Separate but…

[supergee]

I have complained about Borders' policy of treating "African-American" as a fiction category. (You know, Toni Morrison, pimp books, that sort of thing.) Is it possible to be stupider? Yes. Mall-Wart divides up all its books by race.

Thanx to shelleybear

Comments

[laughingrat]

Oh god, Wal-Mart. Like they didn't think anyone would notice that.

The "African-American" category or label on books is one of those problematic things. At Job B, we have patrons who come in and are frustrated that we don't have the books written by African-American authors and featuring African-American central characters (in other words, the stuff that usually gets labeled "African-American" by publishers and bookstores) separated out for ease of browsing! We do have stickers on the spines of many of them, because it makes them easier to find. Many patrons really want that. And yet, you know, it also strikes me that such segregation and labeling reinforces the idea that those books are "different," that white people aren't, couldn't, or shouldn't be interested in them, that they're not the norm.

And yet, as far as who usually gets centralized in mainstream literature (that is, white people), books with African-American characters at the center of the story really aren't the norm. And many patrons, understandably, want to seek those books out. They want to be able to find 'em.

And yet, there's a stigma around that African-American tag, too. Job B, for instance, won't get...oh hell, I can't remember the publishing term for it, I think it's "urban literature." Now, we will get Toni Morrison, and we will get Walter Mosley, but we won't get the pimp books or the "urban" novels. Yet we do get (white) romance novels. So...yeah. It's complicated. :-/