The world of fiction publishing is plagued by "structural, institutional, personal and universal" racism according to a new report that found that less than two percent of the more than 2000 science fiction stories published last year were published by black writers.
This report was published in Fireside Fiction magazine which states that only 38 of the 2039 stories published in 63 magazines in 2015 were written by black writers.
"The probability that it is a coincidence that only 2% of published writers are black in a country where 13.2% of the population is black is 0.00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000321%"
"We all know. We know. We don't need a number to see it, as in all parts of our society, marginalization towards blacks is still a big problem in the publishing world ... The whole system is built to benefit whites"
"I can't say that I'm surprised… I think anyone who is paying attention to the publications of fiction in general and short fiction in particular, knows that there is a big problem with the underrepresentation of people of color and that it is even worse for black writers. "
A half Nigerian, half American author, Nndi Okorafor, who won the World Fantasy award, commented on this fact:
"I don't need a report to tell me what I already know. Damn, this is one of the big reasons I started writing, because as a reader I can't see the stories I want to read, the characters I want to read, the lack of diversity. I don't spend a lot of time desperate about something that has been there for centuries. I keep it moving. "
The report, written by Cecily Kane with data collected by Ethan Robinson, focused on black authors specifically rather than authors of color because, according to Kane, while all of them are important, they noticed different patterns in which diversity initiatives excluded blacks.
On the other hand, the author Justina Ireland wrote an essay accompanied by the report.
"The science fiction and fantasy community has a problem with race. More specifically, the SFF publishing house as a whole is, and still is, anti-black. People at SFF like point to successful black authors as proof that we have evolved because it's the popular fallacy that if a single black person can succeed then obviously we've all moved beyond institutional racism. But a 2015 analysis has put the truth about this lie. "
Author Troy L Wiggins also wrote another essay commenting on the following:
"The truth is that I have a better chance of being wrongfully convicted of a crime than to sell a story. short fiction to a magazine. "
Doesn't this comment remind you of the reality of To Kill a Mockingbird? If you are black you are automatically condemned and everyone will assume that if someone accuses you of something, it will be true.
Brian White is the author of a magazine that took a critical look at his own magazine, which published only 3 stories by black writers in 2015 out of a total of 32.
"Guess what? In 2015 Fireside has not published a single black writer. "
He also comments that, once his eyes are open, he will make a greater effort so that it does not occur again.
"This is something that I have done in the past but I want to be more aware of it. For our open submission periods we will add a form to allow writers to voluntarily and anonymously include their demographic information. The largest piece of data we have is the number of black writers who are submitting stories to our magazine. Talking to black writers, both for our company and in general, is very important to have diversity as part of the presentation guidelines. But even more important is the evidence that this is actually being put into action. If you say diversity is important to you and then a writer of color looks at your magazine and realizes that most of the posts are by white men on white men doing white men's things, the black author is probably not going to go away. introduce"