Be the change

Stage Four Lockdown: Day 4 of 5

Mood: A bit miffed

A news embargo is on the cards - it's all doom and gloom and fucking idiots out there. But what can you do? 

You watch the first five minute of the Daily Dan, pretty much because once the questions start I have to drop off as most of them are so banal, stupid and aggressive - and we don't need to listen to that. I know what arsehats Peta Credlin and the Newscorpse tribe are like, I don't need that in my life. 

I get my daily does of modified right wing whining from the Today Show most mornings. Thankfully that spiteful cow Alison Langdon has been injured and is off screen at the moment (Not thankful she's injured, but pleased I don't have to put up with her gunning for people on screen). Georgie Gardner is a bit more patalable.

There have been a lot of chats with friends over the last few days - a lot of it about what's going on (or not going on) at Parliament House. The other chats have been abour writing and inclusivity. 

A friend sent me a piece to read on the weekend, asking for comment. It was set in a school. I identified what I saw as some weaknesses in the piece, as well as some other issues. The big one for me was that the peice was very 'white'.

Okay, maybe I've been working in IT in corporate Australia for too long - or maybe I've just had it drilled into me that diversity is a great thing and enriches not only your writing but the world at large. And when you're a writer, you have to embrace the world - especially when you write fiction. So if you're writing a piece about a school anywhere in Australia, you don't just have John, Jane, Andrew and Melissa (unless you're writing about a posh boys' school in an affluent suburb where you get Hamish, Angus, Rhys and Michael, with a token Chin Yuen thrown in for good measure). If you're writing about a school in Australia you'll have a Mustafa, a Fatima, a Preeti, a Florence and maybe a Gurri. Your kids will come from all sorts of backgrounds - and you make it known. 

I made this statement to my friend. 

He came back with "As to diversity I write what I see. Where you are, and maybe in parts of London, but only parts, there is what you would call diversity. In the towns and most cities here there is none, and it’s decreasing. The Asian community in the North and there is increasingly lots of it, is insular of its own choice. I recently worked in an environment where as a white male I was treated as a lesser being and it was ‘accepted’. As to the white women in that environment..."

And okay, I do get that. He's in the North of England and there are a lot of racial tensions up there. And I'm not saying that everybody not being equal is acceptable - but then again, as a middle aged white male, he's had the power for most his life. And has he put the shoe on the other foot and been on the receiving end of what 50 years of migration from the sub-continent, where being called 'Paki scum' all your life would be like? And I'm not talking about day to day life - I'm talking about a scene in a school - and a public school - probably in the 2000s (and not the 1960s) where there would be a diverse range of kids.

But he was having none of it. Emails went back and forth a few times. I countered with, "Write the change you want to see. "

He came back with, '. The racism I see is very much inverted as I said and as to our social structure! It's hard being the change you want to see when you are not part of the groups that now need to change.'

Funny, but I think that this is part of the problem. 

Maybe the change needs to come from both sides. 

For me, I'll continue to try to be inclusive. My characters will have surnames line Nguyen, Papadopoulos, Spinetti and Gurrawai. They'll have different skin colours and lunch boxes and various experience. I'll try and stay away from stereotypes. 

Why? 

It's a good thing to do. I want to write the world I want to see. Besides, it feels better to be inclusive. It's the right thing to do.

Today's Song: