So, yesterday was a particularly productive day. As in, I watched six episodes of "The Vampire Diaries." To those of you who know me well, this is probably not a surprise. My taste in TV shows ranges from romantic dramas to trashy reality, so "The Vampire Diaries" is right up my alley.

*Minor Spoilers* Anyway, in the show, the main character, a 17-year-old high schooler named Elena Gilbert, who's just lost both her parents in a car crash, falls in love with Stefan Salvatore, a vampire who's been 17 years old since 1864, or for the past 145 years (the first season takes place in 2009).

After a lot of drama and confusion and people getting eaten by Stefan's evil brother Damon, Elena finally figures out at the end of the fifth episode that Stefan and Damon are vampires. Obviously, she has a lot of questions.

(To those of you wondering why I'm describing the plot of this show, just keepreading, I promise there's an explanation.)

Long story short, to win back Elena's trust and show her that he's not an evil vampire, Stefan explains his past. He starts by discussing Kathryn, the girl who made both him and Damon vampires, and tells Elena about the mansion he and Damon lived in the 1860s.

As it turns out, Damon fought for the Confederacy, and Stefan and Damon's family had slaves. I hoped Elena would call them out on it—maybe have a discussion on moral standards and how they change over time—or at least to ask Stefan if he was still a racist, but that (surprisingly) does not happen in the show. Instead, Elena's more interested in learning about Kathryn and why Damon and Stefan were obsessed with her.

And that was when my marathoning of "The Vampire Diaries" came to an end.

I get that one is probably shocked when their boyfriend admits that he's a vampire, but how could you completely ignore the fact that he had slaves during the Civil War and supported the confederacy?

To be frank, that's something that only a white main character could do. If the main character was black (or even another minority), they probably would have called out their vampire ex-boyfriend over his slave-owning past. When the show glosses over it, it shows that it wasn't important enough to the main character to talk about, and that made me as a viewer very uncomfortable, uncomfortable enough to stop watching.

If anyone thinks I'm taking "The Vampire Diaries" too seriously, just think about it. The plot would completely change if a Person of Color (POC) was the main character and had an open discussion with Stefan about all aspects of his shady past.

It's true that we have had an improvement in the number of POC in TV shows in recent years. "Blackish" and "Fresh off the Boat" are two comedies which center on American families of color, a Black and an Asian family, and which have managed to start a dialogue about race.

Nevertheless, I think there's still a lot that needs to be done to truly represent POC living in America. A good step would be for TV shows to include POC as main characters but not to center on race. For example, take "The Vampire Diaries." If the show had an Asian, Black or Latino lead, it could have included important discussions about race without race being the main premise of the show.

Don't get me wrong, "Blackish" and "Fresh Off The Boat" are important. However, for most POC living in America, race is an important aspect of their lives, but it's not always the main focus of their lives. Like white people, we POC have family drama, love stories, school and job worries, etc. But what gets covered a lot on TV shows is our race and how it makes us different, and not the normality of the lives of many of America's POC.

Basically, I'm asking for a TV show that centers on a POC without centering on race. While race should come up every once in a while (as if often does in real life), it shouldn't be the main focus of the show. And I don't think that's a lot to ask for.

Some may think that now's a good time to be a POC in America, but truthfully, it kind of isn't. Especially for black people and Muslims, who have faced police brutality and "terrorism stereotyping," respectively, for a long time, and the situation isn't getting any better.

People of Color make up about 40 percent of America's population, but they're not represented in 40 percent of the American media. The most recent example is this year's Oscar Nominations, which are so white the award ceremony dress code should include sunglasses*.

Representation of people of color matters. If POC start playing protagonists on TV shows, it helps show white people who may not be as accepting toward people of color (think: the majority of Republicans) that POC are a normal and integral part of American society.

To all my fellow American POC: I get it. A lot of us are angry and hurt that we're not treated like we're Americans, even though we are Americans. (You wouldn't believe how many people asked me if I was an international student my first weeks at Tufts.) If our existence becomes more commonplace on American media and TV shows, it actually does make a difference toward how we're viewed and how we view ourselves.

*Thanks to Odyssey editor Dian Mak for this great description of the Oscars!