In this post, I'm going to consider "diverse characters" to be one or more of the following: Not white, LGBTQ or disabled. I'm also going to be mainly talking about books, and not so much other forms of fiction.
I never used to think about diversity in fiction. That has been changing recently. When I was younger, I never really noticed that the books I read had mainly straight, white, able-bodied characters. That isn't to say that I disliked books with diverse characters, I just didn't really notice either way. I think there are several reasons for this.
First, I never noticed that most of the characters in the books I read were white. I think that the main reason for this is that I did not (and still do not) pay attention to the way a character looks when I am reading a book. When I read physical descriptions of characters, I kind of ignore them. I know that many people automatically picture characters as white if they aren't told otherwise, but that's not really what I do.The thing is, I don't picture what book characters physically look like when I imagine them. I just kind of picture them as their personalities. I don't know if that makes sense. The way people look has never mattered to me. I think this is partially because I am visually disabled. When I meet someone, I do not notice their hair colour, their height or their race. The first thing I notice about a person is the first thing they do or say. This is the case for fictional characters too. I just don't really pay attention to what they look like. It doesn't matter.
However, I recognize that most people do pay attention to the physical descriptions of characters. I also recognize that it is not good that so many book characters are white. Representation of everyone is important in fiction.
I also did not notice that pretty much all of the characters I read about in books were straight. This is partially because I, like many people who do not know better, thought of "straight" as the default state for a human being and anything else as something... extra. When I realized that a character was not straight, I was often surprised. I remember that when I was younger I learned that Dumbledore was gay. This actually kind of upset me. Was this because I was homophobic back then? Partially. It also upset me that a writer would know something like that about a character and not put it obviously in the actual books.
I was kind of homophobic when I was younger. It wasn't that I hated queer people or was against gay marriage, I just didn't really think about the fact that some people are queer. I did not think of queer people in the same way I did other people. I think that many people who claim they are not homophobic actually think this way. This way of thinking actually made it difficult for me to realize that I am not straight. All my life I have just assumed that I am heterosexual. When I joined tumblr, I started to see sexual orientation and gender differently. I started to think of queer people in the same way I thought of cisgendered straight people. Today, when I think about Dumbledore, I think of him exactly the way I would if he were straight. But despite all this, a few months ago I still thought of myself as heterosexual. Only in the past few months have I begun to think more about myself and my sexual orientation.
How does this relate to fictional characters? I think that many people assume that a fictional character (or real person) is straight unless they are told otherwise, not because they are homophobic, exactly, but because they believe, like I used to, that heterosexual is the default state for human beings. This is not a good mentality. Being queer is completely natural and assuming that people are straight and cisgendered contributes to homophobia and transphobia.
Finally, disability in fiction. I am disabled, and so you would think that I would have noticed that very few of the characters in the books I read were too.But I didn't. Maybe it's because, unlike many other children who read books a lot, I did not think of book characters as reflections of myself. I don't really think of them as "friends" either. I've always been drawn to books because they are more interesting than the real world. But, the thing is, characters are in a way a reflection of ourselves and fiction is in a way a reflection of our world. The characters in the books we read might not be exactly like us, but I think that the best fictional characters can tell us something about humanity.
So, why is diversity in fiction important? Because our world is diverse, and fiction is a reflection of our world. It doesn't really matter if you view fiction as a reflection of yourself or a reflection of humanity. The point is that everyone wants to see truth in fiction, and truth is diverse. The people in our world are diverse.
Recently, I've been looking for books with diversity in them. One of my reading goals of 2015 is to read as many diverse books as I can. I also write fiction myself, and I've been trying to make my writing more diverse. If I ever publish anything, I don't want to contribute to the huge number of books with characters who are mostly straight, white and able-bodied. I look forward to a time when diversity in fiction is seen as "normal". It would be nice to be able to pick up pretty much any book and see a reflection of our world that is diverse.
Many people seem to think that diversity in fiction is not important. To them I say, almost everyone (at least in North America) is exposed to fiction of some kind, and, as I said before, fiction is a reflection of our world. When I was a child, I learned a lot about the world from reading fiction. The trouble with that is, fiction can be misleading. It's true that fiction is "fiction" and so it is not, strictly speaking, true, but I think that the point of fiction is to show the truth whether it is historical fiction or high fantasy. I want the next generation to be less sexist, less racist, less homophobic and less transphobic than people are today. Making sure that fiction is diverse will, in my opinion, help make this possible. It will at least be a step in the right direction.
