I originally wrote this post over a year ago, back in May 2016. It was one of those period where I was seeing racism in fandom surge to a high level (this was after the meta of doom a certain BNF wrote) and I was just so fed up by how many people were dismissing our conversations about race and racism in fandom and saying “it’s not about race”.

So, I wrote an open letter that is sadly still relevant in fandom to this day.

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Dear fandom,

It is ALWAYS about race.

No matter how you twist it, fandom’s collective and constant dislike of characters of color (especially if they’re in relationships/shippes with white male characters) for some reason you “just can’t put your finger on” is directly related to race.

Your race.

Their race.

Race.

From “Iris and Barry are like siblings” despite him being in love with her his whole life to “Sam Wilson would be a more realistic Hydra agent than Tony Stark” to “Lucy Liu doesn’t look like she has the emotional range to play Watson” to “I don’t hate Finn because he’s black, I just think he’s a boring character”, it’s all so very clearly about race and fandom’s issues with it.

If y’all would admit that instead of clinging to every ninny who writes a post about how people who call out fandom’s racism are sjw bullies using buzzwords and coopting language/terms (that um, btw, WE CREATED), maybe we wouldn’t have this problem every time a fan of color goes “hey, this thing fandom does is racist”.

For once fandom, maybe consider listening to fans of color who have issues with the way they and characters that look like them are treated by fandom.

Please.

A very fed up fan