Dudgeon

95% of this collection is by white men. The editor's explanation for this? "...the majority of spec fic authors which I know are white males. Nor will I include substandard stories just to achieve some kind of parity." Oh.

The discussion can be seen here.
The bit that struck me was Mat's excellent comment: "I can imagine a couple reasons why the tendency in dudgeon's anthology exists; there's agenda, and there's laziness, and also simple lack of awareness or information. I'm sure some folks feels safer knowing that their demographic has a privileged place at the table so they're pretty happy to maintain it, so they tell themselves convenient stories about that demographic having earned a right to that spot, either through effort or lack of anyone else's worthwhile efforts. Those same stories can be told by people who ideally would like to see more 'diversity', but who are overwhelmed by how to make that happen in a good way (eg. not just printing uninteresting stories for the sake of parity, as suggested). Sure, it's a lot more work and it's a lot harder to put together a good project (anthology or anything else) if we hold ourselves to those standards. But creating a community that fosters the best work requires that effort. How am i supposed to believe that the sf community has not overlooked some really awesome potential talent if the majority of cross sections of experience aren't even represented in the majority of sf anthologies? It just doesn't add up, conspicuously so."… (más)