I am sure that many of us as children had a fictional role model, someone who represented the person we desired to become.
When I was young, I idolized Laura Ingalls Wilder. After reading the "Little House" books and watching the 1970s show based on those books, there was not a day that passed that I did not go to school wearing pigtails. I even dreaded getting braces because I wanted to have the same smile that Melissa Gilbert had in the role of Laura.
Every year during my school’s spirit week, I looked forward to Book Character Day, so that I could dress up as my literary heroine.
In the past few years, for similar spirit days at my high school, I have had difficulty finding a character to imitate. My main trouble is that the majority of female characters in my favorite novels and movies do not share my complexion.
I am biracial and have a diverse lineage, with ancestors from Palestine, Latin America, Ireland, Sweden, Norway, Scotland and England. As a young girl, when I picked a character to imitate, I did not focus on my racial background; the difference in ethnicities did not matter to me.
ADVERTISEMENT
As I got older, though, I began to see how underrepresented biracial and minority people are in the media.
As my classmates easily found a popular and well-loved book character to imitate, I struggled to find such a character with whom I identified. This was not so much a problem until middle school, when I decided to dress up as Hermione Granger for Halloween.
At the time, Hermione was my favorite book character. I greatly admired her bravery, intelligence, and poise. I excitedly shared my plans with a classmate, who nastily told me that I did not have the right hair color to be Hermione. My classmate’s unkind words and attitude hurt me, and my burning excitement quickly dwindled to nothing.
I am sharing these stories to show that characters in literature and film are strong role models and often the best influences for young children. This influence, I believe, is stronger when there is the common bond of ethnicity between reader and character. We cannot attain this type of connection when there are not enough minority characters to adequately and accurately represent the many culturally diverse people groups of today.
Yes, there are some minority characters in films and literature alike; however, writers can often fall into the pit of enhancing racial stereotypes by casting a Hispanic woman to be a maid, or a ditzy, comedic dunce.
Authors and filmmakers alike must purposefully create strong minority characters, such as the three African-American women mathematicians in "Hidden Figures," so that young minority audiences can have influences who are what they strive to be.
In this past Golden Globe awards, I was touched by the acceptance speech of "This Is Us" actor Sterling K. Brown. An African-American actor, Brown addressed the drama’s creator: "Dan Fogelman, you wrote a role for a black man that could only be played by a black man. What I appreciate so much about this is that I’m being seen for who I am and being appreciated for who I am. And it makes it that much more difficult to dismiss me, or dismiss anybody who looks like me."
Literature and films are powerful. Characters especially show us the type of person we would like to be. And, as director Mira Nair said, "We all know there’s almost nothing more powerful than to see people on film that look and talk like you, like we do."
ADVERTISEMENT
