I’m a black woman who writes science fiction and fantasy, along with a bit of interstitial and mainstream stuff. I’ve been wrestling with this issue for my entire writing career: it has always been obvious to me that trying to get published (in SF/F in my case) as a black female writer meant that I had a strike (or three) against me from the get-go, but what do I do about that? Choosing not to try was out of the question. So was self-publishing — which works for a few, but not the vast majority, and was beside the point anyway. The point being that we have a future too. Our mythology and history is just as storied, literally. So why shouldn’t my SF/F stories, featuring characters who looked like me and touching on issues and complexities that resonated for me, be right out there with all those endless tales featuring white protagonists questing across yet another iteration of medieval Europe? Or all those endless “Star Trek” futures, where a token PoC or two hung around to answer the phone, but never got to be the hero or get the hottest love interest? So mainstream publication has always been my goal. (And I’m happy to say that it’s on the way — I’ve got a book coming out in February, first of a trilogy.)

What we’re fighting against here, as Alaya notes, is aversive or systemic racism. That’s the subtle stuff, which even the most well-meaning people, who don’t think of themselves as racist, can perpetuate. I’ve been following a community that’s fighting Hollywood’s tendency to replace Asians with white actors even in their own stories (e.g., the movie “21″, forthcoming films “The Last Airbender” and “Hachiko”). The most common excuse that’s given for this whitewashing is that Asians aren’t “universal”, and that white actors are needed to make the stories appeal to all audiences, not just Asians. But it’s a vicious circle — because Asian actors rarely get lead roles, they aren’t perceived as universal… so they rarely get lead roles. This is the same thing that’s happening in publishing.

What kills me is that, as Millennia Black noted, this problem isn’t new. Authors and scholars of color have been complaining about it for literally decades. Consider Zora Neale Hurston’s work: some of her most brilliant novels featured white protagonists and didn’t focus on racism or “The Black Experience ™”. But despite the quality of the work, Hurston (and later her estate) had real trouble getting these books published and keeping them in print. Publishers knew she was a black writer, and they wanted her to write about “black subjects” — and they simply weren’t interested when she ranged beyond that. Even today these books don’t get nearly as much critical or scholarly attention as Hurston’s “Black Experience ™” books, and frankly a lot of people don’t even know the other work exists.

So a writer of color is working against twin pressures: the assumption that only stories drawn directly from her racial experience are “authentic”, and the perception that such stories aren’t appealing to anyone beyond her race. (Now there’s a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” for ya.) And both are rooted in a subtle sort of racism that pervades the entire entertainment industry.

And there’s only one way to stop this kind of racism, IMO — for all writers (and readers, and editors) to raise a stink whenever they see PoC characters and stories being marginalized, and for all writers to try and incorporate all aspects of the human experience into their work. Normalize and center PoC as well as white characters. Make us all universal.

I agree with you, 100%. We should not allow this discourse to die down again, because every time it does, we lose all hope for action and solutions.

I’m definitely one of the tons who wants something better and is willing to speak up for it. The problem has always been that not enough people are so inclined, and one or two persons can’t do it alone. If we can sustain the awareness, becoming a squeaky wheel, things will have to improve eventually – but enough people have to be willing to speak up and take action…until.

The point of posts like these, and others where PoC are raising our voices, is to create awareness and raise consciousness. It is not to say throw up your hands in despair and stop trying. *That* would allow the current paradigm to continue. The hope is that by raising awareness, dialoguing, and opening roads to new possibilities, things will slowly begin to change.

I am not saying don’t be outraged. I am saying go ahead, *be* outraged, then funnel that rage into action and solutions. Make connections online and in your day to day life with like-minded people. Bounce ideas off one another. Spark movements. Forge new roads. There are tons of people out there who want something better. Find them.

E.g., not long ago this president shows us what a difference it makes to confront a big problem head-on when he spoke this: “General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” A similar approach should be used on publishing too. I have yet to hear somebody describes racism as an abominable or disgraceful thing, instead because its white elites perpetuating this evil conduct, racism is couched and made equal to a mere minor blemish, but its far from being one.
Now you said editors and agents etc., are looking for new writers and I’ve no doubt its true. But which are the publishing companies they work in? Justine, to speak pitifully about two hundred and thirty yrs of racial injustices just won’t do anything, placating and circumvening the official practice of racism still won’t help either. Think about what it would take to guts out internal racist conduct which pays authors of color far less advances for their work than they do white authors.
“Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”

I was very dismayed to see the comments above from aspiring writers. I don’t want to discourage any of you; I want to galvanise you because your voices need to be heard.

Mainstream publishing is not homogenous; there are editors and agents who are actively looking for different voices and actively working against the aversive racism that permeates the field.

I strongly believe that mainstream publishing can change. More to the point that it has to change. Because if it doesn’t it won’t survive. (Which I can fully understand some people will see as a good thing.)

That’s why the self publishing and small press successes are so important. Because changing a centuries old industry is hard work and slow and maddening. It is possible to reach a wide audience outside the traditional publishing industry. It’s hard but it has happened.

The two strategies aren’t opposed. Some of us can work at changing publishing from within. And some of us from without. It’s all the same battle though.

Change is coming but it may not be with the traditional publishers anytime soon. I predict it will be independent presses that will discover and publish talented authors of color in the future. I’m a African American writer of fantasy and after 6 months of my agent getting every stereotypical excuse about my book I finally found a home for my manuscript with a new independent press that is deeply devoted to writers of color and have the money for marketing and distribution.

Keep writing what you are called to write and send it out there until things change. I know I will be still be speaking out.

Not that I can speak from any experience but my own, but I wouldn’t take Justine’s (entirely valid) points as a reason to despair or give up or change your own vision of your work. These realities exist in publishing and they suck. But they are also (I think) changing, and there are a bunch of new POC writers out there who are doing stuff that doesn’t solely focus on race but are bringing different perspectives and backgrounds to the field. Nnedi Okorafor, for example, writes YA fantasy about non-white people having adventures. N.K. Jemisin has a fantasy trilogy coming out next year that prominently features non-white protagonists, where race is an issue, but not THE issue. And I wouldn’t say I’m as successful as either of them, but I’m also a black writer of fantasy and YA, and I’ve never felt pressured in my published (or soon-to-be-published) work to do anything but what I want regarding race issues. Race informs everything I write, but I have yet to write a “race novel.”

All of which is to say, yes, it is harder, but you can also make it. The problems Justine discusses don’t happen because publishing houses or literary agencies have some formal whiteness test. They happen because of passive racism, and probably because agents and editors feel they don’t need to think about these things. Talk about these issues, make them think, and continue to write and submit the best work you can. I can’t promise success, but I think you’ll have a good shot.

This is awful. It makes me worry about when I start querying agents. Will they reject me automatically because I’m black? Will they reject me because I write in genres that aren’t”traditionally” black? I already stress enough about my writing and querying. Now I have to worry about an agent being an undercover racist or if he/she isn’t,a publishing house that is?

It’s enough to make a writer even more crazy. This needs to be stopped immediately. Writers of color need to stand up and let it be known. For God’s sake,this is 2009!

As I side note, I wonder if the more well-meaning members of that bubble don’t also sideline POC authors by insisting they can only acceptably write a very narrow range of stories, i.e. they have to deal with what the Bubble People (heh) consider (imagine are?) POC issues, their POC characters have to have certain “authentic” voices, etc.

It seems to me that there is no reason why a Latino author couldn’t write a “lightning thief” sort of series (or a black author a “hunger games” kind of story; or a forbiden supernatural romance) with POC characters – assuming he (or she wanted to, but why wouldn’t they? Why must thrilling sciffy adventure be a solely white province? It seems unnatural to me.) These are the kind of books that would regularly hit the NYT best-sellers list (if the NYT book people weren’t weasels who ban Childrens/YA, of course) – the kind that would put POC authors in the same economic powerhouse spot as their white counterparts.

It is also slit your throat idiotic in a country where the non-white demographics are rising into a majority, and where white kids have multi-racial friends and classmates, are used to multi-racial characters in cartoons, etc. Big publishers are going to lose business to savvier small presses over time if they don’t wise up.

It’s clear in the USA, that white aristocratic oppression of blacks has never really ceased. I see the publishers hiding behind marketing strategies as excuse for blatant discrimination, and telling the authors to be glad for whatever scraps they get. The publishers are the ones responsible for classifying and presenting their books to stores and resellers. It’s the publishers professional racism that puts all authors’ backs against the wall, and the only difference is that blacks are kept insolvent, while more white authors succeed, because they have the advantage of being mainstream by default!

The question is, how do we get more US authors to speak out about this problem until it’s solved?

The fact that authors of color would be dismissed if they made a similar argument when all the evidence says that the publishing industry does favor White authors only proves what we already know that there is a problem.

All authors should write the stories that come to them. At the same time I think when White authors are praised and awarded for their ability to tell the truth of another race, they should acknowledge their work stands tall on the works by authors of that race that go unrecogizned or unpublished.

While White authors collect awards for their characters of color, authors of color collect rejection letters.
Now I am not going to pull a Kanye West, and try to steal
a White authors spotlight.

1. its not right. 2. They worked hard 3. They didn’t create the problem

Though I do think White authors who tell the story of another race should suggest authors of that race at every opportunity.

Thanks Justine

Exactly. This is why I believe it is imperative that more white writers be willing to speak up about this as consistently as Justine does, until real improvement happens industry-wide. Justine speaks specifically to the YA segment of publishing, but it’s a great microcosm for what’s basically true of the industry at large.

When non-white authors are brave enough to voice their experiences and decry the racially biased treatment they are encountering, it is mostly ineffective for any improvement, because not only are they brushed aside, but demeaned and attacked—with great intensity. Essentially victimized again. And statistics of how well the racially defined “African-American niche” does are used to batter their argument that they do not have an equal opportunity for mainstream success. They’re basically told (and expected) to settle for aspiring to be a big fish in a very small pond, and not to aspire to fishing in the ocean. For a writer of color in the US, such an aspiration can only lead to heartbreak. (See the New York Times bestseller list week after week, year after year.)

Crying out also causes them to risk being blacklisted, losing any chance at a successful career as a commercial author. But this does not seem to be the case when a white writer says the very same things. This has been true historically, and it is still true now.

But color and race aside: Although it is natural for many of the beneficiaries of unearned advantage to fear the loss of said advantage and opt to remain silent, everyone who participates in the industry has a moral obligation to speak out against it. Spend a little time thinking about the price we all pay for the existence of such an unjust advantage, wherever it exists.

Great post, Justine!

Martin Luther’s Dream bypassed publishing, I’m afraid. They’re still stuck in the “crack-addicted pregnant girl in a ghetto with a boyfriend in a gang but it all works out although they’re still jobless and living without utilities” ditch.

—

Justine,

You have guts. Live long and prosper!