In our earlier blog post, Diversity in Publishing: How Diverse is LEE & LOW’s Authors, Illustrators, and Staff, we shared a mini breakdown of our authors and illustrators as well as our staff. In the past, we’ve received a few questions asking about the percentage of authors/illustrators of color we publish as well as the percentage of people of color on our staff. And we hoped that this post would answer a few of those questions.
After posting the percentage, we received a few more questions: what is the breakdown per department? What is the breakdown by race and ethnicity? How many members of your staff are LGBTQ+ identifying, and/or disabled?
To specify, the following mini demographic breakdown will examine the racial background of our staff. We acknowledge that the term diversity applies not only to one’s racial identity, but also gender, disability, and orientation. However, given the sometimes sensitive nature of gender identity, disability, and sexual orientation, this is not something we can publicly report on for our small staff of under twenty people—the study size is simply too small to protect anyone’s anonymity.
For now, let’s take a closer look at the racial breakdown of our staff by department:
Editorial:
We have a total of 5 members on our Editorial staff.
The current breakdown of our editorial staff is 60% White, 20% Black/African American, and 20% Latinx.
Marketing/Publicity:
We have a total of 3 members in our Marketing department.
The current breakdown of our marketing staff is 33% Black/African American, 33% Asian/Asian American, and 33% White.
Sales/Literacy:
We have a total of 3 members in our Sales/Literacy department.
The current breakdown of our sales/literacy department is 67% White and 33% Latinx.
Operations:
We have a total of 4 members in our Operations department.
The current breakdown of our operations staff is 75% Asian/Asian American and 25% Latinx.
Design:
We only have one in-house designer who identifies as Asian/Asian American.
Management:
We have a total of 3 members in Management who all identify as Asian American. They are all part of the same Chinese-American Low family for which LEE & LOW is named!
Total:
In total, we have 19 staff members at LEE & LOW BOOKS.
The current breakdown of our entire staff is 42% Asian American, 32% White, 16% Latinx, and 11% Black/African American.
We acknowledge that there are still gaps to fill, and we will continue to seek out people of color and people of Native American/Indigenous descent to join our staff. And as always, we will continue to publish diverse stories that all children can enjoy and to make a special effort to work with authors and illustrators of color.
Find more information about our Diversity Baseline Study here.
Check out our Diversity Gap studies here.
Missed the first Diversity in Publishing post? Check it out here.
