also not saying that these characters don’t deserve diverse perspective. That these genres don’t deserve diverse perspectives in all of these genres because they should be there and they should have been included a long time ago.

Look at Nikki Maxwell. She was there. She had all of the ingredients to become groundbreaking black character, and they didn’t take that leap. Why? That’s something that we have to think about. So we criticize if they do, we criticize if they don’t. We, as a reading community, need to be a little bit more open to mistakes. Not as harsh, not as judgmental right out the gate. I’ve noticed when I listened to this debate over the summer, I’ve noticed there’s either two stances, like, I don’t think she’s done anything wrong. Why does she have to include characters of color? This is her story, right? And then there’s like, of course she’s done something wrong. She’s purposefully or been neglectful in not including these perspectives, especially when our world, our society, America looks like is made up of comprised of all of these voices that she’s neglecting to put in her stories. And especially when you’re wildly successful in the way that Sarah J mass is, you’re going to get more criticism and more people are going to pay attention to what is in your story.

Saying that to say writing about characters of color is hard for me. Waiting about a person of color is hard for people who are not a person of color. Diversity inclusion is not as simple as we make it seem. We go to these microgression zooms and diversity inclusion meetings for school or for work, and we’re like, okay, problem solved. But really, is the problem solved? Or did we just have a meeting and pretend like we can say we did something instead of implementing actual change?

I also wanted to talk about how increased representation in the media today’s media makes me feel, even as something as small as commercials. As I was saying earlier, I just am not getting that euphoric feeling that I think that I should have. I feel like everyone else was, like, with Black Panther, like, oh, my gosh, this is brilliant, amazing. And I loved Black Panther, but I didn’t make my heart tingle. I felt like my heart was supposed to be tingling or something, something magical. But I just was like, huh, okay, that’s nice. I guess that was it.

But I do get angry at the gaps in representation. So the presence of increased representation in the media, like all types of media screenplays, directors, movies, movies, TV shows when I see it, I’m like, that’s great, I guess. But then when I see the representation only including representation of a certain part of a culture, that’s when I start feeling feelings about representation. Like, why are all of the black protagonists in all of the books, movie adaptations, why do they all look mixed to some degree? Not to say that black people don’t look like that. They do. But why are they all like that? Aside from Lupita, is the only person that is, like, a younger black woman that has consistently not fit that mold of we’re talking about, like, Amandala who played Rue in Hunger Games.

We’re talking about that archetype where you look like a mixed girl, but you also look black. You’re black enough, but not too black kind of person. Even if we look at commercials with a lot of black women, it’s just recently that they’re wearing their natural hair instead of wigs that look like a more acceptable version of black hair. We’re not talking about 4C, we’re talking about 4A. So it’s like when the representation is false advertising. What it means to fit into these communities, is when representation really makes me feel like to have strong emotions, strong reactions. So I just thought that was interesting. I’m like, why am I not feeling all the fuzzy feelings everyone else is feeling when they get represented?

I don’t know, but maybe you guys do. Maybe you guys have reached some epiphany that I haven’t been able to yet. What does the future of POC representation look like? Honestly, who knows? I mean, I’m hoping it includes more representation of diaspora of people. You know, not just the black diaspora. We’re talking about the Latino diaspora, Latinx Diaspora, the Asian diaspora, not just East Asian, Southeast Asians, really expanding what we think representation and diversity inclusion means. Because a lot of the time, especially if we go back to the 90s, representation was, you got one black person, you got one Hispanic woman, that’s diverse. You got all the people, man, you checked all the boxes. We got a diverse cast, and the rest are white.

We’ve had progress since then, but still, a lot of the times you go in an environment and you see a handful of people of color, and they are not like a range of people of color. They’re a certain maybe they’re East Asian or a black person. It’s not an African-American person. It’s not true diversity. It’s just like, kind of checking off boxes to say that they don’t hire just white people. We’re talking about immigrants, bilingual people, people who come from multiple backgrounds. Rich diversity that can really make a community strong and flavorful and interesting and just like something that people want to be involved and engaged in. It’s kind of like the pseudodiversity that people can say they have to make themselves feel better.

So did we unjumble our thoughts today? No, I feel mostly the same. I don’t know how long I’ve been talking, but I feel like kind of in the same spot as when I started. I feel like writing about characters of color is still hard and probably will continue to be hard for me for many years, maybe possibly my entire writing career. I don’t think enough people talk about how writing characters of color is hard, especially characters of your own ethnic background, cultural background, writing about it being hard, especially when you’ve grown up in a predominantly white environment, and how that affects how we view ourselves and how do we try to create representation for ourselves, right?

Because if we don’t create it, no one is going to create it for us, as we’ve seen in the past, how we try to do that and how we can do that being accurate. It’s like, how can you think to yourself, okay, but I’m a black person. How can I write an inaccuractly about black people? Any story I write about black people is going to be accurate because I’m black and my experience as a black person is valid, right? But I don’t know, there’s something that makes me feel like I might write a story about black people and it might not be culturally accurate. It might be just as bad as, you know, a white person writing about black people with information like that’s, just based on what they’ve seen on TV or what they’ve read in other books, right? Maybe they’ve read James Baldwin or Tony Morrison once. They’re like, oh, I know how to write a black story now.

And also taking care to write stories about people of color where they’re the main characters, not a white savior story. We’re not talking about The Blindside or the Green Mile or anything like that. We’re talking about true stories, true perspectives from people of color where they are the center of attention. And that’s hard, and I think it’s okay that it’s hard. And I think we should talk about this more, acknowledge it more, give authors a little bit of leeway. I mean, I know cancel culture and we want people to immediately face the consequences of their actions, which I think to some extent, holding them accountable for what they’re doing is— it’s a great change. Whereas in the past, people who were successful in positions of power were kind of immune to public sentiment. And to some extent, people would get mad at them and then they would say, oh, I’m so sorry. But they would still be making money. And then they would come back until when everyone forgot about it, which is still to some extent happening. But the public is coming after figures in whatever position they are, whatever field they’re in a much more vicious and a much more intense than it was in the past, which I think a lot of people can agree with. You know, seeing even just like YouTubers fall, like their subscriber counts, just like plummet. Like the consequences of the public saying that you’ve done something that you need to be held accountable for is real.

I’ll leave you guys with that. I’m going to end the episode here. Make sure to follow the podcast on Instagram at @jumblepodcast or on YouTube at jumblepod pod. I’m going to be experimenting with some forms of content on there, which I’m really excited to see how that turns out.

I’ll see you guys in the next episode and I hope you have a wonderful day. Or if your day is already over, I hope tomorrow is better than your last day, better than today, and I’ll see you guys next time.