Thanks to a Read Roger post, I've just read Deirdre F. Baker's thought-provoking essay, Musings on Diverse Worlds, published in the January issue of the Horn Book. My favorite quote was her challenging concluding sentence:
The very absence of diversity in imagery as well as in lead characters indicates that as readers — perhaps even as writers — our "desire for otherness" is limited and that ... many of us aren't able or willing to go very far to feel, truly, "with those entirely other than ourselves."