After reading the New York Times story about television producing mogul Shonda Rhimes that starts by saying “When Shonda Rhimes writes her autobiography, it should be called ‘How to Get Away With Being an Angry Black Woman,'” I have a modest proposal. No one who isn’t a black woman should be allowed to write about the cultural products created by black women.

Not a forever moratorium, but at least, I don’t know, a couple decades. And this isn’t to say there aren’t talented, non-black woman cultural critics who have done good work around the music, art, film, and television produced by and centering black women. Slate has a decent piece up about “Clair Huxtable, feminist hero” written by ...