...the OT does, overtly, that white writers should not write black and brown characters is in no way a redress of the problem. It is, instead, an affront to empathy itself, the very existential purpose of human storytelling. It solves nothing -- but it would marginalize black...

...and brown writers as badly or worse as it might inhibit white ones. The segregationist logic would for example consign black writers like Mills to 14 percent of the American national experience. He would rightly resist the entire premise. That is the point of that anecdote...

...that any writer worth his ink -- black or white -- would resist having anything less than the whole of humanity to address if a story required such. That is writing and what it is for, in fact. The added reference to how Mills and I started together simply acknowledges...

...that I was aware of the opportunity I was afforded by having authored a book that was optioned and I did indeed choose to extend it to a black colleague. The anecdote doesn't deny the systemic, which I am not denying. It does...

...however indicate definitively that I'm probably not a guy who needs to be on Twitter being pedantically informed of the need for the film industry or publish to widen its gaze. But again, that reality and my attending to it does nothing to improve the rank stupidity of the OT.

or *publishing*