This is another crossover that I want to highlight when I hear BIPOC writers complain about ignorant reactions from editors and agents, that it's not specific to your culture or identity as a POC. This week I pitched my novel to an agent, and I had feedback on a short story from an editor - who I actually paid to help me write an unfamiliar genre. Here are two examples of similar kinds of responses from people to ideas or cultures from a very superficial vantage point. Perhaps this will help objectively identify these behaviour trends, where race is not an issue.
The first is a short story I am trying to write in horror or horror adjacent genre, based in Romanian folklore - I mean actual Romanian folklore, not filtered through colonised Bram Stoker's version. So I refer to something which it appears J.K. Rowling leaned into heavily in Romanian folklore history, and not the vampire tropes at all. However, the editor only suggested things like "well people are aware of blah blah blah. If this guy was familiar with it, why wasn't he more concerned?" Even though the Romanian in the story is like "yeah, that's stories Grandma tells kids to scare them," which is pretty true to European attitudes anyway.
Sidebar: I want to mention that if you are working with white Americans in the publishing industry, you should not be surprised at all. This is a population who I will generalise and say has zero connection to any cultural or folk origin awareness. Americans do not even understand how they are different from each other, much less the kind of awareness people in Europe have of cultural differences with their neighbours.
One of my friends in Romania really is an expert and proponent of Romanian folklore horror. I have to do research to build the world of my story. However, speaking about it with my local writing group (population includes writers who are: Vietnamese, South African, Italian, Bulgarian, British, Australian, and German), they said their Romanian coworker said he wishes Bram Stoker's Dracula was just burned because it means no one ever learns anything else about Romania.
The bottom line: since she led with her superficial assumptions, none of her suggestions had any relevance to the world of the story.
Second situation with the agent has a similar takeaway. I attended an event with an agent, who was kind enough to take pitches and respond to them. I pitched my WIP based on late classical civilisation. So his suggestion was that I needed to refer to some Roman columns. Except that my world is one without Rome, so I would never reference Roman columns in a pitch. I should add the agent is not American. The agent did actually make a mistake with a pitch from a friend who is a WOC, but I am not sure she specified that it was historical fiction. She has written about her ethnic group experiencing genocide in her country of origin, and the agent suggested that it hand't happened and she was writing about a future. The agent WAS humble enough to acknowledge they were speaking from potential ignorance.
These are cultural inspirations I have spent so much effort researching to craft, and it stings when people do not appear to care enough to set aside their assumptions. It reminds me of a mantra I have in dating, particularly if I meet a man who is interested in me, that the first thing he better do is check his assumptions at the door. Bringing assumptions to meeting someone new in any context presents a large wall preventing the ability to get to know someone.
Perhaps, rather than specifically police how the industry talks to minority writers, it would just help if part of professional development was actually being interested in ideas before you? Or checking your superficial assumptions about whatever world of the story at the door?
