JB has been awesome (for decades) when it comes to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.

Not just racially.  Also in terms of religions, disabilities, different body types.

Again, it's degrees. If the book stars a minority character and their cultural experiences are part of the texture of the book, I'd say having an author of that same minority (in the small or larger sense) is better for the quality of the book. Even if you don't know as a reader that's going on behind the scenes! I only found out YEARS later that James Owsley was African-American, but as a tween I could really feel something different happening in his Falcon miniseries from 1983. Something about the way Sam spoke, something about the milieu and his interactions with it felt lived in in a way that few comics at the time did. As a result, that book lives in my memory far stronger than many of the couple of dozen comics I read in any given month, back in the day.

I just don't like people who espouse absolutes (not you - I am thinking of this ex-editor). 

The Falcon has for example also benefitted from being written in Captain America, the avengers, and many more titles by great writers like JB, Engleheart, Michelinie, Stern, JM Dematteis, Brubaker and more.

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Christopher Priest (formerly James Owsley) bore the brunt of that in the other direction. For years he tried out for gigs like Batman and Superman, only to be told that he was an "urban" writer and they kept giving him titles as such, instead. He was understandably miffed that he wasn't trusted to not write White characters as Black or something*. As he put it, he wanted to be known as a "Writer", not a "Black Writer".

*Ironically, Priest did get to write a single Batman arc during the late 80's - elements of which were adapted into the BATMAN BEGINS movie.

I honestly think you don't receive enough recognition for this. With Northstar, before you were allowed to state it in the actual comments, you made it plainly clear in interviews that he was gay. Kitty being Jewish, James "Rhodey" Rhodes, Amanda Waller, Puck, and Roger Bochs, all were you doing diversity before it was a thing in not just comics, but generally in mass entertainment.

Jean: "...an idiot ex-Marvel editor who constantly espouses that 'minority' characters should only be written by creators from that same 'minority' ..."

If that line of thinking was adhered to, there never would have been hardly any minorities written about in TV, movies, which helped lead to a general audience accepting diversity in those mediums. -- And does this editor believe the reverse is true? Can people of a "minority" write about those not in their minority? Such nonsense.

Dave Kopperman: "...If the book stars a minority character and their cultural experiences are part of the texture of the book, I'd say having an author of that same minority (in the small or larger sense) is better for the quality of the book...."

I don't disagree that a person of the same ethnic background adds dimensions one of that ethnicity would bring to a project, but does that mean that one has to be of that ethnicity to write the character, at all? Does JB have to be Jewish, black, or a little person to write about those characters? And while he may not be able to bring a personal experience in writing such a character, does that mean he has nothing valid to say or offer when writing the character?

Definitely. Writers don't have to be rich to write wealthy characters, blind to write about sightless characters, superpowered to write about superpowered characters. Taken to the extreme, that is like saying a white writer can only ever write about white characters, and this presumably would mean even incidental characters, because it is considered racist or wrong to write characters of other ethnicities. Yet, ironically, the same charge would be applied to the writer for only writing white characters and never adding any diversity to his/her stories. 

It's ludicrous.  

......

@Dave: I may be spitting hairs and I believe we're largely on the same page here, and I don't want to contribute to too much thread drift, but I would argue those are classic universal tales of an individual looking for identity, man's inhumanity to man, and a man in search of the definition family, all of those in specific contextual tableaus. 

And Washington was actually responding to a question about his directing the film Fences, originally a play by prominent playwright August Wilson. 

I think the equivalent example in the MCU would be the use of the Black Panther. He was great as used by the Russo in Civil War, but the way Coogler and Cole fleshed out the character motivations and world building came from fresh perspectives and sensibilities that might have otherwise been overlooked. Doesn't make it right or wrong or better or worse, just a welcome addition to the palette. 

I would take any representation of a gay character I could get even if most movies and TV shows then only had them in relation to AIDS.  So Northstar holds a special place in my heart and when he came out around the time I came out in college, so many gay guys were like, "I been knew!" We didn't need it spelled out, I didn't need for it to be a gay writer.  It was good as is.