Y’all got lit agents out here donning their full My-name-is-Karen-and-I’m-calling-the-police garb but can still insist with a straight face that “not connecting with the voice” is a valid reason to reject a Black writer’s work. But that’s a convo publishing isn’t ready for

More importantly, nobody has bothered to do a deep intellectual dive into why this just doesn’t work when it comes to the voices of marginalized creators.

At the very least, find a different phrasing in the year 2020 that isn’t grossly offensive and borderline demeaning when you apply it to voices that have been systemically and forcefully silenced

But really what we should be doing is shifting focus away from do *I* / one individual person connect and toward the questions: Are there readers who will connect? Are there readers who NEED this voice? Is a higher ratio of positive representation of this voice NEEDED in society?

Because listen, reading is a contract between the individual and society that establishes and reinforces whose existence matters, whose lives are valued, whose humanity is acknowledged by the heroes and protagonists society gets to see

There are some publishing professionals out here who get it. Who are making tangible, meaningful, and genuine efforts to uplift more Black voices, promote more Black voices, sign more Black voices, and publish more Black voices. I need to rest of publishing to get it together too