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Hello, dear reader, and welcome to The Kerfuffler! I'm your host, fantasy writer, essayist, and mad tweeter, Saladin Ahmed. Every other week I'll be looking at America's seemingly endless culture wars playing out online, tracing their fault lines, and wading hip-deep into comment sections so you don't have to.

My first dispatch comes from the war-torn realm of book publishing.

The internet has been abuzz recently with debates over reading lists and reading habits. Writer K. Tempest Bradford caused a bit of a stir when she challenged readers to stop reading straight white cisgendered male authors for a year. Sunili Govinnage generated her share of outrage when she reported on her year spent deliberately not reading white authors. And in late 2014, the phenomenally successful #WeNeedDiverseBooks campaign took Tumblr and Twitter by storm, sparking a conversation about which books get published and read, and which don't, and what these choices are doing to children's literature.

Many of the responses generated by these articles and initiatives have been supportive even from those white male authors 'targeted' for exclusion. Neil Gaiman, whose novel American Gods appears crossed out in red at the top of Bradford's piece, told "anyone hoping for outrage" that he thought Bradford's suggestion was "great":

Bestselling author John Scalzi tweeted similar support:

Meanwhile, Daniel Handler (aka Lemony Snicket) responded to criticism of his self-described racist jokes at the National Book Awards ceremony last year. Instead of doubling down, he met the criticism with that rarest of things: a sincere apology, backed by a donation of more than $100,000 to We Need Diverse Books.

Not all responses have been so generous, of course. The comments on Govinnage's piece are rife with cries of 'reverse racism!' (a thing that, it must be noted, does not actually exist). Those commenting on Bradford's story went so far as to call her reading challenge "intolerant, censorious, and an obstruction of the free exchange of ideas that is essential to freedom itself." Bradford was subjected to a slew of remarkably bilious attacks on Twitter and elsewhere. Inevitably the right-wing blogosphere had its say too, with writers like the conservative scifi/fantasy author and GamerGate favorite Larry Correia comparing "SJWs" like Bradford to wait for it neo-Nazi skinheads.

So...is this a zero-sum game? Are the calls to exclude straight white male authors from reading lists the latest example of politically correct thought policing gone mad? Must one spend an entire year ignoring great books by white men in order to be a 'good ally?'

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The Great Internet Debate Over Not Reading White Men