Why Can't Black Kids Have Fun? - by Khadijah

Why Can’t Black Kids Have Fun?

As life started to get more stressful I began to switch the genre of books I read from fantasy to contemporary rom-coms. I was obsessed! I would read at least three books a week and completed most in just one night. After a while though, I got tired of constantly consuming books filled with white faces, and began searching for books with characters who looked like me: black kids. I loved reading books filled with silly, outrageous, hilarious dialogue, and I knew that I would enjoy them even more if they contained the sharp humor unique to African Americans. But the more books I picked up with a black cast the more I discovered a pattern of depressing themes and somber tones mainly present in those books. And I just have to ask why! Why can’t black kids have fun?

I understand that due to the rampant racism in this country black kids have been forced to face hardships and stressors that are unknown to their white counterparts, but why does that have to translate to every single book, or other forms of media, where people who look like them are present? Why can’t we have an outlet to turn to that doesn’t depict us being killed or discriminated against? I feel that it is extra important for us to be able to read books that are full of laughter and aren’t too serious because we are the ones who are forced to always be serious due to the fact that our home country mistreats us in every aspect of life. We constantly face discrimination in reality, but we are not even allowed to see happiness in fiction, which is literally make-believe! So why can’t we make-believe that the wrongs we are subjected to don’t exist for a little bit? Why is being able to see people that look like you leading happy-go-lucky lives a privilege only afforded to white kids? This makes it seem like black people can never be completely happy even in places that are fragments of imagination.

This is not only a problem in contemporary novels, but also in fantasy (based on the select few stories of this genre where black characters are even present). How come most of the fantasy books I have read contain racism between characters??? Authors are literally able to write about places where dragons exist and technology is non-existent, but for some reason, the people with darker skin tones still have to face discrimination!!! You’re telling me the social construct we call race is still present in a world that is nothing like our own??? A place with a completely different history still has the same standards of whose features are better than whose???

        Although I will concede that it is important to write about what is happening in the world and it is helpful for people to see their struggles being mirrored in fictional characters, it is equally important to write relatable characters and stories that show black kids (and anyone reading about them)--that there is hope--that sadness is not the only outcome for people that look like them with similar life stories. Black kids (and anyone POC tbh) should be able to make the choice of whether they want to laugh or cry, without having to read about people with whom they don’t relate, to do the former. I will admit that there are books about black kids that are simply silly and lighthearted, but they are few and far between, and they are rarely published by big-time publishers. Black publishers have to fight to get their books out into the mainstream and the few that are able to, always seem to have written tragedies. Black kids’ mental health is already beaten down enough; they shouldn’t be subjected to facing even more racism than they have to.