Why don’t black people read? (A response)
I don’t read literature blogs. Until I started checking out Tayari’s website on the regular (what’s the deal with them jones kids anyway? do they come out the crib writing?). Recently she’s been engaging Sara Gran in a minor teaching moment. I thought I’d jump in with my two cents.
Why don’t people like Sara–white authors immersed in the world of literature–know more about black authors? Is it them? Is it black people?
Sara chooses to look at black illiteracy rates. I think she is looking in the entirely wrong place. Let’s say that her literacy rates are absolutely correct–that blacks are more likely to be illiterate than whites.
Of course there are those who know how to read and those who don’t. But for our purposes the important distinction is between those who READ FOR PLEASURE/edification, and those who don’t. Aliterates don’t buy books. Literates do. If we thought about this as a bell-shaped curve we’re looking at the right tail, rather than the left tail–and of course the middle is the vast majority of aliterates. We focus on the right tail–on the Literate population–because the size of THIS population is the only one that matters, as this population is the only one that cares enough about reading to buy the books that Sara and Tayari write.
Is the percentage of black Literates larger or smaller than white Literates? I’m willing to bet that given the historical weight that Literacy has in black communities that the black Literate percentage is at least as big as the white one if not larger.
So the answer to why Sara doesn’t know about black authors and black literature isn’t “black illiteracy.” I’m thinking there’s something else going on.
Sara asked “is it me?”…but never answered this question choosing to instead look at the behavior of black people. It’d be interesting to see someone like Sara think about the ways that they’ve been shunted away from various types of communities and bookstores and towards others. We’re now at the place where it is virtually impossible to escape black actors and some forms of black cultural production. We’d never have this discussion about black singers or black actors. Books are another bag though.
September 20th, 2006 at 12:32 pm
I dug around a bit, and found an NEA study that seems to address almost exactly the issue you’re raising, called “Reading at Risk” and available off the nea.gov website. I haven’t tried to go through their data or anything, but their table 9 (page 11) reports rates of “literary reading”, which means basically how many people said they’d read any novels, plays, short stories, or poetry in the last year. This isn’t real far over to the right on the bell curve you’re describing, so maybe the outcome is different for other cutoffs of being a serious reader. The report said that about 47% of Americans were literary readers, breaking down to about 27% of hispanics, 51% of whites, and 37% of blacks. They further broke this down by education and income, but I didn’t dig into that. It looks like they ought to have data that would answer your question (basically about whether the curves have different shapes for different ethnic groups), but I didn’t see that data in my quick glance at the report.
September 20th, 2006 at 3:16 pm
This is what I’m talking about. They are looking at the right tail (”right” as in “opposite of left” as well as in “correct”). I think they’re numbers are skewed though. I don’t believe that 47% of the American public are literate readers. I’m trying to find some US sales figures on The Da Vinci Code. He’s sold 60 million world wide. How does that translate into US sales? If he’s sold 20 million how does that compare to the number of people who watch the Super Bowl yearly?
September 20th, 2006 at 3:40 pm
slammin’ ass point dr.
is it me? that’s funny. of course it’s you…since you asked the question and chose the framework for finding the answer which doesn’t point at a solution. whom else could it be? teachable moments abound. good stuff.
September 22nd, 2006 at 10:30 am
I’m curious as to how they came up with their numbers. I’m not an avid reader, but I do read. So, would my opting to buy books that I don’t read make me literate? Or, is the fact that I do read, when I can, make me literate? Or, is the fact that I made it through high school & college make me literate?
Not sure how we measure literacy outside of actually sitting down with people to see if they can read. Even if someone can read and articulate a point, would they be considered illiterate if they could not convey these thoughts in writing? I ask that because I know some college educated men, who really butcher the English language when they write. These people do read, but I’m not sure what it is that they read.
I’d wonder what was considered “literary reading”.
September 22nd, 2006 at 12:27 pm
Literary reading meant you read at least one novel, short story, play, or poem in the last year. It’s not a very high bar; about half the people in the country were “literary readers” by that definition. (This is a good example of the importance of making sure you know what the statistic means–I would have assumed “literary readers” were people who read Dostoyevsky on their lunch breaks, not people who’d managed to get through one whodunnit in the last year.)
September 22nd, 2006 at 1:01 pm
Lester, I think the distinction you made between literates, aliterates, and bibliophages (bookworms who buy many books and read for pleasure) is very important. And, I share Tayari’s and your doubts that Sara Gran’s connection between Black literacy rates and the apparent paucity of famous or “super-Pulitzer-Prize-winning-brilliant†Black authors is based on sound premises and valid logic. Yet, I admire the fact that Sara Gran was willing to share her thoughts about this publicly. She started a good dialectic, and I have already learned something from reading her article, her posts, Tayari’s posts, and your post.
Your distinction, the reasons Tayari gave for why African Americans publish fewer books than White (fewer Black authors; racism; lack of access), and my intuitions concerning economics, the affects of marketing, major publishers’ and major booksellers’ profit motives, and affects of cultural differences in literary tastes on the bibliophage market (the most lucrative market for publishers and booksellers) led me to share the ideas I write about below.
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I suspect major publishers’ and major booksellers’ quests for handsome profits, Blacks’ minority status, and Blacks’ below-average per capita affluence level interact in ways that encourage both racist and non-racist profit-focused publishers and booksellers alike to give Black authors the cold shoulder as they target the demographical groups that most frequently buy books and read them for pleasure. Economic incentives created by bibliophages’ market demands encourage major publishers and booksellers to show less interest in the work of Black authors than in the work of White authors and encourage major publishers and booksellers to focus their attentions on publishing and selling books that would please the literary tastes of White bibliophages. And, major publishers’ and booksellers’ profit-focused reactions to these incentives could explain why the average White bibliophage is not very familiar with the works of talented Black authors.
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A more detailed argument for my hypothesis:
Publishers are likelier to sign contracts with and aggressively market, with the help of U.S. booksellers, the works of authors whose books they believe would sell enough copies to yield handsome profits. The books they believe would sell enough copies to yield handsome profits are books they believe would please the literary tastes of the average U.S. book buyer who reads for pleasure. Publishers believe the literary tastes of the average U.S. book buyer who reads for pleasure are likelier to be similar to the literary tastes of U.S. citizens who have above-average per capita affluence than to be similar to the literary tastes of U.S. citizens who have below-average per capita affluence. We all believe U.S. citizens who have above-average affluence are likelier to be White than to be Black. Therefore, if publishers and booksellers believe there is a significant difference between the average literary tastes of U.S. citizens who have above-average affluence and U.S. citizens who have below-average affluence, then publishers are likelier to sign contracts with and aggressively market, with the help of U.S. booksellers, the works of authors whose books they believe are likelier to please the literary tastes of Whites than to please the literary tastes of Blacks.
If publishers are likelier to sign contracts with and aggressively market, with the help of U.S. booksellers, the work of White authors than Black authors, because they believe White authors are likelier than Black authors to write books that would sell enough copies to yield handsome profits, and publishers’ and booksellers’ beliefs about the correlations between literary tastes and affluence mirror reality, then not only are White authors likelier than Black authors to get their books published (assuming publishers know the ethnicities of authors before they sign contracts with them, and the average Black authors’ talent level is not significantly different from the average White authors’ talent level—as talent would be judged by a theoretical culturally impartial literary critic); book buyers who read for pleasure are likelier to be White than to be Black, and they are likelier to be familiar with White authors than to be familiar with Black authors.
September 23rd, 2006 at 6:14 pm
I think this model likely does a decent job of predicting what books are to be marketed aggressively. But let’s go back to Sara’s central question. Sara’s question is “why don’t I know about more black authors?” Just knowing there are maybe 5 times more whites than blacks should inform us that perhaps there are more “white book” advertising campaigns than there are “black book” advertising campaigns. She knows white authors because she is hit by those traditional ad campaigns.
But is this all? Is the fact that there are more white people the only reason why she isn’t familiar with black authors? I don’t think so. So how has she been shunted away from black authors?
September 24th, 2006 at 10:37 am
The fact that she uses the phrase “thought to be illiterate” raises questions for me. I could “think” that a person is literate (or illiterate), but he/she may not be. I could “think” that a person who is driving a Mercedes Benz can afford it, but that may not be the case. Anytime you quote statistics, there needs to be a defined method of measuring how those numbers could be considered valid, and even usable. Mere “thoughts” do not validate these statistics. The only real way to measure literacy is to have a person stand in front of you and read the newspaper (or something else of your choice)…then you will see who can read or not.
September 24th, 2006 at 10:21 pm
“But is this all? Is the fact that there are more white people the only reason why she isn’t familiar with black authors? I don’t think so. So how has she been shunted away from black authors?â€
I think we would need to know something about an individual’s sentiments or beliefs towards Blacks in general or Black authors specifically in order to determine how much of his or her lack of knowledge about Black authors developed from external influences, such as I described, and how much developed from the portion of his or her internal sentiments and beliefs concerning Blacks for which he or she could or should be held exclusively accountable.
The concept of racial sentiments in this context reminds me of Robert Entman’s and Andrew Rojecki’s 2000 book, The Black Image in the White Mind. In Chapter 2: White Racial Attitudes in the Heartland, the authors develop a very useful model for the spectrum of Whites’ sentiments towards Blacks (page 18, Table 2.1 “Spectrum of White Racial Sentiment [towards Blacks]â€). They argue that “White racial thinking now spans a spectrum that runs from racial comity and understanding to ambivalence, then to animosity, and finally to outright racism.â€
A White person’s orientation toward Blacks is determined by four factors (page 17):
1) The degree to which Whites attribute homogeneity in negative traits to African Americans.
2) The degree to which Whites deny the existence of discrimination.
3) The degree to which Whites see themselves as having interests that conflict with those of Blacks.
4) The degree and direction of emotional responses to Blacks as a group.
The description they offer for the ambivalence area of the spectrum might remind some of John F. Dovidio’s and Samuel L. Gartner’s aversive racism social psychological model. Aversive racism is a form of racism that might cause some Whites, who believe themselves to be racially egalitarian, to actually act in racially prejudicial ways, perhaps unwittingly. While they might not consciously believe that Blacks are inferior to Whites or that there are reasons for why, all other things being equal, Whites deserve to control more resources than Blacks and should wield more power than Blacks; their day-to-day actions and sentiments might not reflect racial egalitarianism.
I believe Black authors are as talented, on average, as White authors. So, if there were no evidence that manipulative external forces had shunted a White bibliophage away from Black authors by aggressively publishing and marketing White authors’ works far more than Black authors’ works, then the next explanations I would investigate would involve the influences of racist social psychological (furtive or blatant) forces on the White bibliophage and conscious racist, conscious animosity, or unconscious aversive racist sentiments the White bibliophage might have towards Blacks.
September 25th, 2006 at 6:54 am
This is how I wrote in the original post:
It’d be interesting to see someone like Sara think about the ways that they’ve been shunted away from various types of communities and bookstores and towards others.
I don’t know Sara. I don’t make any claims to know what her attitudes are towards blacks. In fact, because I can’t make these claims, her attitudes are inconsequential here.
Let’s assume–as I am–that there are no book publicists explicitly saying to themselves “I want to publicize X white author and NOT publicize Y black author.”
Let’s also assume–as I am–that there are no book publishers who are explicitly saying to themselves “Y author is black. We don’t want her book to do better than X white author.”
So how might an author like Sara STILL be shunted away from black authors?
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