After that whole brouhaha over the Magic Under Glass cover, we stayed away from internet conversations about racism in publishing for a while. Honestly, they seem more often than not to go like this:

PERSON OF COLOR: posts thoughtful, amazing, carefully-considered, and very insightful commentary about racism/appropriation/marginalization/being a good ally

MANY, MANY WHITE PEOPLE: leave totally horrifying comments (see "but I'm a good person so I can't possibly be who you meant," "whtevr get over it u ppl r so sensitive," "we are post-racial now," "one time someone called my Irish grandfather a bad name which is exactly the same as your experience of racism and look at me I'm fine," etc.)

and then we put out our own eye with a fork and are of no use to the People's Revolution. But anyway! All of that was just to say we missed some of these posts when they first went up, but they are all amazing, and EVERYONE NEEDS TO GO READ THEM RIGHT NOW. Okay! Thanks.

The Book Smugglers compiled the most considered and comprehensive overview of whitewashing in publishing ever, and finished it off with another out-of-the-ballpark letter from Ari, who is seriously our hero, and some days when we are feeling really un-optimistic about the future of the People's Revolution, we think about Ari, and then we feel better.

Also our hero: Neesha Meminger, who routinely posts some of the most thoughtful and compelling writing about race (and cookies) in the universe, has a great post about representation. OH LOOK NEESHA INTERVIEWED OLUGBEMISOLA RHUDAY-PERKOVICH AND THEY BOTH SAID A BUNCH OF CRAZY SMART THINGS HOW EXCITING. This made us cry: "I hope that readers know that I am writing to them from that place in myself that is both broken-hearted and beautiful to that same place in them; that I'm hoping that we meet and are transformed in some way together. That we're all imperfect, self-conscious, want more, don't even know what the questions are sometimes, much less the answers...and we can all get beyond ourselves, even in very small ways, to make a difference in this world." Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich, if you get any more awesome, our head is going to fall off.

Here is a very fabulous post from the very fabulous Zetta Elliott on her experience at the NYC Teen Author Festival (Dear Zetta: "Should I, as a woman of color, expect my “white sisters” to rush to my side and stand in solidarity on this issue that doesn’t negatively affect them?" We know you are being wry and resigned but YES YOU SHOULD WE LIKE TO AIM HIGH OVER HERE AT THE PEOPLE'S REVOLUTION. LADIES LET'S STEP UP OKAY? OKAY!). You should also read her Huffpo post about self-publishing. You should also read some Sarah Schulman while you're at it.

Finally, here is an interesting series of posts on the maybe-almost-but-not-quite-yay-they-fixed-it-anyway whitewashing of the cover for Holly Black's forthcoming White Cat, from Book Smugglers and Gal Novelty, and Holly's response (Dear Simon and Schuster: if someone wanted to send us a galley for this book so we could not have to wait until it comes out to read it because it is totally going to be so awesome confirm your success in non-whitewashing we would not say no).