Last week, I went through what I see to be some of the specious arguments against the practice of using sensitivity reader (these arguments tended to also rope in the general pushback on books for being racist or otherwise culturally insensitive). The handwriting over any of this being a slippery slope to censorship is deliberately obtuse, in my opinion, but there are some arguments that sensitivity readers could be making things worse on the representation front, rather than better. And that’s what I want to explore today.
I’m going to be quoting a couple of very smart people who are far more immersed in the business of sensitivity reading than I am. I highly recommend reading the full articles, which I’ve included below.
Deprioritizing Own Voices
“When our various manuscripts enter the publishing gauntlet, the system, that’s when we see institutional racism, bigotry, homophobia and ableism at work.” – Dhonielle Clayton told The Guardian.
Nowhere did I find anyone arguing that writers never write across cultures, but when books by white writers about the experiences of marginalized groups are being chosen instead of books by writers who belong to those groups, that’s a problem.
This circles back to that thorny mechanism of comp titles, and the fact that publishers often perceive white authors as having a broader audience regardless of the topic. And with racial tension being perceived a “hot” topic at the moment, you can see where these forces would collide in a bad way. Indeed, we saw a very high-profile of this with this year’s American Dirt: a book by a white, American author that was touted as not a story about migrants on the Southern border but the story about migrants on the Southern border. Yikes.
People Use Sensitivity Readers as a Free Pass
“They are using them as shields,” says Debbie Reese “The writers are doing it and so are their publishers and editors. What they are not saying is that a sensitivity reader might have said ‘do not do this’. Instead, they can say, honestly, that a sensitivity reader worked with them. They don’t have to mention that the sensitivity reader said ‘stop’.”
As I’ve mentioned before, sensitivity readers are consultants and do not serve as gatekeepers of any kind. Publishers and authors don’t have to take any of the feedback they offer. Hiring a reader and ignoring their feedback is like throwing a lifejacket in the back of the boat and assuming it will save you from drowning regardless of whether you ever put it on.
And, of course, even if a sensitivity reader’s feedback is incorporated, no reader is monolith. What offends one woman or black person or disabled person might not offend someone else from that group. Some readers are easily offended, some are not.
Writing always comes with a risk, and the certainly writing cross-culturally is a steeper challenge than writing within the confines of your own identity. That’s not to say you shouldn’t do it. I’ll keep saying it: no one is telling you not to! But you don’t get to throw your sensitivity reader under the bus if something offends someone. The buck stops with you.
It Won’t Fix Publishing’s Race Issues
“sensitivity reading is a band-aid over a hemorrhaging problem in our industry. That’s what we should really be talking about — that’s what real censorship looks like. The systematic erasure and blockage of people of color from the publishing industry.”—Dhonielle Clayton
Perhaps the biggest criticism of the sensitivity reader is the idea that anyone could think this would fix what’s broken about publishing. Hiring consultants to make sure that (mostly) white authors get the details of marginalized communities right is not going to make a difference to the paucity of books from those communities in the first place; the punting of those writers to smaller presses; or the lack of BIPOC behind the scenes. These are systemic issues in book publishing and the conversation around them isn’t new. We should all be supporting organizations such as We Need Diverse Books, POC in Publishing, and Latinx in Publishing, who are pushing for real change in addition to making sure our own books don’t cause damage.
So, should we NOT hire sensitivity readers?
As I said in my first post, if you are writing about a marginalized group that you’re not a member of, hiring a sensitivity reader is probably a good idea even though all of the above criticisms are valid. Hiring a reader can still help you not put harmful content into the world.
There are good questions to ask yourself about your intentions in telling a certain story or writing a certain character (and I will get to them!) and a sensitivity reader doesn’t take the place of good research, but as with any situation where you’re writing about something you don’t know intimately—be it a foreign language, a subculture, or another race or sexuality—talking to an actual human with knowledge of it is just good practice.
A word to the wise here, even if you are working with a major publisher do not expect them to save you from yourself. Your name is on the book, you need to do your best to make sure it’s hitting the mark. Publishers are often not equipped to catch these issues, as we will see next week when I start digging into case studies!
Additional Reading:
Meet Publishing’s Sensitivity Readers - The Guardian
Sensitivity Readers – What the Job is Really Like - Vulture
BIPOC to Publishing: We’re Not Okay - Publisher’s Weekly
How 10 Women of Color Actually Feel About Working in Book Publishing - Bustle