Theme, message, and even the feature image of my story, bylined by someone else: A cautionary tale
Yesterday I sent substantially the following email to the “Conscientious Editors of Zora” —
“This week I’ve turned over a new leaf to directly address theft of my work.
This is the first in what will be a series of self-affirming communications, though particularly troubling in this case since the offending author, promoted and published on your afrocentric platform, is a white man. Worse, he’s a white man well-informed on the law of intellectual property, knowledge that he and I hold in common to some degree.
Jeffrey Kass and I connected on LinkedIn on Feb 19, 2023. (...) Around this time, I’d commented on a post of his, and that comment included a link to my story on Medium, “Civics 101: The Shame of Mt. Rushmore — On America’s Incredibly Low Bar for Honoring Dead White Guys.” (See screenshots below.)
Important to know, my story, Civics 101, is all about anti-Black racist former Presidents of the United States.
Civics 101 had been written and initially published in Feb 2021, republished on Medium around the same time, and over the years shared across social media, including LinkedIn a number of times, especially around Presidents Day.
Zora’s June 3, 2023, publication of Kass’ “Top 10 Most Racist Presidents” reflects the theme, message, and even the same feature image as my story, Civics 101. (See screenshot below.)
Also, not to be missed are the 150 claps for a Black woman’s original story versus more than a thousand for a white man’s copy.
It seems fitting to share this unrelated, yet related, comment I left on Medium for another white male writer, as we discussed the overarching long-standing problems of race and representation in literary media:
…Preposterous as it is, American news and magazine editors and book publishers, mostly white, are much more likely to accept your pitches over mine, even on something as layered and epigenetic as Black life, because the social program teaches that whiteness is knowledgeable, trustworthy, and authoritative in all matters. Imagine being chosen last to tell your own story.
The irony here is, while Zora’s leadership appears different to the eye compared to the white editors I’d referenced, for me, the outcome is the same. I’ll explain.
Over the years, Zora has either rejected or been nonresponsive to my efforts to publish my work on the platform, yet in the circumstances I’ve recounted above, by the evidence attached and linked within this email, and through Zora’s publication of Kass’ rendition of my work, the publication has weirdly, actually, acknowledged and promoted my ideas.
The downside though — Zora has neither extended the necessary credit for my labor nor addressed the blatant and willfully unethical behavior of its author Jeffrey Kass. Please begin by taking down Jeffrey Kass’ story and follow up with public editorial commentary.”
After 24 hours, I forwarded that email to Zora’s Editor-in-Chief, and even tapped a second Zora editor on Twitter. No acknowledgments.
I contacted Legal at Medium, and received their copyright infringement script response by email.
The response from @zoramag and from Legal at Medium to the circumstances I’ve described (with receipts) highlights the sort of day-to-day practices that entrench inequitable representation in American media.
Next, I contacted the writer Jeffrey Kass on LinkedIn and shared a draft of this story by private message with a request for immediate review and response. At this point, Kass’ story, a rendition of my own, has enjoyed 20 days of publication on the Zora platform, and counting.
After a couple of hours, I received a response from Kass (excerpt below, emphasis added), denying any wrongdoing on his part:
I’m happy to change the image if you’d like … I can assure you I did not sit down, read your article and then decide to do another one. I read lots, and I get inspired all the time to address issues. I would never just sit down and see if I could mimic someone even though it’s legal to use ideas in the marketplace. I would never in a million years try to harm someone like that.
Obviously, I’m no longer connected to the writer on LinkedIn.
I’ve suffered variations of editorial theft, usually through the pitching process but, as far as I know, this kind is a first.
As more writers begin to share experiences like this, we’ll build accountability that ensures ethical, equitable, representation in literary publishing.
