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Brilliant, necessary idea! For organisers of these workshops, please ensure that they're friendly and supportive of scholars of colour. Navigating the publication process by itself is one thing but being subject to discrimination that hides behind "blind peer review" is another. https://twitter.com/WarwickCFG/status/1326077197136912384
I attended a writing workshop back in 2016 where the reviewer of my paper was so outright discouraging and disparaging, I have parked up that paper for 4 years now and most likely would never return to it. This was a traumatic, and by far one of the worst experiences I've had.
Some people think that because the peer review process is double-blind that there is no room for racism. They're wrong. You just have to check who gets published frequently by the journal. People of colour, Black women in particular often get bypassed and some of worst feedback.
We're often unable to find outlets to publish our work. If you're studying a niche subject area or empirical location, it is not difficult to search and find out who the author might be. Snide comments to authors about English language use also form part of this discrimination.
It's b/c reviewers assume the author is non-native English speaking. This is the casual inconsideration in peer review. Also, if you have any kind of learning difficulties on top of being a person of colour, many journals do not have the facility for dyslexic/dyspraxic authors.
You don't take my word for it, though I suggest you do: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01883-8
Let's not forget the majority of peer reviewers are white men. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6911688/
Being told or signaled at every given opportunity that you don't belong on top of receiving a horrible review from a so-called "anonymous" reviewer can carry you over the edge: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/12/rude-paper-reviews-are-pervasive-and-sometimes-harmful-study-finds
Final piece of advice: if you're an asshole in life, and academia in particular or have no empathy or concern about supporting people and building others up, just decline the peer review request. It's quite simple. Just click "decline" in the email message. END
