The problem from what I gathered is two fold:
#1 The ENTRANTS themselves being a victim of bias because (based on their identity)
#2 Biased judging based on the identity of the CHARACTERS in the submissions.
Both are unacceptable.
You’re correct, the anonymity may not help against issue #2, but it would be effective for issue #1. Judges don’t need that information to determine scoring, and that is data that can trigger certain biases. I know the name of every author I judged. Names matter. I could look up the authors and know their race, gender. Just by the name. Took me 5 mins. Sure, even with anonymized submissions a real jerk could copy some text and look them up, but at least it wouldn’t be top of mind. It’s a bit more difficult. And that’s the goal — to make it harder to prejudge. We won’t even get into the book covers, which could display POC as characters.
Everyone is entitled to their opinion on this, but piracy and theft of these entries is already easy to do right now. You get that submission as a EPUB which you can download as a judge. Most pirated books on the internet are easily uploaded to sites in that format. There are even programs where you can convert the EPUB so it can be edited — replacing cover, names, etc. It’s pretty scary. All you need is the file. You’d be surprised how easy it could be done, which is why we see so much of piracy today. Real talk, I kinda call BS on this excuse. I know us authors have a great fear of piracy, but it cannot be stopped. Sadly, technology has opened that gate long ago.
I would like us to solve for as many of the issues as possible, so combining effort should be a goal. And there will be some trade offs on what’s more important: Maintaining a judging process that has multiple areas of known bias to “maybe” prevent piracy, or make some changes that (maybe the publishers don’t like) but will keep the process fair for everyone and rebuild credibility back into the awards.
For issue #2, if we cannot trust that the judges will check their biases and judge based on a structured criteria (which would have nothing to do with whether they “connected with the character’s (culture)”, then frankly, that pool is simply unfit to judge and need to be taken out of the equation all together. It’s important for decision makers to walk the line and do their job fairly. All those who judge the RITAs are decision makers, so their responsibility is huge. If a decision maker can’t do their job, then they should be removed from duty. Same thing here. Peer-judging has proven to be too problematic for the RITAs.
The goal should be to restructure the RITA judging, so entrants can feel confident that no matter whether they win or not, they were given a fair chance regardless of the color of their skin, who they love, and how they identify their characters.
