Barnes & Noble, that big fake library on the edge of your favorite shopping plaza, came up with a brilliant idea at the beginning of February. They took some 200-year-old books and colorized the characters on the front covers. By colorizing, they made white people brown.
Critics said it was 'literary blackface' and came equipped with the are-there-any-smart-people-in-the-room?
B-N said they were just celebrating Black History Month by turning Captain Ahab into Captain Crawdad in hopes that little pickaninny kids would roar in and take a gander at Herman Melville's classic tale about a black, er ... white whale.
The company maybe beefed up its overall sales by doing this but it's likely that was in spite of the ill-advised (stupid) decision. As one critic put it: Were there any people of color involved in the discussion? It's like, the way to prevent a bad idea from happening is to ask people who are inclined to have an alternate opinion.
As I said in my days in the newsroom: Somebody has to take the other side.
Still, B-N pulled out of the deal after of course producing a number of books that might get sold before they get shredded. Seeing Frankenstein's Monster turn black with envy knowing the contents of the book are still white as rice ... I mean, what kid wouldn't want a black Dracula as his role model? Drac didn't go black, but he was in the shadows at the time.
There are a lot of stupid ideas and not all of them should be left in the conference room. There are a lot of people who walk out of these conferences thinking, "Wow, we did society a service. We're about diversiity."
Um, don't try to fix what's not broken. Forcing people to be diverse is racist.
It just is.
No comments:
Post a Comment