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Q&A How do I know if my cast is diverse enough or too diverse?

It's really important to understand that "diversity" isn't something you should be scoring along a single axis. It would certainly simplify things if you could tally up Diversity Points in your sto...

posted 4y ago by Standback‭  ·  edited 4y ago by Standback‭

Answer
#2: Post edited by user avatar Standback‭ · 2020-01-30T09:58:43Z (about 4 years ago)
Formatting for emphasis
  • It's really important to understand that "diversity" isn't something you should be scoring along a single axis. It would certainly simplify things if you could tally up Diversity Points in your story, knowing that five Diversity Points are Not Enough but seventeen is Too Many, but obviously, that isn't the case.
  • Instead of thinking in terms of "how _much_ diversity does my book have" (five points worth? twice as much as last time? two quarts?), try and frame some specific goals and issues:
  • * "I don't want people to take heteronormative assumptions about sex and relationships for granted."
  • * "The experiences of disabled people are so often ignored, or stereotyped."
  • * "This story is set in Chicago, it makes _no sense_ for all the key characters to be white."
  • Some of those questions or goals are doing a better job of representing authentic reality -- there are people we're often biased to forget about, or consider unimportant, but they're _there_ and our stories shouldn't erase them. Others are questions of whose story you want to be telling in the first place. Others still are examining your own biases and blind spots in your worldview -- since stories tend to push us towards familiar patterns, and also entrench those patterns further, that's an important consideration to make.
  • So consider: a story taking place inside an Islamic community in NYC, or a story about a single queer teen who doesn't know _anybody_ who isn't white and straight, or one about a crack team of superheros where every member comes from a different marginalized background -- each of those is "diverse" in a different way, and accomplishing different things (hopefully) with their diversity.
  • Figure out what's important to you in your story (and what pitfalls you want to avoid). Then figure out how to do that; that's the only measure of "not enough" or "not too much."
  • The basic approach that you touch on -- having characters of many different backgrounds but that never seems significant -- has some important things going for it. It can work well for a goal of _normalizing_ marginalized groups; showing that heck yes a woman can be a starship captain and a black kid can be Spider-Man and it's _no big deal_. It has some pitfalls too, though, and I think you're seeing them: the diversity can feel insignificant, an informed attribute that could have been swapped for anything else with no difference. (Even worse, you can have a cast that's _supposed_ to feel like lots of characters from lots of backgrounds, but _actually_ feel just like a bunch of white straight people, for all intents and purposes.)
  • So if you're going to go down this route, you need to give a lot of thought -- not to how _many_ "diverse" characters you have, but to how you bring out and acknowledge the differences between them. Gay people, people of color, people of faith, neurodiverse people, etc. etc., are all informed by different life experiences than straight white people, who are popular literature's default. (A lot of those experiences are way more than just "society's oppressed me," and, no group is a monolith -- people from the same group will have had _different_ experiences!) Here's a [previous question on the topic](https://writing.codidact.com/questions/15449), and there might be some others on the site as well.
  • It's really important to understand that **"diversity" isn't something you should be scoring along a single axis.** It would certainly simplify things if you could tally up Diversity Points in your story, knowing that five Diversity Points are Not Enough but seventeen is Too Many, but obviously, that isn't the case.
  • Instead of thinking in terms of "how _much_ diversity does my book have" (five points worth? twice as much as last time? two quarts?), try and **frame some specific goals and issues:**
  • * "I don't want people to take heteronormative assumptions about sex and relationships for granted."
  • * "The experiences of disabled people are so often ignored, or stereotyped."
  • * "This story is set in Chicago, it makes _no sense_ for all the key characters to be white."
  • Some of those questions or goals are doing a better job of representing authentic reality -- there are people we're often biased to forget about, or consider unimportant, but they're _there_ and our stories shouldn't erase them. Others are questions of whose story you want to be telling in the first place. Others still are examining your own biases and blind spots in your worldview -- since stories tend to push us towards familiar patterns, and also entrench those patterns further, that's an important consideration to make.
  • So consider: a story taking place inside an Islamic community in NYC, or a story about a single queer teen who doesn't know _anybody_ who isn't white and straight, or one about a crack team of superheros where every member comes from a different marginalized background -- each of those is "diverse" in a different way, and accomplishing different things (hopefully) with their diversity.
  • Figure out what's important to you in your story (and what pitfalls you want to avoid). Then figure out how to do that; that's the only measure of "not enough" or "not too much."
  • ---
  • The basic approach that you touch on -- having characters of many different backgrounds but that never seems significant -- has some important things going for it. It can work well for a goal of _normalizing_ marginalized groups; showing that heck yes a woman can be a starship captain and a black kid can be Spider-Man and it's _no big deal_. It has some pitfalls too, though, and I think you're seeing them: the diversity can feel insignificant, an informed attribute that could have been swapped for anything else with no difference. (Even worse, you can have a cast that's _supposed_ to feel like lots of characters from lots of backgrounds, but _actually_ feel just like a bunch of white straight people, for all intents and purposes.)
  • So if you're going to go down this route, you need to give a lot of thought -- not to how _many_ "diverse" characters you have, but to how you bring out and acknowledge the differences between them. Gay people, people of color, people of faith, neurodiverse people, etc. etc., are all informed by different life experiences than straight white people, who are popular literature's default. (A lot of those experiences are way more than just "society's oppressed me," and, no group is a monolith -- people from the same group will have had _different_ experiences!) Here's a [previous question on the topic](https://writing.codidact.com/questions/15449), and there might be some others on the site as well.
#1: Initial revision by user avatar Standback‭ · 2020-01-30T09:57:53Z (about 4 years ago)
It's really important to understand that "diversity" isn't something you should be scoring along a single axis. It would certainly simplify things if you could tally up Diversity Points in your story, knowing that five Diversity Points are Not Enough but seventeen is Too Many, but obviously, that isn't the case.

Instead of thinking in terms of "how _much_ diversity does my book have" (five points worth? twice as much as last time? two quarts?), try and frame some specific goals and issues:

* "I don't want people to take heteronormative assumptions about sex and relationships for granted."
* "The experiences of disabled people are so often ignored, or stereotyped."
* "This story is set in Chicago, it makes _no sense_ for all the key characters to be white."

Some of those questions or goals are doing a better job of representing authentic reality -- there are people we're often biased to forget about, or consider unimportant, but they're _there_ and our stories shouldn't erase them. Others are questions of whose story you want to be telling in the first place. Others still are examining your own biases and blind spots in your worldview -- since stories tend to push us towards familiar patterns, and also entrench those patterns further, that's an important consideration to make.

So consider: a story taking place inside an Islamic community in NYC, or a story about a single queer teen who doesn't know _anybody_ who isn't white and straight, or one about a crack team of superheros where every member comes from a different marginalized background -- each of those is "diverse" in a different way, and accomplishing different things (hopefully) with their diversity.

Figure out what's important to you in your story (and what pitfalls you want to avoid). Then figure out how to do that; that's the only measure of "not enough" or "not too much."

The basic approach that you touch on -- having characters of many different backgrounds but that never seems significant -- has some important things going for it. It can work well for a goal of _normalizing_ marginalized groups; showing that heck yes a woman can be a starship captain and a black kid can be Spider-Man and it's _no big deal_. It has some pitfalls too, though, and I think you're seeing them: the diversity can feel insignificant, an informed attribute that could have been swapped for anything else with no difference. (Even worse, you can have a cast that's _supposed_ to feel like lots of characters from lots of backgrounds, but _actually_ feel just like a bunch of white straight people, for all intents and purposes.)  

So if you're going to go down this route, you need to give a lot of thought -- not to how _many_ "diverse" characters you have, but to how you bring out and acknowledge the differences between them. Gay people, people of color, people of faith, neurodiverse people, etc. etc., are all informed by different life experiences than straight white people, who are popular literature's default. (A lot of those experiences are way more than just "society's oppressed me," and, no group is a monolith -- people from the same group will have had _different_ experiences!) Here's a [previous question on the topic](https://writing.codidact.com/questions/15449), and there might be some others on the site as well.