If your opinion is that female and poc voices are "low quality" then I don't know what to say...
This isn't adding voices for the sake of it. This is adding voices because those voices are an essential part of historical understanding and history suffers if you exclude them.
Bad authors are bad, and good authors are good whatever sex and skin color they have. Individual author qualities are much more relevant than the social context they are immersed; if somebody doesn't understand they society they are talking about, reading them is worthless, it doesn't matter if it has an incredibly different and interesting culture.
Around here there is plenty (but trending down) of pushing for authors on the basis that they are local, or non-white, or not male, or poor. There is also a lot (and trending up) of pushing for authors on the basis that they are from some "world-class" place/culture. Both approaches are classist/racist/sexist and plain stupid. Labels like "decolonizing" usually come from the first group, and anybody trying to judge local authors based on their own merits is quickly outed from that group with the argument that judging works done by such class/race/sex is classist/racist/sexist, so people using that label are almost never on the actually unprejudiced group.
Besides, forcefully changing authors based on prejudice has the double effect of teaching locals that they aren't expected to create high quality work and delegating competent locals to a life of obscurity, because if you can't judge their work, you can't discover that it's any good either.
But anyway, that says nothing about the subjects of study. It is always worthy to study the cultures that helped forming one's own.
Bad authors are bad, and good authors are good whatever sex and skin color they have.
Again, "voices" not "authors".
And this is the whole point! People aren't elevating worthless voices for diversity sake. People are resolving a problem where valuable voices were excluded because of their identity. We are getting closer to a fair analysis, not further from it.
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Brazilian here. Around here, it usually means adding low quality voices to the discussion.
Although there are a few pushing for recognition of good local work, those few tends to be attacked from both sides of the discussion.
If your opinion is that female and poc voices are "low quality" then I don't know what to say...
This isn't adding voices for the sake of it. This is adding voices because those voices are an essential part of historical understanding and history suffers if you exclude them.
Bad authors are bad, and good authors are good whatever sex and skin color they have. Individual author qualities are much more relevant than the social context they are immersed; if somebody doesn't understand they society they are talking about, reading them is worthless, it doesn't matter if it has an incredibly different and interesting culture.
Around here there is plenty (but trending down) of pushing for authors on the basis that they are local, or non-white, or not male, or poor. There is also a lot (and trending up) of pushing for authors on the basis that they are from some "world-class" place/culture. Both approaches are classist/racist/sexist and plain stupid. Labels like "decolonizing" usually come from the first group, and anybody trying to judge local authors based on their own merits is quickly outed from that group with the argument that judging works done by such class/race/sex is classist/racist/sexist, so people using that label are almost never on the actually unprejudiced group.
Besides, forcefully changing authors based on prejudice has the double effect of teaching locals that they aren't expected to create high quality work and delegating competent locals to a life of obscurity, because if you can't judge their work, you can't discover that it's any good either.
But anyway, that says nothing about the subjects of study. It is always worthy to study the cultures that helped forming one's own.
Again, "voices" not "authors".
And this is the whole point! People aren't elevating worthless voices for diversity sake. People are resolving a problem where valuable voices were excluded because of their identity. We are getting closer to a fair analysis, not further from it.
By "voices" you mean diversity on the subject being studied? If so, I completely agree.
Could you give an example?