Do white parents have to like my books? On YA fiction and the white gaze.

Go browsing for a Black young adult book, and you’ll find several about a character who is one of the only Black kids at their school. Quite a few will feature interracial relationships, and almost all will teach you that Black people have an otherworldly strength that equips us to survive any racist trauma, and an endless well of forgiveness for our enemies.

Black writers querying agents are expected to show them how much time we’ve spent around white people, and how much money we had growing up, as a pre-requisite of entry. It’s interesting navigating an industry when so much of it boils down to defending that you are, in fact, a person.

The stories that de-center whiteness are left to shift the status quo from the margins, while white gaze narratives take center stage. White people are endlessly compelled by the challenge of seeing Black people as human. However, there is nothing about this challenge that can excite the Black imagination.

To defend that you are human, you have to first accept that the denial of your humanity is a reasonable opinion, one that should be met with critical thought. What’s the point of being visible if we’re only here to say, “Black people are people too?”