Yo Americans

because black people in america still face racism rooted by this shit

american chattel slavery was one of the most brutal genocides in history so much so that its consequences are still visible today so for this bl to be set in that time period and having a native character say "im you're humble slave, master" is plain mockery of real life people's trauma. and they didn't even bother drawing the actual black people in the story with proper faces it's plain insulting

No fr I thought I was imagining things at first but then I was like wtf? Why don’t they have any faces. It was rlly strange. Honestly this is kind of reminding me of BTS, w that shitty ass Howard uni video. How tf are you gonna make a video abt the history of Koreans in a HBCU, emphasis on the HB part, and makes almost everyone in that video yt

anything's possible, so maybe this creator will turn out to have done their research and not be insensitive or ignorant, but I'm already skeptical due to the choice of character backgrounds. like of all the kinds of people and stories you could tell about this time period in this place, why are these the ones chosen? what's the appeal of their dynamic? why choose this setting and time period for that? if the creator hasn't done their due diligence, those questions will have very unflattering answers.
as it stands, it looks like a very deliberate choice to write around the existence of Black people who lived during that time even though their presence is integral to the livelihoods of the MCs. maybe the author thought they'd avoid the backlash they're now getting by doing that, but that's still an expression of racism, by ignoring that Black people are also people who want their stories and experiences told and treated with respect. and if the author didn't want to include Black people, which they're ultimately not obligated to do, they would have been better off choosing another topic and setting to write about, because like it or not, when writing about American history, you'll have to grapple with the racial dynamics of this country one way or another, to say nothing of the civil war era (even postwar) where the crux of the conflict was "what are we going to do with Black people (are they even people?)". to then make the only Black people in the story be faceless mobs seemingly only with the intention of making the white MC look good and ethical, just rubs salt in that wound. if the author wanted an interracial cowboy romance with this particular dynamic, they had other options for time and setting (and not to mention that those power and racial dynamics are present in other times as well).
every choice a creator makes in their story reflects their knowledge and interests, which are not free from bias. intentional or not, I see a lot of opportunity for missteps here.
I liked these threads for more background info - https://x.com/SPLover1863/status/2069382347972063697
https://x.com/SPLover1863/status/2069512321475465603

So in areas like the Southwest, Native Americans were kept as slaves both in the missionary system and afterwards when the European migrants from the eastern side of the continent began taking land over in the southwest. Now in present time we have issues of MMIP. That's an ongoing crisis of missing and murdered indigenous people and the stereotyping of colonial violence of native people is problematic, especially because they tend to fetishize native women and men.