Finally read through Steven Barnes' take on recasting T'Challa. He made a lot of good points, as have others on this thread, and used some powerful language. There were some things he didn't get quite right (far as I recall Bill Duke's Bolivar Trask did survive in X-Men: The Last Stand and Captain Marvel was set in the 1990s instead of the 1970s) but overall he got a lot more right, or that I agreed with.
Over a decade ago now his blog influenced a lot of how I see entertainment and the depiction of black people and it's good that he's still dissecting entertainment along that line.
I also wanted to chime in because I'm reading Gorgon Child now. I had read the first book in the trilogy a very long time ago, and then the last book, Firedance, so I want to complete the trilogy. I recall getting the first book because I liked the premise on the back cover, but while reading it, it dawned on me that Aubry Knight was actually a black character and that definitely hooked me. Knight is one of the only black male science-fiction heroes in literature that I've seen, read, or know about, not counting media tie-in stuff like Star Trek, and even there, there's Sisko, Geordi, and Tuvok primarily (and you can throw in Mayweather too) so there are still not many. And for black females, there's Uhura and now Burnham; of course I'm not really counting the supporting characters who might show up in a book like Paul Winfield's Clark Terrell, or black characters originally created for the Trek novels, but I think you catch my drift. And there are even less black males, and especially females, in Star Wars novels-especially back in the day-though Disney Star Wars has been diversifying their books and comics in ways the old EU didn't, though also pushing an "SJW" agenda in ways the old books and comics didn't either. Stargate also had novels, and comics, so there were chances that Teal'c and Teyla got stories, but I would need to look into that. I doubt that Herb Jefferson's Boomer ever got a comic story, and I'm sure not a novel, about him, and then he got erased in the new Battlestar Galactica, and substitued with Dualla in terms of black representation, a character they wrote out even before the series was over, a major waste of Kandyse McClure. I do remember that Dualla got one important storyline in a comic ("The Returners"), involving her brother, which I think was better, from what little I read of it, than anything I saw them give her on the series, with new BSG also not having any prominent main black male characters (not counting guest stars like Bill Duke and Carl Lumbly). I do think that The Orville's Chief Engineer LaMarr got a two-issue storyline (it appears that all Orville comics are set up that way so it wasn't an intentional short changing) in that comic series, so there's that.
Even today I'm not sure there are that many straight black male characters or black male characters period (I'm talking about main characters here, not supporting characters or sidekicks, or those pushed to the side for female, or other, characters) in genre literature, even though there are a lot more black fantasy, horror, and science fiction writers out there. This is just anecdotal on my part but it seems like that there are far more books that feature black females and/or black LGBTQ characters than straight black men in genre fiction today, which is how it's going in mainstream entertainment. Horror/thriller writer Brandon Massey is one though that will feature straight black male characters. If anything I think there might be more straight black male characters in mystery/crime fiction, and also street lit (but I feel that today's street lit is geared more toward female readers unlike stuff like Donald Goines or Iceberg Slim), whereas writers like Walter Mosely (I was at a bookstore event for Mosely once where he said his motivation for writing was to create black male heroes, which he has made good on), Gary Phillips, and Gar Anthony Haywood have no problem creating straight black male protagonists.
I still admire what Barnes has done and what he has to say. So far, my favorite book from him has been Lion's Blood. I have yet to read the sequel, but Lion's Blood was an epic work. I would love to see the Aubry Knight trilogy on the big or small screen. I mean, this could be the role Michael Jai White was made for.
