What percentage of books you own are by white authors?

[Ed Anger]

All Millennials to Gitmo.

[garbon]

I'm glad that the white boys of Languish could agree about how to deal with race...

It is quite telling that 'I don't give a fuck about race' today can be seen as a negative way to deal with race. I do not understand the young generation. Everything is black and white to them.

No, actually you agreed with grumbler's post which is a step beyond that stance.

Besides, I can see how as a white person, it can be easy to say 'I don't give a fuck about race' because in truth, racism doesn't personally affect you.

[garbon]

There you go, being divisive... 

I do believe it was grumbler who started up cries of racism.

[CountDeMoney]

There you go, being divisive... 

I do believe it was grumbler who started up cries of racism.

Only as it pertains to grammar.

[Berkut]

Why does a reader who seeks something new need to determine the particular shade of the skin of some author he or she wants to read?  I reject the implicit assumption here that there are only two kinds of writer, "white" and non-"white" and that, if most of the authors on your bookshelf are one or the other, you are not discovering new authors or trying something new.

Racism is as ugly when it poses as social justice as it is when it poses as racial supremacy.

I agree with grumbler.

I, too, agree with grumbler.

Yeah, same here.

What was really annoying about the OP was not just the suggestion that you should be thinking about the race of your authors, but the smarmy acknowledgement that of course YOU probably don't...immediately followed by letting you know that not caring is in fact just as bad as actively caring and avoiding non-white authors.

Fuck that guy.

I don't need some d-bag shoving fucking racism into my leisure reading.

You want me to read something by some black guy? Some Indian woman? Some Chinese teen ager? No problem. Recommend something, and tell me why you think I will like it, or it will teach me something I don't know, or whatever possible reason I might have to enjoy reading that book.

The thing is, all of those criteria have nothing to do with the skin tone of the person who put pen to paper. They will be good, mediocre, or terrible on the merits of the writing, not on the faux race of the author.

This is *exactly* the kind of bullshit that the Left does to eat itself and make progressives look fucking ridiculous to normal human beings.

[CountDeMoney]

11B's still taking forever plowing through August Wilson's Kursk Cycle.

[Savonarola]

I'm glad that the white boys of Languish could agree about how to deal with race...

It is quite telling that 'I don't give a fuck about race' today can be seen as a negative way to deal with race. I do not understand the young generation. Everything is black and white to them.

Their view is that an institutional or cultural bias still exists in our society and that by simply not caring about race we're perpetuating that bias.  In the United States this will leave African-Americans at the bottom of the social order, in other societies it's probably someone else.  The way to confront this bias is to adopt (what their critics would call) reverse racist policies or to give greater voice to the marginalized groups.

I realize this isn't a popular point of view on this forum; but where do you think that the error in this thinking lies?  Is there no such cultural or institutional bias?  If there is such a bias do you think that this bias will go away on its own if we adopt a color-blind point of view?  Or do you have a different solution other than reverse racist policies and actively seeking out minority points of view?  I'm genuinely curious.

[The Brain]

What is reverse racism?

[Savonarola]

What is reverse racism?

Policies such as affirmative action, preferential hiring for minorities or preferential university admissions for minorities.

[The Brain]

What is reverse racism?

Policies such as affirmative action, preferential hiring for minorities or preferential university admissions for minorities.

In Sweden that is illegal. I tend to agree with the law on this matter.

[CountDeMoney]

What is reverse racism?

Policies such as affirmative action, preferential hiring for minorities or preferential university admissions for minorities.

In Sweden that is illegal. I tend to agree with the law on this matter.

Fortunately, that's not the court's definition of reverse racism.  Just Sav's.

[Oexmelin]

This is the conversation on systemic racism redux.

Race is scientifically bunk, but it has been used to structure Western societies ever since large-scale Atlantic trades of the 18th century. It has structured the fields of knowledge and experience. One can very well assert that race is bunk, while witnessing its constant effects on, say, contemporary America. The same way that I can think sexism is bunk, while agreeing that it structures the experience of large swaths of America, or, in the case of India, that "caste" is bunk, but structures the experience of India pretty fundamentally (and ergo, my Indian colleague tells me, of Indian literature).

And if racism exists, it follows that those who experience it on a daily basis, have a reserve of experience not easily accessible to those who don't.  Clearly, there are some whose powers of imagination are such that they may very well offer a striking account of it, or use it as a convincing device in their fiction. But, it seems to me, that if we allow that collective experiences such as "poverty", "womanhood", "wealth", "nationhood" can have a pretty important effect on fiction-writing, I would suggest that "race", however morally contemptible it is, has its impact too. And, I would suggest that, in some specific cases, the experience of "race" and the experience of "nationhood" intersect pretty strongly, in the case of sub-saharan authors or Caribbean authors. The counter to that suggesting that each book is unique, and solely defined by talent appears to me untenable, in the face of such things as genre, traditions, influences, etc.

It may very well be that in genre fiction that (I think) the forum favors, such differences may be minimal. But the thing with knowledge, is that you don't really know what you are missing until you encounter it. So, if you don't know that you haven't read black authors (or Japanese authors, or Mexican authors, or Canadian authors), I find protests that it doesn't change anything substantial unconvincing - especially in the face of a multitude of counter-examples from other structuring experiences.

So, that's one aspect of it.

The other is whether or not we, as people who purchase books and read them, are entirely free of a world in which prejudice has played a huge role in the production, commercialization, dissemination of knowledge itself. To think that it's only talent that brings an author to the publishing world seems to me pretty naive. To think that people pick book out of the island of their own self-righteous mind, seems to me also pretty dubious. As Sav mentioned (and no one bothered to address, it seems), people pick books that are recommended from their circles. I learned of the existence of the poet Milton super late in life, because it just wasn't part of my world when I grew up: it was a difference in linguistic tradition, and a working class household. Similarly, I learned of the poetry of Derek Walcott also very late. It was the direct consequence of my gaining a black brother-in-law, and discovering, in his bookshelf and his family's, a host of books and authors I had never heard of.

Syt's point is totally fair: not everyone who picks a book wants to read about race relation in 20th century America. One could use, as it was intended, I think, the suggestion simply to see whether or not race (or gender, or class, or nationality, or linguistic tradition) would have an impact on your favorite reading genres, should you realize that you have no book liable to speak from experience. But if you claim to be interested in Political Science, but never picks up a book that talks about race relations, I would argue it's a pretty self-selected blind spot, much like someone who would be interested in, say, WW2, would categorically refuse the suggestion to see whether or not he has books by German authors in his bookshelf.

[Ancient Demon]

The way to reduce racism is to de-emphasize the importance of race entirely. There is no "reverse" racism, only racism.

[The Brain]

This is the conversation on systemic racism redux.

Race is scientifically bunk, but it has been used to structure Western societies ever since large-scale Atlantic trades of the 18th century. It has structured the fields of knowledge and experience. One can very well assert that race is bunk, while witnessing its constant effects on, say, contemporary America. The same way that I can think sexism is bunk, while agreeing that it structures the experience of large swaths of America, or, in the case of India, that "caste" is bunk, but structures the experience of India pretty fundamentally (and ergo, my Indian colleague tells me, of Indian literature).

And if racism exists, it follows that those who experience it on a daily basis, have a reserve of experience not easily accessible to those who don't.  Clearly, there are some whose powers of imagination are such that they may very well offer a striking account of it, or use it as a convincing device in their fiction. But, it seems to me, that if we allow that collective experiences such as "poverty", "womanhood", "wealth", "nationhood" can have a pretty important effect on fiction-writing, I would suggest that "race", however morally contemptible it is, has its impact too. And, I would suggest that, in some specific cases, the experience of "race" and the experience of "nationhood" intersect pretty strongly, in the case of sub-saharan authors or Caribbean authors. The counter to that suggesting that each book is unique, and solely defined by talent appears to me untenable, in the face of such things as genre, traditions, influences, etc.

It may very well be that in genre fiction that (I think) the forum favors, such differences may be minimal. But the thing with knowledge, is that you don't really know what you are missing until you encounter it. So, if you don't know that you haven't read black authors (or Japanese authors, or Mexican authors, or Canadian authors), I find protests that it doesn't change anything substantial unconvincing - especially in the face of a multitude of counter-examples from other structuring experiences.

So, that's one aspect of it.

The other is whether or not we, as people who purchase books and read them, are entirely free of a world in which prejudice has played a huge role in the production, commercialization, dissemination of knowledge itself. To think that it's only talent that brings an author to the publishing world seems to me pretty naive. To think that people pick book out of the island of their own self-righteous mind, seems to me also pretty dubious. As Sav mentioned (and no one bothered to address, it seems), people pick books that are recommended from their circles. I learned of the existence of the poet Milton super late in life, because it just wasn't part of my world when I grew up: it was a difference in linguistic tradition, and a working class household. Similarly, I learned of the poetry of Derek Walcott also very late. It was the direct consequence of my gaining a black brother-in-law, and discovering, in his bookshelf and his family's, a host of books and authors I had never heard of.

Syt's point is totally fair: not everyone who picks a book wants to read about race relation in 20th century America. One could use, as it was intended, I think, the suggestion simply to see whether or not race (or gender, or class, or nationality, or linguistic tradition) would have an impact on your favorite reading genres, should you realize that you have no book liable to speak from experience. But if you claim to be interested in Political Science, but never picks up a book that talks about race relations, I would argue it's a pretty self-selected blind spot, much like someone who would be interested in, say, WW2, would categorically refuse the suggestion to see whether or not he has books by German authors in his bookshelf.

Could you try again, without the strawmen?

[Oexmelin]

What is the strawman?