source: http://news.stlpublicradio.org/

As complex as this tragedy and its responses are, there is one simple truth I don’t think anyone can deny: we are deeply divided.

At the root of this inability to truly understand each other is the limited nature of our individual experiences. Many people have not changed skin color, economic status, sexual orientation, gender, nationality, etc. And I think it’s fair to say that the average person’s closest friends share similar demographics. Of course, there’s a wide range of individual experiences beyond those simple categories.

So the sad fact is that most of our knowledge of other peoples' experiences comes from entertainment: TV, movies, news, and media. We learn about blackness from hip-hop, Asianness from kung-fu movies, middle-easternness from the coverage of the War of Terror, whiteness from — well, pretty much everywhere else.

Unfortunately, this is often false knowledge. These depictions are usually created to entertain, not to enlighten. When we’re kids, though, I doubt we realize this. We internalize what we see, and that subconsciously (or consciously) informs how we view and treat Others.

But in my opinion, books are different. Reading fiction forces you to inhabit another person’s consciousness. You see the world through her eyes. You walk in his shoes. You share in her triumphs and failures. While there are many other ways to cross that divide to a similar effect, I think fiction is one of the most simple, powerful, and practical ways to begin.

If we hope to understand each other and ourselves better, we need diverse books. As publisher Lee and Low has found, 37% of the U.S. population are people of color, but only 10% of published children’s books are about characters of color. If you think that number is as appalling as I do (one which doesn’t even account for differences beyond race), then do more than just talk about how much of a shame it is. Write, publish, represent, buy, sell, read, and recommend books by and about people with diverse experiences.

We need the power to see ourselves in others, to see others as ourselves. We need the ability to with identify Mike Brown AND Darren Wilson AND their families AND their friends AND…you get the idea.

We contain multitudes.

www.weneeddiversebooks.org

From http://blog.leeandlow.com/