Can texts ever be truly representative of groups of people?

I think texts cannot be truly representative of groups of people because even within the small groups, there will still be some differences between the people based on their own backgrounds and experience, and people will also have individual thoughts and perspectives. Texts might be able to show some common traits or identities of a group of people, but they cannot be the representation of everyone within the group. Also, they could be biased due to certain purposes of the authors/publishers, and couldn’t show all the aspects of certain group as the length/area of the texts are limited.

Who gets to represent a group and who doesn’t? (Who gets to tell what?)

Most of the time, the majority people get to represent a certain group, while the minority of the group is being ignored and doesn’t have a chance to speak out for themselves. This creates stereotypes for the people who only get to know to the group through the majority’s point of view, which then leads to a biased chain which the minority finds extremely difficult to break through – people usually only admit to the things they already know, so that they will hardly pay attention when the minority tries to send out their different voices.

Is the act of representation problematic?

I don’t think the act of representation is problematic because people always want to express themselves, and sometimes it’s not their intentions to misrepresent something, but is just due to the influences of the society that have been rooted in people’s minds, creating an automatic mindset. The initiative of representing a group might just be the will of letting more people know about the group.