This is going to come out really clumsy. I'm not totally sure the point I'm wanting to make, either. So please, bear with me and know that I'm not trying to do this wrong.
I grew up in Alberta. My family was, I guess, middle class, though we were treated as upper-middle class due to my father's profession. (Being a member of the clergy will do that, I guess.)
I don't really remember my life when we lived in northern Alberta (as in, north of Edmonton in the actual northern part of the province) because I was only six when we moved down to the prairies (south of Calgary). When I was eleven, we moved to "central" Alberta, nearer the mountains (north of Calgary and south of Edmonton).
I didn't live in large cities. We lived in a small city, I think, up north, and a large town down south, and a medium-sized town in central Alberta.
Most of the people I knew growing up were white. Most of the people I ever even saw were white.
And when we lived in central Alberta, there were two reserves right near our town. When I was in grade eight, my best friend was First Nations and lived in town, but I guess she and her family moved back out to the reserve, because she didn't come to grade nine with me. Most of the First Nations kids in that area went to school on the reserve, not in town.
Also when we lived in central Alberta, one of my classmates was Chinese and was the smartest kid in the class and had the highest grade in everything. In grade nine I had the second highest mark in Math class with a 97%; he had a 99% because the teacher didn't believe in giving 100%. (I am not kidding on that one.)
Again, when we lived in central Alberta, I was friends with a girl whose mother was from I think South America (she was black and an immigrant but not from anywhere in Africa), and whose father was Inuit.
Everyone who went to our church was white, in central Alberta, and in southern Alberta. I can't remember northern Alberta, but I wouldn't be surprised if the parish there was also primarily white (though I also wouldn't be surprised if there were more First Nations in the second point of the two-point parish we served in).
And then I went to university in Calgary, and again, most of my fellow students were white. My roommate in residence first year was Chinese; one of my fellow music majors was Chinese; another was I believe of Mexican descent; and another was Indian.
I can pick these people out of my history because they stand out due to their race. I can also tell you that most of the people I knew in that town in central Alberta were Dutch, and that I myself am Scottish and English, and that my many-greats-grandfather married a woman of the Shawnee nation (which I don't really know but I guess she was Algonquin since this was in Canada? I find it confusing and it was long enough ago that it's like one drop at this point anyway), and their daughter married my one-fewer-greats-grandfather, on my father's side, and that I identify most strongly with my Scottish roots (and yes, I actually enjoy listening to bagpipes, when they are played well).
I feel like I'm saying this all wrong. I will continue, though.
When I lived in Vancouver, I worked with a couple of Chinese children. I also became very close with the family of one of the children I worked with, who are Arabic. That is, he is Iraqi and she is Jordanian, and the family is primarily Muslim. I have also worked with a Vietnamese child and an Indian child, as well as mixed-race children. But still, most of the children I have worked with over the years were white.
I don't feel like this is due to something intentional, at least not on the part of my family or of myself. I don't know if we just lived in places where POC didn't live (which would be really weird and probably fairly impossible and definitely untrue in regards to the town in central Alberta) or if the places I mostly went (and the places I mostly go now, though I see more First Nations people out and about in Saskatoon than I've ever seen anywhere else I've lived) were places where mostly white people congregated, or what.
My writing is populated primarily by white characters, not because of a conscious desire to leave out POC but because my life experiences point to an overwhelming lack of POC in the places I have lived. Not knowing POC on a personal level makes it difficult to write realistically and sensitively about POC. I'm not afraid of the challenge, and I have a few characters who are POC (whose cultures I will be researching as best I can, and who I will ask for input on as I develop their characters), but I know that I don't understand all of the difficulties faced by POC in Canada (especially First Nations).
I think that people tend to write about people they know, and if you are white and have never had occasion to meet or get to know any POC, then you are probably going to write mostly about white people. I'm not saying that this is right, just that it is kind of understandable in certain situations.
For myself, my primary difficulty is that I have no confidence in my ability to meet new people. I feel very awkward and uncertain of myself whenever I'm around people I don't know, regardless of their ethnicity. Social skills are very difficult for me. (I do better online, and even here I often feel like I'm buggering things up.) And I also think that there is a problem with befriending someone just because of their skin tone or something like that. I want to have things in common with my friends besides the fact that we are human beings, so that we can hang out and talk about random things - stuff like books we like, or knitting, or writing.
I feel like I said all of this completely wrong, and again, I'm not sure what my point is, or even if I have a point. This was just something I was thinking about today and I wanted to say it.
Like with everything else I ever say about myself and what I think, I'm not looking for cookies or kudos or anything, I'm just saying what I think. And if you think I made sense, please tell me. If I said something really backwards and offended you, I would really appreciate it if you could explain why it was offensive, because I do try not to do that. If you want to discuss part of what I've said here and get into it a little deeper, that would also be very cool. Discussion often helps me figure out what I meant to say and clarifies ideas so that I can refine my thinking and find better ways of explaining myself. And if you have suggestions for reading material that could help me with understanding more about the lives of POC, that would be tremendously fantastic. (I can't guarantee when I'll get to the stuff, but I'll bookmark web sites for future perusal and put books in my queue.)
