trailsandturbulations

[trailsandturbulations]

Making sense (if you can) of racism in children’s literature

The recent uproar about Dr Seuss’s racism and the subsequent withdrawal of some of his books from the market has left few Americans unshaken. The last couple of generations of Americans grew up on Dr Seuss’s books. Even though I don’t consider myself a 100% American, I, too, have reacted. Two of my three kids cut their reading teeth on “Green Eggs and Ham” and “One Fish Two Fish”. My late husband, Bob, used “Horton Hatches the Egg” as a springboard for his last public address, a terrific commencement speech at the Ursuline High School (of Youngstown, Ohio) graduation in 2007.

And now this.

I made a few half-serious, half-tongue-in-cheek Facebook posts and comments on the topic, but instead of arguing some finer points all over cyberspace (and ending up in the Facebook dungeon), I thought I should make my position on racism (or its lack, where applicable) in children’s literature clear. Having worked face-to-face with children from around the world as well as in the area of children’s literature for young African readers, I have been sensitive to elements that may hurt the reader’s sense of self or negatively influence their views of other people.

Thus I most emphatically object to depictions or descriptions of groups of people meant to portray them deprecatingly as inferior to others. During my lifetime as a consumer of literature, as well my career as a teacher and children’s story writer, I’ve seen and read books that would today legitimately qualify as racist as well as many that are being unfairly accused of racism. I believe that before deciding what’s racist and what’s not, it’s important to distinguish between inaccuracy stemming from the author’s ignorance but with no intent to hurt, and deliberate malice. In examining illustrations, we also need to pay attention to the styles of visual representation, which can vary from realism to cartoon to caricature, the last being the least forgiving, and, in my opinion, not suitable for children’s books.

One of the first pieces of children’s literature I had been exposed to that is now considered racist is “Murzynek Bambo” (Little Negro Bambo), a poem for children written by one of the beloved Polish poets, Julian Tuwim, in 1935. 

In the poem, which was included in the post-war “Elementarz” (beginning reader), Tuwim attempts to introduce to the Polish children their African peer in a kind, warm, caring way. There are many inaccuracies in the text, some actually showing the life of Little Bambo much more positively compared to the real lives of kids on the African continent in the 1930s. Tuwim’s intention was to convince his readers that the dark-skinned children in remote Africa were just like the Polish kids, and the two could easily be friends. Introduced to “Murzynek Bambo” by my mother before I started school, I loved both the poem and the child behind its lines, and I still remember the whole text word by word. It was in “Murzynek Bambo” that I first heard of Africa and its inhabitants, who happened to have black skin, but were otherwise just like us. Throughout my childhood, I always had at least one black doll that represented my imaginary African friend Bambo. And now Tuwim’s poem has been cancelled because the adults, whose souls had lost their open and loving inner child and replaced it with suspicion and meanness and hate, deemed it inappropriate. Shame.

Few readers and viewers of “The Wizard of Oz” are familiar with L. Frank Baum’s children’s book entitled “The Master Key: An Electrical Fairy Tale”, which contains some definitely racist elements. He wrote the book in 1901, when average people in Europe and America didn’t have reliable sources of information about the lives of the “savages” (as Bronisław Malinowski, father of cultural anthropology, called the pre-industrial peoples). At the time Europeans believed in the existence of cannibalistic tribes who would capture and eat strangers (cannibalism did exist, primarily for ritual purposes; invaders, if captured, may have been subject to such customs).

The reason I bring this up is that in the mid-1990s, my late husband, Bob, and I worked on adapting some existing children’s books for young African readers in South Africa. “The Master Key” was one of the candidates for such an adaptation: it dealt with electricity, and we needed stories that would stimulate the young readers’ interest in science and technology. The story, in which the protagonist travels around the world propelled by electricity, includes a visit to The Cannibal Island, which is not near Africa, but somewhere in the Caribbean. The natives are dark-skinned and don’t look at all like Arawaks, the original Caribbean peoples, but something between Africans and Papuans. 

Since the island is fictional, the inaccuracies are irrelevant; what matters is the intentional presentation, both verbal and pictorial, of the islanders as inferior to Europeans. It’s this intention that makes that part of the book and accompanying illustrations blatantly and irredeemably racist. Bob and I unanimously agreed that the content was truly offensive and thus unsuitable to be included in our adaptation.

Now on to Dr Seuss:  was he a racist? Not a racist? Again, we need to take a closer look at his intentions and attitudes as they reveal themselves both in the text and in the illustrations since the two are inseparable in his art.

First of all, Dr Seuss, whose real name was Theodor Seuss Geisel, was a political propaganda cartoonist during WWII. His biting caricatures didn’t spare anyone, whether Asian or European (and let’s not forget that the Americans were not particularly well-disposed towards the Japanese during that time). 

Thus I have absolutely no problem with Geisel’s war-time anti-Japanese caricatures; the intention to show them in a negative light was intentional, but justified, in the same way as the European art at the time depicted the Germans. All is fair in love and war, and we were legitimately at a war that we had not started (and let’s not split the hairs of “not all the Japanese” or “not all the Germans”). For the record, there was no love lost between the Japanese and other Asian ethnicities, either; ask any older Taiwanese or Shanghainese, and they’ll tell you why. However, some of Geisel’s depictions of the Blacks in his political cartoons were extremely racist (I'm not going to reproduce them here, but you can easily find them on the internet). Africans were not our enemy and so there was no reason for deliberately portraying them that way. 

Dr Seuss’s children’s books are, racism-wise, a mixed bag. I do find the drawing of two black figures in “If I Ran a Zoo” racist. 

These individuals are caricatures of inaccurate stereotypes of Black “savages” that had been in circulation for a long time before Dr Seuss drew them: something between African and Papuan, who cares, it doesn’t matter as long as they look black and uncivilized.The artist’s attitude towards his subjects here is clearly supremacist: they’re part of the zoo for the onlookers to be entertained by. That’s not cool. Let’s get rid of it. 

However, I do not have the same problem with the drawing in “And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street” that has been described as a “jarring racial stereotype of a Chinese man who is depicted with chopsticks, a pointed hat and slanted slit eyes” [https://www.denverpost.com/2017/10/06/dr-seuss-museum-to-replace-mural-after-complaints-it-depicted-jarring-racial-stereotype]. 

It is indeed a stereotype, but is it jarring and offensive? What precisely is offensive about it? The Chinese do eat with chopsticks; a conical hat is a strong element of the Chinese culture (still used today for working outdoors), and the epicanthic fold does give the Asian eyes the impression of a slant, which is widely represented in Chinese art. (Would it be preferable to draw Chinese people with round eyes? Wouldn’t that be considered even more racist?) 

Anyway, I keep wondering in what way Dr Seuss’s depiction (which, let’s not forget, is a cartoon), makes the Chinese people appear inferior to other groups of people. Yes, they look different than his European characters, but isn’t difference the very essence of diversity? Is diversity already passé? I must have missed its exit.

I challenge those who disagree with me to present, both verbally and pictorially, an Asian person that would communicate to a young White or Black child the biological and cultural difference between him/herself and that person. Your audience is a preschooler, so use as few words in your description and as few lines in your image as possible. Go!

Someone said that the offensive image of the Chinaman was being removed at the request of Chinese American parents who consider it racist. Knowing quite a few Chinese parents, I sincerely doubt it. Those I know would not allow such trivialities to interfere with their child-rearing: they’re much too busy supervising their kids’ violin and piano lessons, their Mandarin classes, and their math tutorials, to worry about the meaning behind pictures of chopsticks and conical hats. They have beaten all the other races in the only race that matters–the race to success–which they’re winning in all the relevant categories: educational, professional, and financial.  Are Dr Seuss’s books going to stop them? Think again.

While I’m on this topic, I should mention a highly inaccurate children’s book committed by Maya Angelou entitled “My Painted House, My Friendly Chicken, and Me”, which describes a day in the life of an African girl of the Ndebele tribe. 

When the book was presented to a group of Black teachers in Africa, they nearly died laughing. It’s worse than a “jarring stereotype”: it’s both ignorant and arrogant, full of factual errors, written without an ounce of understanding of the rural African lifestyle. But then who would dare criticize Maya Angelou?

What’s missing in all the furor about “jarring racial stereotypes” are any mentions of stereotypical depictions of white ethnic groups. As an East European woman of a certain age, I may choose to object to East European grandmothers appearing in illustrations with babushkas on their heads; neither I, nor anyone I know of my generation or my mother’s generation have ever worn a babushka (just like my Chinese husband or his parents never wore conical hats). Thus I may find many illustrations in Patricia Polacco’s children books, like the one below, stereotypical, racist, and hurtful. 

But of course I won’t. And I would be more than willing to explain to my grandchildren that this is how grandmothers in my country used to dress, but they no longer do. Just like I would explain to them that people in China used to wear pointed hats, but the Chinese people in America don’t. How hard is that?

And how about this picture of a Jewish couple? 

Isn’t a large nose a stereotypical attribute of a Jewish male? Do all Jewish men have large noses? Isn’t this as racist as slanted eyes on a picture of a Chinese person? In the best interest of human uniformity, I suggest that from now on, pictures of all people in children’s books be drawn with small noses and round eyes. Then finally we'll all be equal. 

[trailsandturbulations]

Why I voted for Trump again

A few months ago I received an email from Ola, a friend in Poland whom I have known for over 40 years, informing me that she is officially breaking up with me forever because she had found out that I support Trump. “I don’t understand how you can!” she wrote. Had she asked, “I can’t understand why,” she would have left a gate for dialogue and potential understanding at least slightly open. But “how can you!” disqualified my morality and thus my right to defend my political stance. There was no point in replying, so I removed Ola from my list of friends, as was her wish, forever.

Ola was not the only one among my friends and acquaintances who have kicked me out of polite society. After all, declaring myself openly as a Trump supporter revealed my racism, xenophobia, transphobia, white supremacy, parochialism, ignorance, lack of understanding of my own best interests, my utmost stupidity. Perhaps also my religious fundamentalism, bigotry, over-attachment to firearms, as well as hostility towards political correctness, globalism, science, and alternative sources of energy. If I knew myself as well as some of those friends of mine appear to know me, I, too, would sever all social contacts with myself.

Fortunately, I know myself from a different perspective. I also know Trump and his followers from the angles that the media such as CNN or the Polish Gazeta Wyborcza prefer not to explore.

My demographic profile, my professional career, and my charity activities indicate that I rightly belong on the side of the Democratic Party. I’m a woman with a graduate degree, a house in a suburb, a new car of a good make and model, and annual income that puts me squarely within the upper-middle class range. In addition, I’m an immigrant married to a refugee who is a Person of Color. I’m a retired college professor who volunteers with foster children and with refugees and immigrants, those legal and those not quite so, who need free English lessons. I give money to environmental organizations such as the Nature Conservancy. The only magazine with a regular subscription in our home is Science News.

It would thus seem incomparably easier for me to fit myself ideologically into the group to which I already demographically and culturally belong. It would cost me nothing. The tax-rate raise for the rich, who apparently don’t pay their fair share, promised by the Democratic Party, would not apply to me since I never achieved that level of affluence. Supporting the Democrats would not detract from my social standing. Quite the opposite: I would avoid conflicts with “my kind of people” and could, like them, look down at those ideologically challenged. Ola would still be my friend. My kids would “like” my social media posts instead of hiding their accounts from my view lest I leave a politically incorrect comment under their posts. 

So why did I find myself on the wretched side? Maybe because I’d rather not be on the side of accusatory hate that would command me to break off contacts with a friend in another country for supporting a political candidate who has nothing to do with my life. Or the red-hot hate that makes a person put on a black mask, pick up a baton, and beat unconscious a diminutive, gay Asian journalist for writing from the wrong perspective. Or the bigoted hate that attempts to cancel out of existence anyone who holds the incorrect values. The dangerous hate that brings to mind genocides like the Holocaust and Rwanda. The hate that prides itself on tolerance and believes that love conquers all.

My husband and I used to be Democrats. We both voted for Obama. Alas, the eight years of Obama’s presidency brought us only deep disappointments in all fields of government activity. Race and class divisions deepened, trust in the government diminished, corruption increased, the wave of hope that had brought Obama to the top of political popularity receded. Early in 2016 I knew I wouldn’t vote for Hillary Clinton, but I didn’t expect that I would end up voting for Trump. I did so without enthusiasm, with a smidgen of shame, choosing the lesser of two evils. Four years later, this November, I voted for Trump with full conviction, and if he chooses to run again in 2024 I’m fairly certain that I will vote for him again.

Despite unrelenting demonization, harassment, sneer, false accusations, and plots (amply documented) to deprive him of the presidency, some of which had started before he took office, and above all, contempt with which Trump and his followers had been treated by the liberal elites, the support of the regular people for their unorthodox leader not only held, but grew by millions. In the November 2020 elections, Trump received nearly 72,7 million votes: close to 10 million more than in 2016, and 3 million more than Obama at the peak of his popularity in 2008.

Contempt is one of the key factors that motivate chunks of the traditional electorate of the Democratic Party to switch camps. Hillary Clinton’s undiplomatic “basket of deplorables” comment cost her lots of precious votes, if not the presidency itself. The ridicule that Trump received for saying that he loves “the poorly educated” pitched the Democrats against those diploma-less, hardworking Americans, who then decided to support the man who was not embarrassed to stand by them. Alas, those lessons appeared wasted on Joe Biden, who didn’t hesitate to call Trump’s supporters “chumps” and “ugly folks.” Biden may have won the presidency–perhaps honestly, perhaps through massive fraud–perhaps we will never know. However, the “blue wave” predicted by the polls did not materialize.

Low- and medium-income, undereducated, working Americans have pride and do not allow themselves to be insulted. Pride is one of the few luxuries they can afford, especially in hard times. They recognize Trump as one of their own, who fights for their wellbeing. Trump is not a politician; he’s a street fighter who will not turn the other cheek, but will hit back twice as hard. He has no filters, only a strong tendency towards exaggeration, a loose treatment of facts, and a disregard for details. Like many other Trump supporters, I’m thoroughly annoyed by his antics, and put off by his crude comments and his total lack of diplomacy; because of that, I don’t follow his tweets and have never “liked” his Facebook page. I don’t approve of all his moves. However, I appreciate that he calls a spade a spade, and that he talks directly to the people, not to the cameras, media, or other politicians. And time after time, Trump’s outlandish statements ridiculed by his enemies and treated with skepticism by his followers somehow turn out to be true. Trump approaches all his tasks with boundless energy and the force of a Soviet tank. In his famous rallies, he invariably uses the pronoun “we”–in stark contrast to Obama, whose favorite pronoun was “I”. Trump renders to Cesar what is Cesar’s, giving ample credit to local politicians and activists as well as regular folks who have distinguished themselves in the process of making America great again.

Trump’s enemy is the Swamp: corrupt government agencies (including the FBI and CIA), the media, the "Big Tech" that rules the internet (the likes od Google, Yahoo, or Facebook), the entertainment industry, and institutions of higher education, that latter overzealous in propagating the ideologies of Marxism, theories of gender identity, and the critical race theory, according to which each member of the society is assigned to one of two groups: the oppressed and the oppressors. Trump has promised to drain the Swamp and restore dignity to average, much denigrated Americans.

Trump is the first president in the history of our collective memory to live up, at least in large part, to all the promises he had made to his supporters. "Promises Made, Promises Kept": Reduced corporate tax rates allowed bringing industrial plants from overseas, primarily from China, back to the States. The driving force of the economy was amplified by new international trade agreements coupled with relaxing a host of domestic regulations. Activity returned to the coal mines of Pennsylvania and West Virginia, fracking production of oil and gas heated up, closed oil pipelines reopened, and suddenly we reclaimed our energy independence from the Middle East, for the first time since 1957.  All these measures improved the labor market and caused the unemployment rate to drop to a historically low level of 3.7% in 2019 (i.e. just before the pandemic). Black and Latin unemployment has fallen to its lowest rates in the country's history.

In the Middle East, Trump dealt quickly and effectively with the Islamic Caliphate, moved the US Embassy from Tel-Aviv to Jerusalem, and has already mediated three peace agreements between Israel and Islamic countries. As a pragmatist who doesn’t believe in spending our money to make other countries happy against their will, Trump is withdrawing American troops from Afghanistan. Because it's not our war.

Our war is the one on our southern border, through which thousands of illegal immigrants, emboldened by friendly policies in the Democrat-run cities, have crossed with impunity. A steady stream of undocumented migrants not only from Latin America, but from all over the world, poured into our country in numbers exceeding a hundred thousand a month; not only work seekers, but also gang members, smugglers of fentanyl and young girls destined for prostitution, as well as individuals with criminal record, some previously deported back to their home countries. The wall, or rather the border fence, the agreement with Mexico, and changes to the procedures for granting political asylum have reduced the chances of criminal elements crossing our border without consequences. (Regarding children separated from their parents: the photos of children in cages circulating on the Internet date back to Obama's second term, when trainloads of children from Latin America were sent out alone, under the supervision of paid "coyotes", and let loose at our border crossings. The 500-plus children separated from adults, who were not necessarily their parents, during the Trump presidency, are remaining in the protective custody of the American government because their biological parents refuse to take them back, hoping to reunite with them on their next attempt to cross the border.)

It is impossible to enumerate all of Trump's achievements here because the list is too long. The gains for the country and the society are not advertised in the media because they contradict the narrative of the cultural elites who are no longer concerned with achieving the American Dream that Trump had promised to restore because they or their parents have already reached it. Recently, I got a phone call from a Polish friend who, together with her husband, fled from the Polish socialist poverty, from a squalid one-room rental with mold-covered walls, with no chance for a better future. They did hard manual labor for many years, cleaning smelly motels and lifting bricks on construction sites during the day, studying English and earning professional certifications at night. Krystian, their grown-up son, for whose studies they paid thirty thousand dollars a year with their capitalist savings and loans, announced right before the elections that he was going to vote for Biden because only socialism would guarantee equality for all Americans. “You Boomers don’t get it,” he dismissed the reactions of his shocked parents who had spent half their lives in socialism. I nodded with understanding because my own kids, when told that I voted for Trump in 2016, first growled at me, and then restricted my freedom of family speech to non-political topics.

As I write these words, I occasionally look out of the window, where Alejandro, Krystian's peer and also a son of immigrants, is laying out the boards of our new deck. It snowed last night and the morning is frosty, but the construction work does not stop because of the weather if there are paying customers. Alejandro, in a quilted coat and a hat pulled over his ears, keeps rubbing his freezing hands, but continues working. Alejandro did not go to college because he has to earn a living and help his family; besides, he didn’t do well enough in his Mexican ghetto school. He did not vote in 2016, but last week he joined the growing number of “Latinos for Trump” voters. Alejandro believes Trump's policies will help him achieve the American Dream. Krystian, on the other hand, is already used to living in comfort, and can therefore afford himself the luxury of theorizing about socialism.

"If Trump loses, we're totally screwed," says James, co-owner of a small, somewhat struggling company that employs Alejandro. If James's business goes under, Alejandro will lose his job. "All the small-business entrepreneurs and their employees in Reno are for Trump," says James. Robert, our electrician, independently confirms James' words. "We’d never had it so good before Trump," he adds. "We fear that our prosperity will end if the Democrats win.”

While the Democratic Party chose the so-called "identity politics" that divides people into groups according to race-and gender-based demographic indicators, Trump's politics began to unite people of average economic status–those whose income is not guaranteed, whose material comfort is not stable, but depends on fluctuations of the economy. The rich can afford to support the Democrats because they don't have to fear economic downturns; the rich can also afford the luxury of isolating themselves from the pandemic because they generally have a choice of earning money from home, and getting whatever they need delivered to their doors by peons like Alejandro. Those living on welfare have nothing to fear, either, especially if Democrats come into power. It’s the working people whose livelihoods are at stake if the economy flounders.

Two weeks before the elections, my husband David and I offered our services as canvassing volunteers, going door-to-door and reminding residents to vote. An appropriate phone app showed us party affiliations of households in the neighborhoods we canvassed: Republican houses were marked in red, and Democratic houses, in blue. The posher the neighborhood, the bluer the maps appeared. “Gated communities” turned out to be predominantly blue; as Republican volunteers, we were not even allowed beyond the gate. The generational division was also apparent: in many conservative homes, the parents complained that their adult children had changed their political affiliation in college or right after they graduated. "Universities have completely brainwashed them. Now we regret paying their tuition,"  they expressed exactly the same sentiment I’d heard from Krystian’s mother.

Our canvassing activity didn’t afford us any insight into the political views of racial minorities in our area as the suburbs of Reno are inhabited mainly by whites, with an occasional Asian or Latino family. However, on the national scale, the support for Trump among the racial minorities has increased significantly: 26% of minority voters chose Trump this time around. Among the Blacks, Trump secured the votes of 18% of men (by comparison, only 5% of Black men voted for a Republican candidate in 2008) and 8% of women (compared to 4% in 2016). 35% of the Latinos, such as Alejandro, cast their votes for Trump. Trump was even more successful with the indigenous populations: 59% of the Native Hawaiians and 52% of the continental Native Americans voted for him; perhaps they had never got the message that he’s a racist. Among the non-race based minority groups, Trump received electoral support from 28% of the LGBT community–so much for the claims of his homophobia. (The above calculations are based on exit polls). The Blacks and Latinos who cross over to Trump’s camp want to be treated as regular Americans, not as persecuted minorities and victims of “systemic” racism, courted every four years by the Democrats as dependable election fodder. “What do you have to lose?” Trump called out to them during his 2016 campaign. The People of Color began looking around and noticing that, in reality, they won’t be losing anything by abandoning the Democratic Party.

Neither the dilemmas of the People of Color who feel they’re being used by the Democrats, nor the uncertainty of James’s business future and Alejandro’s job situation would necessarily motivate me to vote for Trump. As the Polish expression goes, those are not my monkeys. I could easily and comfortably stand with Krystian, who has a double major in business and political science and counts on a good job for some corporation, in a fully air-conditioned office, with an income several times higher than Alejandro’s. I have earned my place among the elites, whose members would surely stop insulting me at every turn if I carried my club membership card. My children, not much older than Krystian, have also chosen the political and social comfort of the elites. Had I chosen to vote for Biden, I could have had redeemed myself from my fall for Trump four years ago, and maybe would regain the full member rights in my own family. Oh well.

It is nevertheless my concern for children that motivates me the most to support Trump. Not my own children, but other people’s. Not those from elite families, like my grandchildren, attending private schools or top public ones in gated community catchment areas, but those from families struggling to survive in poor neighborhoods or ethnic ghettos, attending schools which are intellectual deserts. Having worked with, or for, underprivileged children for most of my professional life, I know such schools only too well.

One of the prominent items on Trump’s political and social agenda is school choice: the right of families to send their children to schools best suited to their needs, interests, and abilities. The US is the only one among highly developed countries in which children are tied to their neighborhood schools like feudal peasants to land. There is a marked difference in the quality of schools in rich and poor areas: not only in the physical structures and equipment, but also in the breadth and depth of curricular offerings and the standards of instruction. Needless to say, graduates of excellent schools achieve higher test scores and better chances of admission to top universities than those from the schools in the ghettos; in some of the latter, not a single student achieves the lowest required threshold of academic performance (e.g., thirteen Baltimore City high schools achieved zero proficiency in mathematics; Baltimore has been a bastion of the Democratic Party since the 1960s).

Access to good schools is important to Americans. The quality of its public schools affects a neighborhood’s property values and apartment rent rates. People on limited incomes cannot afford to move, but they have no right to send their children to schools offering better educational perspectives. Thus the children of the less affluent are sentenced not only to years of academic mediocrity, but also to the influence and effects of drugs and crime in their school environments, perpetuating the patterns of failure and poverty.

The Trump administration has been battling the Democratic opposition to allow the money designated for the education of a child to follow each student to a school of his/her choice. All the highly developed countries, in which children and adolescents achieve high levels of academic performance, allow school choice; in some countries, school choice is a constitutional right. Only equal access to the same educational opportunities can erase the glaring economic imbalances by creating paths to prosperity and social equality for the future generations of Americans.

The Democratic Party and its ardent supporters, the teachers’ unions, are fiercely opposing all political and administrative efforts to guarantee the right to school choice for all citizens. The multi-million dollar financial contributions from the teachers’ unions to the Democratic Party’s Political Action Committees are to ensure that no school choice proposal will never be approved by the Congress. One has to wonder why the liberal elites so vehemently deny poor children access to good education; why they don’t consider those children as deserving of the same opportunities as their own offspring. Two words come to mind: control and contempt. Because the Swamp sucks you in.

And that’s why I voted for Trump.