Insider vs. Outsider

To be completely honest I am still partially confused about what constitutes and insider and an outsider. For the most part I would say I consider myself to be an insider because I am from the majority in the sense that I am a white, middle class, heterosexual, educated woman. However, does considering myself an insider mean that I feel comfortable in my environment at all times? No. As I think about the issue, I define an insider as a person who can, for the most part, feel comfortable in the environment they live in through normal every day activities as well as in more structured situations such as the classroom. In terms of literature I would say that being an insider means to be able to relate to the characters presented in a text without stretching to do so. By this I mean being able to easily relate to large characteristics such as race, gender, religion and economic class. In the terms that I have defined I feel as if multicultural literature is an avenue to give every individual a chance to take on the insider persona. It gives children and adults for that matter a connectedness and understanding in regards to their everyday lives. I also believe that no matter what actions are taken, there is always going to be someone that feels like an outsider when reading literature. By this meaning that they cannot fully relate to major cultural or lifestyle aspects of the story. However, I believe that at times being an outsider can be very beneficial. I do not think it is right that the same groups of people are constantly presented with literature in which they can feel like and insider while reading it. Everyone deserves that chance and they deserve it equally. I believe that multicultural literature is extremely important but I do not think that it should become the only source of literature that individuals are exposed to. If this were to happen it would over correct the problem by placing another group of people in the position of being a constant outsider. This is a hard issue because it comes down to where do you draw the line? How do you make the exposure of multicultural literature equal to the mainstream literature? Keeping all of this in mind, I also begin to question what constitutes multicultural literature. I don't think that multicultural literature should be limited to race. There are issues with gender, economic status, sexual orientation, and religion that all deserve their place in multicultural literature. Culture is not solely based on race and for that reason race should not be the only determiner in multicultural literature. I think that it can be difficult to incorporate every culture but it deserves a try because we cannot say that a culture does not have representation in multicultural literature because there are few people who follow that culture. That is again targeting a single group constantly as outsiders within literature.