Okay, disclaimer:
I'm saying this as 1) a life-long, middle aged Flash fan, 2) a
pretty vocal Wally West fan and 3) a black man (by USA standards at least), so everything I say here is colored by these 3 things.
Wallace as Kid Flash is
fine. Wallace as Wally's cousin is
fine. Wallace being from the main Earth and a member of the Flash family having equal footing to the others is more than okay. We don't need to change his identity, his heroic alias or the core of his origin (Iris nephew, Wally's cousin, etc), make him from a different Earth or anything like tat. Changing his name could serve a function, but Flash people with the same name are a staple at this point and it's also not a big deal.
That said, he
does need a retconned origin. First, because it doesn't fit continuity anymore (well, nothing really does, but we an hope)Because when he made his debut, I was really prepared to be offended as a Wally fan (and I was) but I was
really offended as a black person.
Because this...
.... this is fucking disgusting. That grown ass blonde cop giving an arm-lock to an unarmed 12 year old black is as much "Barry Allen" to me as that thing we saw in HiC is Wally West.
This is not this kids uncle, this is not his mentor. This is a ************ that should be in jail for child-abuse and police brutality and I will
never accept that any kind of meaningful relationship should develop between those two, and I sure as hell don't want that **** normalized in my comics.
So yeah, keep Wallace's name, keep his status, hell, give him a promotion within the DCU if that's the case. But the origin, as it was, has to go.