I am a strong believer in white people learning about the cultures they have been disconnected from. In fact, I believe that a part of deconstructing white supremacy is white people giving themselves space to grieve what was stolen from them, too.

For the last five years, there has been a massive push for diversity in the publishing industry. And one of the things that has resulted in is a culture where readers approach authors far more critically than they may have in the past. Where before it wasn't abnormal for authors to misrepresent, and even harmfully represent, marginalized communities in their work, today there are large numbers of readers who are growing louder about expecting better from their favorite authors (not that it's working). And one of the ways that manifests is in demanding that white authors create space for people of color in their stories.

A challenge that is not without objection, because while many conscientious readers are asking white authors to write more diversly, Black and brown authors are asking white authors to let them tell their own stories.

Here's where I'm at...

Instead of demanding that white authors write diversely, what if we asked them to start deconstructing white supremacy on the page. Instead of giving me Black characters in a very white setting, give me stories where your very white characters are realizing that fitting in has cost them something.

Now, I want to be clear, cause I know how white people be sometimes. I am not telling you to go out there and claim culture that you have been disconnected from for centuries. I am not telling you to write an Irish story and call it reconnecting, in the same way that I would never pick up my pen and try to write a story from the perspective of a Nigerian. Because while I have Nigerian ancestry, I have no connection to that ancestry outside of blood and skin. However, as a Black American, that ancestry informs the culture I do have access to. And that is a story I can tell. I can talk about my experience in the world as a Black American. I can tell a story about a culture that was built off of Nigerian ancestry and how it exists in my country and in the world through the influence of Black Americans. But it's important to note that in telling that story, I am not laying claim to Nigerian culture or identity. I am laying claim to mine.

That is what I am asking white authors to attempt.

Give me stories where white characters are so self-aware that it forces them to question their place in the world. Where white characters challenge the status quo, not by adopting aspects of Black and brown culture to give your characters depth, but by fully exploring and representing the pieces of your grandparent's stories that made their way to you. Or by grieving what you should have had access to right on the page. And repenting for what you should have never inherited. Instead of trying to replicate Blackness or brown identity, give us stories where your characters break away from being our jailers.

If you need examples, read Black and brown stories. Because we have been writing this way for centuries.

Take Tender is the Flesh. A book that often gets characterized as a story about cannibalism but is actually an open commentary of humanity's complicity in the dehumanization of women and other marginalized people for the sake of convenience and privilege. It is set in a dystopian south American country where governments around the world have worked together to solve humanity's sudden inability to safely eat animal meat. Their solution: to reclassify select people as "meat product" and to begin farming and slaughtering them as a replacement. The catch, however, is that the story doesn't follow one of its victims. It follows a butcher. A butcher who knows that this "solution" is corrupt and evil. He even suspects that the meat crisis has been entirely fabricated in order to reduce the world's population of undesirable people. But he complies anyway. Partially out of apathy. Partially out of fear. But mainly... out of convenience. And while this story is easily read as a scathing rebuke, it is more accurately a firm--and haunting--request for readers to check in with their humanity. One that I found very helpful in reframing my own framework for the world. Because how often do we choose not to enter a fight because it would be inconvenient to make ourselves targets in a war where we aren't likely to become one anytime soon?

Or how about Wings of Ebony, a YA fantasy that follows a Black girl from an intercity community who gets whisked away to a magical island after her mother dies, where she is exposed to the magical society that her father came from. Throughout the course of the story, we learn that there are dark forces working not only on this magical island, but also back in her own world, where Black kids are being manipulated and coerced into lives of crime and violence. And protecting them (including her sister) just might cost her everything. Going deeper, in the sequel, Ashes of Gold, our FMC discovers that the magical society she has spent the last however many months clashing with only have power because they have stolen it from her father's actual ancestors, a people who have all but been erased. Their power has been stolen, their land commandeered, and their history completely rewritten.

While this story is a conversation about white supremacy and colonization, a large part of the story focuses on looking to the ancestry our FMC has no connection to and asking what could have been and envisioning what can be built now. And while I have some thoughts about the way that storyline played out, I think the conversation is incredibly important and I'd love to see it replicated in more stories.

Like I said at the beginning... I just don't think we need more Black and brown stories written by white authors. You're not gonna get it right, and even if you do, you're going to put hundreds of hours into researching how to write a story that would have been better told by another author. So, what's the point? Tell stories that speak for you...just do it more honestly.

Explore your own identity with the same bravery and meticulous care you think we're asking you to use while exploring ours. The good, the bad, the beautiful and the ugly. Approach your stories honestly and ask all of the questions. The ones that excite you for the future and the one's that leave you haunted by the past. Explore the moments where you have been a victim and the moments where you have orchestrated the victimhood of others. That is all we can ask from a good storyteller. Honesty.

I think a part of deconstructing the horrific history of whiteness is approaching it with meticulous honesty. You can't just ask what whiteness has done. You also have to ask what role your people played in the story of the world's destruction and how you ended up folded into the collective pool of whiteness. Because despite what whiteness has become, there are many people groups represented under that banner, and they did not all play the same part. So, as you write your stories, ask yourself what part your people played. How did you get here? Not for the sake of excusing yourself from guilt or responsibility, because all white people are responsible for ending the oppression that exists for your benefit. But in meticulously questioning your history, you can have honest conversations about what has been taken from you, what you have taken from others, and how those two truths speak to each other.

Deconstructing whiteness is hard. But it is necessary. And I hope that some of you will approach your next projects with what I've shared here in mind.

In your next book, consider deconstructing whiteness and maybe, just for a moment, asking who you could have been without it.

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