NPR ADVISES READERS TO ’DECOLONIZE” THEIR BOOKSHELVES BY REMOVING WHITE AUTHORS:

NPR suggests that “decolonizing your bookshelf” is about “about actively resisting and casting aside the colonialist ideas of narrative, storytelling, and literature that have pervaded the American psyche for so long.”

They posit:

If you are white, take a moment to examine your bookshelf. What do you see? What books and authors have you allowed to influence your worldview, and how you process the issues of racism and prejudice toward the disenfranchised? Have you considered that, if you identify as white and read only the work of white authors, you are in some ways listening to an extension of your own voice on repeat? While the details and depth of experience may differ, white voices have dominated what has been considered canon for eons.

Curiously though, I doubt NPR wants to replace John Maynard Keynes with Walter Williams and Thomas Sowell, or Pauline Kael with Armond White. In any case, as Ray Bradbury wrote in the introduction to the 50th anniversary edition of Fahrenheit 451, “There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running around with lit matches.”