"Little House On The Prairie" Is Racist

[marylander1940]

not to mention Mark Twain.....

 

(but I fear this thread will end up in that hellhole Politics forum pretty soon)

 

Books should be read/studied considering the time they were written and its reinterpretation should be open to discussion.

 

A movie called "Mississippi burning" was seen by the left as a moment when the FBI had to break the law for the greater good of stopping the KKK in the South. Later on it was seen by the right as a way to explain why waterboarding was necessary in order to stop terrorism, and therefore breaking the law for a greater good.

 

 

[tenderloin]

I disagree with your analysis, but your suggestion is a good one.

 

Instead of clinging to outdated books calling Black people darkies and repeating the only good Indian is a dead Indian, let's have schools teach books like Octavia Butler's Kindred, in which a Black woman and her white husband are sent back in time to before the Civil War where she repeatedly rescues the white slaveowner's son who is her ancestor.

 

So if I want to write a novel set in the antebellum south, how do you think I should have the plantation owner refer to the enslaved persons in his custody? "My dear employees?" "My beloved African-American colleagues?" Shall we pretend that people didn't use awful terms to refer to people of other races, ethnicities, religions, etc.? Will that really enlighten the readers? Will that really give them a realistic perspective on life in America in the mid-nineteenth century?

 

It's been said but merits repeating: there is no writer, politician, religious leader or other notable without blemishes. Once the cleansing starts, where does it stop?

 

I am going to go rooting through Octavia's works - I am sure there is something controversial in there.....

[+ Avalon]

So if I want to write a novel set in the antebellum south, how do you think I should have the plantation owner refer to the enslaved persons in his custody? "My dear employees?" "My beloved African-American colleagues?" Shall we pretend that people didn't use awful terms to refer to people of other races, ethnicities, religions, etc.? Will that really enlighten the readers? Will that really give them a realistic perspective on life in America in the mid-nineteenth century?

 

It's been said but merits repeating: there is no writer, politician, religious leader or other notable without blemishes. Once the cleansing starts, where does it stop?

 

I am going to go rooting through Octavia's works - I am sure there is something controversial in there.....

 

 

I remember the controversy over this black female teacher using the book "Nappy Hair".

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/frompost/dec98/hair3.htm

[Courage]

I read the Little House series of books (I was weird little kid, okay?). I enjoyed them, but even as a kid I got some of the overt stuff. In retrospect, the entire series had a worse blindspot--how the homesteaded land was obtained.

 

I'll let other people fight over the Little House books' continuing value. Frankly, I understand it's a struggle to get most kids to read--full stop. If that's the case, preserving the legacy of Laura Ingalls Wilder shouldn't be what people are worried about.

[longtime lurker]

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-44604844

 

I had no idea. I've never read the books. I didn't watch the show when it first aired but years later I've watched all the episodes.

 

The TV show took great liberties with the books. For one thing, the guys in the cast all had access to blow-dryers. The late 1970s/early '80s recreating the late 1870s/early '80s was quite the groovy combination. Also I don't recall the originals having any story resembling the infamous Sylvia episode. Actually the original TV movie of 1974, with the same cast, was pretty close to that book, the third in the series.

 

Going back to the original article, it is interesting that the 1953 editions changed the lines describing a land with "no people. Only Indians lived there" to "no settlers. Only Indians lived there". Already society was advancing. By then, Garth Williams had updated the illustrations to the Eisenhower Era (children's books were loaded with pictures by then), although the original Helen Sewill pictures have a nice woodcut style and are probably worth reviving.

 

I find it interesting that the book Ferdinand the Bull is more even popular today than it was even in 1936. Every Barnes & Noble, Wal-Mart and Target seem to have multiple copies in either paperback or hardback. Today, children are more familiar with the book than the Disney version, although we can blame the recent feature film for that. It is the most "gay friendly" of the bunch even if smelling flowers isn't what defines one's orientation. In the Disney cartoon of 1938, there was something slightly kinky about the bull licking the flower tattoo on the macho matador's chest. I am sure there were plenty of Disney animators still in the closet back then who enjoyed working on that scene.

 

Seems like nobody has been able to kill Little Black Sambo, which keeps getting revived over and over and over again. That story never made any sense to me. Turning tigers into butter? Apparently the Brits of the Victorian Era (it was original published in 1899) thought everybody in Southeast Asia looked "black" to them.

Edited July 7, 2018 by longtime lurker

[+ Pensant]

Forbidden books are always the hallmark of a totalitarian state.

[+ Avalon]

I understand that Nellie Oleson was not prominent in the books.

[+ quoththeraven]

Forbidden books are always the hallmark of a totalitarian state.

Schools pick books for pedagogical reasons. I guess no one gives a shit what effect this has on the groups depicted, on what other students think is okay to think about them, or the further damage that can be done by a racist, incompetent or insensitive teacher.

 

Otherwise, an F on reading comprehension. The books aren't going to be withdrawn from sale or banned. I don't know about school libraries, but they most certainly will stay in public libraries because parents get to manage their children's reading.

[+ quoththeraven]

I read the Little House series of books (I was weird little kid, okay?). I enjoyed them, but even as a kid I got some of the overt stuff. In retrospect, the entire series had a worse blindspot--how the homesteaded land was obtained.

 

I'll let other people fight over the Little House books' continuing value. Frankly, I understand it's a struggle to get most kids to read--full stop. If that's the case, preserving the legacy of Laura Ingalls Wilder shouldn't be what people are worried about.

The problem is the idea that only certain kinds of books count. Graphic novels, manga, comics and car magazines count, too. Reading is reading.

 

If kids want to read Wilder and their parents are okay with it, that's fine. It'd be nice if they discussed the issues, but I'm not holding my breath.

[+ tassojunior]

so let's pretend that no one in the 1800's used the N word. yeah, that will make it better and give kids an accurate picture of culture back then....

 

Much more recent. Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson used the n word daily and frequently. They were extremely proud of using it.

 

I can completely understand going out of the way to take pieces with certain now-offensive words out of the main education norm. Having them available does not normalize the words so much as mainstream core reading does.

 

I do have more trouble with demonizing philosophers, etc because they had bad private lives or even owned slaves like Jefferson or Aristotle.

Edited July 8, 2018 by tassojunior

[Courage]

The problem is the idea that only certain kinds of books count. Graphic novels, manga, comics and car magazines count, too. Reading is reading.

 

If kids want to read Wilder and their parents are okay with it, that's fine. It'd be nice if they discussed the issues, but I'm not holding my breath.

 

One of my brothers, who had untreated ADHD back in the day, learned to read from World War II-themed comics that were published well into the 80s.

 

As to explaining...Frankly, my house might've had too much to read for a precocious little latchkey kid. My mom and the brother mentioned above left stuff around or poorly hidden. I can't blame my "issues" on my Mom's Erica Jong/Alice Walker/Alex Comfort and my brother's 80s porno mags (Playboy, Penthouse, Hustler, and maybe the worst for a kid who likes reading, Forum). But they probably didn't help :-D

[tenderloin]

The problem is the idea that only certain kinds of books count. Graphic novels, manga, comics and car magazines count, too. Reading is reading.

 

If kids want to read Wilder and their parents are okay with it, that's fine. It'd be nice if they discussed the issues, but I'm not holding my breath.

 

You still haven't answered my question, and I am genuinely curious as to your answer (and I am not saying that to be combative - I am curious): if I were to write a book and set it in the south pretty much anytime before 1900, what term should I put into the mouths of southern whites when referring to their African American neighbors? If I want my dialogue to be believable and realistic, what should I do?

[+ tassojunior]

You still haven't answered my question, and I am genuinely curious as to your answer (and I am not saying that to be combative - I am curious): if I were to write a book and set it in the south pretty much anytime before 1900, what term should I put into the mouths of southern whites when referring to their African American neighbors? If I want my dialogue to be believable and realistic, what should I do?

Personally, I would "translate" the period colloquialism that is now offensive into a modern one that is not. There are plenty of "old words" that are not written in literature now because they would not be understood and that would ruin the mood of the statement. Same with now-offensive words.

[mike carey]

f I were to write a book and set it in the south pretty much anytime before 1900, what term should I put into the mouths of southern whites when referring to their African American neighbors?

I would have to wonder what the purpose was of writing such a narrative that 'needs' to include words that are now offensive. I agree that it would be clumsy and inauthentic to substitute another word in a simple 'replace all' mode. But it is not necessary to write in a way that there is a perceived need to use that word and one should be able to navigate around it. Using indirect speech rather than direct is one device for doing so.

[+ WmClarke]

and maybe the worst for a kid who likes reading, Forum).

Worst? More like the best—I learned many interesting words from Penthouse Forum.

 

I always hoped there would be a “gay letter” when I read it, but there was not one every month. What a nice treat when there was, though!

[+ quoththeraven]

You still haven't answered my question, and I am genuinely curious as to your answer (and I am not saying that to be combative - I am curious): if I were to write a book and set it in the south pretty much anytime before 1900, what term should I put into the mouths of southern whites when referring to their African American neighbors? If I want my dialogue to be believable and realistic, what should I do?

You can report slurs without using them or use them, but it wouldn't be a book appropriate for school below college level. Also what is the story and what is the goal of the book? Gone With the Wind may not include racial slurs, but it accepts slavery as a given, romanticizes the South, and has the reader rooting against the Union army because it's written from the point of view of white plantation owners.

 

If, as I suspect, you are white, you may not be the right person to write such a story anyway, especially if it focuses on black pain. That's considered by blacks to be whites exploiting and monetizing their pain. That's also true of other forms of appropriation. British soldiers in Caribbean colonies had orders to shoot men wearing dreadlocks on sight, so a white guy rocking dreadlocks causes a lot of anger because what for them is a symbol of defiance becomes another white hairdo disconnected from its past.

[+ Keith30309]

Some teachers treat it sensitively. Some teachers have black students read the parts that use racial epithets for the class.

 

You do understand why that's traumatic and inappropriate?

To level set, what we’re talking about is banning not simply any scholastic requirement that students read Huck Finn but that we prohibit any student from reading the book in the context of school (I don’t think anyone is saying that the book couldn’t be available at libraries or bookstore for home reading.)

 

To the question, is it 1) traumatic, and, 2) inappropriate to require that a student read a book that contains an offensive word. Maybe it would be traumatic for someone... let’s assume that it would be. I’ve certainly read things that were traumatic (sometime read the lyrics to Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit”). But the problem is this slippery slope of suppressing any open discussion of our nation’s racism exacerbates the problem rather than helping to heal it. It’s abstinence-only education for race. It seems counterintuitive to me that pretending that a wound doesn’t exist or refusing to examine it in the light of day would not cause it to fester.

To stretch a metaphor, it’s very likely that the descriptions of rape in Alice Walker’s “The Color Purple” could be very traumatic to girls who read it... but does that mean we should suppress discussion about it? It seems like shrink-wrapping kids in an intellectual bubble would ultimately lead to adults who are incapable of having a rational discussion about any topic which they find sensitive.

Edited July 9, 2018 by Keith30309

[Courage]

Worst? More like the best—I learned many interesting words from Penthouse Forum.

 

I always hoped there would be a “gay letter” when I read it, but there was not one every month. What a nice treat when there was, though!

 

Yeah, as a kid who didn't know what "gay" meant I still remember the first time I read an account of gay sex...in Forum. I assume Bob Guccione's people knew their audience better perhaps than the audience knew itself.

[tenderloin]

You can report slurs without using them or use them, but it wouldn't be a book appropriate for school below college level. Also what is the story and what is the goal of the book? Gone With the Wind may not include racial slurs, but it accepts slavery as a given, romanticizes the South, and has the reader rooting against the Union army because it's written from the point of view of white plantation owners.

 

If, as I suspect, you are white, you may not be the right person to write such a story anyway, especially if it focuses on black pain. That's considered by blacks to be whites exploiting and monetizing their pain. That's also true of other forms of appropriation. British soldiers in Caribbean colonies had orders to shoot men wearing dreadlocks on sight, so a white guy rocking dreadlocks causes a lot of anger because what for them is a symbol of defiance becomes another white hairdo disconnected from its past.

 

I may not be the right person to write such a story? Oy. For the record, I am an author and historian. The idea that one must be the right race/gender/whatever to write anything is repugnant to anyone who truly values freedom of expression.

[tenderloin]

I would have to wonder what the purpose was of writing such a narrative that 'needs' to include words that are now offensive. I agree that it would be clumsy and inauthentic to substitute another word in a simple 'replace all' mode. But it is not necessary to write in a way that there is a perceived need to use that word and one should be able to navigate around it. Using indirect speech rather than direct is one device for doing so.

 

When one writes about the past, presumably one is trying to create as accurate a picture of the time and place as possible. Sanitizing the past to avoid hurting feelings today is, I would argue, more harmful to anyone than the use of words (however distasteful) in the proper context.

 

Look at it this way: if I wrote a story about the Stonewall riots, I would not have the cops refer to the patrons as "members of the LGBTQ community" - the cops called us faggots and dykes and cocksuckers and.... Whether or not we like it, that is part of our shared history, and should not be forgotten, erased, or sanitized.

[Courage]

Skimming this, I felt like splitting out issues:

 

(1) The removal of Ingalls Wilder's name from the award.

 

(2) Discontinuing teaching of Ingalls Wilder's (and others') work to children.

 

(3) The censoring of Ingalls Wilder's work.

 

One can be con- one or two of them and be pro- the other(s). For instance, I'm against (3). If you wanna read it, knock yourself out. Because, freedom.

 

I'm for (1) because the ALA gets to name its own award. I'm also for (2) because there's better stuff out there for most* kids to read, that will (hopefully) beget more reading--which is the point of teaching "reading" as a subject.

 

*Given limited class time, choices have to be made. If your kid has a thing about the grinding details of frontier life, the Little House books are a blast.

[+ azdr0710]

Skimming this, I felt like splitting out issues:

 

(1) The removal of Ingalls Wilder's name from the award.

 

(2) Discontinuing teaching of Ingalls Wilder's (and others') work to children.

 

(3) The censoring of Ingalls Wilder's work.

 

One can be con- one or two of them and be pro- the other(s). For instance, I'm against (3). If you wanna read it, knock yourself out. Because, freedom.

 

I'm for (1) because the ALA gets to name its own award. I'm also for (2) because there's better stuff out there for most* kids to read, that will (hopefully) beget more reading--which is the point of teaching "reading" as a subject.

 

*Given limited class time, choices have to be made. If your kid has a thing about the grinding details of frontier life, the Little House books are a blast.

 

 

excellent points......thanks

 

[Courage]

excellent points......thanks

 

 

Yup. That was partially the inspiration for the [uSER=14922]@Courage![/uSER] handle. Rather is gloriously off-kilter in a noble sorta way.

[+ azdr0710]

Yup. That was partially the inspiration for the [uSER=14922]@Courage![/uSER] handle. Rather is gloriously off-kilter in a noble sorta way.

 

I kinda thought that might be your inspiration, what with the exclamation point and all.....I remember the hell he took when he started saying that.....then he quietly dropped it a few weeks later......perfect assessment of him in your last sentence!

[Courage]

I kinda thought that might be your inspiration, what with the exclamation point and all.....I remember the hell he took when he started saying that.....then he quietly dropped it a few weeks later......perfect assessment of him in your last sentence!

 

It was his bid to copycat Walter Cronkite with a signoff. I only realized his greatness when CBS canned him. He wasn't the *equal* of Edward R. Murrow or Cronkite (who weren't the equals of each other), but he was every bit a worthy heir. I don't even know who the anchors are now, but I enjoy following Rather's ramblings on Facebook.

Edited July 10, 2018 by Courage!