This was not the article I intended to write this week. Last month we saw an explosion in the need for more diverse voices in publishing, and I have been told that some people are made uncomfortable and avoid the topic. Even with my background and long history of supporting and encouraging diversity, I find myself not contributing things which could be misconstrued. This post is not necessarily to take on the industry of publishing and things in it over which I have no control and cannot change, and create anxiety for me. Homogeneity creates anxiety for me, and I say that as a white cis woman.
During last month's explosion of the discussion, a friend posted a quiz by a WOC who said that people came to her to ask her questions, specifically, how to talk to their children about difficult topics of race. Her quiz asked white people to examine their own lives, over decades, and the presence of diversity in their own lives, before they asked how to tell their children to view something they do not represent in their actions. The questions were along the lines of what races were your best friends when you were 9, 19, 29, 39, so that is somewhere I can start to explain my POV, my writing and my current project, and why I personally cringe and my skin crawls encountering a homogeneous white publishing or editing service industry where I stare at pages of white women, and they look at my MS with a view that it was written for their "white gaze." As a white author writing with a vastly different level of experience than this quiz revealed is the more common white experience, and I run into seeing a bubble other white people seem to have, I can contribute my voice to why this makes me personally so uncomfortable.
Starting with the questions on this quiz, my best friends at school when I was nine was a white girl whose parents raised Irish wolfhounds, a Chinese girl named MayLee whose parents owned a Chinese restaurants, and a black girl who I went on to be in girlscouts until i was 11 or 12, and she and I attended girlscout camp together in the summer, together with a Jewish girl who was a year behind me through high school and followed me to university as my mother supported and mentored her mother through the university application process.
When I was 19, in University, my mother would see pictures of me in friend groups and ask if I had any white friends. I had teammates who were largely white, with some asian members, and one of my closest long term friends who was two years younger than me who was biracial black jamacian and asian. My roommates were largely Korean and Chinese. One of my classmates who I drove great distances to attend her medical school graduation and her wedding was Chinese. The first time she met me she thought I was loud and obnoxious and she was glad she would never have to see me again, but that friendship outlasted many with those who had more similar cultural backgrounds. My large groups of Asian friends were through social activities and because of similar more conservative interests and lifestyles. When I was twenty, I was a camp counselor at an inner city black youth day camp, and my co counselor was an Indian girl from my university, but we met thousands of miles apart designing activities to help promote leadership development and support values and focus for at risk youth.
If you asked who my closest friends were ten years later as an adult, those diverse friendships with WOC are the ones that lasted, as they helped me relate to a young woman in my family who was adopted and growing up facing racism. As they had prestigious professional careers and amassed incredible sets of degrees, and were open with me about their challenges, and their motivation to do something more than just make money, that drove them to gain these impressive c.v.s, they provided inspiration and career advice and support to me.
My current project is to address many of the issues in conversation in our modern climate, but not to "fit into" the way the white gaze expects it to be discussed. In fact, my inspiration draws from examples of civilization prior to Rome's heavy influence. In fact, I removed Rome and Europe from my world. Instead I sent the colonialists away on the other side of a large sea from my world, and gave my cultures strength and ability to withstand colonolization. I did not set out to create diverse characters, but I did so because the characters represented the women in my life.
That is my POV. That is why for me, the idea of a group of white women who are in a bubble agreeing with each other about what they consider acceptable, with no actual input from diverse voices, terrifies me. Not only that, but for me as an author, it does not support my POV in any sense. I do not relate to their POV, and chafe at everything about their attitude and langauge they use to discuss my writing. I cannot imagine who cringy it is from people from these communities.
In my professional life, I discuss with my colleagues, many of whom also harken back to University days, about our generation being a social experiment of diversity where women and POC were thrown together to gain the same backgrounds and opportunities. Here we all are so many years later, in these positions to work together with our various strengths and skillsets, and that is the model I expect to see in other professions. As someone with past ties to the medical community, I see my Asian and black friends making advances and being some of the most reknowned in their professions. Honestly, if I look at a group of white people in a bubble, I can no longer think they represent the best in that industry, because they are so far behind the direction the world is headed.
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