Thomas Sowell has out a new book, A Man of Letters, a collection of letters he's written and received over his lifetime tracing the development of his ideas. While in a bookstore looking for his book, he began to ruminate about the pernicious habit of bookstores to put all books by black authors into a special section.
If Rachael Ray had been black, there are bookstores where her cookbook would not be displayed in the same section with all the other cookbooks. It would be displayed off in a special section for black authors.
This means that many people who were looking for cookbooks would not even see Rachael Ray's cookbook, much less buy it.
This is not rocket science but it seems to have escaped the notice of those publishers who supply racial information on their authors, thereby jeopardizing sales of their own books.
Some years back, I was looking for a particular book on child development and was surprised not to see it in the large section of child development books at a local bookstore.
When I asked a clerk to check and see if that book was available, she checked her computer and then said that there were copies in the store right now -- in the section for black writers.
I had no idea what race the author of this child development book was, and would have considered it irrelevant if I had known. But our schools and colleges have turned out millions of people steeped in the new sacred trinity of "race, class, and gender."
The very people who claim to live for the day when no one will pay attention to race are themselves constantly paying attention to race and making sure that no one can forget it. They'd prefer that black authors lose customers because people wouldn't think to look in the African American section for a child development book than that they turn a blind eye to what might be in the best commercial interests of the author.
Thomas Sowell has out a new book, A Man of Letters, a collection of letters he's written and received over his lifetime tracing the development of his ideas. While in a bookstore looking for his book, he began to ruminate about the pernicious habit of bookstores to put all books by black authors into a special section.
If Rachael Ray had been black, there are bookstores where her cookbook would not be displayed in the same section with all the other cookbooks. It would be displayed off in a special section for black authors.
This means that many people who were looking for cookbooks would not even see Rachael Ray's cookbook, much less buy it.
This is not rocket science but it seems to have escaped the notice of those publishers who supply racial information on their authors, thereby jeopardizing sales of their own books.
Some years back, I was looking for a particular book on child development and was surprised not to see it in the large section of child development books at a local bookstore.
When I asked a clerk to check and see if that book was available, she checked her computer and then said that there were copies in the store right now -- in the section for black writers.
I had no idea what race the author of this child development book was, and would have considered it irrelevant if I had known. But our schools and colleges have turned out millions of people steeped in the new sacred trinity of "race, class, and gender."
The very people who claim to live for the day when no one will pay attention to race are themselves constantly paying attention to race and making sure that no one can forget it. They'd prefer that black authors lose customers because people wouldn't think to look in the African American section for a child development book than that they turn a blind eye to what might be in the best commercial interests of the author.
