Your Bookshelf May Be Part Of The Problem
By Juan Vidal, author of lots of stuff at NYT, NPR, Rolling Stone, the usual outlets. Juan baby is in with the in crowd.
One of my favorite passages from Black Boy, Richard Wright's poetic and searing memoir, which turns 75 this year, goes like this:
I would hurl words into this darkness and wait for an echo, and if an echo sounded, no matter how faintly, I would send other words to tell, to march, to fight, to create a sense of the hunger for life that gnaws in us all, to keep alive in our hearts a sense of the inexpressibly human.
This is one of your favorites, Juan? Seems a bit dark. U mad, bro?
Black Boy traces Wright's development from a troubled youth who encountered bigotry daily in the Jim Crow-era American South to a self-educated man whose reading shaped his understanding of society. I think about Wright's words often, these and others. Especially now, as cries from black men and women demanding agency reverberate across the nation and the world. It feels like the summer of our discontent is only just beginning.
That book sounds super entertaining, I'll run right out and brave COVID-19 at the bookstore to get it. But I think it's more the cries of black businessmen burned out by Antifa rioters that are reverberating across the nation and the world. Why are you boosting the depredations of a bunch of white college kids?
Books, when people come to them early enough or at the right time, have the power to be transformative. And for a lot of readers, this is the right time — witness the many anti-racist book lists circulating on social media. We must recognize the inherent value that good literature has, and the ability of language to strike an emotional chord. But someone, at some point, has to get down to the business of reading — as Lauren Michele Jackson writes at Vulture. Simply handing someone a book cannot automatically make them care. This is something I remind myself whenever anti-racist lists start to make the rounds online.
Now, finally, we come to it. He says "Books, when people come to them early enough or at the right time, have the power to be transformative". Pretty basic question I have, is it the book that has the power to transform? Are those words the thing that changes a human? Or is it more that they do it themselves, and the words just tell them something they didn't know or understand before? If handing them a book can't make them care, reading one can't make them care either. And by the way, since when is it possible to -make- someone care in the first place? I think Juan has some deep seated philosophical issues here regarding force and agency.
Grown white men in their 40s — for example — cracking open James Baldwin or Toni Morrison for the first time, after cities are already ablaze, are not going to eradicate racism. It will not put an end to the systemic injustice that has plagued this country for more than 400 years. Still, I can't help but wonder whether some people have considered that, at a basic level, the homogeneous nature of their personal library — and what that represents — is a part of the problem.
Yeah, as I said the cities are ablaze because of fires set by a fairly small group of white college communist agitators named Antifa. Made possible by DemocRat mayors who ordered their police to stand down and let it happen. Or possibly burned after pillage by black youths getting their rampage on, but to be honest the black kids don't really seem to be burning shit very much, apart from cop cars. Very practical of them, it's hard to steal out of a store that's on fire. So I have to say it is a real stretch to suggest that people's book collections are the cause of the rioting. But let's continue.
You may have seen the phrase "decolonize your bookshelf" floating around. In essence, it is about actively resisting and casting aside the colonialist ideas of narrative, storytelling, and literature that have pervaded the American psyche for so long.
Yes, I've seen the phrase and assumed it was bullshit made up by some socialist Ivory Tower wanker looking for something to complain about. Because try as I might I can't find a definition or even an example of those dreaded " colonialist ideas of narrative, storytelling, and literature". I presume Juan baby is not referring to The Pilgrim's Progress, very popular during the actual Colonial Era.
If you are white, take a moment to examine your bookshelf. What do you see? What books and authors have you allowed to influence your worldview, and how you process the issues of racism and prejudice toward the disenfranchised? Have you considered that, if you identify as white and read only the work of white authors, you are in some ways listening to an extension of your own voice on repeat? While the details and depth of experience may differ, white voices have dominated what has been considered canon for eons. That means non-white readers have had to process stories and historical events through a white author's lens. The problem goes deeper than that, anyway, considering that even now 76% of publishing professionals — the people you might call the gatekeepers — are white.
This is the set-up to the sell. I'm supposed to go look at my bookshelves and count the black authors. I'm supposed to see that there are fewer black ones than white ones. I'm -not- supposed to stop and think that maybe, just maybe that's because there are a lot less black people writing science fiction than white people. I'm supposed to now feel guilty because I've been ignoring those poor black people and then run out and get more.
Because it is the colour of an author's skin that matters, my friends. Not the contents of his book. Or her book, gotta combat that unconscious sexism you know, can't assume that "his" refers to everybody like we normally do.
Tell you what, Juan. Maybe you should go find out why so many black kids in big DemocRat-run cities are graduating highschool illiterate. As in, can't read. Struggle with street signs. (Also white kids, but Juan is on a roll and I don't want to cloud the issue with facts.)
Reading broadly and with intention is how we counter dehumanization and demand visibility, effectively bridging the gap between what we read and how we might live in a more just and equitable society.
Really? Reading can do that? How come it hasn't, so far? Oh right, because 75% of publishing professionals are white, yeah I forgot that. And also because some huge percentage of kids are graduating illiterate in socialist-run cities, maybe? Just a thought.
Or maybe it's because the United States is the most just and equitable society in history, and you, Juan, are lying about it. And I say that as a Canadian, incidentally. Canada is pretty good, but America is better.
Wright, in regards to his own self-education, later writes: "It was not a matter of believing or disbelieving what I read, but of feeling something new, of being affected by something that made the look of the world different." In that moment, he was referencing how he felt upon devouring H. L. Mencken's A Book of Prefaces, a book that helped Wright find new ways of looking and seeing.
I'm sorry, wasn't H.L. Mencken a white dude? How is it that a black dude read something written by a white dude and benefited from it? Aren't we supposed to be decolonizing here?
You might say the same of those who only read the books they have written. Their knowledge of the world and of the systems at play will always be incomplete. This can apply to any form of media we take in, naturally, but especially the literature that non-black and brown people choose to consume. Anti-racist books will only do a person good if they silence themselves first and enter into the reading — provided they care enough to do so.
It's funny you should mention reading your own books, Juan. I was driven into writing my own books after 2010 by the unrelenting push from Big Publishing for Woke (tm) books. I'm not at all interested in processing the issues of racism and prejudice toward the disenfranchised. Not to put too fine a point on it, there aren't any "disenfranchised" to worry about. Everybody has the vote, Juan. Even people who shouldn't have it, like illegal aliens, convicted criminals, and in Chicago the dead.
But anyway, there you have it Ladies and gentlemen, pernicious racism and an exhortation to book burning from NPR and Juan Vidal, as opposed to Gore Vidal or Juan Valdez.
Really, this could have been written by Juan Valdez's burro. Just another Leftist jackass cheering the looters.
