by Anti-Racist Parent columnist Dawn Friedman
By now you may have read the article about Tintin in the Congo – the racist children’s book that’s being shelved in the (adult) graphic novel section after a lawyer registered a complaint saying, “I was utterly astonished and aghast to see page after page of representations of black African people as baboons or monkeys, bowing before a white teenager and speaking like retarded baboons.”
I’ve had my own “utterly” astonished moments cracking open a classic ready to read to my son or sitting down to watch Babes in Arms (we’re a fan of musicals) and remembering too late that there’s a long sequence with Judy and Mickey warbling in blackface.
I struggle with this sometimes. I’m with the booksellers who decided to put the book in another section rather than make them entirely unavailable. But I’m frustrated when I hear people saying that these images and stories are not racist because they were a reflection of the times – as if the times themselves should be forgiven because people didn’t have the sense to know better.
It’s disappointing when we discover that our heroes (literary or not) are faulty. But I’d argue that this disappointment is part of understanding the insidiousness of racism. If even Ma and Pa Ingalls can be racists (remember Pa’s performance as a “darky” in Little Town on the Prairie and Ma’s hostility towards Native American) then it must not be so easy to avoid. In fact, it must not just be bad people who are racist; it might be people who we otherwise admire.
Now my 3-year old daughter certainly isn’t ready to explore the nuances of Judy Garland in blackface but my 10-year old is. In fact, I’d say that it’s absolutely necessary that my 10-year old start exploring the ugly truth that otherwise good hearted people can hold beliefs that are immoral, unjust and just plain wrong. He needs to learn this because he needs to recognize that we are all capable of getting it wrong and that we need to be vigilant. He needs to understand that “everyone else was doing it” or “I didn’t know it was wrong” aren’t excuses.
An interesting project is comparing the original “Bad Tuesday” chapter in my sister’s old Mary Poppins book where the children meet a quartet of Eskimos, Chinese people, Native Americans and Africans Americans. “You bring dem chillun dere into ma li’l house for a slice of water-melon right now.” But in 1981, Travers rewrote the chapter, replacing the racist stereotypes with animals and her illustrator aided by creating new pictures. Parents can talk to kids about the climate when the original was written compared to the climate around the time of the rewrite. And they can go further – was it a good idea to rewrite it? Why or why not? Should the original still be available? Why or why not?
Meanwhile, the Babes in Arms debacle was a reminder that I need to screen – not to censor but to prepare. I’m no fan of TinTin – he just never appealed much to me – but I’m glad that he’s still on the shelves and I’m glad that the shelves he’s on better suit him.
Dawn Friedman is a writer and mother to two children. Her articles have appeared in Salon.com, Yoga Journal, Brain Child and the Greater Good and she is the op-ed editor at Literary Mama. She is also the founder of OpenAdoptionSupport.com and since the adoption of her daughter in 2004 has become passionate about the need for adoption reform. She blogs at this woman’s work.
You can also skip Stormy Weather. I naively thought, “Hey a musical with an African American cast! Perfect!”
Um, no, it’s not!
I like the concept of sharing the original, racist versions, but explaining the historical perspective and what was wrong with what was said and/or done. I think it’s good for children to understand how people have treated other races in the past, how harmful it is, and why we shouldn’t do that now.
All at appropriate ages, of course. I wouldn’t explain it to my 2 year old, and I could probably get away with skipping anything I don’t want to read. My 5 year old would probably catch me eventually, but is old enough for simple discussions of race and racism.
Great post.
I am reading Tom Sawyer out loud to my 8 year old son right now, and we have had great discussions on the n-word (which I only said once, and have substituted with “n-word” now that he knows what it is), racism against African Americans and Native Americans, religiousity and superstition, and child abuse.
All of these exist in popular culture. I don’t deny it exists, and I think that is a dangerous way to approach the world. Instead, I use examples of hatred or violence as learning opportunities. Why would I want to cut out literature or musicals from this discussion, when I cannot cut out the rest of the world?
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I suppose that both our reasons for struggling with the unsettling perpetuation of the imagery and language of oppression, hatred, ridicule, derision, etc., present in such books come from the same jagged sense of walking the line of careful, conscientous parenting, while also allowing our children to be exposed to, enjoy, and fully appreciate the ways in which even tales for youth have quietly, with seemingly little guile, lay down such language and images as true, (albeit ugly and less than human) depictions of some of our least powerful members of society.
As a very small child my mother exposed my brother and I to recordings of Brer Fox and Brer Rabbit, and we thoroughly enjoyed the wily, outrageous interaction between the two. Then, when in college…well, I was red-faced and shamed to know that such recordings, and acts, were produced for the unabashed ridicule of Blacks, at the hands of gleeful and scoffing Whites.
I don’t know the truth of how the origins of such productions come full circle, as has the reported origins of the lawn jockey as tribute to the small statured Black who originally rode the racehorses to glory above all others, but somehow even the Brer Rabbit and Brer Fox antics have been re-envisioned as an interplay of characters with origins of integrity, though bastardized by the vaudevillian performers who co-opted it.
I don’t know. But I purchased a Rabbit Ears Radio production of the same just about three years ago, AND let my children listen. (That was actually a big step for me.)
We have enjoyed Julius Lester’s re-appropriation of The Black Sambo, entitled Sam and the Tigers, together during family reading. I have explained the ways in which this tale once lent to our nation a particularly hurtful and ubiquitous moniker for our people, and why Lester chose to revise, and even celebrate, this once shameful story.
It does not end. Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn are right around the corner.
Dawn…
I love the way Julius Lester does Sam and the Tigers and Breh Rabbit. He has changed them completely for me and I think he is a genius storyteller.
I am having trouble with Little House on the Prairie though. I grew up loving them but I can’t see reading them to anyone now. I want to just throw them out, the good with the bad. It makes me angry to think of reading about Ma’s reactions to Native Americans and the black face show in the Long Winter. I guess I have to work through that and come to terms with it somehow in order to be able to talk with kids about it. Having the books around it forcing me to deal with it on a deeper level, and talking about them with others is how I make progress so I guess I shouldn’t throw them out too fast.
How interesting (to me, a non-fan) that the texts of Little House on the Prairie have held a place in the hearts of those in my own generation. The television show was about as interesting to me in my youth as that show with James Garner as an oft-beat-up P.I.
I suppose culturally I just couldn’t appreciate a literature that didn’t hold me as central to it. No, that’s not it…I don’t think I’d ever seen such texts. I’m supposing the television drama, which I have watched and appreciated (as a mother), has done a wild re-imagining of the Ingalls, if I am to understand what I’ve read here.
(I’ve found incredible leaps of compassion and good will, extensions of humanity and an almost surreal humility and dignity present in the patriarch and matriarch of the television drama; so much so, that I’ve wished to myself, “If only all White people…”)
Sorry to take it there.
I find myself speaking as though it were just the two of us at this very moment, cloudscome, and as though I’ve touched your shoulder in laughter, and shared tea with you: I’m willing to reveal, quite consciously, some of the things I might say to a close first cousin.
I understand the tug to get rid of that which is simply offensive beyond any benefit, that which makes us cringe and want to rip the world apart for the fracture line of hurt it can place inside of our children’s spirits: an indelible seismic line of a suggestion of inferiority, inhumanity, buffoonery, dispensibility. (Glad Flex Bags are remarkably strong; I’ve even bought them at full price so well do they work to hold all that my brood and I have stuffed into them.)
I’ve struggled with this too, and totally understand the Little House (and other movies you talked about) dilemma. It (Little House) was a perennial favorite of mine and I even re-read them as a young adult without getting bothered about the racism. I had a mother who thought these books were great and didn’t recognize for herself why they were so wrong. I had no role modeling for critical thinking.
- Until I had my daughter – and while I wanted to read these to her, struggled over whether to “skip over” those chapters. In the end, I read them to her and we talked about why they were problematic.
And Kim is so right, it’s just the beginning. For example, a recent movie that my daughter wanted to see was “Freedom Writers.” I allowed her to see it, but with the caveat and a discussion about movies that portray white people as “saving” people of color. And by being vigilant about all the things in our culture that our kids are exposed to, it opens up some pretty lively discussions and increases their awareness.
I’ve overheard my 13-year old give “corrective history lessons” to my 9-year old when watching tv shows or reading books. And my 9-year old is now starting to tell his friends. And so it goes on.
My kids biggest challenge with being aware now is finding out that their white friends “don’t get it” [their words, not mine] and being disappointed that their friends don’t recognize the problematic portrayal of people of color in our culture on tv, movies and in books.
My parents never censored what I read growing up, and as such I had a very deep understanding of what is wrong and right. Another reason people should not censor books from the past is because these reveal how there was racism, and still is racism in places where people deny it.
For instance, the entire birther movement with right wingers denying that Obama was born in the United States, that is just pure racism. Obama is distantly related to Bush and many other US President, but the birthers will claim he is born in Kenya or Indonesia, and his mom wanted a better future for him in America. His mom was living in Hawaii at the time she married and gave birth to Obama, so the outlandish birther claims are ridiculous and insidious. If you try to point out to a birther that they would not be saying this if Obama was a white president, they like to point out that it was the Republicans who started the Civil Rights Movement, which proves they are not racist. However, it was Lyndon B Johnson who signed into law the Civil Rights Act of 1964, who was a Democrat.
Soon after the end of segregation in the South many Democrats there became staunch Republicans. Even though Martin Luther King may have been a Republican, it is important to note that the Southern wing of the Republican party grew out of disenchantment over the end of segregation in the South. The modern Republican party in the South and other parts of the country definitely has a racial bias to it. On political news websites in the comments people rail against illegal immigration, and how Obama ruined the chances of the presidency for all future African-Amerians. Why all this emphasis on race?
The reason we should not censor books like Little House on the Prairie or Huckle Berry Finn is because these novels teach Americans of all ages how we do have a legacy of racism in this country, but how we can move past it. When groups like the birthers claim they are not racist, you can use passages from books like these to show them that even though they might think they are not, but that in reality they might be indoctrinated more than they realize. I have even been able to catch a few people off guard in these moments, and they admitted that maybe they need to rethink their comments about people.