#the degree to which fandom is very white seems to be an oft unspoken part of how we talk about fandom

[elumish]

I was looking at the newest release of AO3 Demographic Survey results, which were about race, and something struck me.

Unsurprisingly, the numbers show that this part of fandom is really, really white (78.8% answered white re: their race, with 68.1% giving it as their sole answer). Latino/a/e was the next highest, at 7.1%/3.4% as sole answer.

Black, in comparison, was at 3.0%/1.8% as sole answer.

These numbers are broadly comparable to previous surveys (you can see a brief discussion of the comparison in the link).

When looking at these numbers, there are two main explanations, and both of them are notable in slightly different ways.

First, that fandom (at least defined as people who used AO3) really is this white. I find this particularly notable given the regular framing of fandom and AO3 as havens for marginalized people. We see in other results from this survey that there are relatively high proportions of queer people and women in fandom, but this indicates that fandom is primarily welcoming of and home to marginalized people so long as they are white rather than all kinds of marginalized people.

The second explanation, as I see it, is that fandom surveys consistently reflect the same sampling errors in both directionality and degree, which would indicate that there are parallel or at least broadly separate fandom spaces (outside of AO3), one of which is primarily white and one (or more) of which is less so. Basically, if survyes keep getting sampling wrong in the same way over the course of over a decade, it's because the places where the sample is being drawn from are consistently more white than fandom as a whole.

My instinct is to say that the first explanation is more correct, and that the overrepresentation of white people compared to the overall population is reflective of who participates in fandom rather than simply where survey links are being shared.

Either way, an interesting finding.