The stereotypes that have bedeviled Black men are still a large part of our twenty-first-century life and form a large reason for why romance readers don't accept Black men as heroes in historical romance. (160)
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Adam Morson, the hero of A Virtuous Ruby, [...] does the heroic thing by protecting the woman and child he loves and gets them out of harm's way. Adam takes what is most valuable - his new family, his labor, his ideas, his intelligence - and leaves, not wanting to benefit a town that sought to quell his freedom to be a Black man. However, readers interpreted Adam's actions in a Western way: accusing him of running away. (162)
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Champion Bates, my hero in A Champion's Heart, [...] [i]n order to help the love of his life get her mini-orphanage to safety, [...] agrees to fight one more match, defying doctor's orders and risking his sight on her behalf. To make his actions more heroic, he has to earn money at the height of the Great Depression to secure their future. However, some readers were concerned that the heroine would be "stuck with" a blind man as her husband. There were also concerns that as a former boxer, Champion did not make enough money to be able to support a family. The money concern was a reminder to me that one of the expectations of romance is that the hero be able to make enough money to ensure that the happy couple will not want for anything. (164-165)
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Romance doesn't feature heroes who are enslaved, because being held in enslavement means that the character doesn't have agency or freedom to choose - two things that are essential in a romance fiction character. (165)
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There are an infinite number of historical romance heroes who have littered the English countryside (and it is usually England) with multitudes of illegitimate children. However, readers don't see these heroes as an issue or a problem. It's only when a Black man is engaged in a real struggle with alcohol and fights to find his way to redemption that these tropes are an issue. (169)
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