Hmm... I just noticed this correction. You're right, of course, but (unless I misunderstood palimpsest), I believe I was responding to what she was actually saying, and just consistently misspelling that word "systemic" in my post, rather than misreading her.
I'm not sure whether I can explain why the difference is so important and why it impacts your argument, but I'll give it a go. Systemic bias can be countered with awareness, systematic bias needs much more. Thus it can be helpful to be aware that in the TOC's of many of our genre magazines authors and protagonists of stories are overwhelmingly white and male. Merely
noticing this opens up avenues by which to correct it, because systemic bias works primarily by being invisible. When people notice it, they can (and often do) compensate to avoid it.
In systematic bias the decks are stacked so as to disallow you fixing the thing merely by noticing it. You're not going to fix segregation by reading a sign saying "coloreds only". Noticing the sign would do nothing, on its own. You have to take the sign down to start the ball rolling, an act with far-reaching legal and social ramifications.
No laws need changing for F&SF to be more gender or culture balanced. No social revolutions are required for a magazine to appeal to those readers that feel shunned by the so-called "big three" (and I am one of those readers, I'll just come clean and tell you) and market itself to the shunned. There needn't be demonstrations in the street. All it takes is for people to notice the imbalance, point it out, and act accordingly.
The reason I think this is a critical point is because in these discussions there is often a level of knee-jerk defensiveness when people try to raise awareness of systemic bias (and I'm not talking about your response, here, eytanz, which I would never characterize that way) because in systematic bias you can blame. There is something very obviously wrong (an unjust law, say, or physical intimidation by groups trying to keep the status quo) but in systemic bias it's everyone's fault. We're
all doing it and we - often - don't even know we're doing it.
When someone says,"Check your zipper, your fly is down," most people just shrug and zip it up, because everyone's had their zipper down at one point or another. When it's "Might I get a female protagonist about half the time?" or "Your magazine is whiter than a snowstorm" people get all defensive instead of saying "Huh, you're right, lemme zip."
I think this reaction comes, in part, from the unzipped's concern that they are being accused of purposeful racism or sexism. Systematic, intentional bias. And that's an offensive accusation. But it's not the one that's being made. Thus, I think the emphasis on "systemic bias" is a way of letting people off the hook instead of pointing fingers, the way "systematic bias" does, and that's why I think the omitted syllable is critically important to what palimpsest laid out.