Fingers crossed that Bigoted Donald won’t win. But if nothing else, the KKK-endorsed Presidential candidate has served one useful purpose. He’s sensitized us all to the number of haters in America.
Whether or not it’s a reaction to Donald Trump—I have no idea— I’m pleased to see something more positive out there on the racial front. Tomorrow, November 3, the Book Industry Guild of New York will present a panel on diversity in children’s books. Details are here. The book industry’s own diversity record is pathetic. But I’m always delighted to see efforts to change that, and on the Thursday’s panel will be:
- Ellen Oh, cofounder, president and CEO of We Need Diverse Books.
- Christopher Myers, African-American author and illustrator, who is launching Random House’s “Make Me a World” imprint for RH’s Children’s Books side.
- Kyle Zimmer, CEO of First Book.
Moderator is Phoebe Yeh, VP and publisher, Crown Books for Young Readers, at Random House Children’s Books.
A Hispanic on the panel would have been good, but perhaps that can happen next time, and if nothing else, here’s hoping there’ll be some helpful questions and comments from Hispanics in the audience.
Especially I hope that the topic of e-books and opportunities for minority writers and publishers will come up.
As always, the TeleRead blog remains open to contributors of all racial and ethnic backgrounds. I’m now trying to see if I can get a relationship going with a library system in an area with a large Hispanic population, and I’ll also be reaching out to Ellen Oh. In the other direction, as publisher of TeleRead, I am reachable at davidrothman@pobox.com.
The LibraryCity -TeleRead proposal for a national digital library endowment among other things proposes much more money for the education, hiring and professional development of minority librarians.
Detail: The Trump campaign has repudiated the Klan’s endorsement. But how much does this mean? The campaign is Dog Whistle Central. I have many reservations about Hillary Clinton but have no choice but to vote for her. Votes for third-party candidates just won’t count as much as Trump repellents.
And a reminder: Not every Trump supporter is a bigot—far from it. While he is a racist demagogue and while many of his solutions are loony, he is absolutely right about the extent to which plenty of D.C. insiders have sold out the rest of the country. Just look at our billionaire-friendly tax laws—a problem Trump would actually worsen.
teleread.org 