Literature and commercial publishing have a diversity problem. People of color and women are both in short supply. Rumpus contributor Daniel Peña, writing at Plougshares, offers a market-based explanation:
But I wonder how much these problems stem not from MFA whiteness, or the MFA system, or even publishing at large, but from the very narratives we crave—white, middle-to-upper brow, predominately heteronormative. That is to say, our narrative problem isn’t exclusively a white thing, or an MFA thing, or even a publishing thing, but an American thing. A money thing—this is what sells. This is what people crave.
