B. Dave Walters is a Storyteller & proud Scoundrel American. He is best known as the writer of Dungeons & Dragons: A Darkened Wish for IDW comics, writer of Electropunk (available online), content creator for Wizards of the Coast, online tabletop RPG streamer, and director/writer for a new documentary: Dear America, From a Black Guy.

“The Black experience in America has been a brutal one, and survival has always required one thing more than anything else: Pragmatism. Keep your head down, and do what it takes to survive. It’s still like that now: If you’ve ever heard of “code-switching,” it’s the practice of consciously mitigating our own blackness to make white people comfortable.

Sci-fi and fantasy were safely relegated to the realm of “white people stuff;” daydreaming was a luxury the average Black person could not afford. This was the prevalent belief all the way up to the release of Black Panther in 2018. 

“White People Stuff” and the Evolution of Black Fandom. Talkhouse. Sept 10, 2020.

What advice for PoC creators who want to bring change to our community?
“Just keep speaking your truth. One of the biggest problems we have as a nation right now is what we all believe about those people. In the case of Black people, we’re ‘thugs’ and ‘animals.’ The more we are publicly seen in all our diasporic beauty, the harder it becomes to maintain those lies.”

B Dave Walters Interview. The Geek Lyfe.