{"id":91110,"date":"2016-07-25T16:56:43","date_gmt":"2016-07-25T16:56:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/2016\/07\/25\/representation-matters-to-white-people-too\/"},"modified":"2016-07-25T16:56:43","modified_gmt":"2016-07-25T16:56:43","slug":"representation-matters-to-white-people-too","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/2016\/07\/25\/representation-matters-to-white-people-too\/","title":{"rendered":"Representation Matters to White People Too"},"content":{"rendered":"

antifainternational<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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kvothe-kingkiller<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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cumbrianabroad<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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bethrevis<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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Look, when I say\u00a0\u201crepresentation matters,\u201d I believe that the most important thing is for people who are often ignored in arts and media to see themselves there.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But I also mean that it\u2019s important for white\/hetero people to see people who aren\u2019t white\/hetero.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the thing. I was raised in a very white\/hetero community. Every friend I had was white. I never had a black person in my classroom until late high school. I never had a black teacher until college. There was one out-gay student at my high school. One. And I saw what shit he had to go through by being out.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And, if I\u2019m honest with myself, most of the adults in my life were racist and homophobic. They were good, loving people\u2026to me. But they were also racist and homophobic.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And as a kid through my teen years, I\u2019d be lying if I didn\u2019t say that didn\u2019t affect me. I parrotted the adults in my life, which meant that I often parrotted their hate and their prejudice. I\u2019m ashamed of those attitudes now\u2013now that I\u2019ve had education and met people who were different from me and travelled the world and put aside hate.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But then? It was easy to excuse racism. People who weren\u2019t white and straight didn\u2019t exist in my world\u2013and they didn\u2019t exist in the world I saw on television and in books and on the radio. It was easier to live in the bubble of that world.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Representation matters to white people, too. It is important for white people to see diversity. Not as a token, not as\u00a0\u201cpolitically correct\u201d\u2013the white people who feel that adding a minority character to a storyline is pandering are horrible people who are entirely missing the point. I\u2019m talking about the white kids who don\u2019t see minorities in their lives, but who see a black girl and a white boy being friends on Sesame Street. I\u2019m talking about the straight teen reading More Happy than Not<\/i>, I\u2019m talking about the white teen empathizing with Malala Yousafzai. The more representation we have, the more we hold a mirror through the world rather than whiting-out people who aren\u2019t like the majority, the better our world is.<\/p>\n

Representation matters.<\/b><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I swear to god, it\u2019s like every damn word could have come out of my own brain. Brava!<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Honestly. As someone who went to a very tiny, almost completely white private school through eighth grade and then to a high school in a city with the demographics of a marvel movie (89.3% White, 0.7%African American, 0.4% Native American, 5.6% Asian, 0.2% Pacific Islander, 0.8% other races, 3.0% two or more races. 3.7%\u00a0Hispanic or Latino)<\/i> I never realised that the casting choices in most tv shows and movies vastly underrepresent any race that isn\u2019t white.<\/p>\n

I remember being confused about people saying they should hire more actors of color for movies set in like new york because thats what i legit thought the rest of the US and western europe was like.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Representation matters more than you think.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Agreeing with all the above. I didn\u2019t interact with people of color until I was in the military, because where I grew up was that<\/i>\u00a0white. Now, my parents always made a point of telling my brother and I to treat everyone the same, and not use certain words, and they at least made some attempt to expose us to different media. But it was still a culture shock when I finally met people and I know I said and did some ignorant things just because I didn\u2019t know any better.<\/p>\n

Also, graduating high school in 1997, there was nobody out when I was in school, and I didn\u2019t even know bisexuality was possible.<\/p>\n

Part of why I\u2019m so glad for the Internet and things like tumblr is because it knocks down some of those walls. But people still need to seek those things out if they don\u2019t see them in the ordinary media they consume.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

antifainternational: kvothe-kingkiller: cumbrianabroad: bethrevis: Look, when I say\u00a0\u201crepresentation matters,\u201d I believe that the most important thing is for people who are often ignored in arts and media to see themselves there.\u00a0 But I also mean that it\u2019s important for white\/hetero people to see people who aren\u2019t white\/hetero.\u00a0 Here\u2019s the thing. I was raised in a … <\/p>\n

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