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OK, a couple clarifications.
First: I am
not saying that only certain people should write certain characters, or certain types of characters. I'm a big believer in Own Voices, certainly, but I don't think anyone should be limited to that. I would love it if Nnedi Okorafor wrote a Storm solo. But I would also love it if she wrote a Spider-Man series. And Jeremy Whitley's a white guy, but I'm annoyed that he isn't writing a Misty Knight solo this very moment. So it's not about limiting at all.
What it's about is expanding the range of voices that are actually getting out there and getting heard. Different people have different experiences, which gives them different perspectives on the world, which leads to different ways stories get told. And I love that. I back a lot of diversity-focused projects on Kickstarter, because they always end up being so fascinating and compelling. Elements: Fire, for example, has some absolutely brilliant short comics. Or there's
Agents of the Realm, currently
fundraising for a print version of Vol. 2 (back it, it's a great comic!), a comic that is very much shaped by the creator's life experience as a black woman. A white man might write a magical girl comic, but it wouldn't be AotR, because a white man simply wouldn't bring the same perspective that Mildred Louis has. And it's not even that it's a comic that really focuses on race, it's just that she brings a worldview to the comic that's been shaped by who she is, which includes being a black woman.
As for Punisher: No, he doesn't target people based on their race, but look at the time we live in. How many black and brown people have been killed by the police when they weren't even armed? How many black and brown people have had cops called on them by racist white people who were pretty clearly hoping to get rid of those black and brown people? So what would a brown person do with a white guy vigilante who guns people down? That would be far more interesting to me than yet another volume of Punisher Kills Bad Guys, But Maybe This Time The Cop Chasing Him Is A Latino Or Something.