As we kick off the 2020s, there’s romance in the air — not in a fun way, but more in the sense of a great cloud of ash, dirt, and other detritus swirling around in the wake of a massive building collapse. The Romance Writers of America, a 9,000-member trade organization representing published and aspiring authors in the genre, all but completely imploded in the wake of a racism-related controversy that came to a head just before Christmas.

But this debacle wasn’t a sudden and unpredictable eruption of petty internet drama. Rather, it was a long-simmering stew of resentments that finally, catastrophically boiled over: a potent mix of longstanding discrimination issues within the romance genre, early-aughts changes to the publishing landscape that created a frantic (and sometimes misguided) scramble to serve authors and readers of color, and an organization struggling to make a genuine commitment to inclusive principles without tearing itself apart in the process — and failing spectacularly at the latter.

Kathryn Lynn Davis

Most coverage of this story, which has ranged from shallow to openly snide, has centered on one official complaint filed by author Kathryn Lynn Davis, whose mishandling by RWA created a rolling backlash that ultimately caused the entire organization to become catastrophically unstable. (The collapse is still ongoing as of this writing: the most recent development in the saga is the cancellation of the 2019 RITA Awards, which are basically the Oscars for romance writers.)

Davis is the author whose 1999 novel Somewhere Lies the Moon was described by author and activist Courtney Milan as “a fucking racist mess” for employing what Milan claimed were problematic and harmful tropes about Asian women, and the complaint — which alleged, among other things, that Davis had lost a promised three-book contract after being targeted by Milan — made for a tantalizing narrative about fragile white writers unable to cope with being called out for their racism, as in this representative exchange from NPR’s weekend edition:

BATES: …Davis, who is white, and her publisher Suzan Tisdale, who is also white, and her editor and her friend sent a complaint to RWA. And they claimed that Milan was in violation of RWA’s code of ethics, which says that it’s supposed to create a safe, respectful place in which to discuss people’s works. FADEL: Wait; she was in violation for calling out what she saw as racist? BATES: Yeah, they were (laughter) — they were offended that they had been — or that the writing, I guess, had been deemed racist. And they wanted her to apologize for being offended at the racism.

Oh, but it’s so much more interesting than that — beginning with the fact that Davis was never the central target in this internecine drama. That distinction goes to Sue Grimshaw, a freelance romance editor and former buyer at Borders, who came under fire after another author, Ella Drake, started posting screenshots of some of Grimshaw’s “liked” tweets on August 8, 2019:

It’s unclear what prompted Drake to start scrutinizing Grimshaw’s internet presence in the first place, but she continued to ramp up her rhetoric over the next few days, until — perhaps coincidentally, but critically —she learned that Grimshaw had been hired on as an editor-at-large at the Jack’s House publishing imprint owned by romance superstar Marie Force. Drake doubled down, writing, “I mean, if you want to work with someone who *likes* Trump’s demented tweets, ICE raids, articles calling Elizabeth Warren a hate monger, that’s certainly a choice,” before going on to suggest that Grimshaw would abuse her position as an editor by only buying books by white authors.

While Drake’s first round of tweets hadn’t gotten much attention, the hiring announcement from Marie Force spurred a backlash. People began to claim that Grimshaw’s racism had been whispered about for years in romancelandia backchannels, with particular focus on her role at Borders at a time when the store notoriously relegated black authors to a separate section. (More on this in a moment.) One author described receiving a “deer in headlights” reaction when she asked Grimshaw about publishing an African-American historical romance at a panel in 2011; others insisted she’d killed the careers of countless nonwhite authors by refusing to buy their books or shelve them properly at Borders in the main romance section. And of course, there were those liked tweets from people like Diamond and Silk, Charlie Kirk, Candace Owens, and Donald Trump himself. Soon, high-follower accounts including Courtney Milan had coalesced around this narrative: that Sue Grimshaw had been placed in a position of power at Marie Force’s company despite her “well-documented history of racism.”

Needless to say, reasonable people can disagree about whether “racist” is the most accurate descriptor for liking a Trump tweet or being poorly-prepared for a panel. But Borders’ policy of segregating its black authors in a separate section, which was in place throughout Grimshaw’s tenure at the company, is certainly eyebrow-raising in 2020 and deserves additional scrutiny. Did Grimshaw use her influence to favor white authors over black ones, and keep the books of black authors separate from the romance category at large? Fortunately, we have an answer in the form of a quote from Sean Bentley, who managed diversity merchandising for Borders beginning in 2006 and was interviewed frequently at the time about his role as the company’s buyer of African-American fiction, including romance. Bentley, who (judging by his LinkedIn photo) is a person of color, defended criticisms of the shelving system in Romance Writers’ Report. (His remarks were reproduced in the comments of a 2008 blog post. Bentley had not responded to an interview request at the time of publication.)

“I understand that, but I don’t see it in our sales,” Bentley said. “What we do see is a disproportionate amount of sales in books written by African American authors. Borders and Waldenbooks are one of the only bookstore chains that shelve this way, and we have a significant market share in African American fiction and studies.”

It’s also worth noting that absurd racist stereotypes about black readers (namely, that they didn’t exist) were still prevalent in many parts of the publishing industry at this time. The urban fiction boom of the early 2000s was a wakeup call, and Borders was one of many companies scrambling in the wake of the realization that they’d been missing out on a massive market of readers who were explicitly seeking work by black authors. Segregating the authors by race was clearly a ludicrous solution, but considering that it was already receiving pushback in 2008, it’s a strategy that Borders would have likely changed if they’d had the chance. As it stands, the company went bankrupt in 2010, and we simply don’t know how their business practices might have evolved in light of ongoing discussions about diversity in publishing, or the massive success of books like The Hate U Give.

In the meantime, the allegations that Sue Grimshaw engaged in targeted discrimination against black authors during her tenure at Borders are hard to parse. Given Bentley’s role at the company, it doesn’t appear that she was responsible for buying the books of black authors, let alone endowed with the influence to make or break their careers, and Courtney Milan’s tweetstorm about Grimshaw acknowledges this ambiguity: “We don’t know. We don’t KNOW,” she wrote. “But for decades, Black romance authors heard there was no market for their work.”

That segue — in which one person’s employment history suddenly becomes a proxy for systemic discrimination in publishing — happens so seamlessly that it’s easy to miss, but it effectively indicts Grimshaw in an interesting way. Suddenly, it doesn’t matter what she did. It’s what she represents: the old guard, a relic of the racist system that diversity advocates want to dismantle once and for all, stubbornly refusing to move aside for progress.

Meanwhile, the backlash against Grimshaw spooked Marie Force, and on August 16, she posted on Facebook that she and Grimshaw had parted ways, an announcement that seems to have emboldened the detractors. Grimshaw was also employed as an acquisitions editor at the recently-launched Glenfinnan Publishing, and people began pressuring Glenfinnan’s founder Suzan Tisdale to fire her, alleging that her presence on staff made it clear that authors of color would be unwelcome there. But Tisdale not only refused to fire Grimshaw, she made a video defending her employee and calling for tolerance of Grimshaw’s unpopular political views, which only served to infuriate the community that wanted her gone. Allegations of racism were swiftly leveled against not only Grimshaw, but Tisdale, Glenfinnan, and anyone else who worked there — which is how Kathryn Davis’ 20-year-old novel suddenly came under scrutiny.

This is where most coverage of the RWA implosion picks up: Tisdale and Davis filed complaints against Milan in August and September, respectively, alleging that they had suffered professional damage as a result of her tweets, and that Milan had run afoul of the RWA’s ethical guidelines.

On December 24, Milan was found in violation on one of four counts, asked to resign from RWA’s Ethics Committee, and barred from holding future leadership positions within the organization. That decision was met with instantaneous outrage that led to mass resignations, a frantic reversal, and the election of a new president, Damon Suede. (For those interested, a detailed timeline of the ongoing uproar can be found here, with the caveat that its author makes no secret about where her sympathies lie.)

Courtney Milan

It’s worth noting that the anger at the RWA isn’t coming out of nowhere: romance, like publishing overall, has been overwhelmingly white for a long time and is now struggling, often unsuccessfully, toward greater inclusivity (in researching this piece, I read several anecdotal but credible reports of insensitive behavior at the meetings of certain local RWA chapters.) And RWA’s behavior here does suggest an opportunistic ploy by some members to strike a blow against an author who’d become a thorn in their side: Davis was reportedly pressured to make the complaint that resulted in Milan’s censure (she now says she feels used by the organization) and RWA members formed a secret committee-within-the-committee to weigh the allegations. That’s not to say that the complaint itself wasn’t valid; Milan is a particularly militant activist, and there’s certainly an argument to be made that a person who serves on the ethics committee of a professional organization shouldn’t be throwing her weight behind a scorched-earth campaign to ostracize a Bad Tweet Liker. But RWA’s handling of this situation, and the massive fallout thereof, betrays longstanding and deep-rooted resentments at play.

Since then, the loss of confidence in RWA has been profound. Prominent authors including Nora Roberts have expressed their dismay at the situation, publishers are withdrawing vital sponsorship money, the RITAs are cancelled, and the discourse has descended into a chaos of competing denunciations. This includes a particularly fierce campaign against new RWA president Damon Suede, who became the object of a mass grievance-airing on Twitter as his own back catalog was scrupulously combed for evidence of racism; one scene, in which a working-class protagonist thinks politically incorrect thoughts as he surreptitiously watches two men having sex in an alley, came under particular scrutiny. (Update: Shortly before this piece was published, Suede resigned as RWA president, leaving the organization leaderless for the foreseeable future.)

Meanwhile, two vastly different narratives have taken hold. In Narrative #1, a group of plucky and courageous authors banded together to take down a racist who made romance an unsafe place for marginalized authors, only to be crushed under the wheels of a system that punishes those who speak truth to power. In Narrative #2, a group of manipulative opportunists abused their social capital and exploited the community’s commitment to diversity to destroy the life and career of a woman they disagreed with politically, making ruinous allegations about her character without a shred of evidence. It’s hard to see, under the circumstances, how a reconciliation is possible — or how RWA moves forward from here, let alone recovers enough to continue its leadership role in romance publishing.

At this point, some readers will be tempted to shrug and dismiss this controversy as insignificant fringe drama in a community with no wider influence. But in fact, the stakes are extremely high: romance is a billion-dollar genre, one of publishing’s most reliable and resilient moneymakers, and what happens there has major implications for the industry at large. That a conflict like this could cause the collapse of RWA doesn’t bode well, and should be a cautionary tale — not just for any professional organization struggling with similar issues, but also for those who want change. Consider: in the wake of the RWA implosion, many community members have been circulating a list of demands, the first of which is “a clear, unequivocal statement that RWA is anti-racist and that all of its policies, procedures, and activities will ensure that the organization meets this standard.” But while it’s easy for an organization to simply declare itself anti-racist, putting such a commitment into practice presents challenges. If a professional organization like RWA genuinely intends to eradicate racists from their ranks, it follows that every allegation of racism will have to be taken seriously, investigated thoroughly, and result in grave professional consequences if the allegation proves true.

Anti-racist activists in the romance community would likely agree that yes, this is exactly what they want: indeed, their list of demands also includes firing anyone from RWA who is found to have “discriminated against marginalized authors based on their identities, whether intentionally or through negligence.” But this deserves scrutiny. How would such a judgment call be made, and by whom? If being found guilty of racism means professional ostracism and loss of livelihood, members will expect to be handed a clear and reasonable code of conduct that defines the punishable behavior in very specific terms — and ones that are acceptable to a politically and ideologically diverse membership of thousands, which means that despite what some may prefer, it’s a fair bet that liking a Donald Trump tweet or having written a twenty year-old politically incorrect book won’t be on that list. What then? If racism becomes as serious an offense as, say, plagiarism — and with appropriately serious consequences — what happens when an allegation of racism turns out to be frivolous, unfounded, or motivated by personal animus? What would be the outcome of a campaign like the one against Sue Grimshaw? And what would the consequences be, if any, for the people who participated?

For RWA, these are questions that will have to be reckoned with before they can rebuild. For organizations facing similar issues, the outcome will be worth watching. And for the vocal minority of authors and readers who want to make a professional requirement of their preferred political values, this may be a valuable lesson in the importance of compromise — or, alternately, in being careful what you wish for.