I commented on this very thing in another post. I think it’s time for us to stop focusing so much on just black pain and racism. Although we can still make such stories, I think it’s time to start imagining ourselves in new environments, new types of stories, and in the future, which is why I’m a huge supporter of Afro-Futurism.

Part of the reason white fandom acts the way it does is that so often, those have been the only type of stories they’ve been exposed to, in mainstream media. Black people know there are other types of fun, lighthearted Black oriented, movies out there, that are not associating our race, yet again, with crime and slavery (even positive depictions still associate our race with these two topics). These are often the only ways that white audiences know us, even though we can list a dozen or more films about Blackness that don’t center either of those.

I think part of this is also a “white lash” against the pop culture demands of black people in the past ten years, demands which are finally, slowly, being answered. I know it’s not because we’re taking over white characters roles, because even with original roles, in original stories, black actors get harassed and vilified by white fandom. So it’s not about any of the reasons they state, and in quite a few cases, it’s simply an excuse for some of them to engage in the anti-Black bigotry they’ve always wanted to express, in the real world, but can’t do so without being called a racist bigot. I think that’s something that’s never going to change.

It’s because Black People are being highly visible, everywhere, and demanding, not asking, not begging, to be included in any industry that takes our money. We are demanding they include us, or we will give our money to someone, or anything else, or make our own, and rake in that dough (look at Fenty Beauty!)

There’s also an increasing sense of white male irrelevance, which is the kind of backlash that happens, every time there’s a pop cultural shift of any kind. This sort of behavior happens every time white people start feeling like they are no longer in control of the culture. It’s happened in music for nearly a century (Jazz, Rock, Rap). This is also currently happening in even the most innocuous subjects, like the knitting community, and Romance fiction.

I’ve been thinking about this, studying this, and trying to put it into some kind of historical context, for a while. This kind of behavior from (primarily) white people is far from new. It’s been going on for decades.