My Racially Divided Goodreads

Subconscious Bias in Literary Critique

Katie Hyson
Jul 28, 2017 · 4 min read

I only rate my favorite books on Goodreads. Just the four and five star earners. Sometimes I scroll through the books I’ve rated, partly out of a wish to remember what I’ve read and (mostly) from a vain desire to solidify my identity through my literary preferences. One Sunday afternoon, scrolling in bed after having just finished a book, I noticed something that forced a startled gasp. I was staring at a racially segregated list.

There was no way around it — nearly every five-star book was by a white author: Lauren Groff, Virginia Woolf, Donna Tartt, Victor Hugo... Every four-star book was by an author of a different racial or ethnic group than my own: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Haruki Murakami, Michael Chabon, Gabriel Garcia Márquez... I scrolled up the list and back down the list; surely there had been a mistake. I gasped again, but quieter, so my husband wouldn’t run in and lay eyes on the evidence of my discrimination.

Part of me, the self-absorbed “progressive” white person part of me, wanted to deactivate my Goodreads right then and there, before anyone else could notice what I had just noticed. (As if anyone was scrutinizing my Goodreads account. I’m rolling my eyes at myself, and you have my permission to eyeroll, too.)

But…why? I asked myself. I thought about the books. I loved them all. That’s why I had rated them. They were my favorites! But why did I love the books by white authors just a little bit more?

Why did I give Fun Home by Alison Bechdel five stars and only give Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi and Maus by Art Spiegelman four stars? All three were graphic memoirs, so I couldn’t excuse it as a genre preference.

I tried to remember what I had thought about the five star books that had earned them that little bit extra. They were unbelievably true to life, I could really connect —

My heart sank. I could connect with them, because they were unbelievably true to my life. My experiences. I subconsciously felt they cut deepest into the human experience, when really they cut deepest into a certain white human experience.

I thought about the four-star books on the list. They were incredible. No less worthy than the five star books, and no less true to life. Just different than my life.

I don’t mean to say that there aren’t huge areas of shared human experience between people of different ethnicities and skin colors. We have much more in common than not. If you can’t find something to relate to in a Zadie Smith novel, you are not from this planet.

But culture is real, and privilege is real, and both shape the way we perceive and interact with the world, and how the world perceives and interacts with us. And that difference was enough for me to feel that one author had really gotten to the marrow of life and another had done so slightly less.

I was troubled by my discovery. I still am. It was a subconscious perception steeped in ignorance and fostered by privilege. It was the first time in my life I had noticed it, which itself is privilege — people of color have to navigate the repercussions of this white-as-norm thinking every day.

I considered the four-star books, and acknowledged that they had every bit as much merit, if not more, as the five-star books on my list. I changed each rating to five stars.

Sure, my four-star rating was just a drop in a bucket of hundreds of thousands of ratings, and this was Goodreads after all, not the Pulitzer committee — but how many of those hundreds of thousands were white people like myself who just “didn’t connect as much” with these books? How much was subconscious bias affecting the overall standing of these works? How much was the Goodreads rating affecting how many people chose to pick up the book?

More troubling, given that most positions of power in literary critique and publishing were held by white people, how was this subconscious bias affecting these works on a larger scale? How were sales, awards, and grants being affected? How much harder was it for authors of color to be successful?

The thoughts I had that day have caused me to change the way I reflect on books and other creative works. It isn’t an over-correction; I don’t automatically give books five-star ratings because they are by authors of color, or vice versa. The Vegetarian by Kang Han sits alongside Watchmen by Alan Moore in my four-star books. I simply began removing how much the book related to my own experience from my considerations. This shift in the way I determine the value of writing has been to my benefit. I’ve read more broadly, enjoyed more deeply, and had more chances to consider life from other points of view.

This article is written by a white woman, for other white people who may not have considered this bias. This article is embarrassing to publish, because I am forever wanting to appear more woke than I am. (Also it’s permanent proof that I’m a ~supernerd~, not that anyone needed more of that.) But it’s essential that people who are white consciously work to neutralize this bias. I imagine the bias is natural to people from every background, but we’re the ones holding the most privilege and positions of power, so we need to do the work of undoing.

Now go check your Goodreads.

Katie Hyson

Written by

Storyteller | Immigration Advocate | Inquiries: hysonstories@gmail.com

Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade