Ultimately, there are enough talented people of all races out there and if hiring was done strictly on merit alone (as many claim should be done), greater diversity would come naturally.
No it wouldn't. By that logic there must be sexism among publishers of harlequin romance novels, as well as classism, racism & ablism too. After all, the overwhelming majority of those writers are lower middle class white women who are not physically handicapped.
The fact is it does not follow that merit based employment will lead to a wider range of diversity.
However, can anyone really say hiring right now would be done on merit alone if there was none of this diversity stuff going on? Since nepotism, which isn't at all a bad thing mind you, is so common, probably not.
Except they already do hire on the basis of merit. Every single year the major comic companies & many of the minor comic companies have booths at major comic conventions specifically to look for new talent.
There is also, of course, the issue of, who actually WANTS to be in the industry? Black people make up, what, 12-15 percent of our population? So ideally, in a theoretically perfect world, they would make up that same proportion of the comic book industry. Well what if black people statistically are uninterested in the industry? Well, then the number might be a tad bit lower
More than a tad lower. If you have a starting pool of only 20% of the population & everything else being equal the best you can hope for is that you make up 20% of creators. Of course this assumes that literally every single black man, woman, child, grand parent, crossing guard, homeless person, super intendant of schools & rapper is fighting tooth and nail to be a comic book creator.
No, it's based instead on percentage of readership, not percentage of the population, just as it is for harlequin romance novel writers in my above example.
So really the question that needs to be asked if whether or not taking any steps to enforce diversity are really even necessary. AND... I have the answer. The answer is that there just really isn't enough data to say one way or the other.
Actually the answer is categorically NO. You can't enforce diversity, that's not even a positive goal: What you are talking about is called equality of outcome & it's not equality at all, which is why it's sometimes called "Fascist Equality", since it removes the freedom of choice & builds everything on quotas absent of desire or talent.
When you say "I must hire a black person to fill this quota" rather than "I must hire the person I think will best suit this role," that is a form of racial discrimination. You are discriminating against everyone else on the basis of race.
The fact is that such a concept is actively, openly racist. Remember racism is any form of discrimination or prejudice on the specific basis of race.
What is desirable is equality of opportunity, where everyone has the same opportunity to hone their skills & submit to a critique at a convention.
And to people who want to abuse statistics, this looks like discrimination, because they legitimately think that because their specific demographic makes up such a percentage of a larger population mass, that if they aren't exactly the same in ever field then it must be some form of discrimination that needs remedying by "adding diversity," like that's actually a desirable outcome.
Adding talent is what they should be aiming for, not adding diversity.