Let’s Talk About…Authority in Writing

A lot of conversations have been had lately about writerly responsibility to accurately represent in their books cultural experiences they have not had. There are a lot of things that...discomfit me about this conversation. Like the fact that apparently some writers need to be told this is a thing? When let's be clear: we have always been a hundred percent responsible for not writing racist bullshit. (Unless, of course, that was our goal. Presumably I'm not talking to anyone here for whom "inciting race war" is a goal for fiction.) Also: I'm all for people writing characters who are not