More White People on Black Book Covers, Please
01/28/10 11:02 AM
YA author Justine
Larbalestier recently made some headlines by
complaining loudly and publicly that her publishing
house had placed a photo of a white girl on the
cover of her novel, the heroine of which was black.
The publishing house eventually acquiesced and
replace the cover image with that of a black girl.
One has to applaud Ms. Larbalestier's nerve at railing at the publishing behemoth, but her ire, while morally upright, was practically foolish, and the press indignation that followed was largely self-righteous and hypocritical.
Throughout American history, blacks have often hidden their flames behind white fire screens in order to make good livings. Black artists' album covers from the 1950s notoriously sported white girls to assuage the majority music-buying audience. An LA relative of mine had a black wife so fair that she was mistaken for white. Using her as a front, the pair bought property where blacks weren't allowed to buy. They prospered.
Justifying her crusade, Ms. Larbalestier said, "The notion that 'black books' don't sell is pervasive at every level of publishing. Yet I have found few examples of boks with a person of colour on the cover that have had the full weight of a publishing house behind them."
As a practicing marketing professional, I take the world as it is, not as I believe it should be. I acknowledge buyers' prejudices and preconceptions (especially those they don't acknowledge themselves) and work to subvert them. When the defunct publishing house Carroll & Graf published my novel several years ago, they placed an image of a bare-assed flirtatious black tart on the cover. This despite the fact that the book had one major black character among a pervasively white cast--and that character was male. I noted my objections to the publisher, who ignored them, seemingly convinced that basic marketing principles did not apply to the book trade.
I had grave professional misgivings about a principal black image of any kind on the cover considering the audience I might attract, and this black image, while attractive, was particularly misleading. Would my book have sold better with a more representative and less black cover? I will never have the chance to find out.
Should I be fortunate enough to have another publisher accept a manuscript not aimed solely at a black audience, I will do violence before I let them put a solo black image on the cover. It will limit my sales. Period. The image will limit the marketing department's ambitions for the book, and no one wants to sink time and resources into a foreordained loser. In a perfect world, would such an image limit the book's salability in the salesman's eyes? No. Does it? Yes.
We do not live in a perfect world. This is 21st America where money and power rule; and as black Americans, we have history to deal with. According to a 2003 study by Dr. Marianne Bertrand of the University of Chicago and Dr. Sendhil Mullainathan of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, resumes with "black-sounding" names (e.g., Keisha, Tremayne) were 50% less likely to receive a callback than those with "white-sounding" names (Brad, Kristen).
In 2001, Douglas Massey and Garvey Lundy of the University of Pennsylvania showed that those speaking "black english" or with a "black accent" were more likely to be told that an advertised rental unit was unavailable than those speaking "white english." And yes, it is safe to assume that white folks are less likely to pick up a book with a black person on the cover. These are the facts on the ground. Self-destructive utopianism won't cure it. Cash will.
I will save my crusades for when I have racked up sufficient sales to wield real clout, at which time I will plaster my covers with bona fide Nubian princes. Until then I will accept that in the American marketplace of letters and ideas, black is as popular as it is on the Paris runway. Black authors need to prove we can sell books to mainstream audiences and earn on par with white writers. If it takes a "white" cover to do that, fine. Sacrificing on the alter of "the world is not as it should be" simply limits black opportunity and extends the status quo in which our books too often don't earn, and we continue to get the appropriate lack of deference and respect.
One has to applaud Ms. Larbalestier's nerve at railing at the publishing behemoth, but her ire, while morally upright, was practically foolish, and the press indignation that followed was largely self-righteous and hypocritical.
Throughout American history, blacks have often hidden their flames behind white fire screens in order to make good livings. Black artists' album covers from the 1950s notoriously sported white girls to assuage the majority music-buying audience. An LA relative of mine had a black wife so fair that she was mistaken for white. Using her as a front, the pair bought property where blacks weren't allowed to buy. They prospered.
Justifying her crusade, Ms. Larbalestier said, "The notion that 'black books' don't sell is pervasive at every level of publishing. Yet I have found few examples of boks with a person of colour on the cover that have had the full weight of a publishing house behind them."
As a practicing marketing professional, I take the world as it is, not as I believe it should be. I acknowledge buyers' prejudices and preconceptions (especially those they don't acknowledge themselves) and work to subvert them. When the defunct publishing house Carroll & Graf published my novel several years ago, they placed an image of a bare-assed flirtatious black tart on the cover. This despite the fact that the book had one major black character among a pervasively white cast--and that character was male. I noted my objections to the publisher, who ignored them, seemingly convinced that basic marketing principles did not apply to the book trade.
I had grave professional misgivings about a principal black image of any kind on the cover considering the audience I might attract, and this black image, while attractive, was particularly misleading. Would my book have sold better with a more representative and less black cover? I will never have the chance to find out.
Should I be fortunate enough to have another publisher accept a manuscript not aimed solely at a black audience, I will do violence before I let them put a solo black image on the cover. It will limit my sales. Period. The image will limit the marketing department's ambitions for the book, and no one wants to sink time and resources into a foreordained loser. In a perfect world, would such an image limit the book's salability in the salesman's eyes? No. Does it? Yes.
We do not live in a perfect world. This is 21st America where money and power rule; and as black Americans, we have history to deal with. According to a 2003 study by Dr. Marianne Bertrand of the University of Chicago and Dr. Sendhil Mullainathan of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, resumes with "black-sounding" names (e.g., Keisha, Tremayne) were 50% less likely to receive a callback than those with "white-sounding" names (Brad, Kristen).
In 2001, Douglas Massey and Garvey Lundy of the University of Pennsylvania showed that those speaking "black english" or with a "black accent" were more likely to be told that an advertised rental unit was unavailable than those speaking "white english." And yes, it is safe to assume that white folks are less likely to pick up a book with a black person on the cover. These are the facts on the ground. Self-destructive utopianism won't cure it. Cash will.
I will save my crusades for when I have racked up sufficient sales to wield real clout, at which time I will plaster my covers with bona fide Nubian princes. Until then I will accept that in the American marketplace of letters and ideas, black is as popular as it is on the Paris runway. Black authors need to prove we can sell books to mainstream audiences and earn on par with white writers. If it takes a "white" cover to do that, fine. Sacrificing on the alter of "the world is not as it should be" simply limits black opportunity and extends the status quo in which our books too often don't earn, and we continue to get the appropriate lack of deference and respect.
How to Make Chris Matthews Forget You're Black
01/28/10 10:53 AM
Chris Matthews has a
long history of giving
spontaneous voice to the Village attitude that
black people are icky and not "normal" like
white folks. It just bubbles up, like vomit.
Yesterday, he did it again. "I forgot he was
black tonight for an hour," Chris Matthews said
of Barack Obama's SOTU speech.
This implies that Matthews spent the other 23 hours of that and every other day in unbearable awareness Obama's blackness. To Matthews, the black in the White House is an inescapable taint, a voodoo curse that has slithered into his lizard brain to discomfit him whenever forced to cast eyes upon it. It should not be there. It is deeply wrong for reasons that he can't rationally explain, even to himself. But he understands a white Congressman yelling "You lie" in the hallowed Chamber while The Dark Usurper dared to speak to his betters. It's Obama's own fault for forcing his blackness upon those who have no desire to see it.
For one hour, Matthews forgot that this half white, Ivy League educated lawyer was black. For one solid hour, he was able to see past the twisted gut reactions that that damned accursed skin evokes in him. He and his ilk know that for Obama to succeed as President, he must recapture the magic of that wondrous hour. He must make white Washington (and by association, white America) forget that he is black.
Ideas on how Obama might make Matthews forget:
Hit him on the head with a ball pean hammer. Then hit him again.
Adopt "Dixie" as a White House theme song
Trade White House ghetto blaster for an iPod
Divorce Michelle
Keep those pickaninnies out of sight
Bleach. (If it's good enough for Sosa, it's good enough for Obama)
Fire Attorney General Eric Holder
Fire EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson
Fire Surgeon General Dr. Regina Benjamin
Fire White House Social Secretary Desiree Rogers
Fire UN Ambassador Susan Rice
(Oh... you get the idea)
Obama must also abandon any idea that stinks of liberalism. It reminds "normal Americans" of black people. Screw health care. Damn mass transit. Black people use those. That's why they're "socialist." Obama must make America forget how deep and subtle the hatred is. He succeeded for one hour. He can make Matthews and his ilk forget their fear and their loathing only when he stops assaulting them by shamelessly brandishing that hideous skin, and only then will they deem his administration a success.
This implies that Matthews spent the other 23 hours of that and every other day in unbearable awareness Obama's blackness. To Matthews, the black in the White House is an inescapable taint, a voodoo curse that has slithered into his lizard brain to discomfit him whenever forced to cast eyes upon it. It should not be there. It is deeply wrong for reasons that he can't rationally explain, even to himself. But he understands a white Congressman yelling "You lie" in the hallowed Chamber while The Dark Usurper dared to speak to his betters. It's Obama's own fault for forcing his blackness upon those who have no desire to see it.
For one hour, Matthews forgot that this half white, Ivy League educated lawyer was black. For one solid hour, he was able to see past the twisted gut reactions that that damned accursed skin evokes in him. He and his ilk know that for Obama to succeed as President, he must recapture the magic of that wondrous hour. He must make white Washington (and by association, white America) forget that he is black.
Ideas on how Obama might make Matthews forget:
Hit him on the head with a ball pean hammer. Then hit him again.
Adopt "Dixie" as a White House theme song
Trade White House ghetto blaster for an iPod
Divorce Michelle
Keep those pickaninnies out of sight
Bleach. (If it's good enough for Sosa, it's good enough for Obama)
Fire Attorney General Eric Holder
Fire EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson
Fire Surgeon General Dr. Regina Benjamin
Fire White House Social Secretary Desiree Rogers
Fire UN Ambassador Susan Rice
(Oh... you get the idea)
Obama must also abandon any idea that stinks of liberalism. It reminds "normal Americans" of black people. Screw health care. Damn mass transit. Black people use those. That's why they're "socialist." Obama must make America forget how deep and subtle the hatred is. He succeeded for one hour. He can make Matthews and his ilk forget their fear and their loathing only when he stops assaulting them by shamelessly brandishing that hideous skin, and only then will they deem his administration a success.
On MLK and What Obama Is Not
01/28/10 10:49 AM
Progressives bemoan
Obama's failure to fulfill his perceived promise to
challenge the status quo. During the historic 2008
presidential campaign, Americans both black and
white read his book, saw his skin, heard his
occasionally preacherly speech cadences married to
an academically trained intellect, and the bargain
was sealed. They saw, they heard, they made
assumptions, and progressives swooned.
Their assumptions were wrong. During the campaign, there was a major kerfluffle when some black commentators suggested that Barack Obama was not 'black like them.' It was a statement of truth, but unfortunately it was perverted and condemned because it was presented in language warped by centuries of ignorance, race hatred, and self-loathing. Barack Obama's appeal as a progressive game-changer, a candidate to inflict blunt-force trauma on the status quo was largely predicated on his skin color. Extensive evidence that his domestic policies sat to the right of some of his primary opponents and articles like Larissa MacFarquhar's "The Conciliator," clearly indicated that he was not the man to wage war against existing power structures. But we looked at his skin, heard the words "African-American," and assumed he had the heart of an outsider, someone born and raised to be suspicious of the status quo, born of a people willing to subvert it. None of this was true.
In fact, Barack Obama is not "black like me." Of course, he is as black as any other black man. He is as African-American as any other man or woman of African ancestry. What he is NOT is raised in the culture of the American descendants of African slaves. He is not culturally "Afro-American." This is what most Americans very imprecisely mean when we say "black" or "African-American." We are talking about the culture, not the color. We are talking about drinking in generations of lessons learned, cultural touchstones, habits of being, speech, worship and communication that have bubbled up on American soil over the past 400 years. When most of us say "black," we mean culturally Afro-American -- the culture born of the American descendants of African slaves. This Barack Obama is not. He has no association with it save accepting it in young adulthood. It is not endemic to him. For Obama, the cultural Afro-Americanism that so many voters assumed is an academic add-on, not a cultural foundation.
Color is not culture. Obama was raised by white Kansans, not the American descendants of African slaves. No Kenyan father and no stint in Malaysia, regardless of how exotic they sound to most Americans, trump the lessons he imbibed from the people who raised him. Why would we assume that white Kansans taught anything but tolerance of the American status quo and its centers of power? Yet, we saw dark skin and assumed the political iconoclasm associated with deep cultural Afro-Americanism where neither existed. And now we whine that we have been betrayed.
We let Obama's late adoption of (as opposed to nurturing within) an Afro-American cultural mantel blind us to his actual cultural foundations. We heard some sing-songy, grade B speechifying and anointed him another MLK -- another black man come to wash America's dirty moral linen. We called it a "movement" and thus made it the first "movement" in history in which nobody actually moved. It was a virtual "movement," an ersatz "movement" by proxy because its members weren't committing to any kind of long-term struggle. They were simply appointing a servant to do another MLK -- but this time we didn't ask him to wash the sins of segregation away. This time we wanted him to scrub out the Bush years.
Afro-America should have sounded the alarm. We tried. But we have allowed the majority to dictate our self-image for so long, we were unable to articulate the relevant cultural aspect of our very American being. Which is not surprising because we don't even credit ourselves with that aspect. The majority conflates color with culture, so we follow suit. The majority historically told us that "a nigger's a nigger," so we believe accordingly. We have always been told that we are culturally valueless, little more than color and a political "issue," and so we ignore our own culture; we fail to codify, painstakingly record it or teach it to our young. So a dark-skinned man raised by white Kansans is assumed to have the same cultural innards as I, and when he behaves like what he has been all along -- a typical politician who promises what must be promised to gain office and then waffles on achieving it once there, we complain that he doesn't behave in accordance with our ignorant assumptions about him.
Obama's election was a step forward for America, but his mixed-race and white cultural antecedents wrapped in dark skin and glazed with an intellectual acceptance of Afro-American culture exposed America's deep confusion about race matters. His election testified to his brilliant manipulation of that confusion.
On the negative, though, his election also highlights Afro-America's gross failure to culturally define, and therefore value itself.
Their assumptions were wrong. During the campaign, there was a major kerfluffle when some black commentators suggested that Barack Obama was not 'black like them.' It was a statement of truth, but unfortunately it was perverted and condemned because it was presented in language warped by centuries of ignorance, race hatred, and self-loathing. Barack Obama's appeal as a progressive game-changer, a candidate to inflict blunt-force trauma on the status quo was largely predicated on his skin color. Extensive evidence that his domestic policies sat to the right of some of his primary opponents and articles like Larissa MacFarquhar's "The Conciliator," clearly indicated that he was not the man to wage war against existing power structures. But we looked at his skin, heard the words "African-American," and assumed he had the heart of an outsider, someone born and raised to be suspicious of the status quo, born of a people willing to subvert it. None of this was true.
In fact, Barack Obama is not "black like me." Of course, he is as black as any other black man. He is as African-American as any other man or woman of African ancestry. What he is NOT is raised in the culture of the American descendants of African slaves. He is not culturally "Afro-American." This is what most Americans very imprecisely mean when we say "black" or "African-American." We are talking about the culture, not the color. We are talking about drinking in generations of lessons learned, cultural touchstones, habits of being, speech, worship and communication that have bubbled up on American soil over the past 400 years. When most of us say "black," we mean culturally Afro-American -- the culture born of the American descendants of African slaves. This Barack Obama is not. He has no association with it save accepting it in young adulthood. It is not endemic to him. For Obama, the cultural Afro-Americanism that so many voters assumed is an academic add-on, not a cultural foundation.
Color is not culture. Obama was raised by white Kansans, not the American descendants of African slaves. No Kenyan father and no stint in Malaysia, regardless of how exotic they sound to most Americans, trump the lessons he imbibed from the people who raised him. Why would we assume that white Kansans taught anything but tolerance of the American status quo and its centers of power? Yet, we saw dark skin and assumed the political iconoclasm associated with deep cultural Afro-Americanism where neither existed. And now we whine that we have been betrayed.
We let Obama's late adoption of (as opposed to nurturing within) an Afro-American cultural mantel blind us to his actual cultural foundations. We heard some sing-songy, grade B speechifying and anointed him another MLK -- another black man come to wash America's dirty moral linen. We called it a "movement" and thus made it the first "movement" in history in which nobody actually moved. It was a virtual "movement," an ersatz "movement" by proxy because its members weren't committing to any kind of long-term struggle. They were simply appointing a servant to do another MLK -- but this time we didn't ask him to wash the sins of segregation away. This time we wanted him to scrub out the Bush years.
Afro-America should have sounded the alarm. We tried. But we have allowed the majority to dictate our self-image for so long, we were unable to articulate the relevant cultural aspect of our very American being. Which is not surprising because we don't even credit ourselves with that aspect. The majority conflates color with culture, so we follow suit. The majority historically told us that "a nigger's a nigger," so we believe accordingly. We have always been told that we are culturally valueless, little more than color and a political "issue," and so we ignore our own culture; we fail to codify, painstakingly record it or teach it to our young. So a dark-skinned man raised by white Kansans is assumed to have the same cultural innards as I, and when he behaves like what he has been all along -- a typical politician who promises what must be promised to gain office and then waffles on achieving it once there, we complain that he doesn't behave in accordance with our ignorant assumptions about him.
Obama's election was a step forward for America, but his mixed-race and white cultural antecedents wrapped in dark skin and glazed with an intellectual acceptance of Afro-American culture exposed America's deep confusion about race matters. His election testified to his brilliant manipulation of that confusion.
On the negative, though, his election also highlights Afro-America's gross failure to culturally define, and therefore value itself.