- Via peopleofwalmart.com.
Wal-Mart is in the business of making money. The process by which it does so is attracting a certain brand of consumer and keeping things simple.
This goes for selling books just as much as it does for hawking economy-sized packages of tube socks.
Grouping books together by general topic and genre for easy perusal is how the book world operates. It’s convenient, tried and true, and intuitive even to the book-shopping novice
Ohio Wal-Marts take it a step further, putting works by and about African Americans in a section by themselves and not including them in their larger categories.
Make sense? No, but that’s what Akron Beacon Journal columnist Bob Dyer discovered.
This article appears in Sep 1-7, 2010.
Wow, putting books in a section by category, how radical. I was in a major bookstore in Estero Fl just last Monday and went to the Chinese section to get a book on Chinese culture because Im going on a tour there next year. Anything to trash Walmart is trendy for the left. Walmart has created more jobs than all the politicians in the history of the world.
Borders and Barnes and Noble have African American literature separated out from regular fiction. I suspect it has been some time since you have visited a real bookstore. Have fun at WalMart.
Bookworm, while this is true, all books written by black authors are not automatically put in that section. African American literature is a literary catagory; “black” is not.
It’s truly getting pathetic that every damn day I hear or read about some radical,racial type happening that makes no sense at all.I’m 51,black with probably some predjudices inside but I truly ” don’t care” what color my neighbor is as long as we can respect one another.
I doubt if I was in my Mother’s womb wishing to come into the world being black!
We all need to quit keying in on all this “racial bs” and go further to do better…
Go the the borders and Wal-mart side by side in Cleveland Hts and you will see this practice is an example of retail merchandising sales based on consumer demand and not necessarily racism. The Borders there has an extremely huge African American literature section and the day I was there, it was crowded with people, but the general fiction area was empty. Further, Toni Morrison was NOT even in the general fiction section but several of her copies were in the black literature section.
Next door at Wal-mart, the book “department” was about 15 feet of shelf space, not categorized at ALL, and mostly black authors.
I also read that black book publishers love Wal-mart because they have seen their sales dramatically increase since Wal-Mart began putting these sections in their urban stores. A black mother looking for a positive role model for her young daughter has a place to go, and doesn’t have to sort through the general section to find it.
When I was at the Border’s general fiction section I realized I had no idea that the black literature genre was so big, and I wanted to read more from black authors. I was happy that the separate section was there to guide me.
At Walmart, books written by or about african americans, are all dumped into a shelf together, regardless of content, genre, etc. Wouldn’t it be nice to select a book by its cover, and not by race. How can we come together as a united group when our BOOKS are not even allowed to mingle!
GOLFRON – To learn about chinese culture, you go to the chinese bookshelves, for african american culture, you ask your neighbor, boss, or friend. Assuming you are of the US, african american culture is the same as yours.