I’m not sure what you’re referring to. A number of editors have come under fire for racist and sexist behaviors at various points in time, many of them people that Tempest has called out.

Personally, I think the problems are systemic more than individual and that it’s more productive to concentrate on how the system can be changed rather than focusing on individuals.

I think some of your ideas about anonymity and merit are naive — merit doesn’t exist as an objective measure, and in any case, I strongly syspect that a large amount of the racism and sexism one can find within SFF (or any other field) derives not from byline but from content. Erasing my name from a feminist short story won’t make it non-feminist.

Likewise, why should Tempest leave SFF because it’s racist and sexist? Why does the field belong to those editors who are racist and sexist, and not to her? And if she’s required not to work with bigoted people ever, then what on earth could she do? Again, systemically, there are racists and sexists everywhere in the US, bigots everywhere. No area of publishing is clean. No area of anything is clean. The way to forward progress is not to shun every activity that has a taint of bigotry, but to fight that bigotry with our work.

http://ashokbanker.com/2008/08/01/is-american-science-fiction-fantasy-racist-and-sexist-bigotted-and-culturally-insensitive-too/

I’m not talking only about racism, or about myself, please. I am sure there is greater bias against women in SF, and women of colour in SF, than is openly admitted. If the field is as squeaky clean as some people claim it is, then there’s nothing to be afraid of!

Also I just thought I’d point out that Weird Tales whose present editor is a commentator on this page, accepted and published the only submission I made to them, and I’m glad it was published as part of a regular issue, rather than segregated. I’m sure Ms Vandermeer is a fine editor and probably picks excellent stories, but I thought that diversity is better served by integration than segregation.

I’m also waiting for the SFF ‘Congress’ to issue that official and formal apology to all SFF Writers of Colour! :~)

The rejection I quoted was one of the better ones–that editor actually went on to publish two stories by me, stories set in my country and culture, of course. But other rejections over the years have been so explicitly racist or biased that I made a career choice not to submit any more. In fact, I’ve actually turned down requests from editors to include work by me in their anthologies as my way of protesting against Racism & Bias in Science Fiction and Fantasy. Don’t know how much good it does but I just don’t feel like being part of a field that is still so clearly imbalanced in its racial and cultural composition. I think Tobias Buckell has written very eloquently and passionately about the very blatant imbalance in the field and there are others I’ve corresponded with who have had similar experiences.

I recently turned down an editor named Maxim Jakubowski, and have turned down other ‘name’ editors before. I have nothing personal against them, and Mr Jakubowski and the other editors who wished to reprint stories by me seemed very nice in their correspondence. But I no longer believe that the people at the top imprints and positions in American SFF publishing can accept quality international SF (and I obviously don’t mean by me) and recognize it on its own terms, which may not conform to American ideas of what makes good writing, good genre writing, or even SFF itself, but is nonetheless the future of the genre, whether they like it or not.

Hopefully, editors like you will someday occupy the top positions in the genre, and will open the floodgates to a whole world of talent. I look forward to reading those magazines, anthologies and publishing lists in which American SF itself is a significant minority–but a minority–as compared to International SF.

There’s a considerable difference between what you’re saying here — that contact at cons makes a difference when remembering who a writer is when reading their work — and what you said in your first comment about it being impossible to get published without “sucking up to editors” at cons. Part of the reason I started going to cons at all was to meet people with whom I’d already worked and corresponded online.

If you’ve felt alienated, I’m sorry to hear it, but I do want to point out that it isn’t everyone’s experience. I live in Canada most of the time, but have also lived in the UAE while selling stories and poems and was never made to feel that was a problem. As an editor I’ve published work from people in the US, Canada, the UK and the Philippines, and my co-editor and I are always delightedly surprised when we get submissions from somewhere new.

Also, I’d point that at least one magazine I know of, Shimmer, uses a “submissions wrangler” to remove all identifying information from a manuscript before passing it along to their slush readers. I doubt they’re the only ones, but they too have published work from around the globe.

I think the rejection you quoted was terrible, but I hope it wasn’t something you experienced more than once, and I hope you won’t take it as representative of the SF community as a whole.

Possibly in your case, and in the case of a handful of other editors but of the several dozen editors I’ve corresponded with on a couple of closed-groups and directly, almost all of them feel that meeting a writer face to face at a con, getting a sense of the person, the personality, even, yes, liking the person, make a considerable difference to their recalling that writer later when reading his or her work.

Let me put it this way: In a perfect world, all stories and novels would be presented in identical format, author names removed (or replaced by number codes), and editors would judge those submissions solely on the basis of merit. In reality, I don’t think it’s ever that cut and dried. And the colour of a writer, or the colour of his or her flag, is one of many factors that do impact on an editor, especially when they’ve met that writer in person.

Also, what I’m saying in that reference to cons is that SFF is a very closed circle in the US. I’m in touch with perhaps a hundred authors from around the world as well as the USA, as well as a couple dozen editors and publishing professionals, and at some point every single one has suggested very strongly that attending cons and schmoozing with editors is essential to building a career in American SFF publishing. Since I’m not an SFF writer, and not seeking to build a career there, I’ve never attended a con (I don’t have a passport) but I’ve never heard anyone tell me that attending cons and getting to know editors personally is NOT good for a writer’s career.

As I said, I do give you personally the benefit of the doubt. I still wouldn’t go so far as to submit to your publication, no offense, but that’s because I don’t think my work matches the kind of work you appear to be seeking–or that any US publisher I’m aware of is seeking. I do have the very strong impression that in the US SFF field, if you’re not circulating at the cons, you’re not in the field at all.

Yes.

“Writers who aren’t… visiting cons there and sucking up to editors at such events–a major qualification for SFF writers of all colours, it seems–”

I think you are fundamentally incorrect about this.

John Klima makes the same point when he says that if a publication hasn’t already been publishing diversity, why would that writer try that market? Vandermeer’s claim that a forthcoming issue focusses on ‘international’ writers itself confirms this unofficial ‘policy’. If ‘international writers’ were indeed welcome at WT, then why segregate them into a separate issue? Why not simply publish the best selection from all submissions without bothering about nationality?

I no longer even bother to submit material, whether short-length or book-length to US publishers. What’s the point? Each time I read a blogpost like this it only serves to remind how tough it is for even POC within the US to get published. What chance to POC from other countries have?

As one editor of a fantasy magazine (not one mentioned above) brightly put it to me: “The characters are memorable, the story is taut and interesting, the setting is original…This a good SF story. But why would I want to publish a story by you that could have been written by any American writer?” Why, indeed.