I need to comment because this causes multiple problems for black creators and audiences. The first is that it increases wealth disparity with those who are NOT us making money from our images. https://twitter.com/diversebooks/status/1276509377516777473

And not just with the debut of a character but long-term as an IP finds its way into television (Luke Cage), film (Black Panther), and video games (Miles Morales). Nobody black is seeing royalty checks here. So that's ONE.

The second problem is that no matter how skilled non-black writers are, they are presenting blackness through the lens of their own culture. And anti-blackness in America (and overseas) means that their take will be promoted and heralded over those of black creators. TWO.

The third problem is that due to the hypervisibility of blackness and underestimating the skill of black creators, black characters are the first characters white creators reach for, thinking that they are providing a "gift" to black people and aiding diversity.

"White writer's burden." This just increases the hypervisibility of black characters without making space for black PEOPLE. Non-black POC deeply resent this hypervisibility and attack black people for it when it has NOTHING TO DO WITH US! We have little agency. THREE.

The hypervisibility of black characters makes it even tougher for black creators to make any headway as companies reject our IP because they already have black characters NOT created by us. Plus non-black POC resent our presence and push back against our projects because...

...they feel we are already taking up too much "space" in comparison to them. Even though we aren't even in the room. Even though we haven't even had a chance to define our blackness after centuries of other people speaking over us to tell the world who we are. FOUR and FIN.

And for comparison... https://twitter.com/diversebooks/status/1276509370998808578

This is DEEPLY parasitic and I hate it.