The War on Inclusion: How Publishing’s Refusal to Confront Systemic Whiteness Fails Authors of Color

I can’t help but notice parallels of discrimination against people of color whenever controversies like American Dirt come up. They always point to how strongly systemic whiteness functions among industry gatekeepers and bars people of color from access to the industry.

Publishing is a business tied to long-held fears of slave insurrection, and anti-literacy laws that barred Black people from reading, which adds context to why white-centric stories are held in higher esteem. When stories about people of color are valued, they are more valued if they’re by white people, or written with the white gaze in mind.

Publishing does a disservice to much of the world’s most valuable literature by stacking social and economic barriers between the writers of this literature and reading audience. The windows that authors of color can get in through are narrowed by the way we present ourselves at the gates. We have to write with excellent syntax, be masters of form, story, and structure, and be able to effectively prove to white readers why our existence matters, and why they should care.

I came into publishing in 2017, when a hot diversity movement took the young adult industry by storm. Diversity discourse was joined by the Twitter…