Sorry for taking so long to say something about #JusticeForGeorgeFlyod Others are saying most of what I've been thinking & I to make sure my head was around my lane first. So, here we go. Yes this will be about books & publishing, it'll just take me a bit to get there...

You cannot CONVINCE someone out of racism anymore than you can CONVINCE someone out of alcoholism. They do not have racist thoughts & commit racists acts b/c a racist won a debate in their high school...

They have racist thoughts & commit racist acts because they were nurtured into racism. By their family, by their community, by American society, by American mass media...

Since a compelling argument didn't bring them to racism a compelling argument will not bring them out of it. They do not need convincing. They need counseling. In fact, we already know this...

because those who help people out of extreme hate groups treat that as a process of recovery. There are interventions, counseling, therapy, and support groups, trained & trusted leaders, leading them through the process just like...

recovering from addiction. I'll say it again: People are not convinced to be racist, so how can we expect them to be convinced to not be racist. What does this have to do with books? Getting there...

So giving racist ideas and people who commit racist acts space on your platform does not protect the "free exchange of ideas," because racist ideas do not actually respect or participate in that actual exchange....

As @DrIbram showed in Stamped, the role of racist ideas is to support racist policy, not make sense, not be internally coherent, not reflect observed reality, not honestly and opening engage with other competing ideas. They are rhetoric & rhetoric only...

(Should we note here that Buckley was so often praised for his rhetoric, for his eloquence, for his ability to manipulate language. Given that, many have argued (& I agree) that he was one of the most effective & dangerous promulgators of racist thought in the 20th century)

They simply create enough space in whatever the local system of power is at that moment to enact a racist policy and then they're gone. So...

giving them space on your platform is less like participating in the "marketplace of ideas" (whatever the hell that is) and more providing alcohol to minors. Bookstores around the country are putting together reading lists of antiracist books, which...

is great. The role of a bookstore is to provide resources to their community to make sense of the world. But for every single book on those lists...

there is a racist book being published, most often by the exact same publisher that published the antiracist book & is now making money on that antiracist book. And in many bookstores, for every antiracist book on the book list they create...

there is a racist book on their shelves. That Fox News is popular doesn't change that the fact they are a white supremacist propaganda machine. That we have a two-party system does not mean the racism at the root of the Republican party is different from...

the racism at the root of the KKK. (Yes, there is plenty of racism in the Democrats, too, but I believe this Republican party had formally & officially embraced it as the core of their being in a way this Democratic party used to.) So...

publishing a Fox News contributor, publishing a member of the Republican party, publishing someone who empowers this Republican party is a racist act. And so is having those books on your shelves. You might argue that...

there's a difference between, I don't know, Bill O'Reilly & The Daily Stormer and you'd be right, but in the exact same way that a wine cooler is different from a shot of tequila. In fact, we know 8chan, The Daily Stormer, etc treat Fox News...

like a wine cooler because they tell us they do. We know they recruit from Tucker Carlson, from Trump rallies, from the NRA, because they tells us they do, both explicitly & in how they react to being deplatformed. So...

antiracist book lists are great (PSB is working on one), but for publishing to actually be anti-racist, they need to stop publishing racist ideas & books by people who commit racist acts & for bookselling to actually be anti-racist we need to stop stocking them on our shelves...

and if we can't stay in business without the money that comes in from supporting white supremacy and racist ideas, do we deserve to be in business at all? Publishers have had every opportunity to say no to racist books so I don't know what it will take for those in power...

who benefit from our systems of power to change, for those who have the most economic and social space in which to risk losing money, to actually risk losing money. But...

employees got that Woody Allen memoir canceled. And this moment really does feel different. While everyone is home we have the opportunity to remake our stores, remake our industry. Could employees stop the next Trump family book? Sometimes I think we're *this* close &...

sometimes it feels like there will be a nation of ashes before they were will be a nation of justice, but to paraphrase a friend of mine. The struggle itself is worth it.