Being a writer is hard. It's challenging to get an agent, and it’s seemingly impossible to get a publisher to pick you up without one. The market is crowded, and the #PublishingPaidMe hashtag showed the world that as hard as it is to be a writer, it's even harder to be a BIPOC. The severe disparity of pay between authors of color and their white counterparts is astounding, disheartening, and now well documented; it’s not fair, and something needs to be done about it. Someone needs to speak up on these issues because it’s not ok.
As an author of color, there are inevitable inexplicable vagaries of race. A bias that I have to deal with, and even though I would like to be known as a great author regardless of my race, I can appreciate the Black/African American categories on Amazon that give me and those like me a chance to compete and a place to have visibility in the Kindle Store.
Lately, I've noticed many books ranking quite high in the African American Science Fiction and Fantasy categories that are not written by or about BIPOC. In the tradition of Peter Griffin, that grinds my gears. I'm not interested in any excuses. We know being a writer is hard. We know it's a struggle to sell books and get readers. We also know that racism and bias have made life hard for BIPOC authors. We also know the very same reasons it's so difficult for us, are why non-POC authors and publishers are using Black/African American categories to promote their books on Amazon.
Equally disturbing are the non-POC authors who take a previously non-POC character, change their name and or traits to sell their book as a diverse book. Now I'm not talking about non-POC authors who take the time and effort to research and intentionally write a story of a person of color who was always intended to be a person of color, to tell a great story, or to highlight a culture that they find beautiful and worthy. I think that's amazing, and I applaud it. Several non-POC authors have written excellent Black characters that I genuinely enjoy, my favorites among them Christian Cameron, Steven Erickson, and DB Bray. There is a massive difference between genuinely storytelling and marketing. The Malazan Book of the Fallen Series is full of POC, but never once have I seen it marketed as Black/African American Fantasy.
As the Managing Editor of (SF/F)or the Culture, a subsidiary of the Black woman-owned Wahida Clark Presents Innovative Publishing, and purveyor of speculative fiction by diverse authors and their allies, and a BIPOC, this trend makes me angry. I have to call it what it is: literary Black facing. The fact that it's so common and, to date, I haven't seen it called out is alarming and makes me angrier. The fact that I know both self-published and published authors intentionally using inherent racism to manipulate Amazon's algorithm is not something I can ignore. I don't think the rest of us should ignore it either.
Now we know that Blackface is racist and wrong. In 2021 most people shouldn't have to be told this, and full disclosure, I have my petty hat firmly in place. In a culture where we're about to cancel Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben's...why would you do this? If it's hard for you to sell your book as a white author, imagine how hard it is for the author of color who you are stealing from by occupying a spot in a category not designed for you? That's why I've been reporting any title I see where it doesn't belong. Sorry...not sorry.
In my opinion, when non-POC authors exploit racial bias to sell books, it perpetuates the systematic racism in publishing. It's incredibly discouraging when I'm sure most of these authors and publishers spent the summer standing with Black Lives. Blackfacing your book or your category is in effect profiting from tnon-POC and degradation of BIPOC and is the worst form of cultural appropriation.
I would post the offending authors and publishing companies, that we might troll them together with glee...
But I'm not going to sully my feed and promote trash. Instead, I encourage anybody reading this to check out some books written by real black authors and their allies. In the meantime, all the literary Blackface...let's stop that shit.
Now and Always For the Culture,
