As time passes and our society keeps evolving, races and cultures are no longer confined in one specific place. With rapid technological improvements, it has become easier and easier for people to travel, therefore the majority of countries nowadays are often multiethnic and multicultural. Due to this, a text can often be overwhelmed with the expectations for it to represent every single member of that group. For example in “Crazy Rich Asian”, only light-skinned East Asians are portrayed in the movie while the vast population of other Asian races, such as Indians and Malays in Singapore, were sidelined.
Other than the multicultural and multiethnic nature of our societies, one other important factor that determines whether texts can fully represent groups of people would be who is creating that text. Does the creator come from that culture, or is he or she an outsider to the culture? While it might seem that coming from the same culture makes the writer a suitable candidate to represent his culture, things are actually more complex. Even within a single culture, there are people from different social classes, educational backgrounds, and they might hold different philosophical beliefs as well. For example, even in present-day India, the caste system still applies to different segments of society. An author who does not support the caste system might write a book that describes the caste system as being outdated, but his viewpoint is not representative of everyone in society.
Texts always come from a specific point of view, it never represents everyone in society. The information that it gives can be confined to one specific segment of society and might be outdated with time. For example, Oliver Twist was written by Charles Dickens in the 1800s however it no longer applies for present-day England. Therefore when we come across any information, whether they are movies, books, news articles or social media, we have to question who is producing the text, its legitimacy, and which era it specifically represents.
