This happened a few days ago. I’m curious what people make of it.
For background: I work for a large bookstore located in a middle to upper class neighborhood. The area definitely trends Democrat but there are quite a few Republicans out there, as well (of the type that bemoan Iraq but voted for Bush’s second term because they were worried about taxes).
A customer came in and asked me for recommendations for his teenage son. He was interested in “serious” books rather than more pop culture stuff.
I recommended several books including The Color of Water: A Black Man’s Tribute to his White Mother by James McBride. The customer looked at it, read the back cover and put it down with this comment “I already bought him Obama’s book.”
Thoughts, if any?
well, he may have been honestly attempting to refer to the fact that his son had just read a book by a black author with a back cover that sounded a lot like Obama’s?
I suppose he could just be so racially obtuse as to fail to differentiate, but that gets a :dubious: for somebody if they’re really trying to buy their son serious reading material
Sounds like he just read a book about race, specifically black/white interracial families. (Assuming we’re talking about Dreams from My Father). Unless someone is a scholar of the topic or personally affected by it, it would be a little unusual to read or recommend two books in a row related to that subject.
Also, sounds like the perfect opportunity to recommend one of Hillary’s books 
He’d run the course on books written by black people with white mothers? She could’ve been referring to this one. Are you upset that she judged the book by its cover?