What percentage of books you own are by white authors?

[Eddie Teach]

I own the Douglass autobiography and not Uncle Tom. Reason? It was required reading for a class I  took.

[grumbler]

What would positive change be in this context?

Trying something new? Discovering new authors? New thinkers?

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.

[Valmy]

I have Douglass and WEB Dubois' souls of black folk. And yeah Uncle Tom's Cabin is better well known in our culture. Mohammad Ali didn't call Joe Frazier a 'Frederick Douglass'.

[Oexmelin]

Of course, it is always possible to rigidify any thought experiment into ridicule, caricature, and nefarious intent, despite Sav, or sbr's points. It's The Languish Way.

The point is neither to posit a hard rule, quotas, or anything resembling that. The point is to suggest a proxy for self-awareness. So, if that simple question offends your sensibility, try one that doesn't rely on race. If the question had been framed as "What percentage of your bookshelf is made of non-American, non-British authors", and the result ended up being close to 0, would it, should it not prompt question as to why this should be? And the answer would not necessarily be that one is a close-minded American nationalist. In fact, that answer would probably be pretty low down the list of probable explanations.

But there could be other explanations: how many foreign authors are translated into English? Or, for fans of sci-fi, and fantasy, how many foreign authors are translated? Why so few? Why so many? What is their exposure in the media? How often are they recommended to me? Have I not been exposed to German fiction? To Russian fiction? To Japanese fiction? Etc. etc. If I suddenly realized that I have never read any Spanish-language author,  I would at least ask myself why, especially if I knew for a fact I was not actively discriminating against Spanish-language authors.

We can, of course, pretend racism hasn't been an operative social force for, at least, the last 300 years, and similarly pretend that this has had no structural effect on the production of knowledge and fiction. One doesn't have to be a racist to recognize that, anymore than one doesn't need to be a nationalist to think that nations have structured the shape of knowledge and fiction.

[dps]

Relax, Drakken, no one has accused you of being a racist.

It's interesting that you bring up "Uncle Tom's Cabin" as I think that's a good example of what Nalo Hopkinson was getting at.  "Uncle Tom's Cabin" is an account of slavery written by a white woman who lived in a free state.  You own that rather than an actual account of a slave, such as "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave."  Did you pick Harriet Beecher Stowe over Frederick Douglass because you're a white supremacist?  Of course not.  Did you choose her book because you subconsciously hate black people again?  Again, no.  Most likely you picked it because it's far and away the better known book.  It's not better written (in my opinion) and it's certainly not a more accurate depiction of slavery; but our society has made that the best known anti-slavery book.

Or, perhaps, he just prefers fiction to non-fiction.  I don't necessarily think that's the case;  I'm simply saying that owning Uncle Tom's Cabin instead might be due to many factors.

Also, serious question, how do I know if a particular author is white or not.  For example, one of my favorites is Glen Cook.  I had never cared about whether or not he's white, but for purposes of this thread, I looked him up on Wikipedia.  Going by his picture there, he's white, but it's possible that he's a light-skinned African-American, plus I would assume that if he were an African-American, the article would mention that, but maybe not.  Or, take a non-literary example--up until last fall, even though I had seen him on TV many times, I didn't know that Colin Kapernick was part black;  I had thought that he was part-white and part Pacific Islander.

[grumbler]

Of course, it is always possible to rigidify any thought experiment into ridicule, caricature, and nefarious intent, despite Sav, or sbr's points. It's The Languish Way.

The point is neither to posit a hard rule, quotas, or anything resembling that. The point is to suggest a proxy for self-awareness. So, if that simple question offends your sensibility, try one that doesn't rely on race. If the question had been framed as "What percentage of your bookshelf is made of non-American, non-British authors", and the result ended up being close to 0, would it, should it not prompt question as to why this should be? And the answer would not necessarily be that one is a close-minded American nationalist. In fact, that answer would probably be pretty low down the list of probable explanations.

But there could be other explanations: how many foreign authors are translated into English? Or, for fans of sci-fi, and fantasy, how many foreign authors are translated? Why so few? Why so many? What is their exposure in the media? How often are they recommended to me? Have I not been exposed to German fiction? To Russian fiction? To Japanese fiction? Etc. etc. If I suddenly realized that I have never read any Spanish-language author,  I would at least ask myself why, especially if I knew for a fact I was not actively discriminating against Spanish-language authors.

We can, of course, pretend racism hasn't been an operative social force for, at least, the last 300 years, and similarly pretend that this has had no structural effect on the production of knowledge and fiction. One doesn't have to be a racist to recognize that, anymore than one doesn't need to be a nationalist to think that nations have structured the shape of knowledge and fiction.

The original quoted argument was a thought experiment taken to ridicule, caricature, and nefarious intent.  People don't know, and have a hard time finding out, what shade of skin a given author whose book they own is. 

Now, language is easy, and it is important, I think.  We think in words, so different languages tend to support slightly (or even not-so-slightly) different ways of thinking, and, even translated (if translated well) can expose a reader to a different worldview entirely.  Readers should be encouraged to seek quality works written in other languages even over an equally-quality book written in the reader's native language.

One doesn't get as many clicks writing about language as when accusing the audience of being indifferent to their own racism, though, so I can see why Nalo Hopkinson focused on the logical fallacy of race.

[Oexmelin]

How about nations? Do you think reading outside of a nation's boundary exposes readers to different worldviews? If you were to realize that you own no books by Australian authors? Or no books by Caribbean authors?
               

[Delirium]

Open question: has any period of time in history placed as much importance on race as this one?

[grumbler]

How about nations? Do you think reading outside of a nation's boundary exposes readers to different worldviews? If you were to realize that you own no books by Australian authors? Or no books by Caribbean authors?
               

I am much less convinced that nationality makes writing alien as much as language does.  Navajo legends produce more cognitive dissonance among my American students than English ones do. 

[Grinning_Colossus]

Does Hemingway count as a Caribbean author?

Open question: has any period of time in history placed as much importance on race as this one?

Maybe that one time with the slaves.

[CountDeMoney]

Open question: has any period of time in history placed as much importance on race as this one?

Open question?  Try stupid question.

[viper37]

What would positive change be in this context?

Trying something new? Discovering new authors? New thinkers?

if you do it on purpose, it kinda voids the experiment.  If there's a different line of thought than yours, you may reject it (or approve it) simply because it was a non white / non western author, even if you don't specifically think about it.

[Savonarola]

Relax, Drakken, no one has accused you of being a racist.

It's interesting that you bring up "Uncle Tom's Cabin" as I think that's a good example of what Nalo Hopkinson was getting at.  "Uncle Tom's Cabin" is an account of slavery written by a white woman who lived in a free state.  You own that rather than an actual account of a slave, such as "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave."  Did you pick Harriet Beecher Stowe over Frederick Douglass because you're a white supremacist?  Of course not.  Did you choose her book because you subconsciously hate black people again?  Again, no.  Most likely you picked it because it's far and away the better known book.  It's not better written (in my opinion) and it's certainly not a more accurate depiction of slavery; but our society has made that the best known anti-slavery book.

Or, perhaps, he just prefers fiction to non-fiction.  I don't necessarily think that's the case;  I'm simply saying that owning Uncle Tom's Cabin instead might be due to many factors.

Well I did throw in a couple weasel words.   

I really don't know the specifics in Drakken's case.  In general "Uncle Tom's Cabin" remains the better known work for historic reasons.  It was a staple in many touring company on the vaudeville circuit; so prior to the advent of sound films almost everyone in the United States (outside the south where the work was despised) would have been familiar with it.  So it remains a key work in our culture; even if the last film version of it (to the best of my knowledge) was the ballet in "The King and I"; people know who Uncle Tom was or Simon Legree, or know about Eliza and the bloodhounds on the ice.

[Savonarola]

Open question: has any period of time in history placed as much importance on race as this one?

Well, yes, between the publication of "The Origin of Species" in 1859 and the end of the Second World War (somewhat longer in Argentina) racism was a science.

[Valmy]

It wasn't your fault Darwin!

Besides before then it was a religion to. Curse of Ham and Cush and all that.