The things with RWA are not better. Don't get me wrong, there was nothing, not even sincere retraction and apology (which we...do not have) was going to magically fix this. But it would have been a start.
Since I was visiting family last week, I realized I wanted to clarify some things from Friday.
-I disagree with the decision regarding Ms. Milan. I have enoyed her books and her advocacy, but that is not why, or not only why. RWA's purpose is to advocate for romance authors. If a publisher can file against an author and have that author sanctioned then RWA is not doing that. It matters too that these were white people getting mad that they were being asked to address racism.
-As I am a board member with one of my chapters, I am not quitting at the moment. (Totally understand folks who came to a different conclusion.) But yeah, expecting some tough discussions in the coming weeks as we reevaluate things.
-I had entered the RITA. I have notified RWA that I have withdrawn my entry.
-I decided not to withdraw as a judge (again, totally understand folks who made different decisions). I personally decided I wasn't willing to leave the judging to the folks who aren't mad yet. I am kinda hoping there's not enough entries left and we can all get on to other concerns, but I suspect not enough people are mad yet. Or some folks just left their entry because they uploaded before things went kaboom.
-I wrote about my intention to fix things at the chapter level a bit ago. I wouldn't go so far as to say things are better, but they are not worse. But well, this is worse. This is a lot of failures at once. The organization has survived other debacles before. But as with all errors, it's only survivable if people want to fix it rather than wait for folks to forget.
