Does the Publishing Industry Still Delineate Books by Race?

Does the publishing industry still delineate publications, and promotional campaigns for writers, books, and potential readership by race? This is a question that requires addressing as we are well into the third millennia and racial and gender barriers are being not just crossed but obliterated and completely destroyed. In the book publishing industry there are definitely still writers and books which are considered to be "written by,about, and for... people". In fact you may have seen many authors and books that are promoted in almost exactly that terminology. As though to let people ascertain whether or not the book has enough subject matter and points of interest to be comprehended and enjoyed by people of any ethnicity would be criminal. It is almost as though the promotional campaign rests upon one fact and one fact only. That the book having been written by a black man or woman, about black or minority issues and perspectives, is certainly one which only African Americans can comprehend and empathize with. I think that the publisher and the author are selling both the story and the writer's abilities short and as such they are limiting the market to which they can hope to attract and to distribute the book to. In exactly the same way that many white people and people of other minority racial backgrounds embraced the black civil rights movement in the 40's,50', and 60's, based upon a shared belief system, and today racial lines are becoming blurred as young people today embrace the "world culture" of hip hop music, rock and roll, and alternative musical genres are also beginning to blur the color lines also. The musical and reading preferences of people today has it's influences upon clothing styles, linguistics, and even mental perspectives, I feel that anyone can be interested in a story or a writer, regardless of the ethnic background of writer or reader.

Publishers in the mainstream magazine marketplace also look at their prospective readership in a "black and white" shaded viewer. In a college course recently a classmate had commented on the fact that if white people started a television network called White entertainment TV that people would brand them as segregationists and racists. However no one utters a murmur at the Black Entertainment Network (BET). If there were a white author ho publicized their book as written by, for, and about white people there would be a public hue and cry, yet publishers continue to market new authors of color in this type of "niche". While it is true that people of color are still struggling to achieve a sense of equality within our peer group from other races, it is however not sensible to overcome racism and segregationsism only to adopt those same practices or attitudes ourselves.

While there are a great many organizations that own publications that are focused upon the issues and information that are of interest to people of color. There are EEO (Equal Employment Opportunity) organizations for specific minorities from Hispanic, to black, to Jewish minority recruiting which distribute their own publications. There are also national publications such as Ebony and Jet, that have been in circulation for a number of years, and then there are the magazines that try to appeal to all races and ethnicities and tend to target specific age or income groups. The bottom line is that there will always be some publishers that are seeking safe harbor in a minority niche, or that seek to delineate readers by gender, age, socio-economic grouping, etcetera. This will probably not change within our lifetimes, but with the world culture becoming more and more the culture that young people are embracing it is possible that in the next 100 years or so that magazine, book, and even internet publishers will cease to pretend that they are colorblind. The appeal of a story or publication should not be due to the color of ones skin or ethnicity but rather they should appeal to whomever wishes to read them without the onus of the "Oh, well you're black so you need to read this book!" or "Latina? Yes have I got the book for you!" based suppositions.