Being black is not a personality trait—please stop basing your whole profile around how you're black.
Before anyone gets triggered™ I'm black myself so don't come at me saying I'm being "racist" towards black authors (no, I'm not saying black people can't be racist because lord knows they can be, what I'm saying is as a black person, I've spent time in these spaces so I don't want to hear "well you're not black so you can't say anything and if you do you're racist!"). This rant goes for authors of any race who make their race number 1 in importance on their profile but I'm mostly talking about black authors as I see this mostly in their writing community.
I see black authors who make the fact they're black like their sole identity, why? You only want to be known to your readers as "that one black author"? I dunno about you mate but I do not only want people to remember me merely because of my race.
Also, there are many people who think urban fantasy/urban fiction means it's a genre for stories with black characters and when you search Urban on wattpad all you find is black stories and accounts.
It's not, it's not the Blacks Only genre. It's called urban because it's set in an urban setting—nowhere does the definition for urban fiction/fantasy say it's the genre for black stories. Plus, why do all blacks in stories have to be in an urban setting? Black people live in the middle of nowhere or small towns just like white people do.
When you think a genre is only for one race it creates a form of segregation, it's saying "black stories go here, while other stories go elsewhere". And no, I'm not saying black writers can't have their own spaces or communities to talk in, what I'm saying is when you put all black stories in one genre and treat this genre like it's the Blacks Only genre, then it becomes questionable.
Similar to the rant I had about glorifying fat main characters, I cringe when an author makes it a big deal that their white character has a black love interest to the point BWWM (black women with white men) is in the title.
A black woman with a white guy?!?! WOW, SUCH AN IMPORTANT FACTOR—THE FACT SHE'S WITH A WHITE CAUCASIAN MALE OF EUROPEAN DESCENT IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN THE ACTUAL ROMANCE!!!
Because you know, the skin color of your lover is totally so important.
Just imagine if a white author wrote an interracial story and put WMBW (white men with black women) or white men with any other race, in the title and made a big deal out of it when in actuality it shouldn't be a big deal? People would say the author only wants diversity points, say the author is canceled.
(Before anyone tries to say it, no, you can't compare putting BWWM in the title to putting BxB or GxG in the title. Why? Because rather or not you want to read a story about two boys getting it on is a little more important than what color your characters are.)
And diversity is more than just having black characters, I rarely see stories casually featuring Asians, Hispanics/Latinos, Indians, Native Americans, or Middle Easterns alongside their white and black characters.
By all means, have interracial couples and black characters, have an all black cast, put black people on the cover. Just don't make their skin tone seem like something important when skin tone isn't at all unless you're going to cover topics such as racism and issues that blacks face in society.
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Why Your Story SUCKS | Writer's rants & discussions
RandomA rant book of things that Wattpad writers do that I find annoying and pointless. Plus topics that need to be spoken about and brought to people's attention. I have very very little filter, so if you're someone easily offended, my rant book isn't f...
