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Conclusion

We know that the challenges of working within the scholarly publishing are numerous, and that this toolkit cannot address the many specific experiences of BIPOC people who work within the industry. In particular, while we want to address the commonality of many of the issues ...

Published onSep 12, 2022
Conclusion

We know that the challenges of working within the scholarly publishing are numerous, and that this toolkit cannot address the many specific experiences of BIPOC people who work within the industry. In particular, while we want to address the commonality of many of the issues that we face, we also understand that for several reasons it is difficult for this toolkit to address the specific ways in which our particular identities situate these experiences, whether it is the challenges of being confronted with model minority stereotypes by coworkers, or the myriad ways that colorism intersects with how we are accepted or denied opportunities within our work. Additionally, we want to stress and continue to think about the ways in which disability, gender and sexual identities intersect with our racial and ethnic ones. Perhaps the biggest challenge in writing this toolkit is that, due to the very nature of going into specifics about our experiences, we risk losing the protective anonymity we need in order to continue to have careers in this field, and opens us up to the possibility of indirect, or even direct retaliation, and damage to our careers.

So, this toolkit feels like a jumping off point, in many ways, a place where we wanted to stress the ways in which we can create community and support amongst each other, as much as it is a way to think about managing our work within a still-overwhelmingly white workforce. We intend for this toolkit to be, not only a source for support and advice, but also to continue on as a sort of living document, one which will continue to be added to, and reimagined over time so it can be a resource that we can turn to again and again as our workplaces change. Both trade and scholarly publishing had already begun to organize and challenge the structure of hiring, retention, and promotion practices before 2020, but the protests from that year and renewed national focus on racism in the U.S. and many other countries, gave more energy to these discussions and implemented some meaningful, if imperfect movement for change. Still, now more than ever as other national and international events have begun to overshadow those discussions, it feels ever more important to keep the pressure on to advocate for ourselves and our BIPOC colleagues, including those who have not entered the industry but are looking to get a foot in the door. This toolkit hopefully serves as both an answer and a question for how we look forward to doing this.

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