Wading through the Whitestream: A Conversation about Writing and Publishing When You’re Not White
On november 30, 2017, about thirty writers assembled in Boston at the headquarters of GrubStreet, one of the largest writing centers in the country, for an event organized by the Boston Writers of Color group. The night’s event, called a Local Editor Panel, featured editors of Massachusetts-based literary magazines and a nervous volunteer moderator: me. Despite my efforts to contact magazines that employ an ethnically and racially diverse staff, none of the editors who had accepted my invitation to be on the panel were people of color. Should the event be cancelled? Shouldn’t representation be a prerequisite for a conversation that was to center, in part, on inclusion?
Despite my misgivings, we didn’t cancel the event that night because I received advice from writers of color not to, and, of course, they were right. Too, the optics that night reflected a truth about the literary community: the vast majority of editors are white, and so are the writers whose work their magazines publish and promote. And so, what began as a night intended to educate writers summoned a candid, dogged, and sensitive conversation about the delicate relationship between editors and writers when they come from different racial and ethnic backgrounds and levels of privilege. From the writers, editors heard how their efforts of inclusivity were interpreted—which were meaningful and which were not—and after the night was over, several writers expressed how empowering it felt to share their concerns and skepticism with people in prestigious positions. How it felt to be seen.
While we were nibbling from the cheese platter, I chatted with two Boston writers, Jennifer De Leon and Tanushree Baidya, whose questions during the panel had intrigued me. The three of us wanted to continue the conversation begun that night so we could explore the truths about publishing that disproportionately affect writers of color. We invited Jonathan Escoffery, a local writer I’d never met but whose writing I admired, to join our conversation.
Conflicting schedules and far flung locations made coordinating an in-person meeting a challenge. Video or phone conferencing as an option felt both too formal and too casual for our intellectual and emotional pursuit. What we needed was to write our way into group discovery, so I created a shared Google Doc. There, we simultaneously pounded away at overlapping questions and answers in a chat-style of correspondence that allowed for rants and emojis, cheering on and interrupting. The result was both messy and honest. Here it is, all cleaned up.
SCHECK-KAHN: Let’s start this conversation with the mission of diversity. How do magazines run predominantly by white editors get it wrong?
What I’d like to know is how editors define . I’d like white editors to expand what it should mean. Because “people of color” is a broad group, the generalization tends to box us up in a way that emphasizes white voices further. That is a problem no one really seems to talk about. In most platforms where diversity is discussed, we get the usual white versus the generalized people of color, instead of Whiteness versus African American, Whiteness versus Korean, White versus South Asian (Pakistani, Indian, Sri Lankan), East Asian, etc. How often do panels or (people of color), (writers of color), and : these terms are too broad to be useful, beyond talking points. If the nuances of diversity and representation are not completely or properly addressed or understood, how do editors portion judgment and decisions in terms of selecting stories? Because I think there might be quotas, consciously or subconsciously, and they diminish diverse voices.
