On September 2, "Booktuber" Bre Faucheux posted her controversial video "The Problem with Diversity in Books | RANT". As the title would suggest, Faucheux ranted for 22 minutes about diversity in novels, and about how "it has got to stop now."

Faucheux was right about one thing in her video: she most certainly has some controversial opinions. She calls for authors and readers alike to stop trying to pander to diverse peoples and instead write about whatever they want, even if that means white-washing every book published. "White-washing" has been a problem in both literature and film for some time now, as evident in nearly every young adult novel book and then movie adaptation featuring young Caucasian characters, with the occasional token minority thrown in as a side kick.

For years, people of color and members of the LGBTQA+ community have dealt with countless entertainment devoid of any positive representation. Often, when people of color, especially any that also identify as LGBTQA+ end up being killed ("Orange is the New Black" being a perfect example). How would it feel if every time the characters you connect with most are the ones that are killed off the show?

Representation is incredibly important for countless reasons. For one, diversity in books can help young readers in particular discover who they are by providing characters that they are able to relate to. For instance, including characters that identify as asexual, providing that they are portrayed in a positive light and not in an instance where the character has to be "fixed", can allow readers to perhaps identify themselves as asexual as well, which gives them a sense of identity. This can be a great comfort to those who are confused about their sexuality.

Roald Dahl said it best in his novel, "Matilda."

These books gave Matilda a hopeful and comforting message: You are not alone.

Diversity is not only important in just sexuality; it is extremely important in terms of race and ethnicity as well. Faucheux argues against this point, asking people of color to, "Quit shoving your unearned superiority complex down my throat!" However, is it really a superiority complex to ask for authors to include people of your own race as well as others?

We, as humans, tend to want to find characters that reflect ourselves in some way. Most people's favorite literary characters are those that they relate to in some way, which is what helps us build a connection with these characters. However, people of color have a much smaller selection of those to see themselves in, even in today's society. Yes, we are getting better about representation, especially with novels that released in the past few years, such as "It Ends With Us" by Marieke Nijkamp. The problem still exists though: many authors, particularly caucasian authors, tend to describe their characters as "not white" by using words like "tan" or, even worse, using food-related adjectives such as "caramel" or "honey" colored. These terms, particularly the food ones, undermine the point of including diverse characters and even fetishize them, which is not positive representation.

Despite what the media may portray, we do live in an incredibly diverse world full of incredilby diverse people. Shouldn't we want our literature to exemplify and celebrate this? Faucheux thinks that, "All you're doing is guilt-tripping the majority into catering to the minority and then having the balls to call it progressive."

Maybe she's right about one thing. Maybe we shouldn't be calling this movement progressive.

We should be calling it the norm.