I'm going to ramble a bit, but it will hopefully come around to something. When I was growing up, I read a lot of older historical book series, a big one would be the Little House On The Prairie series. While I really enjoyed it, there are some very obviously negative portrayals of Native Americans and African Americans. I remember being angry about it as a kid, and my Dad telling me, that part of learning about history is that we have to acknowledge the people we were, and still are. But because Little House on the Prairie is only semi-autobiographical, I still have mixed feelings about this. I do think they are well written books by a female author, an interesting perspective on early American life, and as an adult I can see and acknowledge the issues with the text. If we try to get rid of every author with racist ideas there wouldn't be much left to read from the 20th Century, and it also feels like being dishonest about who we are. So, I'm very mixed, how do you all feel about it? Do you think children can handle books with racial issues like this if it's explained to them? What is our responsibility here?
Should schools leave out older novels that contain racism? What about newer ones like The Hate U Give? Should history books be sanitized? Should anything sexist be left out?
Teachers & parents should teach with context. Do they do so perfectly? No. Should they avoid the responsibility? Also, no.
Humans are biased. We must teach about bias, equity & all the rest. Sweeping it under the rug sets students up to ignore racism when they see it or worse, to fail to recognize it.
@RickiTarr I read the whole set to our kids over many years (pre-teen). They enjoyed them and we eventually visited DeSmet, SD. But we talked about things like the land theft in Kansas and the Minnesota massacre while reading, and often later, as they grew up, in connection with "this is like..." It probably helped that we were surrounded by discussions of indigenous rights, which creates such a different context from the time when the TV version was created. I think kids can handle it.
we are better for learning about bad behaviors and ideas of others, how they were responded to, hopefully overcome
we are better to avoid censorship, but to yes, explain, have conversations, learn about different values, different people, different times, and how they inform who we have become
@RickiTarr Kids (like the young of many species) are designed to be -mostly- sponges, they learn from what they are exposed to. If animals learn the wrong stuff, they don't survive.
The saying "garbage in, garbage out" while overly simplified, applies.
Far too many of us are already not spending enough time unlearning the garbage we were fed about racism, sexism, assumptions about how to live with others, peace, economics, how to treat the environment, etc. around us.
@RickiTarr I think it is important that children learn about negative attitudes that some folks have and also to learn why they are negative and how and when to combat and correct those attitudes when they come across them.
@RickiTarr I think a lot of it honestly comes down to how the educator handles that, but otherwise a yes. I do think it's important to criticize and explain why those portrayals were bad....I'm also not sure at what point I think they'd be ready. I don't work with children (and refuse to, personally, trauma reasons), so I'm not qualified to know if that would be grade school or better handled at a high school level. Might be something to take a breakdown of smaller works at an earlier age as recurring curriculum and work up to larger and more complicated ones later?
@RickiTarr Children are naturally curious about all kinds of books (if they're book readers, that is), but that being said, many parents are not, and do not encourage children to read, or read widely.
I was fortunate to have parents that not only encouraged my reading, they did not limit it, either. Parents should give children background on books with racial overtones, but one book that should ALWAYS be allowed is "To Kill a Mockingbird" as a starter book. I didn't read Huck Finn, either.
@RickiTarr They NEED TO have these things presented and explained to them. Otherwise they grow up naive and ignorant [like I did] and allow the system to go on unchallenged.
@RickiTarr I think that a lot of this can be unpacked by learning the work of Mark Twain in context. All the people younger than Twain doing things poorly and problematic are easy to spot.
All the antisemitic nonsense permeating the works of Rowling was an issue before she was loudly and proudly showing bigotry toward the trans community.
There are far too many good books by marginalized voices to bother with people who use a megaphone for their prejudice.
I think we might do better to read literature by Black and indigenous people which discusses racism. That would also get a good discussion about racism going, and provide perspectives it would be hard to provide by just reading stuff from the racists' perspective.
@RickiTarr The Narnia books are extremely racist to the point it makes my stomach sick even to think about them. It's propaganda style racism so no, I don't think kids should be exposed to them (keeping in mind I've very anti-cencorship) any more than they should be listening to neo nazi speeches
@MikeImBack@RickiTarr as an adult, I try to forgive the authors because they, like all humans, are products of their time and environment.
To a child, the thought patterns that are presented and can be insidious because they are wrapped in wondrous and entertaining stories.
I believe that the books should be read by children, and then an adult should help the children to understand that some of the message is outdated. Social norms are bathwater. There still is a literary baby worth keeping.
@RickiTarr As an aside I’m going to offhandedly mention “Prairie Fires” which is an autobiography/deconstruction/takedown of Laura Ingalls Wilder and the little house books.
I learned about it from Ana Mardolls recaps of them
@RickiTarr I will say the one particular note I liked from Ana’s post was pointing out that when the Ingalls set up on tribal land without permission, when the tribe showed up and basically said “WTF” another family that had done the same, the OTHER family said “whups” and left.
@RickiTarr I haven’t read Laura Ingalls Wilder’s work, so I’m not going to comment on its suitability for curriculum, but if it is to be taught, it needs to be in the context of settler-colonialism and its impact on Native populations, especially the starvation of the Dakota and resulting war. (The war might help explain—but not excuse—Wilder’s anti-Native racism.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dakota_War_of_1862
@RickiTarr My opinion might be a bit out of step. I believe it depends heavily on whatever adults are helping a kid w/context. My parents deliberately had me read things that were pretty hair-raising, far more so than the Little House series. Age appropriate & all that, but enough to provide lots of "Wait, WHAT?" We talked about things & when I was old enough to start hearing all the "how I miss the good old days," even as a teen, my response was already: "And when exactly was that??"
@RickiTarr That's quite a topic. I think that POC should be in charge of the narrative. I think they should determine how their story is shared and told.
@RickiTarr My question is whose responsibility is it to have those discussions with kids with racist parents who see no problem with such books. I was given the series as a kid, my parents allowed them because they considered them "good Christian books". I read them all at like 8-10 years old and had literally had no framework to see anything in them as problematic until I was a teenager. My parents still wouldn't see anything problematic with them today.
@RickiTarr I'm amused when white people think they need books set in the past to teach kids about racism, or that approving depictions of racist characters and attitudes are somehow necessary for that education. It has the same ring as "We'll forget all about slavery unless we keep the Confederate leader statues right where they are!" As many have pointed out, that history can be taught even better and in the right perspective by trashing the statues and teaching the records.
Similarly, these books can be excerpted as examples of racist depictions in popular books and in their historical context, rather than making BIPOC children read dehumanizing portrayals of themselves coming from the "heroes" and protagonists of narratives they're meant to be immersed in. Presentation matters in education. Ask yourself--which are you centering in your discourse, the well-being of Black and Indigenous children or your own discomfort about losing part of your "heritage?"
@RickiTarr it also perpetuates the myth of the small farmer. The Ingels family never made a profit on farming and depended on acquiring land stolen from aborigines.
@RickiTarr Ah. I'm going to rant a bit, so I will apologize in advance. My formerly colonized nation is full of books written by the British/ Scottish writers who were absolutely racist. My school syllabus had Tagore and Ezekiel, but the libraries and bookstores were full of books that made reminded that my "Indian" behaviours were crass and that the sophisticated ideal is the European one.
@RickiTarr I was the savage of Ruyard Kipling's books and the misshapen one of Arthur Conan Doyle's. I would have been very grateful to have had some context - but many of the adults around me had the same prejudices! To date so many of them see Indian art as "gaudy" and the muted European palette as the high-class ideal. So many of them gleeful dole out the same colourism and racism that they suffered to people of African origin.
@RickiTarr also, the absolutely worst descriptions were given to Roma peoples, who, in appearance and garb look very, very close to the shepherds of North West India (many Romani people can trace their origins to that region). So y'know. Literally my neighbours.
@RickiTarr Sure, some of these writers were a "product of their time" but as a child, I wish I was told that. That white skin and the Queen's English are not some great ideals to aim for. I had to do so much unlearning as teen and a young adult. I had learnt to be racist against my own self.
I used to love Rudyard Kipling's stories, until I learned that he'd written "The White Man's Burden." I knew of the work, but learned the author much later. Now when I encounter Kipling's work that I used to love, I feel a little sick. Some people would say, "It was the time," but A LOT of people piled on Kipling for the awfulness of "The White Man's Burden."
Anyway, awesome rant. All good rants inspire more rants.
@forsythec thanks. I still do like Sherlock Holmes! I just like being equipped with the knowledge that any person of colour in those books was portrayed in a racist manner. Same with Agatha Christie's work.... I still read her books, but the Indian people that she's describing are not realistic whatsoever.
@Theorem_Poem@forsythec@RickiTarr Tbf that's going to be the case with anything written more than 100 years (Sherlock) and 70 years (Christie) ago. Not exactly enlightened times when it comes to race.
@RickiTarr
I get the same feelings when I read the translations of the early Stoics, Epictitus, Seneca etc. You hear certain cultural biases that are no longer accepted and it can distract you from the valuable elements that remain relevant now.
Add comment