Stereotypes and Book Diversity

I’m from east Tennessee, from “the foothills of the Appalachian mountains”. Yes, I know the Appalachian mountains go way north to Canada and come all the way down to Georgia. But, I grew up in southern thick of things,  near the Tennessee/Virginia/North Carolina borders. We pronounce it as Apple-latch-un. If you say “lay-shun” instead of “latch-un”, you might not be welcome anymore.

I grew up with some racists, both the self-proclaimed kind and the in-denial-but-obviously-inclined kind. Generally, it was a distrust of anyone not in the family. There wasn’t a lot of coming and going out of my region, and families were intertwined like royalties, spread across towns. I could walk for miles and miles and still not be too far away from a distant kin’s house in an emergency. As kids, we did walk those miles. Our parents trusted the neighborhood because the neighborhood was family and of course, absolutely, without a doubt, those distant kin neighbors are “just like us”, “safe”, “upstanding citizens”.

Except the few who were drunks, perverts, or both. Shhh, about that now.

Despite the propensity for proclaiming whites to be superior, many of the families in my neck of the woods had mixed ancestry. There were the Cherokee who hid in the mountains to avoid relocation, marrying whites, and having mixed families. There were the Melungeons, a tri-racial people descending from Europeans, Africans, and Native Americans. However, there was an ugly time in history when admitting to being anything other than lily white would get your land confiscated. Generationally, we aren’t that far away from the trail of tears. In this regard: My mother can speak to me of her time spent with her grandfather. He was born in the 1866 by an unwed 16 year old girl. His mother told him they were part Cherokee. However, when his mother married a very white man and had other children, she did not reveal the Cherokee link to them. If she did, the information stopped there and the next generation were never told.

Most of the kids I grew up with thought they were of 100% European descent.  We never went to school with a black kid until 6th grade. But, by that time, I had already secretly been in love with Charley Pride and obsessively kissed Michael Jackson’s face on the Thriller record cover. To say I didn’t see a difference between black and white would be wrong. I saw a difference, and I thought dark skin was beautiful, and brown eyes intoxicating. I had family members tell me that it was wrong for whites to marry blacks. This was in the 80’s when I was twelve, because they had to instill the idea early (not early enough, folks). Another family member repeatedly said I would grow up to marry a black man (though he used the N word). In high school, I dressed like Prince because he was what I wanted to be when I grew up. I had girls call out as a walked down the halls, “N____ lover!”

I wish I could say I was a born anomaly, a ray of light in the dark. But every single stereotype I was told about as a child had to be worked out of me by years of observation and self-reflection. I did not instantly deny the truth of racists comments. I had to work out the truth about blacks, Hispanics, gays, the rich, the poor, and myself. But, I was surrounded by generations of the same family network, similar incomes, similar religious and political beliefs. Where would I feed my desire to learn the truth? Or to validate my own differences?

Lately, we have heard a lot about a need for diversity in children’s books because children need to see people like themselves on the pages. The only blacks in my elementary school textbooks in the 80’s had been slaves or savages from Africa, yes… they were portrayed as uncivilized. I have no doubt that these limited representations of black history hurt black Americans. But, I also know that it hurt all of us.

The lack of books representing African American true life stories was a void which was filled by ignorance. And those of us willing to take a stand felt too unknowing to do so. What did I know about African American life? Where was my credibility? I had none. Even knowing I was part Cherokee, I could not tell you anything about Cherokee customs which weren’t portrayed as savage.

When my oldest daughter was born in 2001, I knew I would do things differently. We did not assign race to anyone. People had black skin, brown skin, dark skin, pink skin, brown hair, blond hair, etc. But people were not ever called Black, White, Mexican, Asian, etc. Our neighbors had a daughter from Nigeria. She was “from Africa”. She was never “black”. Now that my girls are older (12, 10, 8), they hear the terms for different races by their peers and other adults.They know what race is. But, because grouping people together by race isn’t something they were raised to do, they don’t hear it the same way as other kids and they don’t use it themselves unless referring to the sordid past of the US.

This doesn’t mean that I deny to my children that different cultures exist or that I think they shouldn’t. It just means that I do not assume that every person who looks a certain way IS a certain way. It muddies the water and makes it harder to see the heart of a person. That is the lesson I want my girls to take away from being raised not to see race first. It might mean everything to a person, or it might mean nothing. The only person who can tell you how much their race defines them is the individual.

The people from my part of Appalachia are often viewed as backwards, racist, dirty, and ignorant. If you read only the first part of this blog post, you might be thinking I haven’t done them any favors. But, they are just another example of the hurt caused by judging by stereotype and not by the heart. Many kids who leave Appalachia find that it comes with them like the color of their eyes. They speak with a slow drawl and are assumed to have been barefoot most of their lives. The stereotype of ignorance overshadows every word they speak, often from their own minds. Their hearts could be full of love and acceptance, curiosity and a desire to change the world. But, they struggle to overcome what they feel the world projects onto them.

A book about Appalachian culture would be true if it included some stereotypes. But, it may not leave room for individual differences which do not fit the stereotype. Diversity acceptance happens when people are presented with a large varying collection of stories from a group of people all previously believed to be the same. It happens one personal story at a time and isn’t achieved until many are heard.  There is no reason not to start writing yours now.

Will publishers publish it? It depends on what people spend their money to buy. You can start showing your support for authors who write about minority characters by buying their self-published works, even if those minority characters do not reflect your specific lifestyle. Readers can’t ask for diversity and then only buy books about themselves.

Be curious. Don’t settle for stereotypes. Find and value authors brave enough to tell a true story.