Trigger Warning: This article contains discussions of racism and antisemitism. Please exercise care while reading.
There’s a lot of work that goes into putting quality media out into the world. Whether it’s publishing a new book or launching a new show on Netflix, there are plenty of people working behind the scenes to get everything just right.
One area of media industries that has been receiving more attention recently is jobs that focus on accurate, diverse representation. Within the past five years, there has been a push to diversify both on-page and on-screen storytelling and the hiring processes as the destructive effects of racism in America have become blatantly apparent. Publishers and streaming services alike are racing to catch up with the rest of the culture, but progress has been slow. Jobs such as sensitivity readers and cultural consultants can help to close these gaps.
Not all of this attention on diversity has been positive, however. As the demand for sensitivity readers and cultural consultants has grown, so has the pushback against them. In this era of cancel culture, critics for and against can be equally harsh in their argumentation. So, just what are sensitivity readers and cultural consultants? And why is there so much controversy surrounding these jobs when their purpose is to promote positive representation? Let’s deep-dive into the world of representation and what “getting it right” looks like.
What Is a Sensitivity Reader?
In pursuit of new stories, authors often tend to create characters and even whole worlds that fall outside the realm of their own lived experiences. Sometimes, well-intentioned depictions of minority groups, whether real or fictional, result in harmful stereotypes that a writer from a different cultural background might not detect. This is where sensitivity readers come in.
Publishers and authors hire sensitivity readers to provide feedback on race, gender, sexuality, and physical disabilities to ensure that these descriptions aren’t offensive to the groups the writer is trying to represent. They also may choose to work with sensitivity readers if they anticipate that a particular book’s subject matter may generate angry online backlash and negative reviews. Sensitivity readers essentially serve as an extra editor, noting changes that writers should make to create representation that is not only accurate but multidimensional. Although the use of sensitivity readers is becoming increasingly common across genres, they are especially prevalent in children’s literature and YA fiction. When young readers are learning about people with different cultural backgrounds for the first time, it’s important that they internalize positive representation instead of stereotypes.
What Is a Cultural Consultant?
Cultural consultants are similar to sensitivity readers. The biggest difference between the two is that cultural consultants work with film and TV studios at any stage in the production process to provide a fresh set of eyes for decisions regarding on-screen representation. People who work in these roles are not only concerned with editing scripts but also assist in refining visual representations for productions themselves and for marketing campaigns. For example, if all of the protagonists in a movie have light skin but all the antagonists have dark skin, a cultural consultant would point out how these characters perpetuate damaging narratives about darker-skinned people as inherently villainous.
Companies such as Culture House and Coalition of Asian Pacifics in Entertainment (CAPE) are leading the charge by collaborating with major production companies to inspire real change. Through accurately depicting diverse characters in a variety of roles, cultural consultants hope to help audiences feel seen and to finally profit themselves after years of being marginalized and underappreciated for their societal contributions.
The Controversy
While many writers, publishers, and audiences agree that working with sensitivity readers and cultural consultants is a necessary step in the creative process, others disagree. Critics of culturally sensitive editing argue that making such changes amounts to censorship. With book bans surging across the US, it’s easy to see why some creatives have reservations about cutting content that people may find offensive.
Some of the most recent books to receive intense scrutiny in light of this debate are Roald Dahl’s classic stories. Although he remains a literary staple of childhood, Dahl’s tales are also rife with insulting tropes. His antisemitism, sexism, and bigotry are well known, and have impacted his storytelling. In 2023, Puffin Books announced it would be publishing new editions of Dahl’s works with revisions made to sections that depicted certain groups negatively. Although the edits were relatively small—rewording a key word or phrase here and there—they caused an uproar online. Author Salman Rushdie was among those who spoke out against the changes, calling the revisions “absurd censorship” in an X (formerly Twitter) post. Critics of sensitivity readers and cultural consultants lament what is and could be lost if stories are sanitized to suit modern audiences. They worry that people, especially children, will never learn to confront the ugliness of the world if they aren’t exposed to it in the media they consume.
Roald Dahl was no angel but this is absurd censorship. Puffin Books and the Dahl estate should be ashamed. https://t.co/sdjMfBr7WW
— Salman Rushdie (@SalmanRushdie) February 18, 2023
Why These Jobs Matter
Understanding our prejudices and working to correct them is an important part of being a compassionate and kind human being. What these critics fail to grasp is that any changes that sensitivity readers and cultural consultants make to a book, TV show, or movie don’t occur in a vacuum. They don’t come about from one person randomly eviscerating a text. Any edits consultants suggest are based on years—perhaps even a lifetime—of experience struggling against racism, sexism, homophobia, ableism, etc. There is immense value in editors using the injustices they faced to benefit future generations. People can still grasp difficult concepts without feeling as though they themselves are the targets of the author’s clichés. Audiences deserve more respect than that.
This work is challenging. Recommending changes about cultural representation may seem insignificant, but it requires intense emotional labor. This work is also rewarding and deeply necessary. When people see themselves represented accurately on the page and on the screen, they feel valued and empowered to contribute their own stories to the larger culture. These jobs ensure that creative storytelling will continue to thrive in spite of hateful rhetoric and fearmongering surrounding cultural diversity. Although the industry faces criticism, there is hope.
Want to learn more about how to become a sensitivity reader? Check out our article here!
Looking to diversify your TBR? Click here to see Bookstr’s recs.
