Our Responsibility as Writers and Editors to Combat Racism
It’s never too late to start
Image credit: James Eades on Unsplash
Even though I steadily post on this blog every two weeks, current events in the US have left me heart-heavy, soul-weary, and unfocused—enough so that I was just too burned out to write. For the first time ever, I skipped my scheduled post last week, and I’m willing to bet that most of you were also too burned out to notice.
I just didn’t have it in me to put together a post that required enough research to be helpful, and I got to the point where I didn’t even want to be online any longer than I had to so I could get my work done.
What can I do?
I’m not an activist. I’m not an influencer. I’m not a spokesperson. In fact, I’m rarely in the public eye. So how can I as an editor help in the fight against racism?
As writers and as editors, we have a responsibility to our readers. Journalists carry this responsibility too, and for the most part, I think it’s safe to say that they’ve screwed it up in a spectacular fashion. They know the influence their words carry, and yet they often use those words irresponsibly, either because of their own bias, an unintended/unrecognized bias, or because the headline will look more sensational if written a certain way. (See this story at Honest Reporting for one example of headline bias.)
We want our words to capture people’s attention, yes, but we also have to face the fact that we live in an age where people are quick to condemn or become outraged with only a headline, or a photo snipped from a full video that tells a different story. Clickbait-style headlines often lead readers to believe one result (“And You Won’t Believe What Happened Next!”), when in actuality, the opposite result is discussed in the body of the story.
We are responsible for our words
When we write—or edit someone else’s writing—we have a responsibility to use our words wisely. When someone writes a story in which all the good guys are white and all the bad guys are black, we need to speak up. When we edit a manuscript that only has one non-white character, and he’s uneducated, poor, and lazy, we need to speak up. When we come across work that we know is painting any group in a harmful light, we need to speak up.
It’s hard to speak up, especially if we’ve been trained to not even notice our own biases. I grew up in an all-white neighborhood, in an almost-all-white town, and never realized how bigoted my parents and others were until I moved away. Even then, I thought I was much more enlightened than my parents had been—until my own children grew up and began pointing out the areas where I was still lacking. With the internet connecting us all, my children have grown up in a much larger world than I did, and they’re quick to school me on biases I didn’t even realize I still had.
Thank goodness for others who are smart enough and brave enough to point things out to us that we need to hear.
Get to the point already
And that’s the point of this post, really. We are lovers of words. We use them to entice, to excite, and to draw others in. We know how to use them, and we weave them to the best of our ability so that readers can immerse themselves in the worlds we create.
We know all these things, so why is it that when someone points out our bias or racism, we become defensive and tell them they’re misunderstanding what we said? Isn’t it our job to say what we’re aiming for in a clear, precise manner? Don’t we edit draft after draft in the hope of strengthening every verb, honing our descriptors, and more? I don’t think we’re nearly as misunderstood as we think we are. I think we’re embarrassed at being called out.
Racism in the writing world
If you follow any writers, editors, agents, or publishers on social media, you’ve probably heard quite a bit about the Red Sofa Literary Agency and Corvisiero Literary Agency. Each agency is headed by an owner who posted racist comments on social media and then claimed they were misunderstood.
In the first instance, agents and authors left in droves. The owner posted a public apology on her website owning up to what she did, acknowledging her actions were wrong, making some excuses but still apologizing. Now, she’s trying to legally intimidate her former staffers and force people to not only remove their own tweets where they shared & condemned her racist comments, but to issue retractions saying they were wrong, and that she never said racist things.
In the second, agents began to leave and the owner responded by firing the entire roster of remaining staff—all of them—in an email where she claimed to be doing it for their own protection.
The agents and authors who stood up against this behavior stepped up to the responsibility of taking action in a tangible way—one that actually cost them a great deal—because they recognized what was needed. We may not be in a position to do what they’ve done, but we can still act within our own abilities and situations to make a difference.
Positive steps to take
Susannah Noel, cofounder of Editorial Arts Academy, recently wrote an article on the steps freelance book editors can take to combat racism. Her post went live as I was still drafting this one, and I’ve tried my best to not steal anything she’s said, but I do want to link the post here because it’s full of great advice on the practical things we can do to take an active role for change.
Two of the things Noel mentions are steps I want to include here, in case you don’t take the moment to read her article: the Conscious Style Guide and sensitivity readers. The former is a wonderfully thorough guide to inclusive language based on the changing world around us. The latter are those readers who have personal experience of whatever issue, culture, or representation you’re writing about; they can assess your manuscript to help you get a handle on everything from bias and stereotyping to potentially harmful or triggering content.
Taking these first steps isn’t hard. Some of us take tiny steps and some of us leap. The important thing is that we begin to do something, even if we’ve never done anything about this before.
It’s not being hypocritical. It’s learning and growing.
