Carlin Romano, Professor at the University of Pennsylvania and a member of the National Books Critics Circle Board, is facing pressures to resign after emailing his concerns concerning the wording of a statement in support of BLM.
The NBCC sought to make a statement in reaction to recent calls for social justice. The statement offers some strong claims. For instance, white publishers must acknowledge their “culpability in this system of erasure.”
But Romano took offense to the broad assertions such a claim made. In an email, Romano pushed back saying, “Equating American book publishing with American police departments is ridiculous.”
The outrage from these comments led the NBCC to offer a public response on their website. In short, the triggered outrage is not even close to a consensus position in the NBCC.
A Petition Going Nowhere
In an attempt to end Romano’s career, fellow board member, Emma Eisenberg, has put out a petition for his removal. Since July, it has received a little over 200 signatures. Needless to say, Romano still has his job and his seat.
Does Anyone Even Care?
What makes this entire triggered outrage hilarious is the typical response to perceived injustice: nothing. In the NBCC response, they made it known that there are currently fifteen open seats.
As for the fifteen open seats on the board, we are in the process of gauging interest from both former board members and general members about joining us to fill out these terms. If you are interested in nominating yourself or someone else for appointment, please email [email protected].
If they really wanted to see change, why not join the board? That would require an actual commitment of time, energy and ability. Moral of this story. Change is hard, but being a twitter outrage troll is easy.
