Can someone explain to me why representation is so important?
Because everyone deserves an equal chance to get a job. This isn't just about the content of the stories from the readers' perspective, it's about hiring fairness from the writers' perspective. A fair industry is one where everybody gets an equal chance to participate.
But it is important from a story perspective too, because people with different backgrounds and life experiences can bring different ideas and types of storytelling to the page. It's not just because they can depict the experiences of people like themselves more authentically, although that's certainly important. It's just because a wider range of perspectives and influences makes the fiction richer. Especially something like
Star Trek that's heavily driven by interaction between different cultures and points of view.
I have Aspergers Syndrome, but I have no interest in seeing a person with my condition in a story.
But you're not the only reader. There's an entire diverse audience out there, just as there's a diverse pool of writers out there. They all have as much right to be considered as you do.
To me, this was always a given. As a kid, I'd see all these TV shows like
Star Trek and
Barney Miller where there was an ethnically or gender-diverse supporting cast but the lead character was always a white male like me, and I kept thinking that wasn't fair -- that people who weren't like me deserved the same opportunity to see people like themselves in the lead role instead of always relegated to subordinate roles. It only seemed fair to let everyone have a turn.
Asking "Why do things need to be made more diverse?" is defining the question backward. Diversity is the natural, default state of humanity, certainly in the modern U.S. or U.K. population. In a truly fair process, it would happen automatically. If it isn't happening, then there are artificial filters and biases in place that are creating an unnatural absence of diversity, an unfair selection process. The goal is simply to remove those filters and let a more natural diversity emerge. We're already seeing that process underway to a greater or lesser extent in fields like TV writing and directing, movie writing and directing, comics, prose, and the like. That's the very ideal that
Star Trek has always promoted, so it's ironic that Trek Lit is behind the curve.
As for being creative, people who have led different lives, because they are different (note that different does not mean unequal), will have different experiences to relate and which they can infuse into their work. That will mean that the available stories will contain a wider range of perspectives, which will simply make them more interesting (the same kind of stories written by the same kind of people will inevitably get tired after a while), and might teach something to those people who don't have those perspectives and didn't live those lives, which will in turn help those other people broaden their own perspectives and reduce the institutionalised racism that led to the problem in the first place.
Yes, exactly. It is always good to be exposed to a range of different perspectives, both as a reader and as a writer. Because as a writer, you want to be able to portray a wide range of characters authentically. I try to be inclusive and authentic in my portrayal of cultures and groups other than my own, but I know my own ability to capture their viewpoints is limited, and what I'm able to do in that regard comes entirely from
listening to people who belong to those groups, reading the fiction they write and the reviews and articles they write, listening to female or nonwhite friends and getting their perspectives, etc. I'm only able to do what I can in that regard by following their lead, and I surely can't do it as authentically as they can. Their voices are
needed in the cultural conversation, and we can all benefit from letting them in.
Because it's not a zero-sum choice between Us and Them. That's not how the world works. Infinite Diversity in Infinite
Combinations. It's the blending of diverse perspectives that makes everyone stronger, that makes everyone's lives richer.
---we want to add people of other backgrounds to those panels.
