Is Wikipedia Being Racist ?

Is Wikipedia Being Racist ?

I became interested a little while ago in the recording industry and who has sold what number of records. This came about largely due to my children asking, who has sold the largest number of records? I like to tumble numbers so Google being my friend, I searched for a list of the best-selling artists of all time, and got a Wikipedia list as the first link on the page. Here it is...


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_music_artists

Great - Wikipedia have done the research, so I read, and rely on the list, telling my children all about who ranks where.

Time goes by, and seeing as I'm not young and been around during the popular music boom of the sixties and seventies, I get to worrying about who is not on this list, and where some people rank. Diana Ross for instance, is excluded. Really? Then Michael Jackson is ranked in the 300-400 million record sales area. OK, so that's a lot, is that right?

Firstly, let's deal with Jackson. An article in The New Yorker, published January 2013...http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/did-thriller-really-sell-a-hundred-million-copies

This article establishes that Jackson's sales from before he died and since, totals approximately 515 million records. That's quite a discrepancy with the magical best-sellers list.

But what about Diana Ross? She's a Motown artist and The New Yorker says "Classic-era Motown refused to have its sales audited by the industry, so there are no official gold and platinum figures from this era." It just so happens Michael Jackson spent part of his time with Motown as well.

How many other Motown artists have been excluded or had their sales figures marginalised?

Now back to this Wikipedia best-sellers list. Criteria to be listed means that the audited or certified sales must be a percentage of claimed sales. The percentage changes due to the era but starts at 20%. Sounds good, but what this does is exclude Motown artists as they haven't got the certified units 'banked' as it were.

Is Wikipedia simply flawed or are the editors in this case being racist? I think the latter. Any system that prejudices a distinct group of people, in this case black Americans, has got to be racist. Is it intentional? Again I think so, as this best-sellers list is jealously guarded.