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Thinking about how publishing purposefully positions Black authors to be in "competition" with each other while simultaneously tying us together so that if they sink one of us, they sink all of us.
What I mean is, there's a degree of specificity that's usually required for rejecting a book based on something else that's already been acquired. This might look something like "we can't offer on this because we don't want two monster hunter red riding hood retellings."
In contrast, the "we have our Black book for the year" nonsense doesn't take genre or subject matter into consideration at all. This means, say, Black contemporary stories are FORCED to compete with Black fantasy stories, Black romance, Black horror, etc., just to be considered.
This goes hand in hand with how they treat ANY Black story that doesn't perform adequately. Instead of keeping the conversation on that specific story, like what happens with white books, this "failure" is taken as the gospel truth that ALL Black stories are similarly doomed.
To say this frustrates Black authors, and Black people in general, is the most egregious of understatements.
This thread brought to you by seeing Black stories finally STARTING to get their due, and imagining where we would be now if this had happened decades ago.
