![]() Still, perhaps publishing’s greatest reckoning in years came last summer following the nationwide protests over the police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and other Black Americans. Over the past few years, the industry has weathered the deaths of publishing giants, printer capacity issues, and the Covid-19 pandemic. As a children’s book editor who has discussed these issues with my own circle of friends and colleagues, I wanted to revisit this piece, illustrating what has changed and what hasn’t. ![]() In fact, the main threads of Ledbetter’s story could very well have been plucked from any recent discussion surrounding publishing’s lack of racial and ethnic diversity today. ![]() The parallels between publishing in 1995 and publishing today are astounding, unsurprising, and disheartening. But while the book business’s stance on, and dialogue surrounding, race has improved, there is still work to be done-including much that was laid out in Ledbetter’s piece. Over the past quarter-century, book publishing has made some strides in diversifying its workforce and the authors it publishes, thanks in part to the efforts of many recently founded advocacy groups and movements, including We Need Diverse Books, People of Color in Publishing, and the #OwnVoices movement. Twenty-five years later, the piece was still timely. The second part of the feature, which focused on book publishing, saw a readership boost online in 2020, after the Voice updated its digital archive. In 1995, the Village Voice published a two-part feature by journalist James Ledbetter titled “The Unbearable Whiteness of Publishing” that examined racial disparity in the American book and magazine publishing industries.
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