People are being painfully disingenuous about this BIPOC POV conversation, and I'm over it. NO ONE, not a single soul, told you not to write a diverse cast. All your cast isn't a POV viewpoint, AND YOU KNOW THAT. But y'all don't read to listen, or to learn, but to respond.

It's painfully obvious that a lot of writers, by which I mean white writers, have never been told NO a day in their lives. And the idea that they're not equipped to speak from certain perspectives is, to them, anathema. Because we're creatives! We can make up whatever! Spare me.

We have a whole ass Twitter account dedicated to how poorly men write women. We should have one dedicated to how poorly white authors write BIPOC characters. Why? Because they don't care about how their words are perceived and who they hurt. And for me, that's the key.

Let's be clear. BIPOC writers are not a monolith, and some representation is....yeesh. But more often than not, we're aware of how awful our representation in primarily white-authored books has been. And fuck what you heard, it may be fiction, but it ABSOLUTELY informs how we're

perceived in the real world. And most of us take PAINS to ensure that we're not perpetuating stereotypes, while still being real.

We do that with our ownvoices stories, but these white authors can't even handle BIPOC authors disagreeing with them on a platform?

They can't handle being told no for a single second, and they take a very specific word of caution--you're probably not equipped to write from BIPOC POV--and turn it into "OMG you're telling me all my stories have to be all white!"

Sit. Down. Karen. No one said that, FFS.

Y'all are so unequipped to write from BIPOC POV y'all don't recognize it as a craft issue, and don't recognize there are courses specifically designed to give you the tools to do it well.

To do that would be to recognize the gross disparity in books and worlds you access.

Pretty strong likelihood you didn't spend your formative and collegiate years inundated with BIPOC authors and thought. Pretty sure, especially if you're the "I don't care about the author, I read what I like" type of person, that your bookshelf is a mayonnaise spread.

Pretty sure your survival, especially in the US, isn't based on knowing how you're perceived before you step foot in a place. Pretty sure you don't have to do a Google search to see how much a country hates your skin tone before deciding to visit.

You have to ACKNOWLEDGE that shit ain't the same, and bad stereotypes have a real-world impact. If someone tells you about some racist mess they experienced, and your first response is to say "I'm sure they didn't mean it that way," then how can you accurately portray us?

If you don't even believe us? If you can't even accept our interpretation of our lived experiences, then WHY do you want to write from our POV? Oh, yeah, for the coins. It's disingenuous af, and we see you, and we WILL drag you.

The bar is on the floor, and most of y'all can't clear it.

All that to say, y'all know EXACTLY what we mean when we say include diverse casts, but leave BIPOC POVs to us. You just don't care. And that lack of care is why you shouldn't do it.

I'm no longer engaging in this conversation. It is, as our Grand Dame Toni Morrison says, a distraction. I'm blocking white authors wanting to argue, and muting everyone else.

Just make sure you keep that same energy during the dragging as you have right now.