Ah! Here's another edition!
Oct. 29th, 2009 10:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
conuly
Judging by the reviews I'm guessing this is the exact same words Helen Bannerman used, but different illustrations. Well, even before recently her words were tied to many different sets of pictures, something people don't often realize today.
Here's one review that I'm looking at right now:
First of all I think that racism is learned. I found nothing wrong with this story and in fact it was one of my favorites as a kid. Many a time you would find us playing tigers running around a tree and melting into butter. To me, it is a story about a little black boy who has two parents who love him very much and give him gifts. The tigers try to eat him, he gives them his clothes and then, while they're fighting, he gets them back. I loved how the tigers turned to butter and Sambo got to eat 169 pancakes! Wow, a huge stack of pancakes loaded with freshly melted butter. I know my kids would love that. I asked my kids 12 and 10 what they thought of the story. Did they think it was mean to black people. We all agreed that it was a good story and could be written with any race and still be good. As for their names-since we haven't studied the history of how hated dark skinned people across the world have been in such depth, they don't mean a thing to us. Why wait 100 years to read the story just because some people can't get over the past? I hope you'll read the book and enjoy it with your children-that's what it was written for-and when you're done go make some pancakes together:)
Her kids are TEN and TWELVE. When on earth did she intend to teach them about racism? Do they know anything about the world around them? (Oh wait - it's all in the past. GOT it. Of course, it still sounds like they're ignorant of any form of recent history....)
Here's one review that I'm looking at right now:
First of all I think that racism is learned. I found nothing wrong with this story and in fact it was one of my favorites as a kid. Many a time you would find us playing tigers running around a tree and melting into butter. To me, it is a story about a little black boy who has two parents who love him very much and give him gifts. The tigers try to eat him, he gives them his clothes and then, while they're fighting, he gets them back. I loved how the tigers turned to butter and Sambo got to eat 169 pancakes! Wow, a huge stack of pancakes loaded with freshly melted butter. I know my kids would love that. I asked my kids 12 and 10 what they thought of the story. Did they think it was mean to black people. We all agreed that it was a good story and could be written with any race and still be good. As for their names-since we haven't studied the history of how hated dark skinned people across the world have been in such depth, they don't mean a thing to us. Why wait 100 years to read the story just because some people can't get over the past? I hope you'll read the book and enjoy it with your children-that's what it was written for-and when you're done go make some pancakes together:)
Her kids are TEN and TWELVE. When on earth did she intend to teach them about racism? Do they know anything about the world around them? (Oh wait - it's all in the past. GOT it. Of course, it still sounds like they're ignorant of any form of recent history....)
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no subject
Date: 2009-10-30 02:38 am (UTC)i sat in on a class last week called "class and education". there was a discussion going on, where students were taking about middle- and working-class interchangeably - as if they were the same thing. when called on it, one girl actually said "i don't know if i'm just more compassionate than other people, but i really just don't SEE race and class - teehee!!"
B.A.R.F.
no subject
Date: 2009-10-30 03:32 am (UTC)Oh, isn't it just!
one girl actually said "i don't know if i'm just more compassionate than other people, but i really just don't SEE race and class - teehee!!"
Wow, she's so... modest.
no subject
Date: 2009-11-03 03:54 am (UTC)Leaving aside the red-herring question of dermal pigmentation, it's true that being born into the upper class generally does give one access to an education, whether or not one chooses to avail oneself of it. And it is certainly true that familiarity with the scientific method is considered essential to a proper education. The whole concept of 'race' is utterly unscientific, "not even wrong", as was conclusively demonstrated half a century ago.
The fact that one knows this doesn't make one unable to distinguish relative skin-tones, nor to discern class-markers in behavior and appearance. It doesn't make one more compassionate than other people, either. It only makes one less ignorant.
Yeah, being white and upperclass, or middle-class at least, the girl has probably never been subjected to routine scarcity and systematic oppression, nor lived among those who have been, and doesn't realize the differences that makes. That's what she doesn't SEE; she erroneously imagines that people who have, still think and feel and live pretty-much the same way she does.
Well, is that so awful? It's naive, yes, but naivete is a function of youth (and so is inappropriate giggling.) Surely there are enough people out there who DO see race and class, and intend to war about it to the bitter end, that this idealistic little chickie can be excused for the time being.
no subject
Date: 2009-11-09 04:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-30 03:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-03 03:16 am (UTC)However, I have a very hard time remembering all the 'race'-related media tropes, and knowing which one is meant to apply in what plot-point. The whole thing is so utterly surreal, it's hard to take any of it seriously.
no subject
Date: 2009-10-30 03:08 pm (UTC)Edited to change my icon. I'd used a Halloween icon of M dressed up as a ghost from last year, but then along with that comment, it looked like she was actually a KKK member or something. White robe and hood and all. GHOST, I SWEAR!
no subject
Date: 2009-10-30 03:33 pm (UTC)And for that matter, it's not like this isn't something that's still ongoing, did you hear about that judge in Louisiana? Or how about that club in Chicago?
no subject
Date: 2009-10-30 05:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-03 02:48 am (UTC)I don't think there's a damn thing wrong with either the story or the illustrations. Yeah, Sambo's a cartoon-caricature, but so what; so are at least a thousand other characters in childrens' books and movies. He's very cute, his parents are nicely portrayed, and he is very decidedly the clever, victorious hero of the tale.
Tell you what; I taught my kid (who's 20 now) about racism from the time she was in preschool. What I taught her about it was that the color of a person's skin matters about as much as the color of their eyes or the shape of their earlobes; and that the idea of valuing people differently on the basis of their skin-tone was both stupid and evil.
I don't see why the stupid and evil people should be allowed to just take such a nice story as Little Black Sambo, and make it part of their evil stupidity. And y'know what else, if the true objection to the illustrations is that the characters aren't 'pretty' by 21st-century American standards, that objection is somewhat on the stupid and evil side too, because people who aren't so pretty can still be brave and resourceful.
It's probably a very good book with which to begin teaching children about racism. The fact that this charming little book was declared Taboo on account of it, and has been the subject of a shitload of fire and fury on the part of allegedly-rational adults for almost a century, serves very well to illustrate the point about stupidity and evil.
no subject
Date: 2009-11-03 02:57 am (UTC)As far as why it's considered offensive, I think it's really (mostly) the unfortunate word choice. At the time she wrote her book, Sambo was apparently already an offensive term. What I've read is that she unknowingly took her name from another source, but it was still there, you know? The book didn't help matters.
And the illustrations weren't useful either - it's not that they aren't pretty, it's that they follow what was even at the time a fairly offensive caricature. (Well, there were several sets of illustrations, so I don't suppose it matters.)
no subject
Date: 2009-11-03 04:29 am (UTC)We've got an edition with the original illustrations here, and they aren't all that much of a caricature. Looking at the pictures of actual children from that area (http://www.foodrelief.org/articles/51/1/Update-on-Tamil-Nadu-Relief-Efforts/Page1.html), especially the ones in profile, one can see that some of the supposedly-offensive 'stereotypical' facial traits in the illustrations are actually pretty common in that region.
There's nothing wrong with them, either; they look just fine. I know, some unscientific assholes of the last century tried to put across the idea that black people were related to apes by drawing them with chimpanzee faces, and Sambo does look kind of monkey-like in some pictures. But hello, it's the year 2009; the Human Genome Project was finished years ago; surely by now, everyone but the fanatic Fundies knows that we're all equally related to apes, so the pot's got no room to be calling the kettle black, as it were.
no subject
Date: 2009-11-03 04:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-09 04:52 am (UTC)I do have to say, I don't think white people get to have any say in how this story "should" be viewed. That's a bit like having men decide whether or not something is a valid feminist issue. There is no "should"-- there's only the fact that a group of people, for various historical reasons, find it very hurtful-- that should be enough to make us think twice about it.
no subject
Date: 2009-11-09 04:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-09 05:10 am (UTC)This is a charming little view of the world that, if executed properly, requires them to make no changes to how they act, speak, or otherwise exist. Ever.
no subject
Date: 2009-11-09 05:27 am (UTC)Developing perspective can take time, and the occasion thwap upside the head.