It’s not that I think the publishers are bad people, they’ve just blindly endorsed a doctrine that’s not substantiated by facts, so it tends to do more harm than good.
My solo (so far) campaign to address discriminatory messages on the submission pages of many publishers is still ongoing. Just when I think the zeitgeist may be shifting, I’m disheartened by the discovery of new sites that continue to adhere to this policy of misdirected altruism.
The two responses I’ve received from editors of literary magazines assured me no one was getting special treatment “based on positionality”, and they were “simply encouraging writers from underrepresented communities to submit their work and self-identify if they wish.”
Furthermore, both publications said they do not verify an author’s background but rather, as one editor put it, “We trust the people submitting to us who choose to self-identify as an underrepresented community in Canadian literature to do so truthfully”.
I’ve been having some interesting discussions with two other authors, both of whom believe they have been victims of discrimination in publishing though from completely different perspectives.
“Mostly due to identity politics, I’ll probably never receive a grant from the Canada Council, or be published in any form in the future.”
This is a statement from a talented white writer whose short stories have been previously published in leading Canadian literary magazines. He goes on to say, “I noticed the change over a decade ago. The reasons for rejecting a story had nothing to do with the writing. For example, the editors were concerned that behaviours of a character were problematic, stereotypical, or at least not a positive depiction.”
Has he been blacklisted?
“I cannot say for sure that I have actually been black-listed, but that’s what it feels like. Maybe “blacklist” is the wrong word. There doesn’t have to be an actual list. Any discussion around the editor’s table is now going to involve politics, race, and identity, and I fear I am judged harshly as a result.”
Paradoxically, a BIOPOC author states, that “as a non-white person… I have genuinely felt pushed aside in … my writing life, due to my identity, to the point where I adopted a conventional pen name.”
The conventional pen name he’s adopted is of British origin as opposed to his South Asian birth name. The result has been success he “couldn’t conceive of … if I used my real one; the experience of years informed me of that.”
If these two experiences prove anything it’s that the current approach by the publishing industry is arbitrary and destructive causing authors in extreme cases to abandon promising careers or change their identity in order to succeed.
All this because of an assumption that’s based on the false premise that BIPOC and authors from other marginalized groups are underrepresented in Canadian literature and they need special consideration to overcome this discrimination.
One only has to look at the preliminary results of the current Canada Writes Short story contest for evidence of this sophism. Of the 30 stories longlisted for the prize, eleven were written by non-white authors (36%) which is six percent greater than their representative population (Stats Can say 30.2% of the population identify as non-white).
Furthermore, of the contest’s nine judges, seven were non-white.
Still think BIPOC and authors from other marginalized groups are underrepresented and need encouragement and special consideration?
It’s time to end discriminatory messages on submission pages like this one on a major Canadian publisher’s website, “(The publisher) is excited to open our submission policy as part of our ongoing commitment to amplify and prioritize the voices of Black, Indigenous, and racialized writers, as well as those of other traditionally underrepresented communities.”
Writing - the experience 