DAY 9: Expression of Racial Diversity

Booksellers know it’s important to view their physical and online store through the eyes of their customers. You check out your window displays, walk through the aisles, look at what books you and your staff have positioned for special promotions and recommendations. Today we ask you to do this exercise through the lens of anti-racism and racial equity. What do you see? What is missing?

• Are your reading choices, and what's displayed on your staff picks shelf inclusive of BIPOC authors? If so, what racial groups are represented?

• Are you buying books and gifts that reflect white authorship/white audiences? Do you ask for ARCs of BIPOC books from publishers and sales reps?

• What is the percentage of  BIPOC representation in your online, social media, and in-store displays? 

• What about your author and other event programming? Do you ask for BIPOC authors when submitting your event grids?

• Write an internal anti-racist statement for your store. Involve your staff and pay attention to the parts of the process that generate discomfort. (Here is a resource for talking about anti-Black racism.) Ask yourselves how you would turn that internal policy statement into an external, public statement. For inspiration, see the Anti-Racist Action Plan created by Tubby and Coo's Mid-City Bookshop in New Orleans, Louisiana.

• Here are 5 Things Bookstores Can Do. Pick one or two to do right now.

More Resources

• AMIBA's Shop Black-Owned Business Campaign
• Katherine Morgan on Bookselling to White "Allies"
• Creating a Work Environment That Embraces Access, Equity, and Justice
• 8 Ways to Measure Diversity That Have Nothing to Do with Hiring
• Under the Umbrella Bookstore’s Anti-Racist Action Plan

Yesterday: Racial Diversity in the Workplace
Tomorrow: Internalized Racism

Author Photo Credit: Carl Van Vechten | Quote from Words of Change: Anti-Racism by permission of Sasquatch Books. Copyright 2020 By Kenyra Rankin. All rights reserved.

SIBA thanks its generous sponsors, who have made the 21-Day Racial Equity Challenge possible:

Many of the quotes used in the Challenge are excerpted from Words of Change: Anti-Racism by permission of Sasquatch Books. Copyright 2020 By Kenyra Rankin. All rights reserved.

Although SIBA has modified when appropriate for a bookseller audience, the majority of prompts and resources come directly from the 21-Day Racial Equity Habit Building Challenge created by Food Solutions New England (FSNE). We are so grateful for their extraordinary work creating this program and making it available to other organizations.