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Honestly, I wished the book community talked more about the wave of Islamophobic military thrillers released post 9/11, how they were marketed at young white men, and how they contributed to normalization of alt-right views WAY more than anything YA could do
Take the metro past the pentagon and it’s full of young white men reading paperbacks about CIA agents stopping diabolical terrorist plots—there’s a whole segment of the book industry devoted to placating and justifying the military-industrial complex
This starts young: books for ‘reluctant readers’ aimed at boys often present US military history in a simplified, glorifying light—the idea is that young (white) boys only want to read about war and violence—
YA isn’t radicalizing conservative young white men because they don’t read it, and they don’t read it because they’ve been taught only a narrow catagory of books is acceptable reading for men.
Of course, YA as a category is mostly controlled by white women, and white publishing folks in all catagories should be conscious of how books can reinforce systemic racism. But YA isn't the epicenter of this industry-wide problem
Like it or not, publishers present themselves as arbitrators of truth, of the worthiness of ideas for public discourse—and by giving a platform to the alt-right, they legitimize the racist bullshit wrecking our ability to govern.
When someone buys a book, they give it more intellectual credence than a blog post or YouTube video. They think “surely if this was all lies/rubbish, it wouldn’t have been published.” Publishing the alt-right legitimatizes their ideas as reality-based
YA is an easy target, because “what are young women reading” has been a moral panic for 200+ years. https://mobile.twitter.com/ZREllor/status/1329950115629584385
But the entire YA genre could vanish tomorrow and publishing would keep the vast percentage of the profits it makes promoting white supremacy. Publishers should put their money where their mouth is and divest from publishing Islamophobic and alt-right books
This thread took off, so check out these YA books from Muslim authors! https://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/muslim-ya
