It’s a truism among writers: when you try to sell something that features black, Hispanic, or Asian characters, editors and publishers will push back, asking you to make the characters a bit paler, a bit pinker, a bit more “mainstream”, a code-word for making your characters white. When you fight, you get told that diverse audiences don’t read SFF.The problem isn't that whites won't read diversity fiction, it is that the diverse populations won't read it either.
There’s the story Tony Puryear and Erika Alexander tell about trying to sell Concrete Park, when a publisher told them that “black people don’t like science fiction – they don’t see themselves in the future”. Agents and publishers advised me to set my book in the suburbs, presumably where the children would be a bit paler and speak a more standard variety of English, without any of that pesky Spanish those Puerto Ricans and Dominicans speak.
On the other hand, it’s hard to say that those publishers are 100% wrong. Erika and Tony will happily tell you about the difficulties they have faced getting sales once they get distribution. My experiences trying to get whites to click on my ads have been anything but encouraging, and, while I get rave reviews and support from people that champion diversity in literature, I’ve yet to break even on my publishing venture.
Not only does the mere fact of being not-white and not-male not make a character interesting, due to the strictures of SJWism and PC, it reliably makes them boring because they are not permitted to be anything less than wonderful.
