Writers/people in general talk about diversity all the time and it's importance in books. Diversity meaning race, mental illness, disability, lgbt+. Race is probably the most talked about diversity issue (aside from lgbt) and that's because it's such a prevalent issue in our society. We talk about race so much because it's important.
But let's be clear on one thing. There's no such thing as "white people".
Okay, that's a lie, I just wanted something dramatic to start this whole thing off with. Let's try again. It jsn't like the world is split into people of colour and white people. Just like not all Asians are Chinese, not all white people are american or english.
When people talk about diversity in books, they usually talk about how we need more people of colour in books. And that's a discussion we need be having. That's an idea we should be promoting. This is the biggest and most important issue and should be given the most attention.
THAT BEING SAID there is more to diversity in books that just "poc" and "white people"
I really encourage people to look into other cultures and countries for your white characters - Italian people exist. Scottish people exist. Finnish people exist. Austrians exist. New Zealanders exist. Germans exist. Norwegians exist. Ukrainian people exist. Russians exist. Swedish people exist. Irish people exist. (Just ask prophecypaw!)
We're all here and we're starved for representation. I'm not trying to make a political statement or say this is a huge social justice issue. I'm not trying to steal the stage from poc people. I'm just saying that white people from other cultures/countries want to see themselves in books too. As a new zealander, I never see my country represented in media. I've seen one book set in nz, and that's because the author was from here. I recently got really excited because New Zealand was briefly mentioned in one of the books in The Raven Cycle series. A character picked up a piece of cheese and stated it was from nz. That was it. But that's still the most representation I've seen in a long time.
So many countries have unique cultures. Don't diminish white people to americans, or the American culture to white people. American culture extends to multiple races. And white people have a multitude of different cultures. (Sure, most of it was through colonisation. But this isn't about that.)
So when thinking about diversity, write poc characters. And that means more than just your token Asian character (usually Chinese or Japanese because there's no more Asian races, right?) and your token African American character. When writing diversity, look deeper into culture and races. And that extends to white people too.
