BORDERS Patrol

Just a question. Besides the shelves of BORDERS Bookstore, where else in the United States is it legal to segregate based on race and/or color? Better yet, what other institution is bold and/or stupid enough to do so openly?

BORDERS policy of ghettoizing any book written by a Black author -- ranging from street-lit to the works of the great Toni Morrison -- in the African-American Literature corner, harkens back to a time when you could find all the Blacks squashed in the back of the bus. It would be one thing if AA titles were cross-referenced in other sections, but they're not. They are judged not by the content of their contents but by the color of their author's skin.

But this weekend I think I discovered that at the root of it all is just plain old laziness. When asked why two popular memoirs were shelved under "hot fiction," one BORDERS employee sheepishly explained that because BORDERS doesn't have a biography section they just placed them in fiction because these books "are really good stories." Which just leads me to believe that the corporate brass of BORDERS bookstore is really, really lazy (Too lazy to shelve Black authors alphabetically in the section in which they truly belong perhaps), or really, really dumb. And maybe just a tad bit racist? Maybe it is a combination of all three.

Hmmm.

And in Meltingpot Celebrity News...Does anybody else think J.Lo’s new Spanish Language album is a desperate act on Jenny's part to sever her ties with the materialistic mainstream world she has spent the better part of the past decade trying to woo? It worked for Ricky Martin. After he spent all that time Livin' la Vida Loca he had to repent, bow out of the public eye and re-emerge singing solo en Espanol. Does that mean Spanish is a purifying language? Does that mean English is the language of the devil? If Li'l Kim started rapping in Spanish would all her sins be forgiven?

Peace Out!