This is a Guest Post by Dennis Upkins
A gent by the name of Malcolm X once said, “The media’s the
most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty
and to make the guilty innocent, and that’s power. Because they control the
minds of the masses.”
Many people often wonder how I’m able to reconcile being a
spec fic author with being a social justice activist. Malcolm X’s quote is that
very reason.
Because while the media has the power to control the minds
of the masses, it’s also a platform to hold a mirror and expose inconvenient
truths such as bigotry to a society who is still plugged into the proverbial
Matrix of privilege and institutional oppression.
But in order share the truth, marginalized artists have to
make many decisions that can play an impact on our careers, our art and its
potential impact on society.
An example of this would be a conversation I was having with
a buddy a few years back. He and I were discussing a popular graphic novel
series created by a storyteller of color. My friend thought it was odd and a
bit disappointing that the storyteller decided to make the main protagonist of
the series, white. My buddy explained that even as a caucasian male, even he
gets sick and tired of seeing white characters inundate the media. As I
explained to my good buddy, there’s whole double standard that storytellers of
color have to contend with when it comes to our narratives.
It’s never easy being an artist of color. When it comes to
race, the race itself is a rigged one. No
matter how talented and gifted you are, there are legions upon legions of
bigoted whites who are looking to attack, denigrate and discredit you.
As I learned from several white critics and readers with my
debut novel, Hollowstone,
black writers are
not real writers. We employed some type of chicanery, especially if we got
published before many aspiring white writers did. I was also whitesplained that
publishers who target black audiences or other readers of color aren’t
“legitimate” publishers. They’re just not real.
