Buy Racial
Tikkun Magazine, November 1997

A few months ago I got a call from Brenda Jackson, an editor at a magazine I’ll call (trust me, it’s fair) Yuppie Life. Brenda told me that after four years of agitating for more coverage of African Americans, she’d finally been authorized to put together a special issue on the subject.

Brenda had already assigned feature stories to several prominent African-American writers. From me she wanted an introductory essay, targeted to the magazine’s ninety-percent-white readership, explaining why white people should care about what happens to black people.

I was thrilled, and not just because the magazine–one of Time-Warner’s many profit centers–would pay me two dollars a word more than I’ll be paid for the words you’re reading now. I accepted, then asked Brenda why she’d chosen me.

"The bio on your book jacket described you as a mother who lives in Oakland," she said. "I figured any white woman who’s chosen to raise her kids in a predominantly black city must have something to say about race."

Indeed I did. I wrote about the challenges and joys of raising my sons in a mostly African American neighborhood, and ended by calling on other white parents to go out of their way (which is usually what it takes) to give their children daily proximity to people of color.

Brenda loved the piece. For the layout she hired an African American photographer who spent a day at my house, taking pictures of my white teenage sons playing basketball with their black friends. Every week for months after that, one or another of the boys asked me when the issue would hit the newsstands. They couldn’t wait to see their pictures in a well-known national magazine; couldn’t wait to read an article about the often mis-reported facts of their lives.

Then Brenda called, sounding grim. "Bad news," she said. "They’ve killed the issue."

"What?"

"When the advertisers heard we were putting an African American man on the cover, they refused to buy pages. Last time we had a black person on the cover, sales fell by more than half. They say race doesn’t sell."

The news was hard for me to swallow. But telling the boys was harder. The last thing I wanted was to be yet another messenger bringing yet another message of devaluation to a bunch of young men who’d already heard that message far too often.

I started with my son Jesse. I expected him to explode with anger. His calm resignation was far more chilling.

"It’s not the magazine’s fault," Jesse said. "They have to sell ads or they can’t publish the magazine. It’s not the advertisers’ fault, either. If no one’s gonna buy the magazine and see their ads, why should they pay for them?"

Right, Jesse. But whose fault is it that half of the magazine-buying public won’t buy a magazine they normally buy if there’s an African American on the cover?

More to the point: what’s the solution?

There’s an evil cycle at work here. For the most part, white folks don’t buy books and magazines by black writers. So, for the most part, publishers don’t publish those writers. This gives white (and black) people less access to their work. And less awareness of what there is to gain by reading it. So white folks don’t buy books and magazines by black writers....

How we can break this cycle? Like it or not, what we’re dealing with here is capitalism. What governs capitalism is supply and demand. We need to create demand. We need to create a market. We need to make race sell.

If white folks start buying magazines and going to movies and watching tv shows by and about people of color–and demanding that those magazines and movies and tv shows are made abundantly and consistently available–there will be more of those magazines and movies and tv shows available to us to learn from and enjoy.

If white folks start raising our kids in ethnically diverse neighborhoods and lobbying for affirmative action in our schools and workplaces, we and our children will acquire an appreciation for, and eventually, a familiarity with, the literature and the culture of African Americans and other people of color.

Once that happens it will be natural and easy for us to buy magazines and go to movies about people whose lives aren’t exactly like ours. Once that happens magazines won’t lose their advertisers when they publish articles about race.

By adjusting our buying habits we can eliminate the economic basis for the Balkanization of our culture.

By this simple act of consumer rebellion, we can make race sell–until the glorious day when it doesn’t have to.