Posted on February 5, 2020 at 12:00 PM by Sadye Scott-Hainchek
It’s African American History Month, and as you might expect, bookstores are finding ways to mark the occasion.
The Digital Reader has some issues with how Barnes & Noble chose to celebrate it, though.
The bookstore partnered with Penguin Random House on “a new initiative to champion diversity in literature,” which did not mean promoting any works — modern or classic — by diverse authors.
Instead, they used artificial intelligence to select public domain novels and giving them “culturally diverse custom covers designed to ensure the recognition, representation, and inclusion of various multi-ethnic backgrounds reflected across the country.”
Nate Hoffelder raises several concerns with this beyond simply the question of why they’re using white authors to celebrate diversity in his post.
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Categories: Today in Books