"The Inheritance Cycle is bad because it's just a ripoff of Star Wars/Lord of the Rings but with dragons-"

Ahem. I'm gonna be an annoying bitch. I've got a few questions for you. Favorite color, food and member of One Direction and BTS. (I suppose you would say Larry in 1d) Favorite fan fiction of all time. (Mine's OMCBA and LE) Favorite subject at school. (I'd go with history. I've liked it since I was a young student.) And now. My favorite question The movie that you'll never forget. Thank you for reading this. P. S I haven't even finished Chapter Two

TUMBLR GOERS, SCROLL HECKA FAST FOR JUST ONE SECOND. ITS LONGISH. Oh okay. Welp, my favourite colours are the combo of purple and green. Favourite food is.....pass. Member of 1d is either harry or niall, i dont really know. Musically, harry. And personality, niall. But i dont really have one. Im not really following them in general, but out of everyone i still do, its harry and niall i go to. Bts is impossible to choose omg, but my bias is still undeniably yoongi/suga. No man has hit my heart quite like him in my life, but kwon jiyong and lee taeyong are right behind him, theyre just not bts. but i cant...downplay the other members of bts. theyre essential as well. I dont have a fav fanfiction cuz i cant remember the ones i read back in the day. But i had an author i liked reading and became friends with but i forgot her penname...something 98. Ss? ss98 looks and sounds right. She and i are into that dark shit. I cant remember the works tho 😬favourite subject is definitely a language, and that includes my own. So literature or a foreign language + history ofc. Anything anthro and culturey, i pale at mathematics. The movie that ill never forget oh wow. Theres a few. lets put the big massive shit out of the way, so aside from the lotr, star wars, and hp series, all series aside, and the labyrinth / dark crystal and neverending story aside..what first comes to mind is probably amelie. I really have the fattest crush on that film. I also really love the descent, which is odd cuz its just a horror film, but i also think it's a beautiful horror film? Lol. Idk i saw it when i was young and ive been watching it at least once a year since, i love it a lot. The soundtrack makes me smile, i know like all the lines, and i pull lines from it all the time in every day life, and disregarding the sequel which was trash (sequels generally are) i loved the fact that...well i wont spoil it. i just loved how hopeless the characters were. There were no easy ways out, and it was realistic. It was just really well made and underrated. Okay. Uh..also goodfellas. FANTASTIC movie, fuck. My friends and i used to play ....the equivalent of a drinking game but with a much different substance invoved to that movie based on a detail that came up a certain amount of times for films, and the night it was goodfellas, ill never forget. I also love heathers. Cuz slater was my god as a child. One of them. Boondock saints, one and two. Me and my sisters thing. Mom has a tattoo that relates to that. The grudge because that was my first horror film that i secretly watched and it stayed in my peabrain for so long. Im 22 btw, but that movie was 2004. Then Veer-Zaara for sure. Omg i fucking love veer zaara. It makes me feel all kinds of things, i sing those songs in my sleep. Beautiful fucking story. Kal ho naa ho, too. basically anything spun up by yash and aditya chopra is a-okay with me, ESPECIALLY if ill be seeing shah rukh khan in it, which is almost a given. Theres movies i cant forget for horrible reasons, the wall (pink floyd film) and requiem for a dream included, perhaps trainspotting too, but those are for personal reasons. Most unforgettable movies are good things. Im forgetting a lot. The muppet movie, young frankenstein, terminator, haunting in connecticut, the babadook (when you know what it IS from the book), rocky horror picture show, a clockwork orange, the crow, beetlejuice, edward scissorhands, crybaby, whats eating gilbert grape, grease, but im a cheerleader, v for vendetta, crouching tiger hidden dragon, silent hill, sound of music, titanic, footloose (the 80s one ofc), what dreams may come, big fish, a walk on the moon, the breakfast club, chocolat, the return of the pink panther, jay and silent bob strike back, school of rock, better off dead, shanghai noon, bill and teds excellent adventure, wizard of oz, fear and loathing in las vegas, underworld, interview with a vampire, i guess les miserables but broadway is better, elizabeth, a very long engagement, batteries not included, and final fantasy advent children are all moves that mean a LOT TO ME LOL. So much.

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.