Tess on the Mess: Race in publishing

Interesting that Tess Gerritsen tackled this subject on Saturday, since I'd just made a previous reference to her book cover contest. It's great that a prestigious author such as Tess is willing to tackle such a subject. You certainly don't hear any other NYTBS'ing authors speaking out against it....Well, I don't count because I'm black and I've only hit it once. We have to bitch about it....often times in silence if we don't want the food taken from our mouths.

We need more non-black authors, like Tess, to stir the pot. To help bring about the type of awareness that'll force the publishers and editors to be accountable for their actions. As it is, they're just rolling along with the status quo and choosing to ignore the fact that they're blatantly practicing racial discrimination.

In the case of the author that contacted Tess, how can anyone justify restricting that work purely on the basis of the author's skin color? The characters were NOT black! Unbelieveable. I'd love to know who that author is, as she isn't alone. The same has been done to me. I've never made race a focal point of my plots, but my publishers do so without so much as batting an eyelash. It's as if they're saying, "You're black. Only your own kind is interested in what you've written. And that's the way it is whether you like it or not."