On Friday night, I went to see a screening of the movie Dear White People, a wonderfully funny and warm but still very biting comedy about race relations on an Ivy league campus. (“Dear White People, the amount of black friends required not to seem racist has just been raised to two. Sorry, your weed…
Unfortunately for the author of this blog post, I did cringe while I was reading this. As a black person and a avid writer, I cringed hard (sorry).
I cringed because white people are so removed from this issue, they are baffled by it. I cringed because the writer of this blog post questions whether or not black writers even exist (sigh). I cringed because the fact that so many people are baffled by this issue means things will likely never change for me. If there is ever real progression toward anti-blackness, I doubt I will live to see it.
And no. Fucking Obama doesn't count. He's not proof of a post-racial society; he's proof of a racist society. You lost the ability to use him as "proof" when Trump got in office.
I think it's sad that publishing has a race issue but 1) doesn't know it and 2) doesn't know how to fix it.
The problem was immediately obvious to me.
It's not that writers of color don't exist. It's that white literary agents and publishers don't think such books can make money, so they don't sign writers of color and they don't publish them.
And if they DO sign writers of color, they only sign one or two tokens, while completely comfortable signing several white authors because “white authors sell!”
And it's like this because of institutional racism. Because we live in a society where white children are groomed to not see people of color as PEOPLE. They see us as angry, ghetto two dimensional caricatures. (white people reading this right now are probably imagining some ghetto neck rolling woman is typing this) And because white people can not see us as human beings, they can not relate to stories about dragons and wizards where a person of color is -- gasp! -- the central character instead of a white person.
If you need to see firsthand evidence, google "Roswell race controversy" "Hunger Games race controversy" or "Earthsea race controversy" OR "Harry Potter Cho Chang race controversy" OR "Star Wars race controversy"
Time and AGAIN, white readers have shown that they are too racist to imagine people of color in genre fiction and are too racist to even relate to characters of color. They can't do it because -- thanks to institutional racism -- they've been taught not to see us as people but as subhuman inferiors.
White people have been taught this lesson well. Google the racist reaction of many whites to The Wiz. They instantly deemed The Wiz as a "pc disaster" because things with people of color in it must be inferior. (Except, not. The Wiz with Diana Ross and Micheal Jackson was a fucking classic) And then, of course, they bitch about something being all black and how it's "racist" when the existence of something all black can not oppress white people. Not when white people can look literally anywhere else and see themselves in fiction. Also, we already had an all white Wiz. It's called The Wizard of Oz. And no. People of color don't see it as "racist."
If there aren't a lot of black authors, well, once again, we have institutional racism to thank. It's not that people of color can't dream and imagine. It's that we're oppressed and don't have the same opportunities as white people. Growing up, I didn't have my own computer. I wrote all my stories longhand on sheets of line paper. I didn't even get access to a computer until I was nineteen, when I finally had my own money. And the only reason I had my own money? Because I joined the military. The reason I joined the military? Because I was a black person on the highschool-to-prison pipeline. I lived in a place that was so intensely racist, white people would not hire black people for jobs. My options were to become a criminal or join the military (not options really) so like most black people, I joined the service.
Racism isn't exclusive to one aspect of life. It spreads its nasty fingers into every aspect of life. It's the reason why white people are where the money's at -- because white people hire each other for all the jobs, white people give each other all the opportunities, white people have all the social and economic power. Every literary agency I go to is full of white agents with Harvard degrees who've had every opportunity in the world, from trips to Paris to internships I could never land while at my first college. There's a reason for that. You got it yet?
A lack of authors of color is not the root of the problem, it's the symptom of a bigger problem.
Now comes the question: what can you do to help?
Fight for people of color. Push back against the institutionalized hatreds that actually benefit you and make life beneficial for someone else. Actually teach other white people, because lord knows white people don’t listen to people of color.
Teach your children that people of color are human beings, not stereotypes and caricatures with bad and bizarre hair. Yes, something as simple as that will change future generations, so that black people can actually get jobs based on personal merit and not how well they assimilate into white culture. So that black people can wear their hair the way it grows out of their fucking head without losing a job, being treated like something behind glass, or being sent home from school.
You don't have to go out of your way to hire writers of color just because they are of color, but it would be nice if you didn't assume their stories would be worthless and unmarketable just for having brown people in them.
Stop labeling everything written by black authors as "black fiction." Toni Morrison didn't write her stories for black people. She wrote stories about black people for ANYONE to enjoy. You saw it the other way because you're so racist, you can't even relate to her characters.
I write stories about people of color for EVERYONE to enjoy. The same way everyone enjoys fucking LOTR, Harry Potter, and other popular crap about white characters. So why is my story being sequestered away to black fiction? It shouldn't be. It isn't "ethnic fiction." It's just fucking fiction.
Stop whitewaashing our characters. Stop turning our talent away because you already have that token black author. Stop being afraid to lose money.
Stop being afraid.
At the end of The Wiz, there's a very beautiful ballet sequence. The slaves of the Wicked Witch are all big-butted, nappy-headed stereotypes. When the Wicked Witch dies, the slaves shed their skin, discarding the offensive caricatures they've been made into and embracing their beauty as human beings of worth.
The slaves in The Wiz are celebrating their sudden freedom to be completely valued as HUMAN BEINGS. They no longer have to hear that they are ugly and inferior. They no longer have to toil away in the darkness, hidden behind racist stereotypes and caricatures of the white idea of blackness.
The slaves in The Wiz are finally free. Because freedom is being treated like an equal, like a human being.
There is a difference between saying a people is equal and TREATING them like equals (this is what I was talking about in regards to the Constitution, Hancock fans).
Treat us like human beings. You know, the same way you treat white writers.
