Jan 8, 2014

Our Perspective (The QK Crew)

The last three years have been pretty amazing. Michelle, SC, and I have helped so many writers achieve their dreams, and that alone makes everything we do worth it. QK and NoQS have grown to be so much bigger than we ever expected, and I'd like to thank the writing community for that.

I'd also like to apologize.

As most of you know, SC is no longer a member of The QK Crew. I thought the diplomatic and professional thing to do was to stay silent. But you can't really do that in a community, and I'm sorry for trying.

The decision to part ways with SC wasn't made lightly, and I don't think I can stress that enough. I didn't just discuss it with Michelle, I sought the opinion of complete, unbiased strangers (https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/3gskyk/does_lack_of_diversity_in_any_given_industry/). Why? Because I'm not arrogant enough to think my way of thinking is always right.

I have a few issue with the campaign, one being the use of the word 'racist', and the fact that it's being used without evidence. If you read my conversation with SC over twitter (August 11th), you'll see exactly where we disagree. He feels it's okay to call an industry racist without indisputable evidence (https://twitter.com/SC_Author/status/631157498058309632). I don't. I think it's mean and inconsiderate to the people who work in the industry (and who have donated their time to helping us with the contests). SC believes that a system can be racist, even if the people that comprise the system aren't (https://twitter.com/SC_Author/status/631147467405434880). I believe that a system can ONLY be racist if individuals within the system are acting on racist impulses. Lastly, I don't believe anger fixes anything. I think it makes things worse.  SC disagrees(https://twitter.com/SC_Author/status/630486476183203840).

As you can see, most of the tweets referenced above are recent, yet I  knew about the #WriteInclusively Campaign during QK2015. In fact, Michelle and I gave the go ahead for SC to use the #WriteInclusively campaign as a submission requirement for Query Kombat. Why? Because we believed in what he was doing, and we felt QK would be an excellent platform. As The QK Crew, we endorsed the #WriteInclusively campaign by partnering during QK2015.

Since then, Michelle and I feel like the tone of the campaign has darkened. On August 11th, Michelle brought her concerns to my attention. She, as well as others, were hurt by some of the things SC was tweeting. I decided to talk to him to get his point of view. During our discussion (both over twitter and via email) I asked him to consider creating another account for his campaign. Why? Because people who feel hurt by his accusations still need to read through his tweets to get pertinent contest info. Do you see our predicament?

The email I wrote to SC took a long time to write. I started and stopped a few dozen times because it was one of the hardest emails I've ever written. I DID say that "his passion for the Write Inclusively campaign may be unsettling or uncomfortable for people who don't write from the POV of ethnic characters, or who don't portray ethnic characters as 'honestly' as you would like." 'Passion' is the operative word, but SC interpreted it as us siding with racist white people. We're not. Michelle and I WANT more diversity. What we don't want is for writers/agent/editors/publishers to feel attacked because they don't consciously tackle racial issues in their work. I don't want agents to feel attacked because their agency is comprised mostly of white people. And I don't want to accuse the industry that makes our contests possible without evidence.

There is a need for diversity in the publishing industry, but I don't feel the lack of it is due to racism or oppression (http://careers.penguinrandomhouse.com/ Check out the image on that page.). I think  the stigma of little to no money in publishing drives the lack of diversity. Instead of shaking our fist and calling the industry racist, I think we should work with the industry to disprove negative statistics, and help advertise them to minorities in high school and college. The fact is, creativity is lacking in the education system (http://www.businessinsider.com/a-ted-talk-on-how-the-education-systen-is-killing-creativity-2013-1) and until we fix THAT (the foundation, IMO) we have little chance of making a lasting change.

I agree with SC's vision. I don't agree with his conclusion, and I don't think it meshes well with the spirit of our contests. Since SC post (http://scwrite.blogspot.com/2015/08/a-query-kombat-noqs-announcement.html), I've cut all communication with him. After the laughing, joking, and good times we've had over the years, to even imply that I'm racist because I don't agree with his conclusions is utter ridiculous. I never said he was wrong. Never once. I simply asked for evidence/testimony. I side with facts, and SC doesn't have them. Only when it is proven that the publishing industry has a track record of turning away qualified applicants of color will I accuse it of racism. To do so at any moment beforehand is shortsighted and hurtful.


  1. Honestly, after reading all this I wondered how you were doing. I wish you the best of luck.

    1. I'm kinda sad to be honest. I wish things turned out better. Though we have different views, we want the same thing. I wish we could have inspired change together rather than bickering.

      Now that I think about it, I wonder of Malcom X and Martin Luther King had a similar argument in their day.

    2. I understand feeling sad. It's hard to lose friends, and it's impossible to agree with everyone on everything.

  2. I agree education is at least one of the roots of lack of diversity in books. I read 5 novels by authors of color while in school, including my time getting a BA in writing (it would've been 2 without my African Am. lit class).

    I didn't question this until I learned about institutionalized racism.

    1) Most students tend to learn from a majority of white teachers about
    2) white authors who
    3) wrote white-character books picked by
    4) white agents/editors/publishers which are marketed to
    5) white audiences and which are classified as worthy of prizes/etc by
    6) white reviewers/judges which leads to
    6) white academia teaching those white books which...well, leads to more of the same whiteness.

    A diverse group of students, (would-be writers/agents/publishers/teachers) then learn that white is the filter through which they must pass, thus continuing the cycle.

    Anyhow, I think SC has provided some good proof for his claims.

    For example, http://scwrite.blogspot.com/2015/06/dear-publishing-industry-fix-your-own.html

    The same authors/agents/publishers whose feelings you are trying to protect are the ones most responsible for the lack of diversity in publishing. If you're not focused on true diversity, you (general) are part of the problem. If you don't want to work to make books diverse, you are comfortable in the white-privileging world of literature.

    And I say that as a white woman married to a black man. I'm still racist. I still make racist assumptions, still perpetuate the system that privileges me over my mother-in-law. My white family/friends/teachers like to think they aren't racist, yet are who I learned racism from.

    The only way to change things is for people to see and accept that they have a problem. They're going to feel hurt at first, but I've seen many be able to get past that self-defensive "I'm not racist, I care about diversity, I just don't want to focus on marginalized people" nonsense (which sounds a bit like, "I'm not an alcoholic, I can stop anytime! I just don't want to," to me,) and push on to the growing process.

    Publishing has a racism problem. The first step is to not be afraid to admit it.

    Also, just like women can still internalize misogyny, POC can still internalize racism. And oh, tone policing...can I give you a nice link on tone policing?


    1. I agree with a lot of this, but, ouch!, does this ever look like a problem arising from the word "racism." Racism traditionally described intentionally discriminatory and hateful behavior which is no longer acceptable among most Americans. In the place of overt racism, institutions like publishing have inherent bias and structural racism, both of which exist largely despite the individuals abhorring the idea of racism. Racism has become such a serious charge that even overt, hateful racists don't want to own it. So when SC calls out the publishing industry as racist, people react much more negatively than they would if we had a word that distinguished intent from consequence.

      Good people rarely want to take ownership of abstract moral flaws that they aren't directly committing. The academic-y side of anti-racist activism has not done a good job at creating a safe space for people who are not part of that culture to understand the complex systems that lead to racist outcomes. The demand is almost, "agree with me on this stuff we don't agree on, then I'll talk to you," which, surprisingly, most people aren't too into.

      I'm not sure about the tone-policing thing, in this case. SC appears to have called out #WeNeedDiverseBooks for ignoring structural racism without having done any research. When he did, he added a note acknowledging that they were actively pursuing a fix with an internship scholarship. If that's indicative of SC's approach leading up to the parting-of-ways with Michael and Michelle, he deserves much more blame than he's accepting. It's fine to be angry, but to start throwing out accusations without facts undermines everything you say.

  3. Racism/racist is not a slur, so we don't need a different word to describe what people are doing by perpetuating racist systems.

    If people are actively ignoring those who call our their unintentional racist actions,then they are no longer being unintentional. Getting called out stings, but one needs to grow a thick skin in publishing anyway.

    If one truly believes we NEED diverse books, not just that they'd be nice to have, then we need diversity in publishing. An internship scholarship is a nice start, sure...but that is a leaf floating on top of an ocean of systematic racism.

    Much frustration, I think, comes when white agents/etc claim they want diverse books, but then disregard diverse books as issue books (such as in the Write Inclusively blog post), or say there isn't a market for them, or do other things that just keep perpetuating the racism in publishing (like having diversity panels with all white people on them). There are authors of color on twitter and elsewhere who share their experiences about trying to find diversity-friendly agents/etc, but they realize that the agents are really looking for a whitewashed book. (Because authentic characters of color might, oh, I don't know, make the majority of white agents/editors/readers uncomfortable, or even have some dialogue about racism that hurts white feelings.)

    This and the post on Michelle's blog are dripping with tone policing. Such as, "people who feel hurt by his accusations". If you can't see that, I can't help you see it.

    But in the US, my fellow white people's definition of a "safe space" to discuss race usually means a space in which they are coddled, never made to feel uncomfortable. White people thinking they are good people who didn't intend to be racist and therefore shouldn't have their feelings hurt by being called what they are, racist, is kind of a perfect example of tone policing.

    If people are more interested in having their feelings protected than they are in listening when their racism is called out, then those people don't actually think we need diverse voices/books. They just want to pat themselves on the backs without doing the hard work of eradicating systems of oppression from within themselves. (I occasionally fall into the trap of self-back-patting. It is much easier and certainly more pleasant than digging through my innards to try to rid myself of internalized racism.)

    The fact that the QK crew says, "what we don't want is for writers/agent/editors/publishers to feel attacked because they don't consciously tackle racial issues in their work. I don't want agents to feel attacked because their agency is comprised mostly of white people" demonstrates that the QK crew doesn't think we NEED diverse books. They just think they'd be nice to have.

    Which is again, the problem with WNDB...most of the people saying that don't really mean it. What they really mean is, "It might be nice to have diverse books, but eh, we can keep doing the same racist, non-diverse stuff we've always been doing. That's cool too. Don't want to ruffle any feathers."

    But of course, that's not easily hashtagged.