Exclusion of Black Authors
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Mathabane takes to task the Encyclopedia Britannica for not including black authors among its “Great Books of the Western World.”
The reason for this is straightforward. Black writers have written predominantly about the experience of being black. That puts them in a category with Philip Roth and Leon Uris, who have written about the experience of being Jewish, and Betty Friedan who has written about the experience of being a woman. Roth, Uris and Friedan are also not in the “Great Books.”
Obviously, these are very good writers and authors. But a key criterion for admission to the “Great Books” series is “universality.” And that means something more than an author writing about his or her own community, however adroitly.
At its base, then, Mathabane is simply one more voice calling for quotas, race-based preference and the like.
T.A. HEPPENHEIMER
Fountain Valley
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