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Stop white centering.
On February 2, the School Library Journal, a publication for librarians and information specialists that reviews and recommends children’s books, released the cover of their February issue, which drew immediate criticism on social media.
Happy Friday, and welcome back! This one is personal. For my 9-to-5 (I don’t run this newsletter full-time!) I run a company that creates diverse mindfulness content for kids, and I just published my first children’s book with the same intention. For both of those projects, I’m committed to centering Black and brown kids because of how often they’re overlooked. Today’s topic – during Black History Month no less – is infuriating.
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Nicole
Ps – be sure to sign up for 28 Days of Black History.
TAKE ACTION
Support the work of We Need Diverse Books, which advocates for essential changes in the publishing industry.
Buy books that center children of color, particularly books beyond “issue books” from independent writers and publishers—recommendations on our Bookshop.
Consider: How do you center the “benefits” of diversity, equity, and inclusion at your office? In your community? At your school? Does it align with centering the needs of those most marginalized or the white community?
GET EDUCATED
By Nicole Cardoza (she/her)
On February 2, the School Library Journal, a publication for librarians and information specialists that reviews and recommends children’s books, released the cover of their February issue, which drew immediate criticism on social media.
Before we dive in, the statement on this cover isn’t factually wrong. The article highlighted on the homepage names the challenges that libraries in majority-white school districts experience when diversifying their collections. It’s correct that, as the article states, centering whiteness in children’s media can promote an ethnocentric, superior mindset against other communities of color. You can read the full article here.
But this is a disappointing example of white centering – when the case for change has to be rooted in the benefit of dominant culture. It’s a violent manipulation of privilege, a way to disregard the sentiments of a non-white person or community and prioritize white feelings instead. White centering is often found in tone-policing, racial gaslighting, and in the refusal of apologizing or holding oneself accountable for their actions. It creates the assumption that diversity is only important when it benefits white people.
The illustration, personally, makes this positioning most damning. The cover depicts a white child holding up a Black face speaking Spanish over their own. The two images merge, so the Black face becomes theirs, too. This is a form of blackface (Anti-Racism Daily) and normalizes the idea that white people can adopt the culture of non-white people for their own gain – as if it’s automatically theirs to own. It perpetuates the idea that the experiences of non-white people should be designed for white consumption, white empowerment, and white advancement. This notion is the foundation of white supremacy.
Rebekah Borucki, author, and publisher at Wheat Penny Press, emphasizes that “what happened here was no accident or oversight. The decision to center white children and their needs in an educational institution’s cover story, written by a non-Black woman, during Black History Month, is exactly why we desperately need more Black authors, publishers, and librarians creating and curating content for our children. Black creativity and labor does not exist for white people’s benefit.”
This perspective on books is quite common in the publishing industry. We already know that the industry is largely white, and the books written by people of color that succeed are “issue books,” books that educate and illuminate their struggles. We wrote about this in more detail in a previous newsletter. Consider the controversy around “American Dirt,” a novel that glorified the trauma of immigration written by a white woman. Publishers celebrated it and accelerated its rapid success without listening to the Latinx voices adamant about its harm (Vulture).
And this is reflected in the children’s book publishing space. A 2019 study by We Need Diverse Books found that 71% of the characters found in children’s books are either white or non-human (BookRiot). It’s 2.5x more likely that a children’s book character will be an animal than Black/African American, and only 1% of characters are of Native background. Currently, there are several top bestselling kids’ books featuring kids of color. Still, all but one of them reflect the inauguration of Vice President Harris (there’s also one that celebrates President Biden). We can’t wait for another inauguration to see this type of diversity (Barnes & Noble).
I was one of the few kids of color at an otherwise all-white school. I'd go home and wrap a towel around her head to pretend to have the long locks of my peers. I tried everything I could to fit in. Abby, an American Girl doll that represented a nine-year-old enslaved child, was the only Black doll I owned. In the first pages of the book that accompanied the doll, her overseer forced her to eat a worm found on the tobacco plants because she wasn’t removing them fast enough (Paris Review). Who was that doll created for? Who was that story created for? Was it designed to offer this young Black girl representation, vision, and hope, or make the horrors of slavery consumable for a broader audience? And would the diversity efforts of my school actually support me and my experience?
As of now (mid-day Thursday), the School Library Journal has yet to respond to the feedback on their cover. It’s clear that it’s up to us as individuals to stay educated and aware on how to center diverse kids’ books – by centering the experiences of marginalized children that deserve to be seen, heard, and celebrated.
We’ve created our own recommended reading list of diverse children’s books for Black History Month. You can explore the collection in our Bookshop.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
The School Library Journal released an off-putting cover in February that centers the need for diversity in children's media for the benefit of white students
This is an example of how white centered diversity efforts only perpetuate white supremacy
The publishing industry is notoriously white, and often only celebrates diverse stories when they seem to have a benefit for white readers.
RELATED ISSUES
11/19/2020 | Decolonize your reading habits.
7/15/2020 | End racial bias in school discipline.
9/7/2020 | Learn about critical race theory.
PLEDGE YOUR SUPPORT
Thank you for all your financial contributions! If you haven't already, consider making a monthly donation to this work. These funds will help me operationalize this work for greatest impact.
Subscribe on Patreon | Give one-time on PayPal | Venmo @nicoleacardoza
Decolonize your reading habits.
Until recently, I worked for a public library. Part of my department’s job was recommending books to patrons who wanted suggestions of what to read next. Unfortunately, our staff often only recommended books by writers of color if the patron asked for it specifically— if they asked for books about racism or for Black History Month or about “the immigrant experience.”
It's Thursday! Welcome back to the ARD. As we enter the holiday season and plan to spend more time indoors, book sales spike. If you're looking to gift yourself or a loved one with a new book, make it a new tale from a diverse writer. Today, Jami explains the significance of broadening your reading habits and pitfalls of the publishing industry.
This is the Anti-Racism Daily, a daily newsletter with tangible ways to dismantle racism and white supremacy. Support our work by making a one-time contribution on our website or PayPal, or giving monthly onPatreon. You can also Venmo (@nicoleacardoza). To subscribe, go to antiracismdaily.com.
Nicole
TAKE ACTION
Browse through your bookshelves or think about the books you’ve read this year.
Reflect: How many books are by people of color? By Black writers? Are all those books only focused on trauma or pain? Are all the books you read for fun or pleasure all by white writers?Ensure that your anti-racism reading translates off the page. After you read a book, ask yourself: what actions or steps are you taking in response?
Divest from Amazon. Buy from Black-owned bookstores.
GET EDUCATED
By Jami Nakamura Lin (she/her)
Until recently, I worked for a public library. Part of my department’s job was recommending books to patrons who wanted suggestions of what to read next. Unfortunately, our staff often only recommended books by writers of color if the patron asked for it specifically— if they asked for books about racism or for Black History Month or about “the immigrant experience.”
But people didn’t ask those questions very often. They asked for thrillers. For books like Harry Potter or Game of Thrones. For a book with a good love story. And in those cases, our staff would often suggest white author after white author.
My experience at the library is mirrored in our reading habits across the nation. In the wake of George Floyd, people talked a lot about how anti-racist reading was on the rise, and pointed to the number of Black authors on the bestsellers’ lists (NYTimes). But with one or two notable exceptions, those authors were writing nonfiction explicitly about racism. Meanwhile, the lists were full of white writers writing about everything (Publisher’s Weekly).
Unfortunately, we have a tendency to read Black authors or authors of color only when they write about very specific topics—and it’s a problem deeply entrenched in publishing. “In the industry, stories about police brutality, the struggle, poverty, etc. have been dubbed “issue” books, and it’s a not-so-secret secret that if your book doesn’t fall into this category, it won’t get any real push or marketing,” says L.L. McKinney, author of the fantasy series The Nightmare-Verse (Tor.com). The industry, she explains, focuses predominantly on Black pain.
The results of such pigeonholing are far-reaching. Often, these are the only books about Black people assigned in school— an example of how curriculum can unintentionally result in racial trauma (Teaching Tolerance). Meanwhile, McKinney argues that “there’s the exploitative aspect of non-Black readers taking in this story and somehow feeling they’ve accomplished something. They’ve managed activism by bearing witness to the events of the book, but then don’t follow up with seeking change in the real world. Reading then becomes performative” (Tor.com).
This happens against the backdrop of a publishing industry with a huge diversity problem across the board. Editors are 85% white, sales representatives are 81% white, agents are 80% white, book reviewers are 80% white (Lee & Low). (Interns, however, are only 51% white, a statistic that comforts me not at all.) The viral Twitter campaign #publishingpaidme (started by McKinney and YA author Tochi Onyebuchi) exposed the enormous pay discrepancies between Black writers and non-Black writers (Buzzfeed News). Black writers like N.K. Jemisin, whose amazing Broken Earth trilogy won basically every fantasy and sci-fi award, was paid an $25,000 advance for her book; Roxane Gay got a $15,000 advance for Bad Feminist (NPR). Meanwhile, white authors with less experience in the same genre were pulling in six-figure advances.
So it’s not that reading books about “issues” is problematic. It’s problematic when those are the only books by Black authors (or authors of color) you read. It’s problematic when you turn to writers of color when you want to be educated, but white writers the rest of the time. Instead, we should also be reaching for authors of color when we want a lighthearted, fluffy book. When we want to read something to decompress from our months of election anxiety. When we want to travel to a different world. We shouldn’t have our “race/racism bookshelf”, crammed with writers of color, and have every other shelf filled with white writers.
It can be hard to know where to start—especially when major publications and newspapers don’t make much space for these kinds of books. Luckily, the Internet is chock-full of so many reviewers and book bloggers of color who have collected so many resources for all sorts of genres. Lists like 8 Great Books Celebrating Black Joy by Enobong Essien, 5 Indigenous Speculative Fiction Authors You Should Be Reading by Rebecca Roanhorse, and The Asian Detective Novel: From Racist Caricature to Authentic Representation by Pooja Makhijani show that there’s no excuse for ignorance. (For parents [and other people who love reading YA or kidlit] check out the organization We Need Diverse Books and their wonderful Instagram.)
And when you choose to buy, purchase from Black-owned, Indigenous-owned, or other POC-owned bookstores, many of which have been hit hard by COVID. Most importantly: don’t buy from Amazon. I know, I know—I too have been seduced by their low, low prices, especially when compared to an indie bookstore. But I’m trying to remember that the $5 or $6 dollars I save buying at Amazon is possible because of their exploitative, unethical practices (which we covered in a previous newsletter). The company can offer cheaper books because “they are cutting other costs: taxes, publisher payments, author payments, and safe-labor practices” (Social Justice Books). (For more on Amazon pricing and problems, check out The Nation.)
We need to imagine a different future. Books can point us there—but only if what we’re reading also helps us imagine and understand a world full of the fullness of Black lives, of the joy in Indigenous community, in the mundane and the silly and the vastness of experience of people of color. It’s important to educate ourselves about the painful reality of racism, but we can’t stop at trauma. Instead, we need to incorporate books by writers of color into all of our reading, and ensure that what we read translates into our actions.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
he publishing industry promotes books about Black pain and trauma more than books by Black writers in other topics or in other genres, like fantasy and romance (Tor.com).
It’s important for us to read books by Black writers and writers of color not only when we want to read about racism or want to be educated, but also for leisure—mysteries, romance, thrillers, literary fiction, etc.
The publishing industry is predominantly white. Editors are 85% white, sales representatives are 81% white, agents are 80% white, and book reviewers are 80% white (Lee & Low).
RELATED ISSUES
6/15/2020 | Diversify your media consumption.
7/17/2020 | Analyze representation in media.
10/26/2020 | Support diversity in animated films.
PLEDGE YOUR SUPPORT
Thank you for all your financial contributions! If you haven't already, consider making a monthly donation to this work. These funds will help me operationalize this work for greatest impact.
Subscribe on Patreon | Give one-time on PayPal | Venmo @nicoleacardoza