Anyway, back on target, I think I've covered the points that I need to make in order to start going after the things that were axiomatically assumed earlier in the thread.
First, the author's intent does matter. It's irresponsible to go up to a work, merely react to it, and then assert that somehow your reaction to it was anything more than your reaction to it. Your reaction may be important, but it doesn't in and of itself say anything about the meaning of the work. The intent of the work does matter, and you still have a responsibility to explore it.
Secondly, even with respect to a very sympathetic portrayal of a minority that had a strong intent to be uplifting - such as 'Black Panther' - it's possible to dissect the work and look at parts of it in isolation and make criticisms of its method. Some of those criticisms might even be fair. But none of them are fair if at some point you don't draw back and look at the larger intent and impact of the work. It's not enough to just 'proof text' this one part of the work in isolation, show that you can react to that part of the work negatively, and then assert from that something like the author is racist or even that the work is racist.
Simplistic claims like, "The drow are an evil dark skinned matriarchy. That's so racist and sexist.", are almost always wrong. The drow are a matriarchy not because Gygax was terrified of women, but because female spiders are often several times the size of male spiders and are known for their habit of devouring males. The drow are led by a spider goddess not because the initial intent was to find some symbol for the evil of women, but to reach for some symbol of predatory cunning and artistry - such as a spider's web. Can I prove that? No, I'd have to go research Gygax's original intent and find evidence of it, but it is I think an entirely reasonable and charitable approach to the material.
Where I will assert that I could prove something to the contrary, was an earlier claim lumping Burroughs in with Lovecraft and Howard. Lovecraft and Howard are we can tell from their personal writings racist, and we can look at their body of works as a whole and show how they reflect these beliefs. But with Burroughs, investigation will show that the was a member of a leading progressive abolitionist family, and that a close reading of his works will find that Burroughs intent is often to subversively undermine the prevailing racism of his day. For example, in his Martian tales, one of the traits that is most useful to the protagonist John Carter is that he holds no racial prejudices toward the martians, nor is he subject to them himself. The Martians on the other hand have all sorts of racial animosities against each other and grievances, and John Carter spends much of the story healing these racial divisions. Indeed, pretty much everywhere John Carter goes he finds someone with a different shade of skin from himself who proves to be a noble and loyal friend. The only race of Martians in which he finds no one with honor, are the white skinned Martians that look most like him, and these White racist bigots prove to his longest running and most tenacious adversary. Most of the Barsoom stories are about the evils of racism, and at several points in the story he has characters like Dejah Thoris and John Carter give speeches that are aimed at the racist theories proposed by racists of Burroughs day. Burroughs isn't racist, nor are his stories intended as such. And to the extent that you could choose to react to them as racist, because the protagonist is white or because the people of Africa in the 1920's are frequently depicted as primitive or savage, see also the savage and primitive depictions of people in Africa in the Black Panther. You have to look at the work as a whole and the author's intent to really understand it.