Diversity in Publishing:

My MBA thesis, from 2019

In 2019, upon completing my MBA on the Barcelona campus of EU Business School, I was expected to write a thesis on a particular issue in a particular industry in a particular country. I chose to address diversity in UK publishing, it was fresh off a dispute between Lionel Shriver and Penguin Random House UK.

This is the first time I’ve shared it publicly. It delves into issues including misogyny, race, and the trans debate. What could possibly go wrong?

Diversity in Publishing: Are Diversity Initiatives Proving Productive for UK Publishing

By

Kevin McGeary

Executive Summary

Mass media, including publishing, now rival the state and religion in their ability to introduce new ideas and shape public opinion. This power can be used for good or ill.

Publishing is the business of telling stories. In his seminal essay, “Story”, screenwriting lecturer Robert McKee cited story as the world’s most trusted medium, writing:

“Traditionally humankind has sought the answer to Aristotle’s question (how should a human being lead their life) from the four wisdoms – philosophy, science, religion, art – taking insight from each to bolt together a liveable meaning. But today who reads Hegel or Kant without an exam to pass? Science, once the great explicator, garbles life with complexity and perplexity. Who can listen without cynicism to economists, sociologists, politicians? Religion, for many, has become an empty ritual that masks hypocrisy. As our faith in traditional ideologies diminishes, we turn to the source we still believe in: the art of story.

The world now consumes films, novels, theatre and television in such quantities and with such ravenous hunger that the story arts have become humanity’s prime source of inspiration, as it seeks to order chaos and gain insight into life.”

McKee’s assertion is backed up by the history of the past century.

In 1915 “The Birth of a Nation”, one of the most influential films ever made, stigmatised interracial mating and glorified the Ku Klux Klan. This preceded the most successful period in the organization’s history. Among media, publishing can have a particularly strong impact on the way people think.

Studies have shown that daily news is relatively ineffective in changing people’s views or guiding decisions. By contrast, published books have been known to inspire major social changes. The World Economic Forum has cited Robert Tressell’s “The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists” as an ‘integral part of the drive for social reform at the start of the last century’.

In the United Kingdom, the publishing industry is in good health. It is estimated to have accounted for 192,000 jobs in the creative economy in 2017, almost ten percent of the creative industries. 

One of the biggest organizations in the industry is Penguin-Random House UK. In 2018 it announced that by 2025 its roster will be an exact representation of the UK population in terms of minority groups such as BAME (black, Asian, minority-ethnic) and LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transsexual).

Author Lionel Shriver has described Penguin as being ‘drunk on its own virtue’. In a riposte to Shriver, another author Hanif Kureishi described the company’s act as being both brave and necessary.

This thesis will explore the implications of diversity in UK publishing, from both a social and business perspective. Its conclusions will be based on qualitative and quantitative data as well as extensive reading of relevant literature and interviews with industry professionals. 

The two political earthquakes of 2016, the victory of the Leave campaign in the European Union referendum and Donald Trump’s election as president of the United States, were largely powered by marginalised groups. Diversity drives may be tapping into hidden strengths and broadening the cultural conversation. They also may lead to over-promoting unqualified people or penalising people on the basis of their identity instead of their ability, defeating the stated purpose.

This thesis will ask to what extent it is a social obligation for publishing organizations in the UK to introduce diversity drives, and whether it makes business sense.

Research Question

Diversity in the Publishing Industry: Are diversity initiatives proving productive for UK publishing?

The publishing industry has an impressive track record of changing the world. According to Steven Pinker’s “The Better Angels of Our Nature”: “The forces of literacy can prompt people to take the perspectives of people unlike themselves and expand their circle of sympathy to embrace them” (1).

“Uncle Tom’s Cabin” by Harriet Beecher Stowe was the best-selling novel of the nineteenth century, and its portrayal of slavery and those affected by it had a profound impact on society. When President Abraham Lincoln met Stowe in 1862, he is alleged to have said: “So you’re the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war” (2).

For a publishing company to be relevant and for the industry to fulfil its role as a gatekeeper of culture, it is important to be representative of the society it serves. The UK publishing industry’s track record of offering representation to marginalized groups has left something to be desired.

In the 1920s, Virginia Woolf wrote of how women’s lack of power in British society was a disadvantage to those who aspired to write fiction (3). Half a century earlier, Mary Ann Evans wrote under the penname George Eliot due to her lack of confidence in a female author being taken seriously (4).

The debate continues to rage. On the one hand, there is much quantitative evidence to suggest that society is skewed in favour of middle-class white men. There is also qualitative evidence, for example Kristy Lynn Gustafson of the University of Colorado has done important research into this issue through a study of men’s fitness magazines. In a 2013 academic paper “The Ultimate Silver Lining”, Gustafson examined how the body promoted in men’s health magazines encourages white privilege under the guise of pursing a fit body. By focusing on the oppressor’s role in social inequality, this research exposes the ways privilege is unknowingly perpetuated to prolong social injustices (5).

In the July 2017 edition of The Journal of Counselling Psychology, William Ming Liu described the ways in which white wealthy men use privilege as a means to access and gain power while white men in lower- and working-classes use privilege to build relationships and legitimize inequality (6).

Failure to recognize white male privilege is arguably itself racist or misogynistic (7). On the other hand, this rush for diversity could be proving censorious, killing debate, or simply be a fad with no long-term effect.

Arguing in favor of intellectual discomfort, educationist Michael Barber said in 2017: “Diversity of view is vital. And the key to genuine disagreement is that everyone involved seeks to understand fully the others’ case. Our economy depends on this, as do our culture and society. We cannot accept any compromise”. The Daily Telegraph described him as the “bravest man in Britain” for saying this (8).

Objectives of Research

The aim of this research is to answer whether – as one interviewee put it – diversity initiatives in UK publishing are ‘a necessary evil’. Much data seems to support the claim that diversity is a good thing in-and-of itself, but then there is a danger of these drives defeating their initial purpose, by judging people by what they are (gender, ethnicity, sexuality) instead of who they are.

In 2018, Penguin determined that by 2025, it would acquire books that reflected the UK population. That is, it would publish people of various ethnic groups and sexual minorities in a proportion that represented their percentage of the UK population (9). This was supported by an opinion editorial claiming that publishing was still “hideously middle-class and white” (10).

Criticising Penguin, author Lionel Shriver attacked its policy, claiming “great writers are found with an open mind” (11). On its website, Penguin provides long lists of options for job applicants to state their gender or ethnicity. Penguin Random House aims to find and publish new writers who are "under-represented in books and publishing”. Targeted groups are writers from socio-economically marginalised backgrounds, writers who come from LGBTQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, Queer) or BAME (Black, Asian, Minority Ethnic) communities, or writers with disabilities (12).

Shriver has criticised this, writing:

“I see two issues here. First: diversity, both the word and the concept, has crimped. It serves a strict, narrow agenda that has little or nothing to do with the productive dynamism of living and working alongside people with widely different upbringings and beliefs. Only particular and, if you will, privileged backgrounds count. Which is why Apple’s African-American diversity tsar, Denise Young Smith, got hammered last October after submitting, ‘There can be 12 white, blue-eyed, blond men in a room and they’re going to be diverse too because they’re going to bring a different life experience and life perspective to the conversation…’

Second: dazzled by this very highest of social goods, many of our institutions have ceased to understand what they are for. Drunk on virtue, Penguin Random House no longer regards the company’s raison d’être as the acquisition and dissemination of good books. Rather, the organisation aims to mirror the percentages of minorities in the UK population with statistical precision. Thus from now until 2025, literary excellence will be secondary to ticking all those ethnicity, gender, disability, sexual preference and crap-education boxes” (12).

Doctor and author Theodore Dalrymple has argued that slavishly following the principle of diversity is becoming racist: “having spent years denying that there is any objective reality to racial classifications, liberals start sifting people into racial categories with an obsessiveness that puts South African policemen under the old regime to shame” (13).

Is diversity of opinion as important as other forms of diversity? Are drives for inclusiveness and diversity like those of Penguin publishing improving inclusiveness in the industry or simply replacing one set of prejudices with another?

This thesis will look at the issue under the framework of all six categories in the Equality and Human Rights Act (EHRA) of 1998. It is illegal in the UK to discriminate by ethnicity, sex, disability, age, religion, or sexual orientation. It will also add another category to the list: class, since low-income people are one of the most strikingly under-represented groups in the industry.

This will include findings such as that the industry is mostly staffed by women, but that men are over-represented at executive level. Moreover, in recent years, many women have left high-level jobs in the industry to be replaced by men.

In spite of all the impassioned debate and vast amounts of qualitative data around the subject, no comprehensive study has ever been made to address the question as to what impact diversity measures are having on UK publishing. Diversity is now a major subject within management studies, and publishing is said to have accounted for 192,000 jobs in the UK creative industries in 2017, so this study seems both timely and relevant.

 The following pages will explore this issue using a literature review, quantitative and qualitative research, followed by conclusions and recommendations.

Limitations

There is only so much that can be achieved in a study of this scale. Interviewees do not necessarily want to discuss such sensitive topics as racism and homophobia with a stranger. During this research, questionnaires were sent to dozens of influential organizations and individuals, but the responses were less plentiful than hoped. It would have been of questionable professionalism or ethics to push the issue any further or to put interviewees on the spot, forcing them to give opinions if they did not want to.

In 2019, broadcaster Danny Baker was sacked by the BBC for retweeting something that was deemed racist (15). In 2014, scientist Dr Matt Taylor was forced to apologise over a T-shirt that was considered sexist after he was seen wearing it in public (16). The research had to respect the fact that some people want to steer clear of these issues altogether.

Another limitation is that, though publishing is a business and the primary purpose of companies like Amazon, Penguin-Random House UK, and Waterstones is to turn a profit, it is also much more than just a business. For many people, writing and publishing projects are labours of love whose value do not necessarily show up on balance sheets or any other measurable form.

The chances of any individual making a splash financially in the publishing industry are very low, but many try their hand at writing books for reasons of self-improvement or recreation. In an interview, 2017 Booker Prize winner George Saunders had this to stay:

“The chances of a person breaking through their own habits and sloth and limited mind to actually write something that gets out there and matters to people are slim.” But it’s a mistake, he added, to think of writing programs in terms that are “too narrowly careerist. . . . Even for those thousands of young people who don’t get something out there, the process is still a noble one — the process of trying to say something, of working through craft issues and the worldview issues and the ego issues — all of this is character-building, and, God forbid, everything we do should have concrete career results. I’ve seen time and time again the way that the process of trying to say something dignifies and improves a person” (17).

This research will consider the root issue – is the UK publishing industry sufficiently representative of the society it seeks to understand, portray and entertain, based on the quantitative and qualitative data that could be acquired? Also, is this outcome both attainable and desirable?

References

1.     Pinker, Steven “The Better Angels of Our Nature” Viking Books (2011) pxxxi

2.     Ibid p155

3.      Woolf, Virginia (1935) [1929]. A Room of One's Own. London: Hogarth Press. p. 4.

4.     https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/george-eliots-ugly-beauty

5.     Gustavson, Kristy Lynn “The Ultimate Silver Lining: The Normalization of White Male Privilege through the Guise of an Objective Body” University of Colorado, Boulder 2013 https://scholar.colorado.edu/honr_theses/371/ [Accessed June 27, 2019]

6.     Ming Liu, William “White Male Power and Privilege: The Relationship between White Supremacy and Social Class” Journal of Counselling Psychology July 2017 Vol 64 Issue 4, p349.

7.     Katherine Craig (2017) “My fellow white people: if you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem” The Guardian September 6, 2017 https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/sep/06/white-people-solution-problem-munroe-bergdorf-racist

8.     Michael Barber (2017) “Universities must be places of intellectual discomfort” Times Higher Education November 23, 2017 https://www.timeshighereducation.com/opinion/universities-must-be-places-intellectual-discomfort#survey-answer

9.     Penguin (2018) Creative Responsibility: Inclusion Penguin.co.uk [Available at https://www.penguin.co.uk/company/creative-responsibility/Inclusion.html]  Accessed on [November 16, 2018]

10.  Arifa Akbar (2018) “Diversity in publishing – still hideously middle-class and white?” The Guardian December 9, 2017 https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/dec/09/diversity-publishing-new-faces

11.  Naomi Klein (2018) “When diversity means uniformity” The Spectator June 9, 2018 https://www.spectator.co.uk/2018/06/when-diversity-means-uniformity/

12.  Katherine Cowdrey “PRH hunts for writers from under-represented communities” The Bookseller July 27, 2016 https://www.thebookseller.com/news/prh-launches-writenow-publish-new-writers-underrepresented-bookshelves-369101 [Accessed June 27, 2019]

13.  Klein (2018)

14.  Dalrymple, T (2018) More victimised than thou [Blog] Fans of Theodore Dalrymple [Available at https://theodoredalrymple.wordpress.com/2018/10/23/more-victimised-than-thou/] Accessed November 16, 2018

15.  Daniel Mackrell (2019) ‘Danny Baker fired: Why was the Radio 5 Live host sacked over his royal baby tweet?’ The Metro May 9, 2019 https://metro.co.uk/2019/05/09/danny-baker-fired-why-was-the-radio-5-live-host-sacked-over-his-royal-baby-tweet-9465065/

16.  James Meikle (2014) ‘Rosetta scientist Dr Matt Taylor apologises for “offensive” T-shirt’ The Guardian November 14, 2014 https://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/nov/14/rosetta-comet-dr-matt-taylor-apology-sexist-shirt

17.  Joel Lovell (2013) ‘George Saunders Has Written the Best Book You’ll Read This Year’ The New York Times January 3, 2013 https://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/06/magazine/george-saunders-just-wrote-the-best-book-youll-read-this-year.html

Literature Review

1.     Theoretical Framework

Diversity is now a globally recognised concept in management studies. While the concept of diversity is well recognised, its meaning, purpose, applications at work and interpretation in practice in different local settings remains highly divergent (1). In China, for example, it has been recognised that ethnic diversity alone may reduce economic performance, but under specific conditions (eg less disparity of education), it can have a positive impact (2).

In the United Kingdom, diversity management has its roots in affirmative action in the United States. In “How Affirmative Action Became Diversity Management”, F Dobbin and E Kelly explore how during the 1970s, active federal enforcement of equal employment opportunity and affirmative action law, coupled with ambiguity about the terms of compliance, stimulated employers to hire anti-discrimination specialists (3).

There is also a strong business case to be made that diversity is a recognizable source of creativity and innovation that can provide a basis for competitive advantage (4). This theoretical framework and the empirical studies that follow will explore what is already known about this issue via a comprehensive literature review.

Why Representation Matters

The UK population is 86% white, followed by Indians (2.5%), Pakistani (2%), black African (1.8%), black Caribbean (1.1%) and Bangladeshi (0.8%). People of two or more races make up 2.2%. Department of Work and Pensions employment data from 2014 shows that in 2013, the overall unemployment rate was 8% with a striking variation between different ethnic groups. The white ethnic group had the lowest unemployment rate at 7%, and the highest unemployment rate of 17% was found in the Pakistani/Bangladeshi group (5).

Ethnic minority groups are more likely to be employed in sectors relating to accommodation, food services, retail and transportation. They are less likely to be employed in other sectors including publishing (6).

In the United Kingdom, people from BME groups are much more likely to be in poverty than white British people and are also more likely to experience homelessness (7). Racism and racial inequality in the United Kingdom date back to pre-medieval times. Black people have lived in the United Kingdom for centuries, during which period they have been subjected to slavery and exploitation (8).

A key policy response to social inequality and disadvantage is embodied in the Equality and Human Rights Act (EHRA) of 1998 which brings together six equality strands: sex, race, disability, age, religion, sexual orientation.

Related to diversity is inclusion. Diversity refers to differences of all kinds, including those mentioned above. Inclusion refers to creating a climate where differences and similarities are respected and people are welcomed into the workplace, have their voices heard, and contributions recognized.

Organizations can be diverse, but not inclusive, which often results in lower engagement of underrepresented groups, higher turnover, and increased opportunity costs from failing to leverage all employees’ contributions. Conversely, organizations can be inclusive, but not diverse (9).

Diversity and inclusion are particularly important in publishing because it is a form of mass media. This leads to another key principal – representation. How certain groups of people are depicted in media can impact their treatment by society.

For example, most women’s magazines worldwide consistently portray women into narrow channels and define their concerns, pre-occupations, and aspirations within matters concerning the home and family (10). Understanding the importance of its role in representation, the UK publishing industry has often been proactive in promoting marginalized groups. Virago, a women’s publisher, was founded in London in 1973 and continues to celebrate and promote female authors (11).

Professor Jordan Peterson has argued against some of the identity politics that this represents, claiming that having a diversity of ideas will come from having a diversity of classes of people (eg race, gender, identity) assumes that ideas and identity are the same thing (12). He has said in an interview that “the difference between the individuals is far greater than the differences between the groups” (13).

Aside from women and BAME people, other groups may be marginalized in publishing. If low-income people are underrepresented, the industry may fail to do its job of helping the society understand itself. In a TED talk titled ‘Diversity of Thought’, entrepreneur Vidya Spandana has argued: “Diversity must be considered at the level of thought and perspective, not just in terms of gender and race” (14).

Kit de Waal is a female BME author from the UK from a low-income background who started getting published when she was in her forties. That arguably puts her into three under-represented groups. She has expressed concern that publishing threatens to become closed to low-income people. ‘One result of that is that whole swathes of experience – the world of minimum-wage work, for example – are absent’ (15). The closed nature of the industry may betray the principals espoused by Steven Pinker that enabled publishing to bring about real social change.

There is also an argument to say that different ethnic groups bring a wealth of different experiences to an organization, including a publisher. Speaking of representation in US government, activist Jesse Beason said in a 2017 TED Talk: ‘It’s not about race, it’s about the experience of race. Government’s need to be led not just by people who understand police forces, but by people who know what it’s like to be scared of police’ (16). The same can surely be said for promoting marginalized voices in publishing.

Inconsistencies: The Pitfalls of Positive Discrimination

If discrimination is the problem that keeps marginalized groups out of publishing, then some observers seem to be arguing that discrimination is also the solution. Affirmative action in the United States has shown that diversity quotas, taken to their logical conclusion, can be bad for fairness, and even end up discriminating against people because of their ethnicity.

If Ivy League universities in The United States admit students solely on academic merit, then Asian-Americans will be over-represented as a percentage of the population, while both white and black Americans will be under-represented (17). Lionel Shriver has argued that with its strict adherence to diversity quotas, Penguin Random House is neglecting its core duty of uncompromisingly pursuing excellence, writing:

If an agent submits a manuscript written by a gay transgender Caribbean who dropped out of school at seven and powers around town on a mobility scooter, it will be published, whether or not said manuscript is an incoherent, tedious, meandering and insensible pile of mixed-paper recycling. Good luck with that business model. Publishers may eschew standards, but readers will still have some (18).

In spite of Shriver’s reservations, there is much academic literature that highlights the problematic nature of ‘meritocracy’. Invented by novelist Michael Young in 1958, the term is defined as ‘a society governed by people selected according to merit’ (19).

Advocates of meritocracy stress that in true meritocratic systems everyone has an equal chance to advance and obtain rewards based on their individual merits and efforts, regardless of their gender, race, class, or other non-merit factors. In ‘The Paradox of Meritocracy in Organizations’, Emilio Castila and Stephen Bernard conducted four experiments on the subject and discovered that meritocratic systems only exacerbated the problem of white men being more likely to achieve pay rises (20).

Sallie Crawcheck, founder of Ellevest, a financial advisor for women, has argued in her book “Own It: The Power of Women at Work”, that diversity is more important than meritocracy (21). She illustrates that one of the world’s most meritocratic systems is Wall Street. It is also strikingly homogenous, and its meritocracy did not prevent the Global Financial Crisis of 2008 from happening. 

In the UK at the time, Minister of State at the Government Equalities Office Harriet Harman quipped that, due to a male tendency to take risks, the crisis may have been averted if Lehman Brothers had been Lehman Sisters (22). Other women countered this by claiming that it only reinforced dangerous gender stereotypes (23). 

2.     Empirical Studies

Representation as a Business Strategy

Aside from issues of social responsibility and fairness, increasing the representation of marginalized groups may be a good thing in its own right. A reputation for diversity and inclusion can increase the employee brand. Diversity and inclusion is based on understanding and respecting differences and similarities between people and cultures to create a positive climate in which all employees bring their best efforts to the workplace, enhancing the development of relevant products and services in a changing marketplace. This is all good for a company’s image (24).  

Moreover, studies have found that diverse companies are more innovative.

In Germany, this is known to be the case, but the biggest companies are not taking advantage. Only 30 of the top 100 companies have one or more women on the board. For gender diversity to really make a difference, at least one fifth of leaders need to be women (25).

 In “The Impact of a Diverse Workforce on an Organization: Challenges and Opportunities”, Abraham Brima Bah considers how workplaces react to the “global village.” In it, he describes the impact of a diverse workforce on an organization in terms of problems and benefits to an organization. This action project aims to examine the perceptions of ordinary employees and senior management to shed light on challenges faced by the diverse employees and highlight opportunities open to management for building an inclusive organizational environment that will capitalize on the unique contributions of diverse employees (26).

Controversies: How Effective Is It?

Since the 1990s, diversity rhetoric has moved beyond a traditional focus on equal opportunities and discrimination and shifted to emphasize the “business case” for diversity (27). A 2016 Human Resources Management (HRM) study by Hyuntak Roh and Eugene Kim found that under high levels of HRM investments and organizational identification, organizations still experience initial negative consequences of diversity such as conflict and thus a decline in productivity; however, this negative pattern turns positive after gender diversity reaches a threshold.

This finding is consistent with predictions from the social identity theory, which suggest that stereotypes and biases toward the out‐group members are innate and difficult to change (28).

Rightly or wrongly, representation of people of colour remains an issue for the UK publishing industry. A January 2019 survey of the UK’s publishing workforce found that 11.6% of respondents identified as BAME – lower than the UK population (14%), and significantly lower than London (40.2%). It was a survey of 6,432 individuals working for 42 organisations, which the Publishers Association described as the most comprehensive ever conducted of the UK industry (29).

In May 2019, author Pat Barker argued that drives to boost diversity can turn out to merely be fashionable without having any lasting impact (30).

Diversity by EHRA Categories

Sex

Women in Publishing is a London-based group established in 1979 aimed at promoting the status of women in the publishing industry. In early 2018, the organization set up a website to celebrate its own history and achievements. Women in publishing’s recent activities include a meeting in Autumn 2018 to address the gender pay gap as was said to be revealed by data released that year (31).

However, this ‘data’ merely took the form of an opinion poll of people in the industry and what they thought of the pay gap. It was not supported by substantial quantitative evidence to support the belief that women were paid less for doing the same job as men (32). 

No nationwide survey has been done in the UK to show how represented women are in publishing, but by all accounts, the industry is overwhelmingly staffed by females. In the United States the industry is 78 percent female (33). In spite of the industry being made up of mostly women, men are represented disproportionately highly at executive or board level, with 40 percent of the jobs (34).

Women such as Random House’s Gail Rebuck, Penguin’s Helen Fraser, Macmillan’s Annette Thomas and Little, Brown’s Ursula Mackenzie, who had all embodied the ideal that women publishers faced no glass ceiling, have in the last seven years all been replaced by men. This opens up accusations of tokenism at the highest level (35).

Race

Where sex is a biological fact, race is a socio-political construct. In biomedical science, academic debate rages as to whether to use race and ethnicity as scientific classifications (36).

In ‘The Ascent of Man’, historian and mathematician Jacob Bronowski explained the biological roots of different skin colour: ‘Why are the Lapps white? Man began with a dark skin; the sunlight makes vitamin D in the skin, and if he had been white in Africa, it would make too much. But in the north, man needs to let in all the sunlight there is to make enough vitamin D, and the natural selection therefore favoured those with whiter skin’ (37).

In “The History of White People”, author Nell Irvin Painter reminds that the concept of race is about as old as The United States itself (38). Race may be discredited as a scientific theory, but as a social construct it is alive and well. In “Living Color: The Social and Biological Meaning of Skin Color”, academic Nina Jablonski concluded that “racism is probably humanity’s single biggest impediment to human achievement” (39).

In 2016, a network was launched titled BAME in Publishing. They hold monthly meetings in London at which BAME people who work in UK publishing can meet and discuss their issues (40).

On its website, BAME in Publishing explains:

In an ideal world, we wouldn’t need this group, but we all know there’s a lack of ethnic diversity in the UK publishing industry. When people from BAME backgrounds do make it into the industry, they can often feel isolated because they’re one of the few BAME people around. So we want a group where BAME publishing folk can meet each other.

The claim that BAME people are under-represented in UK publishing is supported by research. The UK Publishers’ 2018 Diversity Report concluded that more needs to be done to tackle inclusivity within the industry’s workforce to ensure publishers better reflect the UK population. The report found that BAME presence within the industry had fallen by 1.4 percentage points on the previous year (41).

Promoting racial equality is not just socially responsible, there is evidence that points to it being good for business. A 2005 study by Elaine Hutchings and Huw Thomas found that promoting racial equality within the planning industry helped make a business more progressive and therefore more relevant (42).

Disability

Some of the greatest works of literature ever published were written by people with disabilities. John Milton dictated Paradise Lost and James Joyce completed Finnegan’s Wake while blind.

However, as a percentage of the UK population, disabled people are also underrepresented in publishing. Only 5.4 percent of respondents to the 2018 diversity report claimed to be disabled (43). Just over 18 percent of the British population have a limiting long-term illness, impairment or disability (44). Eight in ten disabled people say they do not feel well represented in the UK media (45).

Disabled people are among those listed by Penguin as being among the groups they wish to represent. In the industry, there is already Disabled Magazine, Able Magazine and communities like Disability Writes to help boost the inclusion of this particular group.

Age

The Royal Society for Public Health did a study in 2018 which concluded that ageism is rife in The United Kingdom, particularly but not exclusively among millennials (those aged 18-34). The society’s chief executive Shirley Cramer said, “Too often ageist behaviour and language is trivialised, overlooked or even served up as the punchline to a joke – something we would rightly not tolerate with other forms of prejudice” (46).

Suzanne Collier, an award-winning careers adviser specializing in the publishing industry has derided the amount of ageism in the UK publishing industry, claiming that age diversity is as important to the industry as social and ethnic diversity. The UK Government is pushing the retirement age back to 70 and beyond. For that reason, there should be more roles for older people at all levels. She considers the danger that book publishing be seen as a short term career that will sustain people only into their mid-30s (47).

Many great authors do not start getting published until relatively late in life. Raymond Chandler was 44 when his first novel The Big Sleep was published. Anna Sewell was 51 when her only novel Black Beauty first sold. Book careers do not have a recognisable trajectory the way other careers do.

Author Joanna Walsh has expressed concern that, while footballers might express concern about breaking into the team by a certain age and lawyers may aim to become a partner, people in the publishing industry progress at radically different rates. Despite this, The New Yorker, Granta and Buzzfeed all publish lists celebrating authors under 40, yet have no such equivalent for older authors (48). The industry could miss out on valuable insight as a result.

Religion

According to statistics released by the Home Office, religious hate crimes increased by 40 percent in England and Wales in the year leading up to October 2018. More than half of religiously-motivated attacks in 2017-18 were against Muslims, while the next most targeted group were Jewish people (49).

There are reasons why these statistics may be unreliable. The number of recorded incidents may be caused by improvements in police records or increasing racial sensitivity in society. Still, marginalized groups can offer a lot to the cultural conversation, just as jazz and blues came out of the downtrodden African-American community.

In 2006, an opinion piece in The New Statesman observed that British literature was dominated by three figures, Martin Amis, Salman Rushdie, and Ian McEwan, and all saw the war on Islamic terrorism as a pet issue (50).

To combat the threat of marginalization, young British Muslims have set up their own publications in the hope of improving the representation of their community (51). Muslim representation in UK publishing had a boost in 2019 when Jokha Alharthi, the first female Omani author to have her work translated into English, won the Man Booker International Prize. It was the first book translated from Arabic to have done so (52).

Sexual Orientation

According to the 2018 diversity report, sexual minorities are over-represented in UK publishing as a percentage of the population. A total of 8.2 percent of respondents identified as LGB, more than four times that of the UK population. Meanwhile 0.6 percent of respondents identified as transgender, with a further 0.8 percent preferring not to specify. Combined, this is higher than the UK population forecast for individuals that are gender-nonconforming (53).

There is further good news for LGB representation in the United Kingdom. The nation ranked number one in lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersex rights, according to The Equal Opportunities Review (54).

However, the BBC reported that hate crimes against transsexuals recorded by 36 police forces increased 81 percent year-on-year during the financial year of 2017/2018 (55). Moreover, hate crimes and bullying are not the only problems that sexual minorities face in the United Kingdom.

In a 2018 thesis, academic Eleanor Formby highlighted the complexity of language use related to homophobia and bullying and demonstrated that some school responses can (appear to) ‘abnormalize’ LGBT identities, for instance in referrals to counselling that young people can interpret as apportioning ‘blame’. She also points to tensions between governmental efforts to address bullying and, until recently, their lack of support for school-based sex education (56).

This is where an industry like publishing can come into its own.

An Extra Category: Class

While the disabled and sexual minorities are well-represented in publishing as a proportion of the population, there is still considerable difficulty in accessing the industry for those from a low-income background.           

England has a rich history of working-class writing that is traceable to the origins of the Industrial Revolution and the development of the class system itself (57). The publishing industry is now acknowledging that working-class writers and stories are missing and some in the industry want to remove the barriers to writers from low-income backgrounds (58).

In 2019, The Performers’ Alliance all-party parliamentary group held its first evidence hearing for an inquiry on social mobility in performing arts jobs. Along with policy voices and practitioners, the session heard evidence from Drs Louise Ashley (RHUL) and Sam Friedman (LSE). They spoke about their research into barriers to social mobility across a range of jobs, including acting and working in television. What became clear was there are complex and often ‘hidden’ barriers to entry into these professions that are not just about talent or qualifications (59).

Trump and Brexit were both widely considered to be revolts by members of the working class who were tired of being underrepresented by the mainstream (60).  Increasing the representation of low-income people may be good for business as well as society.

In 2017 Penguin Random House chief executive Tom Weldon has urged the industry to respond to the “really urgent commercial imperative” of reflecting working-class experiences in books. Citing both “moral” and “cultural” reasons for this imperative, Weldon told an interviewer: “I feel sick in my stomach when I realise books and publishing don’t reflect the world we live in. I fundamentally believe in books and in the power of books to shape culture and it’s depressing and wrong that culture is driven by a narrow sector of society” (61).

Education is prohibitively expensive in the UK and libraries are closing down in increasing numbers. For this reason, the working class may be more excluded from the industry than any other group.

Summary: Key Concepts and Theories

Diversity – In current management theory, diversity has its roots in affirmative action in the United States. Most multinational companies now have a diversity manager or something similar, and DiversityInc keeps a league table for the best companies at meeting its criteria for this issue.

Inclusiveness –  A company can be diverse without being inclusive. As a percentage of the UK population, women are massively over-represented in publishing, but as a percentage of the industry, men are still over-represented at executive level.

Representation – As a medium of mass communication, publishing arguably has an obligation to make sure all points-of-view are heard. Figures like Kit Dewaal are using their influence to increase the representation of the lower-income classes in publishing, something that statistics show to be lagging behind.

Identity Politics – At their best, identity politics can combat unspoken prejudices, which hand unfair advantages to certain groups. Critics of identity politics have claimed that defining people by what they are instead of who they are is, by definition, bigoted and dangerous.

A famous example of identity politics in action is that of Justin Trudeau’s liberal government in Canada. Upon winning the general election in 2015, Trudeau appointed a cabinet that, for the first time in Canadian history, had equal numbers of men and women as well as unprecedented numbers of BAME women (61).

White Male Privilege – Until around a century ago, the only people able to vote in the Anglophone world were white men. Since then, the situation has improved radically for women and people of colour, but white people and men are disproportionately likely to be in positions of privilege.

As of the most recent general election in the UK, 68 percent of members of parliament were men and 92 percent were white (62). Today’s white men are not responsible for how their ancestors and historical counterparts exercised power, but they are beneficiaries.

As discussed earlier, white people in the UK are disproportionately likely to be employed and disproportionately likely to be wealthy. As a percentage of the population, black people are massively over-represented in Britain’s jails, while white people are under-represented (63).

In a TED Talk, transgender activist Dane Woodland has pointed out that women are disproportionately likely to be victims of crimes ranging from harassment to armed assault to all forms of sex crime (64).

Political Correctness – Political correctness refers to language intended to give the least amount of offense, especially when describing groups identified by external markers such as race, gender, culture, or sexual orientation (65).

At its best political correctness enables society to use a more inclusive language, as The Columbia Political Review argued: “What you say and refuse to say is indicative of what you think about the world, and it also informs the reality of other individuals around you. Political correctness, therefore, is establishing a preference for certain types of testimony in any context to advocate for a set of beliefs about the way the world ought to be” (66).

It has also been accused of being dangerously censorious. Author Paul Johnson has described political correctness as ‘the most comprehensive system of censorship since the days of Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Russia.

It is primarily a system of verbal and written censorship, banning all words and expressions likely to “cause offense” – racist terms, expressions reflecting “ageism”…In an attempt to put down “racism”, the concept of “hate terms was introduced into English law for the first time. This makes many words and expressions unlawful, and punishable by fines and imprisonment…and means that there is more restriction on freedom of expression in England than at any time since Hogarth’s day (67). 

Tokenism – Tokenism is the practice of making only a perfunctory or symbolic effort to do a particular thing, especially by recruiting a small number of people from under-represented groups in order to give the appearance of sexual or racial equality within a workforce.

Intent is important in deciding whether an organization is behaving this way. If there is only one candidate from an underrepresented minority, then that suggests that tokenism is going on. Or perhaps the company genuinely wants to improve diversity among staff, but past initiatives have been lacking (68).

Racism – The most comprehensive definition of racism is provided by the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination: ‘Racial discrimination shall mean any distinction, exclusion, restriction, or preference, based on race, skin colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin which has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal footing, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural or any other field of public life’ (69).

Cultural Appropriation – Cultural appropriation is a controversial issue in the early twenty-first century. An example of cultural appropriation from history is the Nazis borrowing the swastika from Asian religions and subsequently giving it a bad name.

One of the arguments against it is that it allows privileged people to profit from the labour of oppressed minorities (70). An example of this could be white people adopting the African-American genre of rock and roll in the 1950s.

References

1.     Özbilgin, Mustafa, and Jean-François Chanlat. “Management and Diversity : Perspectives From Different National Contexts”. Vol. First edition, Emerald Publishing Limited, 2017.

2.     Shi Young Lee, Eun Jung Lim, & Qinglei Meng “Ethnic Diversity and Economic Performance in China: The Role of Education, FDI and Trade”  Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2019 http://web.b.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=1&sid=d772c367-f662-4e52-9a5b-834264991892%40sessionmgr120

3.     Kelly, E, Dobbin, F (1998) “How Affirmative Action Became Diversity Management: Employer Response to Antidiscrimination Law, 1961 to 1996” American Behavioural Scientist http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0002764298041007008

4.     Bassett-Jones, N (2005) ‘The Paradox of Diversity Management, Creativity and Innovation’ Wiley Online Library May 11, 2005 http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-8691.00337.x/full

5.     Özbilgin, Mustafa, and Jean-François Chanlat. “Management and Diversity: Perspectives From Different National Contexts”. Vol. First edition, Emerald Publishing Limited, 2017

6.     Charlotte Eyre (2018) ‘Publishers should “hire more BAME staff” to improve representation in children’s books’ The Bookseller July 18, 2018 [Accessed April 25, 2019]

7.     Institute of Race Relations (2019) ‘Inequality, Housing and Employment Statistics’ [Viewed April 25, 2019] http://www.irr.org.uk/research/statistics/poverty/#_edn1%20MLA%20

8.     Sandhu,S. (2003). “London calling: How black and Asian writers imagined a city.” London: Harper Collins.

9.     Derven, Marjorie, Leri, Pamela & Dundling, Ernie. “Leveraging Diversity & Inclusion for a Global Economy”. American Society for Training & Development, 2014.

10.  Negm, Eiman Medhat “Investigating Consumers’ Perceived Social Representations of Arab Women in Media” International Journal of Business & Innovation, 2017

11.  Sarah Dawood (2018) ‘Illustrated Virago modern classics collection celebrates female authors’ Design Week May 3, 2018 [Accessed April 26, 2019] https://www.designweek.co.uk/illustrated-virago-modern-classics-collection-celebrates-female-authors/

12.  Wall Street Journal (2019) “Notable and Quotable: Jordan Peterson and the Inclusivity Paradox’ The Wall Street Journal March 21, 2019 https://www.wsj.com/articles/notable-quotable-jordan-peterson-and-the-inclusivity-paradox-11553209202 [Accessed April 26, 2019]

13.  YouTube: “Jordan Peterson: Why affirmative action and diversity quotas are inherently sexist and racist” Chuckling Rhinos December 2, 2016

[Accessed April 26, 2019]

14.  YouTube “Diversity Of Thought | Vidya Spandana | TEDxPortland” TEDx Talks July 20, 2015

 [Accessed April 26, 2019]

15.  Tim Adams (2019) ‘Writing’s very solitary – you do it because you want to find readers’ The Guardian April 14, 2019 https://www.theguardian.com/food/2019/apr/14/lunch-with-kit-de-waal-novelist-new-anthology-working-class-writers-and-rights [Accessed April 26, 2019]

16.  YouTube “Why representation matters | Jesse Beason | TEDxMtHoodSalon” TEDx Talks June 2, 2017 [Accessed April 26, 2019]

17.  Ian Moreau (2019) ‘The Discrimination Debate: Asian Americans and Ivy League Admissions’ The Politic February 4, 2019 https://thepolitic.org/the-discrimination-debate-asian-americans-and-ivy-league-admissions/ [Accessed April 27, 2019]

18.  Lionel Shriver (2018) ‘Great writers are found with an open mind’ The Spectator June 9, 2018 https://www.spectator.co.uk/2018/06/when-diversity-means-uniformity/ [Accessed April 27, 2019]

19.  Young, M (1958) ‘The Rise of the Meritocracy’ Thames and Hudson

20.  Castila, Emilio & Benard, Stephen ‘The Paradox of Meritocracy in Organizations’ Johnson Graduate School, Cornell University (2010)

21.  Crawcheck, C (2017) ‘Own It: The Power of Women at Work’ Crown Business, 2017

22.  Jim Pickard (2009) ‘Would Lehman Sisters have survived?’ Financial Times August 3, 2009 https://www.ft.com/content/c555026c-d1b6-31a1-ad3e-5f85df82a1b0 [Accessed April 28, 2019]

23.  Ally Fogg (2013) ‘Don’t give me this “If Lehman Sisters had been in charge…” nonsense’ The Guardian September 17, 2013 https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/17/dont-give-me-lehman-brothers-sisters-nonsense [Accessed April 28, 2019]

24.  Derven, Leri & Dundling (2014)

25.  YouTube “How diversity makes teams more innovative | Rocío Lorenzo” TED November 15, 2017

[April 28, 2019]

26.  Brima Bah, Abraham (2015) “The Impact of a Diverse Workforce on an Organization: Challenges and Opportunities”   St. Catherine’s University https://sophia.stkate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.co.uk/&httpsredir=1&article=1020&context=maolhonors

27.  Certo, S. T., Lester, R. H., Dalton, C. M., & Dalton, D. R. ( 2006 ). Top management teams, strategy and financial performance: A meta‐analytic examination. Journal of Management Studies, 43, 813 – 839.

28.  Roh, Hyuntak & Kim, Eugene (2016) ‘The Business Case for gender diversity: Examining the role of Human Resources Management investment’ Human Resource Management. May/Jun2016, Vol. 55 Issue 3 p533

29.  https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/jan/16/publishers-failing-to-improve-racial-and-regional-diversity-survey-finds?CMP=aff_1432&utm_content=The+Independent&awc=5795_1559036492_6141c6c02b909d65e5b56e3ad7cdd323

30.  https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/may/26/novelist-pat-barker-hits-out-at-fashionable-diversity-schemes

31.  Benedicte Page (2018) ‘Women in Publishing reactivates, schedules pay gap meeting’ The Bookseller August 2, 2018 https://www.thebookseller.com/news/women-publishing-reactivates-schedules-pay-gap-meeting-843376 [Viewed June 28, 2019]

32.  Bookseller News Team (2018) ‘Over 80% concerned about book trade’s gender pay gap’ The Bookseller April 6, 2018 https://www.thebookseller.com/news/staff-respond-gender-gap-data-764281 [Viewed June 28, 2019]

33.  Alison Flood (2016) ‘Publishing industry is overwhelmingly white and female, US study finds’ The Guardian January 27, 2016 https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jan/27/us-study-finds-publishing-is-overwhelmingly-white-and-female [Viewed June 28, 2019]

34.  Danuta Kean (2017) ‘Are things getting worse for women in publishing?’ The Guardian May 11, 2017 https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/may/11/are-things-getting-worse-for-women-in-publishing [June 28, 2019]

35.  Ibid

36.  Smart, Andrew, Tutton, Richard, Martin, Paul, Ellison, George, Ashcroft, Richard (2008) The Standardization of Race and Ethnicity in Biomedical Science Editorials and UK Biobanks Social Studies of Science (Sage Publications, Ltd.). Jun2008, Vol. 38 Issue 3, p407

37.  Bronowski, Jacob “The Ascent of Man” BBC Books (1973) p42

38.  Painter, Nell Irvin “The History of White People” WW Norton & Company (2010)

39.  Jablonski, Nina (2012) “Living Color: The Biological and Social Meaning of Skin Color” University of California Press

40.  Natasha Onwuemezi (2016) ‘Launch of BAME in Publishing network’ The Bookseller May 6, 2016 https://www.thebookseller.com/news/bame-publishing-launches-328482 [Viewed June 28, 2019]

41.  Porter Anderson ‘UK Publishers’ 2018 Diversity Report: More Needs to be Done’ Publishing Perspectives January 14, 2019 https://publishingperspectives.com/2019/01/uk-publishers-association-diversity-report-2018-bame-inclusivity/ [Viewed June 28, 2019]

42.  Hutchings, Elaine & Thomas Huw ‘The business case for equality and diversity: A UK case study of private consultancy and race equality’ Planning Practice & Research. Aug2005, Vol. 20 Issue 3, p263

43.  Anderson (2019)

44.  University of St. Andrews (2019) ‘Facts on Disability’ University of St Andrews https://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/hr/edi/disability/facts/ [Accessed June 28, 2019]

45.  Mark Atkinson (2018) ‘There Are Now Nearly 14 Million Disabled People In The UK – So Why Doesn’t Society Reflect This?’ The Huffington Post April 6, 2018 https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/there-are-now-nearly-14-million-disabled-people-in_uk_5ac61b74e4b01f556d5658d4 [Accessed June 28, 2019]

46.  Older people (2018) ‘A quarter of millennials believe that depression is “normal” in older age’ Royal Society for Public Health June 8, 2018 https://www.rsph.org.uk/about-us/news/a-quarter-of-millennials-believe-depression-normal-in-older-age.html [Accessed June 28, 2019]

47.  Suzanne Collier (2016) ‘Publishing: where are the roles for seniors?’ BookBrunch June 2, 2016 http://www.bookbrunch.co.uk/page/free-article/publishing-where-are-the-roles-for-the-seniors/ [Accessed June 28, 2019]

48.  Joanna Walsh (2014) ‘Why must the ‘best new writers’ always be under 40?’ The Guardian November 14, 2014 https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/nov/14/best-new-writers-always-under-40-lists-young-joanna-walsh [Accessed June 28, 2019]

49.  Lizzie Dearden (2018) ‘Religious hate crime rises 40% in England and Wales – with more than half directed at Muslims’ The Independent October 16, 2018 https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/uk-hate-crime-religious-muslims-islamophobia-police-racism-a8585846.html

50.  Ziauddin Sardar (2006) ‘Welcome to Planet Blitcon’ The New Statesman December 11, 2006 https://www.newstatesman.com/node/165981 [Accessed June 28, 2019]

51.  Zainab Mahmood ‘Young British Muslims are launching their own publications to provide a different media narrative’ Press Gazette July 14, 2017 https://www.pressgazette.co.uk/young-british-muslims-are-launching-their-own-publications-to-provide-a-different-media-narrative/ [Accessed June 28, 2019]

52.  Alison Flood ‘Man Booker International prize: Jokha Alharthi wins for Celestial Bodies’ The Guardian May 21, 2019 https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/may/21/man-booker-international-prize-jokha-alharthi-wins-celestial-bodies-oman [Accessed June 28, 2019]

53.  Anderson (2019)

54.  “UK tops European LGBT rights review” Equal Opportunities Review (June 2012) Issue 225 p 5

55.  “Transgender hate crimes recorded by police go up 81%” BBC June 27, 2019 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-48756370 [Accessed June 29, 2019]

56.  Formby, Eleanor ‘A sociological exploration of lived experiences of LGBT people in the UK’ Electronic Thesis Sheffield Hallam University 2018 p1

57.  Simon Lee (2018) ‘Of Place and Identity: Working-Class Writing in 21st-Century Britain’ Los Angeles Review of Books September 4, 2018 https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/of-place-and-identity-working-class-writing-in-21st-century-britain/#!

58.  Bel Greenwood (2017) ‘Where are all the Working-Class Writers?’ National Centre for Writing December 12, 2017

59.  Dave O’Brien (2019) ‘Why class is a far bigger problem in publishing than you think’ The Bookseller March 27, 2019 https://www.thebookseller.com/blogs/why-class-far-bigger-problem-publishing-you-think-979436#

60.  Simone Lee (2018)

61.  Jessica Murphy (2015) ‘Trudeau gives Canada first cabinet with equal number of men and women’ The Guardian November 4, 2015 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/04/canada-cabinet-gender-diversity-justin-trudeau [Accessed August 4, 2019]

62.  Lukas Audickas, Richard Cracknell “Social Background of MPS, 1979-2017” House of Commons Library Briefing Paper November 12, 2018

63.  Georgina Sturge “UK Prison Population Statistics” House of Commons Library Briefing Paper (July 23, 2019) p11 [Accessed August 4, 2019]

64.  YouTube “How male privilege made me a feminist | Dane Woodland | TEDxYouth@StJohns” TedXTalks December 8, 2017

[Accessed August 4, 2019]

65.  Cynthia Roper ‘Political Correctness’ Encyclopaedia Britannica https://www.britannica.com/topic/political-correctness [Accessed August 5, 2019]

66.  ‘In defence of political correctness’ Columbia Political Review April 10, 2019 http://www.cpreview.org/blog/2019/4/in-defense-of-political-correctness [Accessed August 5, 2019]

67.  Johnson Paul “Humorists: From Hogarth to Noël Coward” Harper Collins, New York (2010) p213

68.  Kara Sherrer (2018) ‘What is tokenism, and why does it matter in the workplace?’ Vanderbilt University February 26, 2018 https://business.vanderbilt.edu/news/2018/02/26/tokenism-in-the-workplace/

69.  Grayling, AC ‘Ideas that Matter: A Personal Guide for the 21^st Century’ Phoenix, London (2010) p426.

70.  Maisha Z Johnson (2015) ‘What’s wrong with cultural appropriation? These nine answers reveal its harm’ Everyday Feminism June 14, 2015 https://everydayfeminism.com/2015/06/cultural-appropriation-wrong/ [Accessed August 16, 2019]

Methodology

Quantitative Data

The numbers suggest that the UK publishing industry is in excellent health. According to official government data, publishing is estimated to have accounted for 192,000 jobs in the UK creative economy in 2017, almost 10 per cent of the nation’s creative industries employment (1). The Gross Value Added (GVA) for UK publishing in 2016 was estimated to be £11.6bn (US$14.4 billion), rising from £10.3bn in 2010 (2).

The most recent figures showed that the industry had a record-breaking year in 2017, with income up 5 percent (3). According to a 2017 report for The Publishers Association by Frontier Economics, the industry directly supports 29,000 UK jobs, with more than 70,000 more supported in total through direct, indirect and induced impact (4).

Publishing also contributes massively to other creative industries. For example, productions that originated as books generated 44 per cent more in UK film box office revenue (and 53 per cent more globally); 58 per cent greater viewership of ‘high-end’ TV productions; and nearly three times more ticket sales for theatre productions in 2017 (5).

Encouraging Statistics for Diversity

The industry is also more diverse than ever. The Booker Prize is a British institution and also one of the most prestigious and lucrative literary awards.

In the first ten years of the prize’s existence, only one out of the fifty authors to be shortlisted was BAME. That was the 1971 winner VS Naipaul. During this time not one of the judges was BAME. BAME representation has increased massively since then. In each of the past eight years, at least one BAME author has been on the shortlist, including the 2015 and 2016 winners.

Another one of the biggest awards is the Folio Prize. In 2014, one out of eight nominees was BAME, the following year it was two out of eight, and in the past two years, three out of eight nominees were BAME. The winners in both 2015 and and 2018 were BAME.

Only 5 out of 38 winners of The Costa Book of the Year in the novel category have been BAME, and that includes Salman Rushdie, who won it twice. Two out of the nine winners of The Sunday Times Short Story Award have been BAME.

As a proportion of the industry, men are underrepresented, but at the highest levels, both as executives and authors, they are overrepresented. In 2018, male authors wrote 8 out of the ten top-selling books as well as 61% of the entire list's authors, up from 35% in 2017 (6).

Inequality in the UK

The numbers suggest that publishing is doing a good job of increasing diversity and representation, but society appears to be lagging far behind. A 2014 study by Race for Opportunity found that there had been virtually no ethnicity change in top management positions in British business during the five years up to 2012 (7).

Other forms of discrimination also appear to be prevalent and holding back progress. A 2016 study by The Fawcett Society found that black women were among the lowest paid females in the UK, with Pakistani and Bangladeshi women earning even less (8). This could be bad for business as well as society. A 2016 report by McKinsey titled ‘The Power of Parity’ found that in a full potential scenario in which women play an identical role in labor markets to that of men, as much as $28 trillion (26 percent) could be added to the global annual GDP by 2025 (9).

Another group that struggles for equality in the UK is the disabled. Only 17 percent of disabled people in the UK were born with their disabilities, making it the minority group that a person is most likely to enter (10). As little as 46.5 percent of working-age disabled people are in employment, compared to 84 percent of working-age non-disabled (11). It has been estimated by disability equality charity Scope that a ten percent rise in the employment rate among disabled adults would contribute an extra £12 billion to the exchequer by 2030 (12). Publishing has done much for the disabled, as was illustrated in the literature review, but apparently there is much more that can still be done in society.

For all of its problems, Britain is one of the most advanced and liberal countries in the world. It has 45 LGBTQ members of parliament, the highest number globally (13). In spite of this, there is still room for improvement in society’s treatment of this group.

A British survey of gay men found that 50 percent of those who experienced depression had contemplated suicide; 24 percent had already attempted to take their own lives. Of the 600 men who responded to the survey, 70 percent cited low self-esteem as the main reason for their depression, followed by relationship problems, isolation, and not feeling attractive. Twenty-seven percent said homophobic bullying was the main reason for their depression (14). Increased representation in media such as publishing has been known to help advance certain social groups. UK publishing has a record of helping to remedy this type of situation.

One problem not covered by the EHRA is that of class. A longitudinal study by the Centre for Social Investigation found that coming from a high-income family almost doubles a British person’s chances of entering the professional classes (15). In February 2016, when the Social Mobility Commission enlisted Ipsos Mori to conduct a poll on intergenerational social mobility, the situation appeared to be getting worse (16).

Figure 1: A survey on the pay gap in the UK publishing industry (17).

Statistics on Social Injustice

There is enough statistical evidence to show that, in the United Kingdom, white privilege is more than just a politically correct fiction. Not only are BAME people more likely to be unemployed, there are more likely to be in low-status employment. Black workers with university degrees earn 23.1 per cent less on average than their white counterparts.

Moreover, Black African women have a mortality rate four times higher than White women (18). Police are far more likely to stop and search non-white Britons. Black people are six times more likely to be stopped and searched than white people. Minorities are also more frequently the victims of crime and report a greater fear of it. However, while minorities are over-represented in stop and searches, staffing in the criminal justice system fails to reflect British diversity (19).

One possible counter-argument to this theory is that BAME people are more likely to be immigrants, and immigrants are more likely to be poor. Contrarian author Brendan O’Neill tried to use government statistics to show that white male privilege does not exist (20).

However, the Office for National Statistics has found that white people who were not British had an even higher employment rate than white British people, at 81 percent, a full 26 percentage points above Pakistanis and Bangladeshis (21). 

A 2018 survey found that unconscious bias is alive and well in the UK. Minorities were more than twice as likely to encounter abuse or rudeness from a stranger. Also, 53% of people from a minority background believed they had been treated differently because of their hair, clothes or appearance, compared with 29% of white people (22).

In ‘White Privilege: The Myth of a Post-Racial Society’, author Kalwant Bhopal argues that white people claiming not to see race is a refusal to acknowledge historical discrimination and structural disadvantages against black people and other (23). There are structural biases that need to be redressed.

The Stigmas of Being a Minority

Overcoming prejudices is a long process for both an individual and a society. Experiments have shown that in job interviews, interviewers sit further away from minority applicants, make more speech errors and end the interviews 25 percent sooner. These shadows hang over stigmatized people no matter their status or accomplishments (24).

A study presented to the International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing in Germany in 2016, using algorithm written by computer scientists at the University of Modena found that even in developed European countries, hidden biases against minorities are still prevalent (25).

Political Correctness by the Numbers

More studies have been carried out in The United States than in the UK on the social impact of and public opinion on political correctness. According to a 2016 poll by Gallup and The University of West Virginia, 73 percent of Americans think that political correctness is a serious problem.

Older Americans tend to be more opposed to political correctness than younger ones. According to Senator Ben Sasse, forty-one percent of Americans under age 35, “now think the First Amendment is dangerous because you might use your freedom of speech to say something that would hurt someone else’s feelings” (26).

Two-thirds of Americans (66%) say colleges and universities aren’t doing enough to teach young Americans today about the value of free speech. When asked which is more important, 65% say colleges should expose students to “all types of viewpoints even if they are offensive or biased against certain groups.” About a third (34%) say colleges should “prohibit offensive speech that is biased against certain groups” (27).

However, political correctness is not just unpopular with a particular group of Americans (eg old, white, wealthy) but generally unpopular with Americans of all ages and ethnicities. Seventy-four percent of people aged 24-29 and 79% percent of those under 24 were found to dislike political correctness by a 2018 report titled More in Common.

The report also found that a majority of people of all races dislike political correctness. Seventy-nine percent of whites saw political correctness as a problem compared to 82% of Asians, 87% of Hispanics, and 88% of American Indians. African Americans are most likely to support political correctness, with 75% seeing it as a problem (28).

In December of the same year, NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll found that fifty-two percent of Americans are against the country becoming more politically correct and are upset that there are too many things people can't say anymore (29). In spite of all this, there is strong evidence that the extent to which political correctness is prevalent is exaggerated. The only type of public speaker that is more censored (as opposed to far less censored) than they were thirty years ago is racists.

(30).

The numbers are not as comprehensive, but polling suggests that The United Kingdom is less politically correct than America. By two-to-one—67 per cent to 33 per cent—Britons believe “too many people are too easily offended these days over the language that others use,” as against the view that care with language is needed “to avoid offending people with different backgrounds.”

This lead for what some would call the “politically incorrect” position is considerably larger than the 20-point gap that Pew recorded with the identical question in the US, where the “people are too easily offended” position led by 59 to 39 per cent (31).

Maria Sobolewska of Manchester University ran an experiment on people’s attitudes towards the ethnic diversity of London. She conditioned a sub-sample of respondents with the thought that being positive about diversity was a “politically correct” attitude to hold. Voters who were primed in that way were somewhat less likely to be warm about the capital’s multiculturalism, suggesting that “PC” has some charge as an anti-liberal message.

Focus groups for the think tank Demos found that talk of PC reliably “incensed participants.” They talked of the country being run by too many “do-gooders,” of feeling unable to “stand up” and state their views plainly for fear of being judged, and of feeling like “they are standing on eggshells” (32).

Is Diversity Good for Business?

Studies have shown that diversity and inclusion are good for business. Laura Hinton, head of people at PwC UK claims that the business case for diversity is simple. “If we want to deliver value for our clients, we need diverse talent, views and thinking that reflects the society in which we work” (33).

Moreover, it helps to attract younger employees. Research carried out by PwC in 2015 claimed that 86 percent of female millennials (the generation born between the early 1980s and mid-1990s) consider prospective employers’ policies on diversity, equality and inclusion.

Through its GenNEXT initiative, Estée Lauder UK encourages its millennial employees to contribute to the business's aims. Diversity is also integral to the firm's ambition to reach consumers in an authentic way. Monica Rastogi, head of corporate cultural relevance and regional innovation explained: “We explore how people’s culture and attitudes translate into their idea of beauty," she explains. "We try to understand who our consumer is in a granular way" (34).

According to McKinsey, companies in the top quartile for gender diversity outperform their competitors by 15 percent and those in the top quartile for ethnic diversity outperform their competitors by 35 percent (35). A 2018 article in Forbes encouraged corporate leaders to embrace an approach called “allyship”, which it describes as follows:

·      Openly sponsor someone within your organisation from an underrepresented/marginalised community

·      Speak your sponsee’s name when they aren't around

·      Share their career goals with influencers

·      Recommend them for stretch assignments which allow skill-set growth and career progression

·      Invite them to high-profile meetings

·      Open endorse them publicly (36).

Among the benefits of fostering diversity in the workplace, Inc cites better decision-making (a greater diversity of perspectives leads to better decisions), richer brainstorming, better consumer understanding and increased creativity (37). Most publishing houses are forward-looking in their approach to diversity and inclusion, and this appears to be paying dividends for the industry.

References

1.     Creative Industries Council (2018) ‘Publishing Facts and Figures’   https://www.thecreativeindustries.co.uk/industries/publishing/publishing-facts-and-figures [Accessed July 1, 2019]

2.     Ibid

3.     The Publishers Association ‘Value of UK publishing industry increases 5% to £5.7bn’ The Publishers Association July 19, 2018   https://www.publishers.org.uk/news/releases/2018/yearbook/ [Accessed July 1, 2019]

4.      A Report for the Publishers’ Association (2017) ‘The Contribution of the Publishing Industry to the UK Economy’ Frontier Economics December 4, 2017 file:///Users/kevinmcgeary/Downloads/Economic%20Contribution%20of%20UK%20Publishing.pdf [Accessed July 1, 2019]

5.     Publishers Association (2019) ‘The Value of UK Publishing’ The Publishers’ Association https://publishers.org.uk/policy/value-of-uk-publishing/ [Accessed July 1, 2019]

6.     Adam Rowe (2019) ‘7 Publishing Insights Revealed By Last Year's Top 100 Bestselling Books’ Forbes January 5, 2019 https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamrowe1/2019/01/05/publishing-insights-revealed-by-last-years-top-100-bestselling-books/ [Accessed July 1, 2019]

7.     Race for Opportunity, Business in the Community (2014 )‘Race at the Top’ a study by Business in the Community (BITC) https://race.bitc.org.uk/all-resources/research-articles/race-top

8.     Smethers, Sam (2017) ‘Many Ethnic Minority Women “Left Behind” by Pay Gap Progress’ Fawcett Society March 6, 2017 https://www.fawcettsociety.org.uk/news/minority-ethnic-women-left-behind-pay-gap-progress

9.     McKinsey Report (2016) ‘The Power of Parity: Advancing Women’s Equality in the United States’ April 2016 https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/employment-and-growth/the-power-of-parity-advancing-womens-equality-in-the-united-states

10.  Hammond, Rob ‘Facts and Figures 2018: Disability in the UK’ Papworth Trust file:///Users/kevinmcgeary/Downloads/Papworth%20Trust%20Disability%20Facts%20and%20Figures%202018.pdf

11.  Sarpong, June ‘Diversify’ Harper Collins (2017) p183

12.  ‘Enabling Work – a Scope Report’ Charities 2015 https://www.base-uk.org/knowledge/enabling-work-scope-report

13.  Andrew Reynolds (2017) ‘The UK just elected a record number of LGBTQ people to Parliament’ Pink News June 9, 2017 https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2017/06/09/the-uk-just-elected-a-record-number-of-lgbtq-people-to-parliament/

14.  GMFA (2015) ‘50% of gay men with depression have considered suicide, survey reveals’ August 7, 2015 https://www.thecalmzone.net/2015/08/50-of-gay-men-with-depression-have-considered-suicide-survey-reveals/

15.  Social Mobility Commission (2016) ‘State of the Nation 2016: Social Mobility in Great Britain’ November 2016 https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/569410/Social_Mobility_Commission_2016_REPORT_WEB__1__.pdf

16.  Sarpong (2017) p213

17.  Bookseller News Team (2018) ‘Over 80% concerned about book trade’s gender pay gap’ The Bookseller April 6, 2018 https://www.thebookseller.com/news/staff-respond-gender-gap-data-764281 [Viewed June 28, 2019]

18.  Equality and Human Rights Commission (2018) ‘Race Report Statistics’ Equality and Human Rights Commission (December 27, 2018) https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/en/race-report-statistics [Accessed August 7, 2019]

19.  Al Jazeera News (2017) ‘All the ways white people are privileged in the UK’ Al Jazeera October 11, 2017 https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/10/ways-white-people-privileged-uk-171011124754885.html [Accessed August 7, 2019]

20.  Brendan O’Neill ‘I hate to break it to feminists, but ‘white male privilege’ is a myth’ The Spectator January 5, 2016 https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2016/01/i-hate-to-break-it-to-feminists-but-white-male-privilege-is-a-myth/

21.  NOMIS ‘Ethnicity Facts and Figures’ Gov.UK September 21, 2018 https://www.ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.uk/work-pay-and-benefits/employment/employment/latest#by-ethnicity [Accessed August 7, 2019 ]

22.  Robert Booth and Aamna Mohdin ‘Revealed: the stark evidence of everyday racial bias in Britain’ The Guardian December 2, 2018 https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/dec/02/revealed-the-stark-evidence-of-everyday-racial-bias-in-britain [Accessed August 7, 2019]

23.  Sinead D’Silva ‘Book Review: White Privilege: The Myth of a Post-Racial Society by Kalwant Bhopal’ LSE Review of Books August 22, 2018 https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks/2018/08/22/book-review-white-privilege-the-myth-of-a-post-racial-society-by-kalwant-bhopal/ [Accessed August 7, 2019]

24.  Professional Development ‘Test Yourself for Hidden Biases’ Teaching Tolerance https://www.tolerance.org/professional-development/test-yourself-for-hidden-bias [Accessed August 8, 2019]

25.  Aviva Rutkin (2016) ‘Camera spots your hidden prejudices from your body language’ New Scientist September 28, 2016 https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23130933-200-camera-spots-your-hidden-prejudices-from-your-body-language/ [Accessed August 8, 2019]

26.  Karlyn Bowman (2017) ‘Polls on Political Correctness’ Forbes June 5, 2017 https://www.forbes.com/sites/bowmanmarsico/2017/06/05/polls-on-political-correctness/ [Accessed August 12, 2019]

27.  Emily Ekins (2017) ‘Poll: 71% of Americans Say Political Correctness Has Silenced Discussions Society Needs to Have, 58% Have Political Views They’re Afraid to Share’ Cato Institute October 31, 2017 https://www.cato.org/blog/poll-71-americans-say-political-correctness-has-silenced-discussions-society-needs-have-58-have [Accessed August 12, 2019]

28.  Sinéad Baker (2018) ‘Political correctness is widely unpopular with Americans of all ages and races, a study finds’ Business Insider October 11, 2018 https://www.businessinsider.com/political-unpopular-with-americans-all-ages-races-2018-10?r=US&IR=T [Accessed August 12, 2019]

29.  Domenico Montanaro (2018) ‘Warning To Democrats: Most Americans Against U.S. Getting More Politically Correct’ NPR December 19, 2019 https://www.npr.org/2018/12/19/677346260/warning-to-democrats-most-americans-against-u-s-getting-more-politically-correct?t=1565604523770 [Accessed August 12, 2019]

30.  Matthew Yglesias (2018) ‘Everything we think about the political correctness debate is wrong’ Vox March 12, 2018 https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/3/12/17100496/political-correctness-data [Accessed August 12, 2019]

31.  Tom Clark (2018) ‘Free speech? New polling suggests Britain is “less PC” than Trump’s America’ Prospect February 16, 2018 https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/free-speech-new-polling-suggests-britain-is-less-pc-than-trumps-america [Accessed August 12, 2019]

32.  Ibid

33.  Katherine Earley (2017) ‘The business benefits of promoting diversity and inclusion’ The Daily Telegraph August 22, 2017 https://www.telegraph.co.uk/connect/better-business/business-sustainability/business-benefits-diversity-inclusion/ [Accessed August 14, 2019]

34.  Ibid

35.  Vivian Hunt, Denis Layton and Sara Prince (2015) ‘Why diversity matters’ McKinsey and Company January 2015 https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/organization/our-insights/why-diversity-matters [Accessed August 14, 2019]

36.  Sheree Atcheson (2018) ‘Embracing Diversity and Fostering Inclusion Is Good for your Business’ Forbes September 25, 2018 https://www.forbes.com/sites/shereeatcheson/2018/09/25/embracing-diversity-and-fostering-inclusion-is-good-for-your-business/#53c6749072b1 [Accessed August 14, 2019]

37.  Ian Altman (2017) ‘5 Reasons Why Workplace Diversity Is Good For Business’ Inc. March 15, 2017 https://www.inc.com/ian-altman/5-reasons-why-workplace-diversity-is-good-for-business.html [Accessed August 14, 2019]

Interviews with Industry Professionals

To gain a greater understanding of the issues dealt with in this thesis, it is important to consult people with direct experience of the issue. I sent the following Q & A to over 30 industry professionals and top organizations.

1.         Employment data from The Department of Work and Pensions found that the white ethnic group has the lowest unemployment rate in the UK (7%) while the Pakistani/Bangladeshi group had the highest (17%). Does the publishing industry have an obligation to try to redress this sort of imbalance?

2.         Do diversity quotas infer that discrimination is both a problem and a solution?

3.         Is increased representation of minority groups (eg staff and writers who are BAME, low income or LGBTQ+) a good thing for a publishing organization to have in-and-of itself?

4.         Does determining to increase the representation of certain social groups in an attempt to diversify ideas only promote the idea that those people think differently and therefore are different? 

5.         Do diversity quotas risk penalizing people on the basis of their ethnicity, sexuality or gender, as with the case of Asian-Americans at Ivy League universities?

6.         Hanif Kureishi has argued that ‘middle-class’ people are less able to be subversive. In your experience, is there a truth in this?

Those consulted included a large number of high-profile people who are involved with the issue, and all major publishing houses. I also attached the Participant Note ensuring their privacy and right to pull out of the interview at any time.

The study is being conducted by Kevin McGeary, a MBA candidate at EU Business School. The aim of this study is to explore the implications of diversity initiatives in the UK publishing industry. You have been selected to take part in this study because you have direct experience of the issue. Your answers will help me to develop my understanding of the it.

Your participation in the interview is entirely voluntary, and you can opt out at any stage. The interview should take approximately 25 minutes to complete.  Your answers will be treated confidentially and the information you provide will be kept anonymous in any research outputs/publications.

For further information, or if you have any queries, please contact the lead researcher: Kevin McGeary at kevin.mcgeary@euruni.edu or his supervisor Konstantinos Biginas at

konstantinos.biginas@euruni.edu

Thank you for taking the time to participate. Your help is very much appreciated.

Kevin McGeary

Question one approaches a very real problem from an unhelpful angle. Yes, the publishing industry has an obligation to do justice to diversity and representation, as does every industry – doubly so the gatekeepers of culture to the masses. But when talking about one industry specifically it is not necessarily helpful to express that in terms of the unemployment rates of certain ethnic groups; it wouldn’t make any sense for Penguin to have a company-wide objective to reduce the unemployment rate among the Pakistani/Bangladeshi population.

Why is diversity and representation so important? On two levels: for society’s sake, and for the company’s sake. For society, lack of diversity and representation is an existential threat, dividing people, fomenting intolerance and lack of understanding. For the company, lack of diversity and representation risks leaving the company blinkered and increasingly irrelevant; a diverse and representative company will be more likely to see (and successfully capitalise on) a broader range of opportunities, and ultimately sell more.

Most responses suggest that Penguin-Random House is taking things too far.

Comme Press for example does not believe in setting diversity quotas but sets a minimum target in terms of diversity, inclusivity and accessibility in accordance with Arts Council England (ACE) guidelines

It is widely agreed that diversity initiatives are a ‘necessary evil’. In a fair and representative society (or company) measuring such attributes would be unnecessary. But the fact is we do not live in a fair and representative society. This unfairness does not (usually) arise out of malice, but from systemic cultural biases that we are constantly, unconsciously, reinforcing. Our collective values and unconscious prejudices lead us to use measuring sticks that give a natural advantage to certain demographics of people. Using artificial means to counteract this invisible bias might sometimes seem hypocritical – can you use discrimination to combat discrimination? – but it is a potentially powerful tool for starting to overcome deeply entrenched inequity.

However, having “increased representation of minority groups” among staff and writers is not a panacea. It can be tokenistic if not properly implemented; for example it’s no good if your staff as a whole reflects the UK’s diversity if your senior leadership does not. And in order to be truly effective it must be part of a wider package of measures designed to shift a company’s culture.

The point of increasing the representation of certain social group is not that “those people” are different, it’s that those people are part of “us”. And we all think differently. We’re all different.

Some publishers think that the diversity of an industry reflect the diversity of its output and audience. How can society ever hope to make publishing accessible and no longer the pursuit of the white middle class if it does not work to increase representation from BAME people.

Diversity quotas are a tool that must be carefully employed to be effective. Reaching a diversity quota should never be seen as a goal in-and-of itself, but as a means to a broader end.

This is why it is something the industry needs to work towards and think about in depth before rashly instituting said quotas without thought for the repercussions.

Lastly, it is not that, as Kureishi asserted, middle-class people are less able to be innovative, but they are less willing. In a race-conscious patriarchal free-market capitalist society such as ours, straight white middle-class men have the greatest advantages – they’re playing the video game of life on “easy” mode – and so are less motivated to subvert the status quo. Whereas a gay black low-income woman is playing on “hard” mode and would therefore be much more inclined to subvert the status quo.

Ethics

These are fraught issues over which some people get passionate. The research has been predictably unpredictable. Initial transcripts and recordings of all interviews are available to adjudicators.

Even the most well-ionformed people are prone to prejudices and logical fallacies. “Black Swan” by Nassim Nicholas Taleb contains the following paragraph: “All zoogles are boogles. You saw a boogle. Is it a zoogle? Not necessarily, since not all boogles are zoogles; adolescents who make a mistake in answering this kind of question on their SAT test might not make it to college.

Yet another person can get very high scores on their SATs and still feel a chill of fear when someone from the wrong side of town steps into the elevator. This inability to automatically transfer knowledge and sophistication from one situation to another, or from theory to practice, is a quite disturbing attribute of human nature.”

Since the author of this dissertation is not a member of any of the minority groups whose treatment is being researched, it is important for this thesis to be aware of its own possible prejudices.

Findings and Analysis

Did findings confirm or contradict current literature?

The UK publishing industry’s embrace of diversity has coincided with an unprecedently successful period in the industry’s history. The literature and quantitative research has confirmed that diversity – that is, bringing a variety of experiences and walks-of-life into an organization – has a positive impact on profit.

This is supported by a quote from “Diversify” by June Sarpong:

If you invest all your capital in one place, you leave yourself vulnerable to fluctuations in that particular market. In the same way, companies need to ensure a diverse mix in their employee portfolio so that new ideas from people with different skill sets give them a competitive edge. Because when everybody thinks the same, we miss out on the opportunity to meet the challenges with fresh ideas, we become complacent and we continue to do what we’ve always done before (1).

There was also considerable evidence that there are massive hidden biases in UK society that discriminate against certain minority groups. Publishing appears to be leading by example in increasing representation of minorities (except for those of low income). This carries on the tradition exemplified by Harriet Beecher Stowe with the industry playing its part in changing society.

The introduction to Arts Council England’s ‘Guide to producing Equality Action Objectives and Plans for NPOs’, states:

We see diversity as an opportunity. We want to see an inclusive approach remove barriers to entry, discover new talent, raise the bar for artistic excellence, inspire innovation and spark new collaborations; we want to see our stories and experiences as a nation shared across our stages, our galleries and our public spaces (2).

Arts Council England appears to practice what it preaches. All National Portfolio Organisations, as a condition of their funding, must comply with equality legislation. This means complying with both the Equality Act (2010) and, as National Portfolio Organisations receive public funding via Arts Council England, with the Public Sector Equality Duty which was created under the Equality Act (3).

Much good has come from this type of thinking, but it has been shown that it can be taken too far. Encouraging people to identify as a member of a group (eg black, Chinese) instead of as an individual has historically been proven to be dangerous, and the publishing industry has been guilty of this.

In another Spectator article, Lionel Shriver has argued that the political left urges every race to organise, pull together, demand their rights if not special treatment, recognise their common experience, celebrate their people’s separate history and separate accomplishments — except one:

Keep playing this game, get more white folks playing it, too. Some white liberals will continue to compete over who can seem more ashamed, in an effort to earn themselves out of their skin colour (sorry, guys—doesn’t work, and anything nasty you say about white people still applies to you). But all the other pale faces won’t necessarily tolerate being told that Caucasians alone cannot be regarded as a cohesive people, cannot experience solidarity, cannot feel communal pride, cannot fight back when slandered or stereotyped, cannot advocate for their interest and cannot ever, ever feel sorry for themselves. The sleeping giant of white identity politics? Thanks to misguided hard-left activism, it’s woke (4).

The Trudeau Parallel

Publishing is playing its part, mostly successfully, in creating a more inclusive society. However, there is a danger of embracing the ugly side of political correctness and identity politics.

Penguin Random House has fallen for the same excesses as Justin Trudeau’s government in Canada.  At the beginning of his term, Trudeau slavishly followed the principle of having fifty percent of his cabinet be women, but this dogma has given way to political reality. In 2019, resignations of female cabinet ministers called into question the government’s commitment to feminism (5).

Jordan Peterson has spoken scathingly about Trudeau’s immaturity and irresponsibility, claiming that the prime minister neglected his most important duty of appointing the most qualified people to each role regardless of their gender or ethnicity: “It was easier for him to do that than it was for him to screen people for the sort of competence that would actually be necessary to be Cabinet members” (6).

Humourist Jonathan Pie has pointed out that there is little point having women and people of colour on the cabinet if they all have the same beliefs (7). For these reasons, Penguin-Random House’s tokenism is highly likely to backfire.

Hidden Biases and Their Beneficiaries

Reading the literature and conducting the quantitative research confirmed two things that show that show some diversity drives are a good idea. One is that even today, minorities are subjected to hidden biases that can prove to be an obstacle and publishing has a proven track record of being able to remedy these biases, which are seldom the result of malice, but are present and are corrosive to society.

Publishing is at its best when it is open to new voices, and – though there is a proven danger of political correctness being damagingly censorious – it is important for the industry to be more inclusive to allow marginalised voices to have a say. This is in keeping with the great traditions that have included Robert Tressell’s “The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropist” helping make society more open-minded and compassionate.

Another finding is that diversity is indeed a good thing in-and-of itself. A room full of blonde-haired, blue-eyed, expensively-educated heterosexual men will still be diverse in a way, but for a business to thrive, it helps to reflect the wider society that it serves.

Is diversity more important than meritocracy?

Meritocracy is itself a problematic concept. Moreover, it has been shown to be highly fallible in creating a fairer and more prosperous society, an example of this is Wall Street, as cited above.

For that reason, and the ample evidence that diversity is a good thing in-and-of itself, this thesis concludes that diversity, within reason, is more important than meritocracy.  

On the key concepts and theories

Racism and misogyny are both damaging, and both have historically held humanity back from achieving its potential. Publishing has played its part in helping to combat these phenomena but the battle is not yet won.

Other of the key concepts undermine publishing’s most helpful role in society. Political correctness, in its extreme form, and cultural appropriation both undermine the concept of publishing as agitator and innovator.

References

1.     Arts Council England (2018) ‘Guide to Producing Equality Action Objectives and Plans for NPOs’ https://www.artscouncil.org.uk/sites/default/files/download-file/Equality%20Action%20Guide%20-%20Introduction.pdf

2.     Ibid

3.     Lionel Shriver (2018) ‘Identity politics are – by definition – racist’ The Spectator August 18, 2018 https://www.spectator.co.uk/2018/08/identity-politics-are-by-definition-racist/

4.     Sarpong, June ‘Diversify’ Harper Collins (2017) p12

5.     Katherine Laidlaw “Justin Trudeau’s feminist brand is imploding” The Atlantic March 12, 2019 https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2019/03/canada-trudeau-feminism-wilson-raybauld/584677/ [Accessed August 5, 2019]

6.     Kyle Perisic (2018) ‘Watch Jordan Peterson React to Justin Trudeau’s Telling a Woman to Say “Peoplekind”’ The Daily Signal February 6, 2018 https://www.dailysignal.com/2018/02/06/canadian-psychologist-ridicules-trudeau-over-peoplekind [Accessed August 5, 2019]

7.     YouTube ‘Boris’s Britain’ Jonathan Pie July 25, 2019

[Accessed August 5, 2019]

8.      

Conclusion

Reflections and Recommendations

One interviewee described diversity drives as being a ‘necessary evil’. In light of the unspoken biases that appear to lead to such scenarios in society as BAME people being disproportionately likely to be unemployed or sexual minorities to be more likely than others to attempt suicide, the publishing industry is right to try to redress some of these imbalances.

Caucasian, materially privileged heterosexuals are not to blame for the unfair advantages they may have, but they are beneficiaries. It makes sense that an industry that has historically achieved great changes in society should represent the groups who have the most incentive to want to cause change.

It is a good idea to give these groups an authentic voice with which to tell their story. Cited in the executive summary, Robert McKee’s “Story” describes the artform as follows: “The archetypal story unearths a universally human experience, then wraps itself inside a unique culture-specific expression” (1).

Some cultures have been wrongly marginalized, and this marginalization must be redressed. In a video essay about whether people should still be watching “Gone with the Wind” a historian on coldcrashpictures argues that to completely dismiss this (for want of a better term) political correctness is not rebellious, but cowardly (2).

However, there are all kinds of pitfalls that some companies have been falling into. The introduction to Arts Council England’s ‘Guide to Producing Equality Action Objectives and Plans for NPOs’ states:

We see diversity as an opportunity. We want to see an inclusive approach remove barriers to entry, discover new talent, raise the bar for artistic excellence, inspire innovation and spark new collaborations; we want to see our stories and experiences as a nation shared across our stages, our galleries and our public spaces (3).

There can also be a contradiction between the pursuit of diversity and uncompromising excellence. Lionel Shriver is right that Penguin Random House’s drive is an unnecessary distraction from its core responsibility, that is publishing excellent books.

She is also right that it is untenable for Penguin Random House or any other company to exactly represent the UK population. Race, gender, and sexuality are themselves fluid in their definitions.

Moreover, most publishing houses are based in London, which is far more diverse than the rest of the country. The United Kingdom is 86 percent Caucasian. London is 41 percent BAME, to proportionally represent the BAME population of the UK is to massively underrepresent the BAME population of London.

The dangerous thing about political correctness is that when certain words become unsayable, certain thoughts become unthinkable, which undermines the purpose of a free society. It also flies in the face of all the positive changes that publishing has made by challenging taboos and breaking anathemas. Penguin Random House clearly falls into the trap of political correctness.

Ultimately, it is not a corporation’s role to be virtuous. In reaction to a controversial Gillette advertisement in early 2019, Jordan Peterson said “I would rather have my corporations be greedy than virtuous” (4).

When Hanif Kureishi stated that middle-class people were less able to be innovative, he was himself being classist. He was betraying the kind of prejudice that he is ostensibly trying to oppose. However, one interviewee made the excellent point that the more advantages one has in life, the fewer unspoken biases one is a victim of, the less likely someone is to upset established ways of thinking, one of the publishing industry’s greatest contributions to history.

Publishers need to continue setting a good example for the rest of society in diversity, inclusiveness, and representation. However, they must not lose sight of the fact that excellence is always king, and queen.

References

1.     McKee, Robert ‘Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting’ Regan Books (2006) p11

2.     YouTube ‘Should we Still be Watching 'Gone with the Wind?' Part 1’ coldcrashpictures June 16, 2019

[Accessed August 15, 2019]

3.     Arts Council England (2018) ‘Guide to Producing Equality Action Objectives and Plans for NPOs’ Introduction by Darren Henley (p2)

4.     YouTube ‘Jordan Peterson on Gillette Ad’ Silvio T. January 21, 2019

[Accessed July 30, 2019]