Excellent article. One thing worth noting is that entry-level salaries in publishing are notoriously low. (I made $14K a year as an editorial assistant at Viking 1980-82). This has had the effect, over time, of weeding out young people who didn't have help from parents, trust funds, or a willingness (in my case) to take much less than I …
Excellent article. One thing worth noting is that entry-level salaries in publishing are notoriously low. (I made $14K a year as an editorial assistant at Viking 1980-82). This has had the effect, over time, of weeding out young people who didn't have help from parents, trust funds, or a willingness (in my case) to take much less than I could have gotten selling my skills in some other field. Over time, this resulted in a notably un-diverse publishing industry, with few people of color working as editors and literary agents. Why should a talented black humanities grad from the Ivy League take a pittance when so many other places, including investment banking and elite law schools, were looking to recruit? This isn't my own speculation; it's something that's been widely discussed. (The editor of my first book, Erroll McDonald, was one of the very few black trade-book editors back in the 1990s and he mentioned this relative paucity of black editors.) In the summer of 2020, the publishing industry went through a particularly wrenching version of the Come-to-Jesus moment that many sectors of the panicked American elite went through. (The film industry, prodded by the Oscars So White hashtag, did the same thing.) Things tilted hard in the direction of....well, the sort of dynamics that Perez is talking about here--dynamics led, as Perez pointed out in a celebrated/reviled interview, by white women determined to Right the Wrongs by Any Means Necessary. I'm glad to see Adam Bellow mentioned in this story. He's one of the people--and there are a few--pushing back against this Wokeness Inc. trend.
Excellent article. One thing worth noting is that entry-level salaries in publishing are notoriously low. (I made $14K a year as an editorial assistant at Viking 1980-82). This has had the effect, over time, of weeding out young people who didn't have help from parents, trust funds, or a willingness (in my case) to take much less than I could have gotten selling my skills in some other field. Over time, this resulted in a notably un-diverse publishing industry, with few people of color working as editors and literary agents. Why should a talented black humanities grad from the Ivy League take a pittance when so many other places, including investment banking and elite law schools, were looking to recruit? This isn't my own speculation; it's something that's been widely discussed. (The editor of my first book, Erroll McDonald, was one of the very few black trade-book editors back in the 1990s and he mentioned this relative paucity of black editors.) In the summer of 2020, the publishing industry went through a particularly wrenching version of the Come-to-Jesus moment that many sectors of the panicked American elite went through. (The film industry, prodded by the Oscars So White hashtag, did the same thing.) Things tilted hard in the direction of....well, the sort of dynamics that Perez is talking about here--dynamics led, as Perez pointed out in a celebrated/reviled interview, by white women determined to Right the Wrongs by Any Means Necessary. I'm glad to see Adam Bellow mentioned in this story. He's one of the people--and there are a few--pushing back against this Wokeness Inc. trend.