NYT: White Author's Book on Black Feminism Pulled

[dismalist]

Not being accepted by a publisher is not a societal problem if one can self publish. The contemporary venues for doing so are widespread. One can do it on Kindle without charge, e.g.

No worries.

[mahagonny]

Not being accepted by a publisher is not a societal problem if one can self publish. The contemporary venues for doing so are widespread. One can do it on Kindle without charge, e.g.

No worries.

How do you get distribution with self publishing? A name publisher is a big advantage.

[Katrina Gulliver]

Not being accepted by a publisher is not a societal problem if one can self publish. The contemporary venues for doing so are widespread. One can do it on Kindle without charge, e.g.

No worries.

How do you get distribution with self publishing? A name publisher is a big advantage.

Not only that, most newspapers/magazines with book sections won't review self-published work. Not being published by a legit press is a huge disadvantage. Saying it's not a disadvantage is like saying I can photocopy an article and hand it out and it's just like my story being in the Washington Post. No, it really isn't.

[apl68]

The theologian Candice Marie Benbow, author of "Red Lip Theology," was "livid" to learn that a white academic had published a book about the theology of trap feminism — an emerging philosophy that examines the intersection of feminist ideals, trap music and the Black southern hip-hop culture that gave rise to it.

"It matters that you have an academic text that would situate Black women's lived experiences and Black women's spirituality, and it's not written by a Black woman," she said.

Sesali Bowen, a pioneer of the concept of trap feminism and the author of "Bad Fat Black Girl: Notes From a Trap Feminist," also took issue with the author's failure to properly credit or engage with the Black women who have been leading experts in the field.

"Even if another Black woman did this, the issues around citation would still exist," she said. "The fact that this is also a white woman, who has no business writing about this because nothing about the trap or Black feminism is her lived experience, is adding another layer to this."

Imagine a book on Robert Frost by a black academic being pulled because of lived experience.

This assertion that one's skin must be a certain color, or that one must have been born into some particular situation in order to have the "right" to write about something is and should be troubling.  The implication is that "outsiders" have no right to have a perspective upon "insiders."  What a sad world academia, or the whole world, would be if we all took that attitude!  The critique needs to be based upon the substance of the work, not on the color of the writer's skin.  Visceral statements like the one quoted above certainly raise the suspicion that the author's work may have received less than a fair hearing from her critics.

[dismalist]

Not being accepted by a publisher is not a societal problem if one can self publish. The contemporary venues for doing so are widespread. One can do it on Kindle without charge, e.g.

No worries.

How do you get distribution with self publishing? A name publisher is a big advantage.

Not only that, most newspapers/magazines with book sections won't review self-published work. Not being published by a legit press is a huge disadvantage. Saying it's not a disadvantage is like saying I can photocopy an article and hand it out and it's just like my story being in the Washington Post. No, it really isn't.

Oh, I know self-publishing differs from getting published by a reputable press, but samizdat got very influential even though the barriers were far more severe than for self-publishing.

The point is not to praise the equality of self-publishing but to deny the possibility of censorship.

[marshwiggle]

This assertion that one's skin must be a certain color, or that one must have been born into some particular situation in order to have the "right" to write about something is and should be troubling.  The implication is that "outsiders" have no right to have a perspective upon "insiders."  What a sad world academia, or the whole world, would be if we all took that attitude! 

It's also really stupid, since it means that no-one can write about extinct groups of people, since no-one living is an "insider". By logical extension, this means that no-one should really write about almost any history at all, since the Byzantine and inconsistent rules about who is "allowed" will shut anything down. (If writing about some historical community in a specific location, does a descendent who never lived in that location "count" more or less than someone who currently lives in that location but is not a descendent? Ad nauseum.)

[Golazo]

It seems like there are two arguments--one is an identitarian argument but other is that the author doesn't know/engage with lots of relevant literature on the subject. Given that this was supposedly peer reviewed, I think the second is the fault of the publisher. It would seem like a more robust review process would have brought this to light. I wonder if they had someone do a sympathetic review, perhaps someone  with links to the author's evangelical school, rather than a more rigorous review. I would certainly know in my field if someone hadn't engaged with key texts.

This also brings to mind the Bruce Gilly controversy of a few years ago.

[marshwiggle]

It seems like there are two arguments--one is an identitarian argument but other is that the author doesn't know/engage with lots of relevant literature on the subject.

It seems like the second argument is disproportionately applied to cases where the first also applies. In other words, "failure to engage" seems to be rarely used if/when a writer is of the "correct" identity group, but is routinely applied when the writer is from the "wrong" identity group.

[Parasaurolophus]

This assertion that one's skin must be a certain color, or that one must have been born into some particular situation in order to have the "right" to write about something is and should be troubling.  The implication is that "outsiders" have no right to have a perspective upon "insiders."  What a sad world academia, or the whole world, would be if we all took that attitude! 

It's also really stupid, since it means that no-one can write about extinct groups of people, since no-one living is an "insider". By logical extension, this means that no-one should really write about almost any history at all, since the Byzantine and inconsistent rules about who is "allowed" will shut anything down. (If writing about some historical community in a specific location, does a descendent who never lived in that location "count" more or less than someone who currently lives in that location but is not a descendent? Ad nauseum.)

The point is that one doesn't just sit in one's armchair and write a book about other people, speaking about and for them without evincing sustained and significant engagement with them. If the book doesn't do its due academic diligence, doesn't adequately engage with the things the people it's studying actually say, doesn't cite the relevant literature, etc., then "I like the music" doesn't really hold much water. But again, anthropologists know how to do this. I don't think anybody is seriously suggesting that they can't do their work--and that's surely because they take their work seriously, and don't just sit in their armchair and make shit up about other people.

Whether that's the case here, I don't know, because I don't know anything about the subject, and am not super interested in giving myself a crash course at the moment. I suspect there's a mix of issues, mostly stemming from somewhat lax scholarship. And when the scholarly chops aren't there, especially where issues of engagement with the culture the book doesn't have a ton to fall back on.