As a queer person of color, I have lived a life being told that I am other, but there is no other there is just human and more people should recognize that.
Our society has many beautiful things, but our most amazing aspects are our outspokenness and ability to have riveting influential discussions; yet even that can be depreciated by our bias and prejudice. I'm not talking about misandrist going on rants demonizing all men or people trolling who constantly use racial slurs because they think it's funny. I'm referring to when we allow well-articulated arguments to be driven by ideas that disrespect or harm others.
I was talking with a friend about if it was necessary to have systems in place that support diversity in school and the workplace. After explaining to him that not only is diversity needed to gain multiple mindsets who can find different solutions, open opportunities to have a more diverse customer base, and improve relations outside of the workplace but also that systems are needed to support this diversity due to biases and discrimination in the work and educational fields. After this, he told me that mindset supports the cultural bias that demonizes straight white men because their normal. His use of the word normal here though I'm sure not meant to offend was a way of dehumanizing minorities. His and society's mindset that labels straight white men as normal automatically label everyone else as other, atypical, freak.
The default human is not a perfectly healthy straight Christian cisgendered white man living in his suburban home, yet people act as if minority status is just adjusting this "normal" model to make someone more "interesting" or to score diversity points. But what else could be expected when that's how the media (such as games and tv) depict it.
When a video game character is a woman, queer, a person of color, or disabled they aren't usually the playable character because that would supposedly make them "unrelatable" to a lot of the audience. In tv minorities are usually side characters to their more "normal" main character or are main characters in series targeted to those demographics, and the most well and earnest depictions are those from the targeted demographic. The fact that well-written depictions of minorities are usually restricted to shows made for them often focusing on the unique experiences of their minority further pushes the idea that they are only their minority status. When the Cartoon Network show Craig of the Creek was announced some people thought it was strange that the main character was black even though his character wasn't focused on that, as some say he is just a normal kid hanging with his friends and creators are "making him black just to make him black" as if that isn't something black kids do.
Even though representation of minorities is improving we need to keep in that minorities are more than just their minority status as white people aren't just white, straight people aren't just straight, men aren't just men we are not stereotypical archetypes but real people who are your neighbors, classmates, co-workers, and fellow citizens. So if you're straight, white, Christian, able-bodied, middle class, cisgendered, male, or anything of the sort you aren't treated negatively because you're normal and everyone else is a special snowflake; but because we all have advantages and disadvantages compared to others, people are just trying to make things more even because we are all human, different, complex, anything but normal humans.
