If Gaines just pointed out how hypocritical and racist it was for people to complain that it’s not “The Wonder Years” simply because the characters are black — sure. That’s an easy argument to make independent of any qualities of the show. Here, I can do it in one sentence:

“Not liking a fictional heir of a fictional story simply because the race of the characters have changed is, unless the race was in some way absolutely central to the original story, by definition racist because you are not liking something precisely and only because of someone’s race.”

That’s all it takes. It would be more elegant if it were split into a few sentences instead of one big complicated one, but it’s not a hard case to make.

But she also argued that people had to admit it had merit…without arguing that it had merit! I assume we’re not forcing people to admit things that aren’t even true, hm?