Perhaps it’s a more diverse range of illustrators themselves which is closest to a solution that actually results in more inclusive illustrations? I’m in a mixed race marriage (I’m the caucasian), and we’ve noticed that our children’s school faculty is most definitely not even close to representative of the community we live in (really of any of the non-caucasian folks from here); and that seems like it doesn’t serve our children best. When I brought this up at a recent school town hall, we were told that they are actively seeking out more representative faculty members, but, that the majority of applicants available are caucasian. What can one say to that? Is that really true? Perhaps, but I don’t know without doing the research. But the result just feels lame.

Same at my workplace. It’s not nearly as diverse as it ought to be in my opinion, and I’ve mentioned it to HR et al, and have even had private conversations with folks high up, but I don’t see any major changes. I at times hear a notion that most qualified folks in tech are of certain ethnic backgrounds and that’s why. Having worked in tech a long time, I don’t consider this unique.

I don’t have a solution to all this, but I sense it’s going to be a difficult problem to address without really addressing the fact that we should be sensitive to not only content consumers, and what we say or illustrate, but, also ask the question: Are our content producers really representative of the community? Since content and messaging really comes from the top, this would go for executives to managers to creatives. If the answer is no, perhaps that’s the real problem—JM2C