There's something that's been lingering on my mind for a while.
White privilege is so widespread, I notice a lot of POC authors tend to lie about their race just to dodge racist comments from readers, both on sites like here on Wattpad or Ao3 as well as in traditional/self publishing, and worse is that when people find out "who they really are" they're immediately attacked for being liars, and then told their work is bad because of who they are (even if their work is actually really good!)
Like yeah it's bad to lie, but isn't it worse to be attacked just for doing something that they like to do, interests them, and isn't harming anybody? And wanting to use a white-sounding pen name isn't even harming anyone. People get HARASSED just for publishing as a POC and get comments like "Shouldn't you write in your native language instead" or "I'm astounded at how good your English is for a (insert race) like you" and I don't think it's something people can just brush off like a mild nuisance. It doesn't happen to everybody for sure, but some people won't take their chances with being harassed just for being a POC author.
They get shot down just for being them, and another tendency, I notice, is that if you have a white-sounding name your sales/ratings/views/votes tend to be higher, but if your name sounds even a bit foreign your book kinda gets brushed to the side besides everything else I've mentioned, and I feel like this isn't talked about enough.
Just because people like Kazuo Ishiguro or Khalid Hosseini have recognisable names in the western world of publishing doesn't mean this stuff doesn't exist. Heck, a lot of foreign classical authors didn't even write in English, their work was translated into English and that's what people are reading.
Thanks for coming to my ted talk
