Systemic Racism Is Everywhere and Nowhere

Last week, Amanda Nelson, managing editor of book blog Bookriot, claimed to have definitive proof of “systemic bias” in the publishing industry. Apparently, the Bookriot editors put their lab coats on and tracked all the unsolicited galleys sent to them by publishers for possible review for “a few months.” They even created a spreadsheet like total “NERDS!” What they discovered was that only 15 percent of the galleys sent were by writers of color. “And that is literally end of story,” Nelson tweeted. “I mean, that’s it. Publishers put money behind white authors. Arguments that bias doesn’t exist are just incorrect. Sorry.”

It’s certainly a very popular story these days, though it may have a few narrative gaps. First, there’s the problem of tracking only unsolicited galleys, and thus excluding all the books by authors of color that were sent by request but which the publisher would have sent anyway. It’s possible, perhaps even likely, that tracking all advanced copies, solicited and unsolicited, would tell a slightly different story, particularly at a publication like Bookriot committed to covering writers of color.

The more serious problem, of course, is that keeping track of books sent to a single publication for a few months hardly proves anything, much less that the entire (American? English-speaking?) publishing industry is polluted by racism. The editors at Bookriot might have an argument if they also tracked the number of galleys from big publishers to major book blogs, magazines, and newspapers over several years and compared that to the number of books by writers of color at these same houses. If the ratio of galleys-to-non-white-writers was smaller than the same for white men, for example, it would be a statistically meaningful difference.

But even this wouldn’t tell us anything about causality, which is sort of important in cause-and-effect arguments. If publishers did send out comparatively fewer galleys by writers of color, why? Is it because the mostly white employees in one of America’s most liberal industries think of themselves as superior to non-whites? If so, that would be interesting and worth writing about. Or is it something less odious, though lamentable, of liking stories and characters that are similar to our own? (Nelson thinks this is also racism. It’s not.) Perhaps it’s a result of the ad-hoc way that books are promoted? Or maybe it is something more complex, related to poverty and education and the plight of African inner-city life?

Whatever the reason, counts like this or the VIDA, whose approach the Bookriot editors are clearly borrowing, don’t bother with causality. Any discrepancy between the percentage of women writers or writers of color and the demographics of the general population is simply attributed to racism or sexism, modified by the word “systemic,” which usually means that no proof of sexism or racism is required.