How Do We Encourage Diversity?
Having established that representation of diversity in the media is important, this now raises the question, how do we get there and what is involved in doing it well? I noted before that the question of diversity appears on an in-world level (inside the world of the piece of media), as well as on a meta level (the people involved with creating the media). As these are two different, if related topics, I will break them down as such, addressing the meta level first.
Why Are Certain Voices Underrepresented?
This issue is one that is best addressed on a more systematic level. There is a variety of reasons why certain groups are underrepresented in the media, and the reasons depend on the group and depend on the field.
For example, if there is a high percentage of a group that lives below the poverty line, that group is already less likely to be able to be a creator of media. Access to education being limited by financial resources is one reason. Even if someone has natural talent, they might not be given the opportunity to investigate or hone that talent the way they would be encouraged to do in an academic setting. Furthermore, even with access to education, work in the arts generally comes with less of a guarantee of financial stability. If someone has to work to support their family, a risky career path would look distinctly less appealing than if they had some form of safety net.
None of these dynamics are absolutes, of course, and things have been improving. Still, there are certain groups of people who are discouraged from entering into media, and if they do choose to enter it, they might be met with hostility or prejudice, or might find that they have issues having their voices be heard in what is a sea of mostly homogenized voices.
Marginalized Voices Need Not Stay in the Margins
On a systematic level, a way to improve upon this is to have institutions within the world of media engage in active support of these specific voices. This might include scholarships and grants for people for whom working in the arts would otherwise be financially prohibitive. Even if certain groups might not be able to offer that, they can specifically create spaces for underrepresented voices. An example of this would be literary magazines that specifically seek out writing from queer folk, or POC, or women. Happily, spaces like this are starting to exist. The problem, of course, still exists, but popularization of these spaces aids in marginalized voices being heard. (Note: as a writer, if you are looking for a literary magazine like this, submittable is a platform that a lot of literary magazines use for submissions. It has a “discover” feature wherein you can search certain tags in order to find magazines that specialize in certain things).
How can one person help with this problem? If you’re not a member of these groups, how might you help them become better represented? If you are someone who works in media with an opportunity to collaborate, try to collaborate with a wide variety of people. This is not to encourage tokenization of diversity. Rather, it is a means to investigate new artistic possibilities with someone whose perspective might differ from your own.
Counter intuitively, even if you are not someone whose work is the production of media, you still play a crucial part in the process. Artists, writers, and directors might create media, but it’s the consumers who popularize it and determine its success. Supporting those with marginalized voices means actively consuming the work that they produce. Practice responsible media consumption remembering that the personal is political.
In part three I will address In-World diversity and what it means to responsibly create characters.
