For Electric Literature, Adalena Kavanagh has a conversation with poet Elisa Gabbert on Google Chat about how to advise white male writers to publish ethically. Their conversation also explores topics related to power structures in the publishing industry, and the implications of white authors writing from the perspective of a different race:
There is a long tradition of male novelists writing female characters, and that doesn’t feel *necessarily* problematic to me. But I’m squeamish about doing it with race. The risk for unexamined appropriation/exploitation seems SO high. Do you have this same sense? Why do you think that is? It must be connected to the feeling that a white woman “identifying as black” is NOTHING like a man identifying as a woman.