There is a now established and very stale way of thinking about diversity in publishing. It sees the problem as merely one of rectifying representation. It’s a way of seeing that’s wrong because it assumes something, unwittingly no doubt, that itself ought to be examined. It’s +

unsurprising that it’s assumed because so many of us have bought one of the assumptions of Econ 101 without noticing.
Publishing is not the kind of competitive industry that finance or tech or medicine is. There is no fierce competition for talent because the returns on talent +

are so diffuse; talent does not have the pathway to economic value that it has in those and other industries, notably industries dependent on the acquisition of objectively (not subjectively) assessable technical skills. The pathway in publishing, for all those in the industry, +

is overgrown and even divergent, with luck and the whims of others determining outcomes.
Publishing houses don’t have the economic pressure or resources to compete for talent.
Many talented outsiders—working class people and non-whites at Western publishing houses—stay away +

from industries like publishing because those industries aren’t able to put a premium on talent. By contrast, consider the UK’s medical profession, the doctors and nurses, whom Covid19 has brought to the fore of that nation’s attention. Overwhelmingly children of immigrants or +

foreign-born. Finance is full of them, too. Keep in mind in all this, that British-Indians, -Bangladeshis and -Chinese perform better in exams from high school up than their white counterparts.
The crisis of publishing, the culture sector, politics, journalism, and the public +

space is that talent itself is not the singular attribute demanded. Social and cultural capital—being from the right class, school, race or gender (this last in the higher echelons of publishing, though certainly not lower), and having access to the important people—these +

things are believed to matter, and in some sectors there is evidence to support this. In the UK, especially, where class deference is still significant—look at the shticks (which is what they are) of the likes of Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees Mogg. These are elected +

politicians wielding enormous power.

(None of the foregoing addresses the analytical complications arising when one includes in the mix the fact that the modern economy is moulded around the idea of a worker unfettered by family-related matters).