White really is boring

I’ll be the first to admit I haven’t been in the young adult section of a bookstore since I was about 13 and obsessed with vampire love stories. At 13, it never occurred to me that the books I loved so much, with female protagonists emblazoned on the covers, were actually whitewashed by publishing companies. Where I once saw mystery and romance, now I see rows of identical covers all featuring a white, beautiful female protagonist, even when the heroine herself is a woman of color.

Most recently, the massive publishing house Bloomsbury misrepresented protagonists of color on two different young adult books: “Liar” by Justine Larbalestier, and “Magic Under Glass” by Jaclyn Dolamore. Thankfully, Bloomsbury later re-released the novels with more accurate covers.

But it isn’t just Bloomsbury. The Book Smugglers blog lists titles from 1987 to the present that illustrate this ongoing issue.

How could publishers get something as characteristically fundamental as race or ethnicity so incredibly wrong? Moreover, how has a system so incredibly racist and colorblind gone unnoticed by bibliophiles like myself for so long?

Publishers have convinced themselves and their readers that the only thing that sells is whiteness, because there just aren’t many books featuring people of color to choose from in the first place. The young adult market seems to prefer white protagonists because they are the only ones offered, not because of an aversion to or lack of demand for protagonists who are people of color. Quite the Catch-22.

What’s distressing is that the trend of whitewashing so apparent in young adult books begins at the earliest ages of reading and development.

In a study done by the Cooperative Children’s Book Center at the University of Wisconsin, there were 3,200 children’s books published in 2013, yet only 93 of them were about black people.

 By exposing children to only white protagonists, it sparks the conception that protagonists must be white in order to be successful, and a black protagonist must be the exception and not the norm. That’s just about as white-centric as you can get.

Christopher Myers, an author of books for children and young adults, calls this paucity of black protagonists the apartheid of children’s literature.

“Characters of color are limited to the townships of occasional historical books that concern themselves with the legacies of civil rights and slavery but are never given a pass card to transverse the lands of adventure, curiosity, imagination or personal growth,” Myers wrote in a recent article for the New York Times.

Publishers come up with all sorts of reasons for featuring a majority of white protagonists. The most ridiculous reason I’ve come across is that white readers just won’t be able to relate to characters of color — which is complete crap. Young adult readers aren’t looking to identify with a character based only on their skin color. They’re more likely to identify with the personal struggles of the protagonist.

In an interview with Vanity Fair, actress Anika Noni Rose the voice of Princess Tiana in Disney’s “The Princess and the Frog” voiced a similar sentiment about what happens when black authors approach their editors with stories that have black protagonists.

“And why can’t you expand yourself so you relate to the humanity of a character,” she asked, “as opposed to the color of what they are?”

What accounts for the fact that most popular young adult novels feature supernatural creatures or other fantasy creations? Certainly not the fact that white werewolves are more popular than black ones, because that’s truly ridiculous.

To escape being blamed themselves, publishing companies place the blame for underrepresenting people of color on a lack of demand or empathy from readers. The publishers are the ones who perpetuate the system by limiting the market to mostly white-centric novels, and not because readers are demanding only white characters.

While it’s unclear how deeply the trend of whitewashing extends into more adult novels, the current situation reinforces a system of power and oppression through books marketed to children and young adults who are just developing their sense of self and awareness of the world.

A lack of racially diverse protagonists systematically reenforces the conception that a hero can’t be any race other than white. Publishing companies evade blame to save face, when what they should be doing is fixing the problem by adding more diversity to characters in young adult literature.

 

Give me a Break aka Stop Being so Sensitive

The definition of solipsism is a preoccupation with one’s own feelings, which is exemplified by the overuse of trigger warnings on the Internet.

If you’ve surfed the web long enough, or even paid attention to Tumblr, you know that a trigger warning is often used to advise an audience of ensuing graphic content. This could be anything from eating disorders to rape, but the message is always supposed to be the same: We care about your feelings and sensitivities, so we’re here to warn you about all of the bad stuff.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t actually work the way it’s supposed to. According to newrepublic.com, trigger warnings can be provided for just about anything at the request of just about anyone. At the University of California, Santa Barbara, students recently passed a resolution to include trigger warnings on syllabi, letting students know ahead of time what kind of content they’re going to be exposed to.

Yes, it’s sensitive, but it’s also incredibly short-sighted.

Trigger warnings are problematic from the outset because they blur the line between genuine sensitivity and downright censorship. Where do we stop having open discussion about the implications of complex topics displayed in the media and start limiting ourselves solely to our comfort zone?

Reading about rape may be especially difficult for a rape victim, but when we most need to talk about and deal with rape and raise social awareness, we’re shutting down the conversations before they’re even allowed to take place. Trigger warnings should not be an excuse to just skip over sensitive topics, especially at the collegiate level.

In another instance, students at Wellesley College protested a sculpture of a man in his underwear because it triggered thoughts of sexual assault. They demanded it be moved inside even when the artist explained that it was merely a representation of sleepwalking. A piece of art and personal expression was hidden from the rest of the student body because of triggers not associated with the intent of the piece itself. This incident isn’t reactionary sensitivity, but a stifling of artistic creativity and expression because of the rampant solipsism of a select group of students.

 

While the original intent of trigger warnings was to prevent survivors with post-traumatic stress disorder from suffering panic attacks or uncomfortable flashbacks, their widespread use is far less virtuous. There is no way to know how every person is going to react to every possible scenario and every reaction will be different. Without the ability to anticipate reaction, we’re not doing ourselves any favors by limiting the things we read or experience in the real world. Life does not come with trigger warnings, and neither should anything else we’re exposed to.

We are becoming so preoccupied with our feelings that we forget how to learn from inflammatory or sensitive material. Novels like “The Color Purple” or “The Kite Runner,” both of which include explicit themes such as rape and domestic violence, are also incredible stories of strength and personal development.

Trigger warnings aren’t protecting us. If we were to cite every seemingly explicit scene or insinuation in every classic novel, we’d be left with a short list of culturally irrelevant novels that teach us nothing about society or the realities of life. They’re a catalyst to stunt our own growth as students and as individuals who must deal with our share of trauma. We should be pursuing open and informed discussion about these topics not ignoring or brushing aside the issues. There is no way to address every single concern for each person.

The cure to solipsism is discourse, something we can’t have if we’re too caught up in posting trigger warnings along the way.

We’re Getting Swindled out of our own Education

Ask me or any other college student about our fears and you’ll see the look, the one that screams, “I’m in way over my head with debt, and on top of that, my tuition has increased every year I’ve been here.”

It’s a look that comes with an understanding that a “full-ride” scholarship won’t cover all of your costs because the award is static, while tuition isn’t.

While our pleas for more financial assistance and more transparency in university spending go unanswered, our goals are overshadowed by the possibility of rising tuition.

According to a study conducted by The College Board in 2013, Arizona had the highest in-state tuition and fee increases at its public four-year institutions. Over the five-year span from 2008 to 2013, tuition increases clocked in at a whopping 70 percent, compared to the national average of 27 percent.

In strictly monetary terms, that’s a $4,135 hike that no student should be expected to shoulder.

The answer to such a financial mess lies in an option the UA has yet to offer its incoming students: locked-in tuition.

According to scholarships.com, locked-in tuition offers enticing benefits to students looking to save long-term on higher education. For starters, the amount of tuition you pay for your entire college career is literally “locked-in” to whatever rate the university currently offers.

 

Big name schools like the University of Kansas, George Washington University and Columbia College all offer plans that make it easy for students to know exactly what they’re going to be shelling out for an education.

Even NAU abides by a set tuition program known as PLEDGE, where freshmen are guaranteed the same tuition for all four years of school. As attractive as an education from the UA is, there’s no denying a better financial deal elsewhere could certainly make me reconsider my enrollment choice.

If the UA adopted a similar plan, students could start saving earlier, better understand their financial situation before college and not be subject to the whiplash of tuition hikes year after year. There are already models we could follow.

In Texas, there is an entire system dedicated to helping students save for either a two or four-year institution, known as the Texas Tuition Promise Fund. The fund allows families to purchase units of tuition credit at a fixed price before even deciding on which Texas school they want to attend.

Think of the units like CatCash. There’s a fixed amount you put on your CatCard at the beginning of the semester, and then you can decide where and how you’re going to spend your money.

In this instance, you would be deciding which UA classes you want to take. While Texas allows its students to apply credit to any of its institutions, the UA could adopt a very similar plan and still remain autonomous from NAU andASU tuition policies.

What’s such a steal about this system is the total transparency it represents: Market changes don’t affect the value of units used toward tuition, so what you save is what you can spend.

Moreover, the system is highly attractive to a diverse group of people from all types of socioeconomic backgrounds. Even people who may not have been able to afford tuition all at once would have the option to put away small amounts of savings over long periods of time, making higher education attainable to more than just those people who can anticipate rising tuition.

Under the weight of fees, debts and the ever-increasing price of tuition, the UA student body needs a way to compensate. Locked-in tuition or a similar system could be just the option we’re looking for.

Without change, the UA will certainly lose out on enrollment to other schools — like NAU — that already offer more financial stability and guaranteed tuition plans. Unless the UA wants to continue to turn out dissatisfied, debt-ridden students who feel completely taken advantage of by volatile tuition hikes, there needs to be serious reconsideration of current policies and the implementation of a far more responsible tuition system.