I'm glad people are engaging in these diversity conversations with such vigor and nuance. It's a good and vitally important thing for us to do. There are many, many good points being made in this thread, and I'm going to specifically address rae-pleasant's comments about the importance of people telling their own stories. There is a way in which I think that's a separate conversation from the one taking place in this thread, which is explicitly about how to identify racial and ethnic heritage, but there's a way in which I think it's not separate at all, but inextricably related.
I happen to believe very strongly that we all have the right to create stories about characters whose identities and backgrounds differ from our own. I also happen to believe, with equal strength, that we all have the right to create stories about characters whose identities and backgrounds are rooted in our own. However, the latter is not, to come right out and say it, a right that we all currently experience with the same degree of fullness and satisfaction. The work of advancing diversity in children's literature so that it matches the actual reality of the world we live in involves both the books being published AND the people who create, publish, promote, distribute, and sell those books.
I don't think that means all of our conversations about diversity have to be conflated every time we discuss one aspect of diversity; I think there are plenty of times when we can and should focus on something resembling a single talking point, whether it's the word choices we make when writing about people of a certain racial background, or the ways we can support an illustrator or author who identifies as someone from an underrepresented community.
However, it's becoming clearer and clearer to me that different facets of the diversity dialogue are provoked in an astonishingly high number of ways. The mere mention of a certain word can spark painful, deeply internalized emotional connections for us. I'll say that "PC" is one of those terms for me, because my perception is that it's become something that's used to diminish and invalidate statements and beliefs about diversity. That's not at all what andracill was doing when she started this thread - her intent was clearly at the other end of the spectrum, and that's important to acknowledge. Still, the use of "PC" lights a little spark of agitation inside me anyway, because the backlog of attacking, devaluing ways in which I've seen and heard it used is that big, and that toxic.
I think there's enormous value and truth in all of the comments that have been made about portraying history accurately in order to portray the progression of change with equal accuracy, and making a fierce, uncompromising effort to prioritize authenticity over erasure of discomfort. And I think there's an equal amount of value and truth in rae-pleasant's assertion about the ability of (for example) African-American authors and illustrators to tell their own stories. It's entirely possible to say that assertion could or even should be broken out into its own discussion thread; it certainly does merit a long, honest conversation in its own right. But I understand how that assertion could be (and in fact was) provoked by a discussion like the one in this thread, and I don't want to have "maybe that's a different conversation" to be the only thing I say about it. I want to acknowledge its truth.
Rae, you're right. I don't know if this thread is the most effective starting point for that conversation, and I do agree with the entirely appropriate, respectfully stated rebuttals you're seeing here, but that doesn't make what you say any less valid, or any less true. You, I, and we absolutely are capable of telling our own stories. We all deserve to have that chance. There's reason to believe we're not all getting that chance, and that needs to change.