I do not see incorporating a different culture into a book we all love as bad. Just by accepting/seeing that books (not all) are in a way stereotypical to another "race", does not mean we have to hate that book now, or dislike the author. We can still enjoy the book just as much as we did before, but for future books, maybe to not make them as limited or exclusive. These works of fiction and fantasy may be just books to make things what we want to happen, but why does anything we want alot of the time end up being from a white person's perspective? Of course, I am sure that most books weren't written to be exclusive. But we are living in a culture were it has become the automatic assumption that the poor people or that the "ghetto's" are mainly black people, and that the nice house in the suburbs is a white family. This is what we are subconsciously taught how to think. Through movies, the media, history, and through books. And just imagine, if perspective and "race" were equalized in the book world (which is rather large), think about how that effects us, how we think.
Maybe it just needs us to see a different perspective. When books are the things I take joy from and often learn many things from them, I would like to take joy from reading about a character from a different perspective other than a white girls perspective, and I feel at a disadvantage when it isn't another perspective--NOT to say all white girl's perspective are the same, but I find many of the characters that are white that I read are very similar: in how they act and what they do.
Reading a book from a different perspective would affect us greatly, to make these things equal. You may think that its just a book, just a "race," its doesn't matter. But let me assure you, it matters to me, and I am sure I am not the only one. If you don't understand that, try looking at a different perspective.
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That is a very interesting take on books in mainstream culture. And yes I agree, that in the many facets of media, books being no exception, we are constantly taught complex rules regarding race, ethnicity, socioeconomics, and culture as a whole. I do have a.....thing. I don't really know the word for it.......justification? No....explanation. Yeah. Anyways, I think I have an explanation for this dominance of white culture in the book world. It's the simple fact of white dominance in American culture as a whole. Everywhere, the Anglo-American culture is the norm. Which is wrong; especially in America, which is home to countless other cultures. However, it's kind of supported by simple numbers. Thirteen percent of American citizens are African-American. This means that there are really more white people than black people (however, the difference between the number of white people and the number of people from other races is thinning). So, basically, there are simply more white people, meaning that there are more white people writing books, creating television shows, and doing everything else. So it's a balance between dominance in numbers, and dominance in......dominance. Well........I don't really know where I'm going with this. "Sir I advise you to keep your mouth SHUT."
ReplyDelete-Robin
i like this. and i completely agree with it. i myself want to be an author someday, write novels, etc. i have heard about books about people [fictitious] of other races in the world, but they are always depicted as poor, in the ghettos. and, rarely, if the rich person is black or mexican or whatever, the race always comes up as a barrier for that character. i think this is because it is our present reality. it is still tougher for people of races other than white to be successfull. this is a great shame, and i really want it to change. i think we should change it. after it changes, [because i know it will] and it's still in my lifetime [which i pray it will be] because of my dreams to be a writer and assuming i will be one, i want to promise to write a book that has a rich, non-caucasion character in it, thats not a rap artist or drug dealer, and it's not going to discuss race being a barrier to over come for the character. it will discuss matters completely irrelevant to race and it will be an excelent book.
ReplyDeleteThis was one of the things people both liked and didn't like about the Cosby show. They were rich, successful, and black - showed the people in the ;burbs that black people aren't actually all that scary - hey, they're practically like us! But at the same time, lots of people were ticked off because Theo never got stopped by the cops walking around his fancy neighborhood at night, etc. They did bring in some cultural things that were 'black' as well - lots of jazz icons, historically black colleges - in a friendly, non-threatening way. Does the fact that the main character is black, say, have to affect her in order to make it authentic? Can it just be put out there and then not mentioned again? I'm kind of thinking of HSM, with Chad and whatever her name is being black, but not 'black' if you know what I mean. Is it a step in the right direction or a cop-out?
ReplyDeleteI agree with you (Kloie) in many ways yet in other's I disagree. I think that the reason that "white" authors write stories with "white" main characters because that is all they know. I am guessing that they do not want to write a story from the perspective as anyone else because they do not want to misrepresent anyone. The same would probably go for a male writer writing a story in the perspective of a female. It is also hard to write a story with a person that is not white, because you can NEVER ever know their truth fully. Yet also coming from someone who has never written a book and is not in the head of anyone that is.
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