Just an item for thought: in defense of the "damned if you do, damned if you don't" people, I have as a colleague a PoC who is militantly adamdant that if anyone who is *not* a member of her racial group tries to write about or include a member of her group in their stories, then that person has committed the worst of all possible hate crimes. She contends that people have absolutely no business writing or talking about (in any capacity) groups of which they are not members because that's a form of appropriation that is tantamount is committing (or, at least, contributing to the committement of) cultural genocide. Unfortunately, this colleague's attitude is not unique to her, and it *has* scarred me as a writer. No amount of listening on my part is going to make it easier for me to want to/be able to write her racial group knowing that she or her ilk will use that effort as proof of the hatred they are convinced that I and my ilk harbor towards them.