Most unintentionally hilarious Amazon review I've seen in a while!

[conuly]

This is a review of the book Two Little Trains by Margaret Wise Brown. Now, I haven't seen much of the original illustrations. This book has been newly illustrated for the reprinting.

It's really a cute book except for one... little... problem. You see, when Brown wrote this book originally back in 1949, she saw nothing odd about mentioning at one point that the trains hear "a black man singing in the West". And not a few reviewers thought that was a little... well... weird. I did too, actually, and most of my review is taken up with discussing this issue. (And if anybody would care to comment, I'd love to hear it. Really.)

I was concerned enough that I actually posted two images of the spread in question, to help people decide.

This is what well-meaning E. Hoffer thinks:

A good book, but needs a little white out

I was shocked to find the phrase "...of a black man singing in the west" in this book. I realize it is an older book, but shouldn't it be edited to be P.C.?? I used some white out so our copy now reads "of a man singing in the West." A good book other than that.

I know her intentions were all for the best, and it's no different from everybody else just carefully not saying That Word, but... I can't help laughing over here. Too much "black man" in your book? Just use... white out!

Comments

[leora.livejournal.com]

I'm meter impaired, so I can't really tell, but it is rhymey, is it also in meter? If so, wouldn't it be simple to talk about how you often add a descriptor to help keep the meter right, and that in poetry one generally uses more descriptors than in standard speech?

That may not be why it was done here, but it seems like a reason why one might.

Also, we do sometimes mention random attributes other than race. We do sometimes say "the thin man" or "the man in the yellow hat" or "the brunette" or "my brown-eyed girl". It's less common, but it is done.

[conuly]

In fact, keeping a one-syllable adjective there IS essential for keeping the meter, you're right.

[dandelion.livejournal.com]

Since they're talking about hearing a song, it makes some sense to me. If you said "thin" or "blond" it'd be an adjective you couldn't justify and isn't relevant - how do you know what a singer you're zooming past in the dark looks like, and how would it affect their voice? But black male singing voices are usually identifiable by sound, and if you don't specify, white people will probably imagine a white male voice by default. (It does raise the question as to whether it's strictly necessary to correct that assumption, or whether people should be making that assumption at all, but that's another issue.)

I love how it needs to be edited to be PC (white-out, aside from the hilarious irony, doesn't work because it disrupts the meter) since for some of us, "black" is still the PC descriptor. British people are utterly, completely mystified by "person of color" and most think you're taking the piss if you tell them that that's the PC term in America. It might be because it's too close to "coloured", which is regarded as outdated and offensive, and sounds similar to terms such as "vertically-challenged" which people know only as jokes.

[conuly]

Just mentioning race in this context, I think, is what's "not PC".

[leora.livejournal.com]

I think it's a vicious cycle. White people assume a non-racially described person is white, in part because when they describe white people they don't mention race and when they describe other people they do. I think reinforcing that is a problem. Since there is a picture, this is actually a great place to violate that - leave out race and have the person not be white.

However, I wonder if what tends to happen is that it's a part of the larger tendency for people to assume that non-described people are more like them. This isn't exactly racist. For example, I often notice how when I'm at a multi-age gathering, people tend to guess the ages of others to be closer to whatever their age is. I do not know if people of a minority race tend to imagine a racially undefined character as more likely to be their own race or the race of the majority where they are.

I do know that from the review, it seems the man is the man in the moon, which struck me as very interesting. I tried to see if there were any stories about the man in the moon that gave extra context. Describing a character with a descriptor that is a reference to an attribute a special character has that hints at the character not just being a regular human feels very fairy-taleish to me, and made me wonder if there was hidden context here. But I could find none. The race of the man in the moon (or woman or girl or boy, depending on the culture for cultures where there is a human in the moon as opposed to a hare or some other such thing) doesn't seem to be specified, so it seems to go along with whichever culture the story is from.

[conuly]

One thing that bugs the hell out of me is actually when people take a work -- any work -- out of their time context when working with a review. I can't count the number of times I've seen people complain about the presence of the WTC towers in a movie or TV show that was done prior to 9/11.

Well, that's just fucking stupid. (You know what else is? People whining about "One World Trade Center". Aside from the obvious fact that we currently live on exactly one (1) world, not several, it's an address, not a statement. There's, you know, One WTC and Two WTC and the famous Seven WTC. Duh?)

Wow, tangent much? Sorry.

[erisiansaint]

The thing is, you could also use that line as an opportunity to talk about racism. If you take out the word 'black', the automatic assumption on most people's part now changes to 'a white man singing in the west.'

I think it's better to leave the line in and talk about the history and what led to the line, than to white it out and pretend it doesn't exist and race relations are perfect, now.

Then again, that could be my white privilege and liberal guilt showing.

[conuly]

The thing is, you could also use that line as an opportunity to talk about racism. If you take out the word 'black', the automatic assumption on most people's part now changes to 'a white man singing in the west.'

Actually, there is an image of the (black) man in the moon singing (yay!) but it's a bit subtle, you might not notice it at first glance.

[caprinus.livejournal.com]

America is so wierd.

Seriously? SERIOUSLY?

I'll have to reëxamine my readings of Goldilocks and Little Red Hen and I think my head hurts.