From National Public Radio:
On the day George Floyd was murdered — Monday, May 25, 2020 — there weren’t any books exclusively tackling white privilege, anti-Blackness, or policing on the New York Times’ Best Sellers list. White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo was the only book to break through the week of May 31, but by June 21, almost 70% of the Times’ Best Seller list confronted race.
With the sale of print books rising just over 8% and all unit sales of books surpassing 750 million, Black bookstores would play an integral role in feeding the nation’s “sudden” appetite in the plight of Black people.
Black bookstore owners like VaLinda Miller of Turning Page Bookshop in Goose Creek, S.C., can attest to the book boom.
“It was crazy and extremely overwhelming. And I had to hire some more staff members just to mail out the books,” Miller says. From June through August, Miller says they “were getting [anywhere] from 100 to 200 to 300 orders a day.”
. . . .
Even though anti-Blackness is an indiscriminate system that pays little attention to borders, Miller was especially shocked by the international shipping addresses.
“About 70% of my customers were from the United States… [but] I was surprised I got so many people from Brazil and Venezuela and so many other foreign countries,” Miller says.
She called the surge “unbelievable,” and that word resonates twofold for Miller, who had to close her first bookstore, The BookSmith, after only a few years when “people weren’t interested” in what she had to offer.”
After Miller reopened in June of 2019, she learned from this and took on a different approach when engaging this past summer’s burgeoning readers. She prodded customers to buy a book from their favorite genre in addition to the book on race that they were solemnly after. Miller vividly recounts an instance where an elderly white man entered her store looking for White Fragility.
“He said ‘My wife told me to come in here and buy a book by a Black author so I can support a Black-owned bookstore,’ ” Miller says. Her store is the only Black-owned, brick-and-mortar bookstore in the state.
“I want you to support my store,” she remembers saying, “but if you’re going to buy this book, especially considering what’s going on, I need you to also buy another book because I know what you’re going to do. You’re going to take this book home, put it down, and read the other book,” Miller says.
A few months later, this same gentleman stopped by Turning Page Bookstore to confess that he did exactly that.
. . . .
While print book sales are still surging, the Black bookstore owners who spoke to NPR say sales are down for them when compared to last summer, when they were handling 100-300 orders per day. Some of the books purchased at the apex of last summer’s protests were never finished. And there are no longer legions of protesters marching for accountability for consecutive days, despite their personal feelings toward the Black Lives Matter global network.
Link to the rest at National Public Radio
“Even though anti-Blackness is an indiscriminate system that pays little attention to borders…”
What does this even mean? What is “anti-Blackness?” Is it the same sort of thing that grievancemongers on the right complain about when they say “anti-racist is code for anti-white”? Is it some kind of global conspiracy to keep black people down? Something else?
There’s a laundry list of potential issues with this statement that means it almost requires some kind of further explanation, but the author of the article simply drops it into the beginning of a paragraph, as though it were an established and obvious fact and everyone knows what it means, and moves on.
NPR is not immune to the universal decline in the quality of journalism and reporting.
Some would say NPR started it, even before CNN.
NPR–>CNN–>FOX–>MSNBC–>Everybody else.
NPR reports are stupid. Time to recognize they are idiots.
But phony sincerity can be funny, too. I recall one NPR item titled, “The contribution of indigenous folk music to the struggle for civil rights in South Africa.”
Perhaps the best was the frantic keening when Daniel Ortega lost to Chamorro in the 1990 election. The energy of the emotional sincerity could have eliminated fossil fuels forever.
‘Color’ me surprised.
White Fragility is yet another of those Coffee Table Books. The ones that you prominently display, to signal your intellect – and, now, your Wokeness.
But, not read past the first 30-40 pages. After that point, boredom, and a near complete lack of interest in the subject, take over.
Kind of like school assigned reading. After a chapter or two, you start looking for the Cliff’s Notes, to avoid having to waste any more time on it.
These books, like so many other “must-read” books, are not thought-provoking, quality writing. They are status symbols, that identify you as one to keep in the In-Group. Who will be armored against losing your social/economic status.
Agreeing that White Racism permeates our society – in housing, in schools, on the job? Totally Righteous!
Actually selling/renting out your suburban/Upper class neighborhood housing to live ‘in da Hood’? Uh, not happening.
Pulling your kid out of private school to attend the local, non-Elite schools? No way. Oh, not because I don’t want my child to attend school with Black people – there are some lovely People of Color at their school. The Right Kind of PoC – highly educated, well-mannered, 2-parent families, possibly African or Caribbean immigrants. But, not, you know – whispers – STREET KIDS.
Pursuing eQUITy on the job by giving up your job, and insisting on it being filled by a Black person? Essentially putting the Quit into eQUITy?
Well, MAYBE once I pay off my student loans, I could CONSIDER that. Or, I WOULD, but wouldn’t I be more effective staying here as a Force for Good?
B$
Talk’s cheap. And, cheaper than Living Your Lofty Principles.