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Re: STEM and Representation follow-up
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From: Christine Taylor-Butler <kansascitymom_at_earthlink.net>
Date: Sat, 30 Mar 2013 01:49:10 -0500
Dear Charles,
As one nerd (MIT) to another - I was left speechless that your conclusion is that African Americans are "overrepresented" in the industry based on their book buying patterns.
After I eradicated all of my deleted expletives from my vocabulary I would remind you that it is possible to take "raw" data or other and totally misinterpret the meaning. Particularly since most "data" is culled using methods that don't adequately capture the true nature of those populations. You get what you measure and I've had to 'correct" enough Arthur Anderson consultant types to know that data is often skewed to fit the opinion of the poll takers.
A good example are polls conducted via landlines when a growing number of people are using cell phones. Or Editors at ALA staring me in the eye and telling me my race doesn't buy books (American Express begs to differ as it relates to my family).
I am reminded of a meeting I had with the then head of Hallmark years ago. In a meeting with minorities he complained that "focus groups" proved that minorities didn't buy Hallmark cards. A colleague from the marketing department stood up and said "I'm in that division. The managers have already decided that we don't buy cards so they are intentionally screened out of the focus groups." The CEO said "You mean we don't really know who is buying our cards?" We all shook our heads in affirmation. Likewise, a few weeks later I walked into a Hallmark owned card shop in a predominantly white neighborhood and asked for a card. I was told that "we don't carry those because our demographics don't warrant it." Turns out that although the shop was near a major mall, the marketing people drew a line only a few miles around the store. Fast forward to 2012 when they are closing plants and laying off a lot of employees because they still don't know who is buying their cards (or how the social expression game has pivoted to ward social media, not physical.
My last example will be when I worked for the now defunct Filene's Basement back when it was still in it's original location and had potential. I was tasked to promote a fur trunk sale. My boss demanded that I send postcards to only affluent neighborhoods around the Boston area. Only my secretary was Italian and she pointed out that in her blue collar-neighborhood, furs were a status symbol, especially for young women and the sales at Filene's basement made the furs attainable. So I starved off some dollars and sent a large mailing to that zip code without my boss's knowledge. Sales for the event increased by 50%. First time ever. He walked by my desk, smug, and said "See? Just follow my lead!" Only I also modified the event so the cashiers were capturing the postcards and/or contact information for future promotions. Almost all of the sales came from my secretary's neighborhood. Wealthy people didn't seem to find buying furs from an FB trunk show "in good taste."
That's a long winded way of saying - sometimes you need to get your head out of empirical data and put your boots on the ground. You know - where you might be surprised to find that readers of color are rarely surveyed about whether they are reading or "what" they are reading. And perhaps if publishers spent less time listening to marketing and select focus groups and more time listening to people who are living the experience they might see a corresponding sales increase if they stopped acquiring what they liked and spent more time asking what "we" want.
Sometimes experience trumps dry data absent any qualitative explanation as to how those numbers are derived. In a past life I spent a lot of time cleaning up corporate messes made from assumptions based on the former.……Christine
P.S. Yes - you are correct on one point. We are over-represented in books filled with stereotypes. If you're arguing that we put an end to those books and replace them with something more thoughtful - I'm right there with you.
On Mar 29, 2013, at 1:14 PM, Charles Bayless wrote:
I have waited till the end of the month in order to not distract from the current discussion. I have a follow-up to last month’s conversation regarding representation in children’s literature. Recapping: The argument was advanced 1) that certain classes of children (race, gender, class, culture, orientation, etc.) are underrepresented in children’s literature, 2) that this lack of representation creates a material negative impact on children, and 3) that the cause of such underrepresentation was conscious or unconscious discrimination on the part of the publishing industry.
The counterargument was that a) there is no objective empirical evidence that documents the extent and degree of underrepresentation by group (not contesting that there likely was underrepresentation, only that there was no data to quantify it), b) that there is no empirical evidence supporting any impact of over or underrepresentation of traditional categorizations (race, gender, class, orientation, etc.) on life outcomes and much obvious evidence to the contrary, and c) that there was no evidence supporting discrimination on the part of the publishing industry.
In the spirit of March’s STEM theme (science being the generation and testing of hypotheses with data) I have been able to source data from credible organizations (US Census, US Bureau of Labor Statistics, CCBC and the Kaiser Foundation) that allows a first order crack at answering argument element 1 (degree of representation). In doing so, that also begins to address argument element 3 (publishing industry discrimination). In order not to disrupt the CCBC monthly conversation, I have posted the methodology, details of analysis, and results at my blog, Thing Finder – Reading, Publishing, and Ethnicity html). Comments are welcome there.
This analysis is only a first order estimate. It is always better to use data collected in a common controlled fashion than to use data from multiple sources. In the absence of any other evidence though, this is likely a reasonably robust first order effort.
The summary is that at a demographic level, all minority groups are underrepresented in children’s books. However, publishers being commercial enterprises, they are not responding to the raw census level of population but rather to the subpopulation that are book buyers. What I have done is take the average reading volume (hours per year) for each group, adjusted it for the percentage of reading that is book related (rather than magazines and newspapers) and adjusted yet further to reflect propensity to purchase books. This allows us to assess whether and to what degree publishers are responding to the book buying public. The answer is that the non-Hispanic white book buying public is being served proportionately, that the African-American and Native American book buying populations are being dramatically overrepresented and the Hispanic and Asian American populations are being materially underrepresented.
The gap between demographics and the book buying populations arises because of differentials in the volume of book reading and book buying being done by the respective groups. The necessary corollary conclusion is that increased supply won’t do much if there is not increased demand. (Also see Richard Nash’s article What is the business of Literature? [ in which he observes that “Abundance, it turns out, is a much bigger problem to solve than scarcity”).
The fact that publishers are significantly oversupplying some groups and undersupplying others would seem to clear publishers of the charge of conscious or unconscious discrimination. It suggests that they are possibly ineffective at correctly judging the extent to which different groups would be willing to buy themed books but the data indicates that they are clearly attempting to address submarkets.
So we now have a first order estimate of the degree of over and underrepresentation by ethnicity and we also have data indicating that simple discrimination within the publishing industry is unlikely the root cause of lack of representation for some groups. Thought you might be interested in the analysis.
None of this addresses the core issue, whether there is any data to support the contention that representation has any measurable impact on life outcomes. If there is no measurable impact of over or underrepresentation, then the whole issue is moot and something of a red herring.
While we are on a data analysis roll, I have another post which might be of interest to teachers and librarians. The US education system frequently gets criticized in international comparisons as both expensive and ineffective, with our students scoring only in the middle of the pack. In the post at Thing Finder – U.S. Education Expensive and Ineffective? Not So Fast ctive.html), I look at the underlying data. The US system is actually extremely effective (at least in terms of the reading aspect of education) when one compares like-to-like in terms of cultural origins, scoring better than all sixty participants save only Finland.
Charles
Date: Sat, 30 Mar 2013 01:49:10 -0500
Dear Charles,
As one nerd (MIT) to another - I was left speechless that your conclusion is that African Americans are "overrepresented" in the industry based on their book buying patterns.
After I eradicated all of my deleted expletives from my vocabulary I would remind you that it is possible to take "raw" data or other and totally misinterpret the meaning. Particularly since most "data" is culled using methods that don't adequately capture the true nature of those populations. You get what you measure and I've had to 'correct" enough Arthur Anderson consultant types to know that data is often skewed to fit the opinion of the poll takers.
A good example are polls conducted via landlines when a growing number of people are using cell phones. Or Editors at ALA staring me in the eye and telling me my race doesn't buy books (American Express begs to differ as it relates to my family).
I am reminded of a meeting I had with the then head of Hallmark years ago. In a meeting with minorities he complained that "focus groups" proved that minorities didn't buy Hallmark cards. A colleague from the marketing department stood up and said "I'm in that division. The managers have already decided that we don't buy cards so they are intentionally screened out of the focus groups." The CEO said "You mean we don't really know who is buying our cards?" We all shook our heads in affirmation. Likewise, a few weeks later I walked into a Hallmark owned card shop in a predominantly white neighborhood and asked for a card. I was told that "we don't carry those because our demographics don't warrant it." Turns out that although the shop was near a major mall, the marketing people drew a line only a few miles around the store. Fast forward to 2012 when they are closing plants and laying off a lot of employees because they still don't know who is buying their cards (or how the social expression game has pivoted to ward social media, not physical.
My last example will be when I worked for the now defunct Filene's Basement back when it was still in it's original location and had potential. I was tasked to promote a fur trunk sale. My boss demanded that I send postcards to only affluent neighborhoods around the Boston area. Only my secretary was Italian and she pointed out that in her blue collar-neighborhood, furs were a status symbol, especially for young women and the sales at Filene's basement made the furs attainable. So I starved off some dollars and sent a large mailing to that zip code without my boss's knowledge. Sales for the event increased by 50%. First time ever. He walked by my desk, smug, and said "See? Just follow my lead!" Only I also modified the event so the cashiers were capturing the postcards and/or contact information for future promotions. Almost all of the sales came from my secretary's neighborhood. Wealthy people didn't seem to find buying furs from an FB trunk show "in good taste."
That's a long winded way of saying - sometimes you need to get your head out of empirical data and put your boots on the ground. You know - where you might be surprised to find that readers of color are rarely surveyed about whether they are reading or "what" they are reading. And perhaps if publishers spent less time listening to marketing and select focus groups and more time listening to people who are living the experience they might see a corresponding sales increase if they stopped acquiring what they liked and spent more time asking what "we" want.
Sometimes experience trumps dry data absent any qualitative explanation as to how those numbers are derived. In a past life I spent a lot of time cleaning up corporate messes made from assumptions based on the former.……Christine
P.S. Yes - you are correct on one point. We are over-represented in books filled with stereotypes. If you're arguing that we put an end to those books and replace them with something more thoughtful - I'm right there with you.
On Mar 29, 2013, at 1:14 PM, Charles Bayless wrote:
I have waited till the end of the month in order to not distract from the current discussion. I have a follow-up to last month’s conversation regarding representation in children’s literature. Recapping: The argument was advanced 1) that certain classes of children (race, gender, class, culture, orientation, etc.) are underrepresented in children’s literature, 2) that this lack of representation creates a material negative impact on children, and 3) that the cause of such underrepresentation was conscious or unconscious discrimination on the part of the publishing industry.
The counterargument was that a) there is no objective empirical evidence that documents the extent and degree of underrepresentation by group (not contesting that there likely was underrepresentation, only that there was no data to quantify it), b) that there is no empirical evidence supporting any impact of over or underrepresentation of traditional categorizations (race, gender, class, orientation, etc.) on life outcomes and much obvious evidence to the contrary, and c) that there was no evidence supporting discrimination on the part of the publishing industry.
In the spirit of March’s STEM theme (science being the generation and testing of hypotheses with data) I have been able to source data from credible organizations (US Census, US Bureau of Labor Statistics, CCBC and the Kaiser Foundation) that allows a first order crack at answering argument element 1 (degree of representation). In doing so, that also begins to address argument element 3 (publishing industry discrimination). In order not to disrupt the CCBC monthly conversation, I have posted the methodology, details of analysis, and results at my blog, Thing Finder – Reading, Publishing, and Ethnicity html). Comments are welcome there.
This analysis is only a first order estimate. It is always better to use data collected in a common controlled fashion than to use data from multiple sources. In the absence of any other evidence though, this is likely a reasonably robust first order effort.
The summary is that at a demographic level, all minority groups are underrepresented in children’s books. However, publishers being commercial enterprises, they are not responding to the raw census level of population but rather to the subpopulation that are book buyers. What I have done is take the average reading volume (hours per year) for each group, adjusted it for the percentage of reading that is book related (rather than magazines and newspapers) and adjusted yet further to reflect propensity to purchase books. This allows us to assess whether and to what degree publishers are responding to the book buying public. The answer is that the non-Hispanic white book buying public is being served proportionately, that the African-American and Native American book buying populations are being dramatically overrepresented and the Hispanic and Asian American populations are being materially underrepresented.
The gap between demographics and the book buying populations arises because of differentials in the volume of book reading and book buying being done by the respective groups. The necessary corollary conclusion is that increased supply won’t do much if there is not increased demand. (Also see Richard Nash’s article What is the business of Literature? [ in which he observes that “Abundance, it turns out, is a much bigger problem to solve than scarcity”).
The fact that publishers are significantly oversupplying some groups and undersupplying others would seem to clear publishers of the charge of conscious or unconscious discrimination. It suggests that they are possibly ineffective at correctly judging the extent to which different groups would be willing to buy themed books but the data indicates that they are clearly attempting to address submarkets.
So we now have a first order estimate of the degree of over and underrepresentation by ethnicity and we also have data indicating that simple discrimination within the publishing industry is unlikely the root cause of lack of representation for some groups. Thought you might be interested in the analysis.
None of this addresses the core issue, whether there is any data to support the contention that representation has any measurable impact on life outcomes. If there is no measurable impact of over or underrepresentation, then the whole issue is moot and something of a red herring.
While we are on a data analysis roll, I have another post which might be of interest to teachers and librarians. The US education system frequently gets criticized in international comparisons as both expensive and ineffective, with our students scoring only in the middle of the pack. In the post at Thing Finder – U.S. Education Expensive and Ineffective? Not So Fast ctive.html), I look at the underlying data. The US system is actually extremely effective (at least in terms of the reading aspect of education) when one compares like-to-like in terms of cultural origins, scoring better than all sixty participants save only Finland.
Charles
---Received on Sat 30 Mar 2013 01:49:10 AM CDT
