camtns

Hi Emily, thanks for an amazing podcast, great articles, and what looks to be a fantastic book. Best of luck.

My question: Slate suffers from a real dearth of voices from people of color. It's really pretty shocking for such a large staff of writers. I think this is Slate's greatest weakness. Both you (at the Seattle live gabfest) and David Plotz (in his Reddit AmA) have acknowledged that Slate recognizes this is a problem, but from what I can tell (and from what I hear and read) Slate has done nothing about it. We are all missing important perspectives. What is Slate doing to change this?

There's no appeal from SCOTUS.

Probably because it's answered very clearly in the article.

You guys only have one Native person? Good lord.

Adding the below from farther down the chain here so that Plotz may see it:

I went back and looked, and it was a question from the Seattle gabfest, on October 4, so 3 months or so; you're right.

A summary of the answer (from Emily, actually): That's something we've thought about and talked about, sometimes we bring in guests like Ta-Nehisi Coates [once, as far as I recall]. But it's a fair question and something we are working on.

Then Dan Savage makes fun of Elizabeth Warren for talking about her Native heritage.

Not stellar.

I don't doubt changing the staff is a small thing, however, how has it gotten this far? Looking at the page right now, there is one story about race or ethnicity (Segregation in the List of the 21st Century's Hottest Women), and it's probably 30 headlines down.

Notably, the above question doesn't make the cut of Plotz' own recap of this AMA.

In sum, we agree, and are frustrated by the same thing. I give Slate less of a pass on this, as it has been a problem for a long time.

Copying above as a reply to Plotz, in the off chance he checks his reddit orangereds.