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December 06, 2006

Segregating Fiction

One of the A1 stories in today's Wall Street Journal takes a look at how black authors are treated by the book industry. I don't spend a lot of time in book stores, tending to get my books via Amazon instead, but I've been in them often enough to notice the various ethnic sections. I always assumed, however, that those sections were intended for books focused on that general area. For example, if I were looking for a book on the black experience in America, I'd go to African-American. If I were looking for fiction, I would just go to the appropriate section (mystery, horror, etc.) and look for the book there. Apparently, if I were to do that in Borders or Waldenbooks, I'd walk away thinking that the book I was looking for wasn't available, because those chains (among others) put all books by black authors in a single section regardless of subject.

My first reaction to this was strongly negative. I know that questions of race are far from settled in the U.S., but this kind of thing strikes me as doing little to help that problem and perhaps something to harm it. In addition to encouraging people to read only authors who are ethnically similar to them, this seems to hurt the authors in question, since it's a lot harder for them to get their work in front of a larger audience if it's tucked away in 'African-American' or some other side shelf instead of with other comparable works. With a very few exceptions, I can't tell you the ethnicity of the fiction authors I read, nor do I particularly see why I should care. A good book is a good book. I hate the thought of missing out on good authors because I'm only looking in the fiction section while the store has segregated ethnic authors in their own section.

Conversely, I can see how this policy can help struggling authors. Readers often prefer characters they can relate to, and that means that many black readers probably get frustrated from time-to-time with fiction written from a perspective wholly alien from their own. It may be a relief for them to know that by going to the African-American section they can find fiction that is more likely to speak to them. And that also provides a more focused audience for less-well known authors, probably leading to greater sales. But it's also that much harder to those authors to break out to a more general audience, so that's a two-edged sword.

I find all this interesting in no small part because it throws a highlight on a facet of America that I don't get much contact with. The dominance of whites in America for so long created a society where things tend to be oriented to us to such a degree that we don't really notice it. From 'flesh' colored crayons to the predominance of white faces in entertainment, we're surrounded by little (and sometimes not-so-little) things that we often don't even notice. I don't believe I've ever even bothered to check out an African-American section of a bookstore, because it's not an area that particularly interested me. Now that the question is brought up, however, it highlights some difficult questions about how to address problems of integration in American society.

During the first half of the 20th century, for example, there were almost two separate economies in American cities. There were black newspapers, black hotels, black restaurants, the Negro Leagues, and much more. When segregation began to break down in the 1950s and 1960s (and earlier for the Negro Leagues), those institutions tended to disappear. While the erosion of segregation was a great moral good, I'm not sure that desegregation was all that great for blacks in an economic sense; with black businesses no longer necessary, that meant an awful lot of mangerial and owner positions for blacks disappeared as well, a problem that is still reflected in American business today. I can see a similar problem with the elimination of African-American sections in bookstores: the top tier of black authors will probably benefit, as their works suddenly find a larger audience, but I suspect we may also see a number of lesser black authors suddenly on the outside of the business looking in as their niche market vanishes.

That's a lot of words without much resolution. I'm curious what my readers think, however. Would we be better or worse off with the desegregation of our bookstores, both as a society and as individuals? Are the costs to individuals worth it? I'm not sure how to answer that question.