"Diversity is not a shiny brooch to wear to impress your friends" - This Week's ReadItTorial

2020 might well be remembered as the 'year of the virus' but it's also going to be remembered as the year that an entire nation stood up to a stupid shredded-wheat haired President and shouted "enough is enough".

One thing I wasn't really prepared for was how angry Twitter would make me while #BlackLivesMatter protesters the world over mobilised and began to make their voices heard (not anger at them of course, but anger at the way they were being portrayed).

Some of the sources of annoyance were obvious, for example our own trash-fire political system slyly trying to brush its chief advisor's blatant ignorance of the COVID-19 lockdown to serve his own ends, while simultaneously readying itself to blame the inevitable 2nd wave of COVID-19 infections on the protests that have been taking place in major cities here.

The other annoyance was the disgusting "bowing and scraping" going on from the publishing industry. Suddenly every agent or commissioning editor seemed to be crawling out of the woodwork to offer black creatives all sorts of tantalising deals, almost a free run at the submissions process so that they could tell their stories, make themselves heard. Silently in the background listening to the "Ka-CHING!" from book sales of fast-tracked titles pushed out to serve a public who now, more than ever, want to make sure their kids know what's going on and are kept well informed from an early age.

It's laudable, of course it is but I'm horribly cynical about this stuff, just as I was horribly cynical about the tidal wave of eco-cash-in books that arrived when Greta Thunberg's plaintive globe-saving messages began to come to public attention, or the many books that pull the same stuff with women's rights.

If there's a buck to be made, it seems, the industry knows no shame.

As it says in the header of this article, true diversity and representation of black talent in children's books isn't some gaudy little brooch to pin to your publishing house, wearing it around to impress your friends and notch up a few extra book sales.

Simultaneously to the hideous (and quite rightly pilloried) guilt-assuaging going on was a Twitter thread about the money that authors are paid as advances by their publishers. The UK figures told the same old story they always do. UK authors and illustrators get a pitiful sum compared to their US counterparts, and of course the more famous you are, the bigger the loot grab from writing or illustratng (well, that is common sense). But then there's the whole question of the whopping great big advances paid to celebrity authors who (in most cases) will inevitably end up with their well-meaning books clustered like flies at the bottom of the bargain bin in factory clearance outlets like "The Works".

Back to #BlackLivesMatter though, and the simple fact that some publishers - independent and still sadly considered 'non mainstream' really know how to promote and encourage black talent, in fact world talent from a rich and diverse set of cultures stretching right across our planet. As much as the UK children's publishing industry seems locked in a litany of producing and publishing the same tired old moral messages and themes year in year out, publishers such as Tiny Owl and Lantana are quietly, without pomp or ceremony, producing some of the best diverse books on the planet by some of the most awesome black authors and illustrators.

Some Twitter folk have been, quite rightly, rounding on those who have been making advances to them, pointing out that the rather empty gesture won't be sustained. The UK Children's publishing industry is still an industry that systematically fails to consider the rich diversity of our country, and still seems to think it's fine to parade the inclusion of a minor black character in a book like it's some new amazing pioneering thing they've just discovered, when really all kids want to see in a book is themselves, their lives, and the way they look and feel about things being treated as it always should be, as the norm not the exception.

We've had a lot to say on this subject for quite some time, and have always championed diversity here. Racism is an antiquated concept that has held the world back for far too long, it's about time it got in the bin.

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