Fireside has the right to put out a call for submissions with whatever criteria they see fit; that's their right, and there's no use complaining about it. They're taking what they think is an appropriate measure to correct an imbalance in the publishing industry.
However, just to play Devil's advocate...
By implementing such structures we’re moving towards a meritocracy, not away from it. You can’t have a meritocracy without an equal playing field.
That seems like a slight contradiction to me, or at least it could be taken as such without some clarification. To me, equality of opportunity is inherently desirable, but I do have my doubts as to whether this is the way to go to achieving that. This seems like trying to achieve equality of outcome, which is inherently
not meritocratic.
Jo's correct in saying that the vast majority of writers historically represented in SFF have been white and male, but to then derive an oppressive framework from that is not necessarily a logical conclusion as it's not taking a multivariate approach as to why this is so; it's simply saying that the majority of SFF (or any genre) writers are white and male,
because they're white and male. It doesn't take into account demographics, geography, time, access to education etc and a whole raft of other things which all contribute to the status quo.
And, to be contrarian once more, if you take a look at recent shortlists for the major awards, us white crusties are being equalled and frequently outnumbered by women, and the number of ethnic minority shortlisters and winners has also shot up. Again, to be one of the Sad Puppy mob and derive some conspiratorial bias from this (the number of white, male writers on shortlists is decreasing
because they're white and male) is also simplistic and self-defeating, because it's not taking into account the closing of those gaps with respect to time, demography, geography, time, access to education and all that other good stuff.
My suggestion would be for publishing and agency houses' editorial teams to be more diverse wherever possible, and have calls as open as possible, so that they can assess submissions more equally, and I think the occasional anonymous call should also be encouraged.
And in any case, I won't be subbing because I don't have anything to sub, poor me!
