Sowell on Race and Bookstores

I would have had no idea that this occured since I get most of my reading material via the public library and Amazon.

Some years back, I was looking for a particular book on child development and was surprised not to see it in the large section of child development books at a local bookstore.

When I asked a clerk to check and see if that book was available, she checked her computer and then said that there were copies in the store right now -- in the section for black writers.

I had no idea what race the author of this child development book was, and would have considered it irrelevant if I had known. But our schools and colleges have turned out millions of people steeped in the new sacred trinity of "race, class, and gender."

I was reminded of all this recently when I noticed that my own latest book, "A Man of Letters," had as its number one official classification "African-American Intellectuals."

This book is no more about black intellectuals -- I don't even use the term "African American" -- than the child development book was about race.

Fortunately, a local San Francisco Borders bookstore that I visited seems to have ignored that classification and had the book on the shelves for books on government and politics.

But I also have no reason to doubt Sowell.