Folktales are great for learning dynamic storytelling and how to structure the resonant echoes that give a plot forward motion. It wouldn't be the la… - Nalo Hopkinson

What's needed instead is to state up front at submission time that you want to see submissions from authors of color; to include people of color in significant positions on your staff (editorial, marketing, etc.); to educate yourself to the ways in which cultural specificity results in stories being told differently, signifying differently on race, culture, fashion, language, you name it; to recognize that "not seeing race" means that they also can't perceive structural racism; to grasp that racism isn't just a stoned white male musician ranting at his concert that all people of color should be kicked out of the UK. I suspect that only if you do that groundwork will you be able to assess submissions from authors of color on an equal footing with white authors. The Anglophone market is still hugely skewed in overwhelming favor of straight, white, male authors. There are still nowhere near enough translations from other languages into English. (2021)

Every time I put my work out into the public, I risk putting something out there based in my unexamined and unrecognized assumptions. That's part of the game.

To certain white male writers, I'd like to say, "When those around you try to wrestle with issues of entitlement and marginalization, please don't give us the tired trumpeting of 'Censorship! No one can tell me what to write!" True, people shouldn't tell you what to write, but people will try to, for bad reasons and better ones. Your mother will try to tell you what to write or not write. Your husband will. Your editor, your government, your church, your readers, your nosy neighbor. Humans are an argumentative lot. Dealing with that as a writer comes with the territory.