"You Will Be Tokenized": Speaking Out about the State of Diversity in Publishing | Brooklyn Magazine

Unmeasured in the survey is class, but the anecdotal evidence is vast. People who work in books make very, very little%u2014and at the beginning of their careers too little to even live in the city of their employment. This one-two punch of there-is-no-one-here-like-you and you-literally-cannot-afford-to-take-this-job results in an industry that is, to its own detriment, made up of very much the same people. Like the doomed Cavendish banana, publishing is a monoculture. It does not have the genetic diversity necessary to resist threats to its health, to adapt to its environment. There was apparently an even better banana before this one, but it died out too. Homogeneity kills.