Diversity

[Reece]

Just think about YOUR cast. Do their races or genders matter at all in the context of the fiction you are writing? Are any of their races or genders pivotal to the story? Would being a different race or gender change them at all as characters? If not, then why not include a more diverse cast?

This probably makes me come across as incredibly ignorant, but to be perfectly honest, the main reason I don't tend to include more diverse casts in things I write is just because it never even crosses my mind to do so.
Where I live, a vast majority of the population is white, so I just tend to assume that unimportant background characters are white.
I do sometimes write Japanese characters, because I'm an otaku, but that's about the extent of racial diversity from me.

Which is odd, now that I think about it, given that I pride myself on my open-mindedness...

I guess it's most likely just because both manga and western fantasy/sci-fi novels tend not to feature as many black characters, and that's pretty much all I read, so I've just gotten used to having stories written that way.