The NYTimes has an op-ed on racial diversity in children's books

[conuly]

which is mostly a plea to stop framing picture books with black kids ONLY about the (mostly historical) struggles of being black in America. While the numbers are every bit as bad as the writer says*, the topics of those diverse books which are published are not quite as dire as she portrays, thank goodness. But it's still a valuable point which should be taken to heart.

But, as always, it's not the article that interests me, it's the comments. Specifically, the contradictory ones. No, I don't know why I do this either.

They're the usual mix you expect to see in response to articles on this subject, aggrieved that people are suggesting we should write more books about non-white kids, but not willing to phrase it that bluntly. Several try to frame it as though the author is asking for black kids to only read books about black kids, and so on, but without actually saying that. It should go without saying that anybody who comes to that conclusion from reading this op-ed must have the reading comprehension of the average garden slug, and since any person who is capable of reading the NY Times and then writing a stylistically correct response in Standard English is, by definition, at least slightly more literate than a garden slug I assume they're all being amazingly disingenuous with their phrasing and they know it.

But what always surprises me, and I don't know why I'm still surprised, is the ones who seem to think that asking people to write more books about non-white characters is somehow tantamount to teaching racial bigotry.

I don't get the logic. If you think that race, rather than being one of the most important socio-political constructs in our society, is amazingly unimportant and that all enlightened people should just forget about it... then why do you care if we write books where the kids have dark skin instead of light skin? If you think that it's "stupid" or "insulting" to think kids might want to read books with characters that look like them... then what difference does it make if some white kids end up reading books with black characters? If you think that it's trivial and silly to care if even every single book in the world is about white people, then why are you commenting? Isn't it just as trivial and silly to care if every single book in the world isn't about white people?

These people need to all buy themselves dictionaries and look up the word "hypocrite", and then once they do they need to sit down and explain their thinking. Because, honestly, they always think they have an argument, and it doesn't make any damn sense.

* Sooner or later somebody will passive-aggressively ask if we really want a world where all media exactly matches real-world demographics. Don't bother. That is what I really want. That goal seems eminently reasonable to me, and all the snideness in the world can't change my mind.

Comments

[author_by_night]

So here's the thing: I run social media for work, and my work involves education, so in turn that means one of the things I do is recommend books. I have been doing this since 2011. For seven years, I have noticed the dire lack of diversity in fiction. It shouldn't be that hard to find a book about POC characters that aren't about slavery, racism or gang violence. I have no political "agenda" in saying this. It's just the truth. I'm glad people are talking about it, because it's pissed me off for a long while.


Sooner or later somebody will passive-aggressively ask if we really want a world where all media exactly matches real-world demographics.

And that's just idiotic of them. Because of COURSE that's what you want. It's what we should all want. WTF, people?

[malkingrey]

I don't know whether it's negative bias or hamhanded good intentions that says that any children's or YA book that isn't about cisgendered straight currently-ablebodied neurotypical white people (preferably male ones) has to be about, and only about, the problems of being non-cis etcetera -- but the result is the same. You end up with a literature that tells kids that if they aren't cisgendered et cetera, then they don't get to have adventures, or romance, or happy endings (or poetic introspection about the nature of the world, if that's what floats their boat) -- all they're allowed to expect is problems.

Which they almost certainly don't need a book to tell them about.

[conuly]

And as you probably know, but others might not, it's all cumulative. Non-white authors have a harder time getting published. When they do, they're invited to do fewer book talks and the like and their books are less likely to end up on bookstore and library shelves or get non-diversity-related awards. When the books do get on the shelves, they're given less choice spots and removed more quickly.

I have no idea what it looks like for books that aren't kidlit or YA, but I suspect it's actually worse for many genres.

[conuly]

Related gripe: You are allowed to be 2+ things at once. You can be gay and disabled, transgender and a minority, and so on.

[al_zorra]

One social evening of dinner and great conversation at a friend's home in Harlem, one of the women and I began talking about the library books in our schools when were young girls. She grew up in Alabama and I grew up in the midwest. She was a city girl, I was a farm girl. She is African American and I am as white as you can get.

I kept mentioning the books I so enjoyed -- books with animal protagonists in particular, about girls finding their true love horse, Nancy Drew mysteries, and the kids' books aimed by publishers at school libraries in our region of the US: Little House on the Prairie, Carrie Woodlawn, etc. Then all the King Arthur hero books, Mythologies, etc.

The only books my black friend's library had for her were about the heroes of anti-slavery and Civil Rights. I felt so badly for her and all the girls as they were of her generation. They couldn't afford to just relax into Story, but had to always be thinking of Race.

There were few or no Story books with African American protagonists then, any more than there were in Fantasy or SF or in Mysteries or any other fiction genre. This was as true for adult books as for juveniles.

"One book would never be on the shelves of any black school back then," she said at one point. "That's Gone With The Wind."

That is one of those moments in which it could hardly be more clear to me what white privilege means, even if one personally wasn't in a wealthy or influential family, and it was no small privilege at all to be able to just recreate reading books, and not be thinking of personal responsibility to one's family and community and the antagonism against me of the country in which I lived.

[silveradept]

We need books that represent the experiences of everyone. And we need books that don't represent those experiences, but do have children of color. A lot more of them, because children's publishing is mostly anthropomorphized animals and things and white children, last time we checked.

[conuly]

Indeed, and most of those anthromorphized animals, let's be real here, are white kids with fur.

[conuly]

Yes, this.

(And nowadays, African-Americans still have it a lot better than other racial minorities, especially Native Americans. Incidentally, Caddie Woodlawn and Little House are widely panned for being omg so racist, though people cry when you do that because their beloved third grade teacher introduced them to those books and you must be mean.)

[silveradept]

Pretty much. Occasionally someone crafts the animals and things into distinct categories that translate otherwise, but it's mostly white kids with fur. Or metal.

[al_zorra]

Yah -- privilege, privilege.

[greghousesgf]

please explain further.

[wpadmirer]

* Sooner or later somebody will passive-aggressively ask if we really want a world where all media exactly matches real-world demographics. Don't bother. That is what I really want. That goal seems eminently reasonable to me, and all the snideness in the world can't change my mind.

Indeed! I join you in this!

[conuly]

So race is tied up with culture and ethnicity in all sorts of ways.

In the US, for reasons of both demographics and culture, white, nominally-Christian (but not Catholic), not an immigrant is assumed. That doesn't have to mean WASP, but it mostly does.

So when you have a book about humanized tigers or bunny rabbits or dogs that act like humans, if there aren't any cultural markers the reader is likely to assume that the characters are WASP-y. (Especially if they themselves are of that broad grouping.)

For example, there's a Rosemary Wells book where the Japanese kitten brings Japanese food for her classmates. Since all her classmates eat "normal" foods, the average reader will assume they are, therefore, all white non-immigrant Americans. And she's the only one who isn't.

It could be easy enough to circumvent this simply by having a diverse range of names (Jose, Ahmed, Soo-jin, and Afua probably will not be assumed to be white) or, in the food example, having them eat a wider range of foods... but that would require five minutes of thought on the part of the author.

(Also, if most of your characters have white fur, say, if they're mice, then the ones with brown fur may be assumed to be the non-white ones whether or not that was intentional.)

[conuly]

And they always say it with such finality. "CHECKMATE, SJWS!"

[chomiji]

I hear you, and the columnist as well.

As a Jewish kid, I got SO TIRED of Holocaust narratives. Or narratives about dealing with being the only Jewish kid in your class and wanting a Christmas tree.

Jewish kids never had adventures or fun. They had PROBLEMS instead.

When I volunteered at the synagogue library when my daughter was in her Sunday school class, I discovered that the most heavily circulated books were our three copies of E. L. Konigsberg's About the B'nai Bagels. If you read adult critiques of this, you'll find nasty remarks about the stereotypes in the story. None of the kids cared.

It's a funny book about a 12-year-old Jewish boy with 12-year-old-boy concerns: his Little League team, his best friend who's drifting away, and the tantalizing, ever-closer world of sexual relationships (both as a crush on the older sister of a pair of teammates and a carefully hidden copy of a girlie magazine). He also has Hebrew classes, because he's preparing for his Bar Mitzvah, and cuts Saturday morning services at shul to pay baseball at The Projects.

All minority kids need books like this, books that feature kids like them in thrilling or funny situations.

(I re-read this book every couple of years. It's sweet and warm and has a few serious things to say about ethics, integrity, and how to be a good friend.)

Yes ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

>>Sooner or later somebody will passive-aggressively ask if we really want a world where all media exactly matches real-world demographics. Don't bother. That is what I really want. That goal seems eminently reasonable to me, and all the snideness in the world can't change my mind.<<

I don't think it's likely to match exactly, because interest and numbers both vary. But it's a laudable goal. At least if you're in the ballpark of demographic representation, you're not grossly underrepresenting some groups like now. I often look up demographics when I'm writing about a given place, so the minorities vary from one city to another.

[gwydion]

Sometimes I wish they'd just grow the fuck up. They remind me of a phase my little sister went through at three where she'd scream Mine a lot and want to pile all the toys around her and would tantrum if anyone touched them. It was baffling to my seven year old self. Her phase lasted about a week? Maybe two. They insist on carrying it into adulthood. That shit's age appropriate for a toddler, not a grown ass adult.

[conuly]

Tangent, while I'm sure the Holocaust did occupy the minds of everybody unfortunate enough to have to suffer through it, do young Jewish kids really angst that much about the Christmas tree question?

Re: Yes ...

[conuly]

Sure, I'm okay with not being absolutely perfect. But we could try? And we mostly don't?

[conuly]

Hear, hear.

[chomiji]

So yeah, I put that awkwardly.

First, that was meant to give the range of problems, from the historically and universally tragic (Holocaust) to the individually saddening (Xmas trees that will never be yours).

So the tree thing... it's not that most of us craved the shiny tree itself, but when every other house on the street, and the next street, and so on, has a tree in the window and yours doesn't, a child who cares about social interactions starts to feel left out and weird and different in a very uncomfortable way.

Le Guin brings this up in Always Coming Home when the main protagonist's father finally reappears, and the young girl is terribly pleased to be putting her bedding out on the balcony of the big shared house where she and her mother live, the way all the other children do when their parents need privacy, and she has never had to do because her father disappeared before she was born. Le Guin described it as something like a "mindless longing" to be just like all the other children.

And it *is* angst, at that age. It's all very well to say "well no one ever dies from it!" But actually, having other children smirk at you for being religiously different is the first step on the long continuum that eventually ends up at the concentration camp. And by the age of ten, I already felt "got at" by people handing me literature aimed at making kids better Christians. Some of it was pretty much tracts and I could just glaze over and ignore it, but the Narnia books left me feeling betrayed when I realized what Lewis was getting at, and I couldn't get enough distance from them to enjoy them again until college.

[conuly]

So the tree thing... it's not that most of us craved the shiny tree itself, but when every other house on the street, and the next street, and so on, has a tree in the window and yours doesn't, a child who cares about social interactions starts to feel left out and weird and different in a very uncomfortable way.

I will certainly take your word for it.

[chomiji]

Sorry, I shouldn't have got started with this. I'm taking up too much space.

[conuly]

It's a blog. I have infinite space if you want to talk. I just didn't want to make a long involved reply because I worry that when I do I overthink and annoy others.

[stardreamer]

It's definitely at least as bad WRT non-YA SF/F; there's been an ongoing discussion (at higher or lower levels of contentiousness) in that community for about a decade now. The entire Sad Puppies kerfluffle is the result of privileged white guys thinking that the only possible reason their formula fiction isn't getting Hugos must be a conspiracy against them, such that only books with non-default main characters (or by not-white-male authors) are even considered. The idea that readers are interested in reading things that aren't just more of the same isn't even on the table.

One interesting "time capsule" (about gender rather than race) is the Sword & Sorceress series of theme anthologies started by Marion Zimmer Bradley. This was an attempt to extend the S&S sub-genre beyond the default white male character; the stories had to have a female protagonist, or at the very least co-protagonists of equal story-weight. In her introductions to the books, Bradley talks about how many of the early submissions were based around the theme of "Oh yes I can, even if I AM a girl!" By the 10th or 12th book, she was getting stories about women who were just doing things and having adventures, not having to prove themselves. In one of the intros she said that she was rejecting, by that time, stories that she would have gleefully accepted for the first 2 or 3 books.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

"Because, honestly, they always think they have an argument, and it doesn't make any damn sense."

My High Priestess (who was also a clinical psychologist) used to say "Thou shalt not try to make sense of crazy: it's crazy because it doesn't make sense." There's no point bringing rational objections to an irrational argument. As for hypocrisy, it's like narcissism or anosognosia: the more a person has it, the less able they are to grok that they do have it.

The true reason certain people bitch about books, movies, etc. with non-white characters is because they feel there are Too Many Minorities (https://youtu.be/_hfSqBPd7tM) at 'their' waterpark already. The reason they don't just say that outright is because they don't want to be called racists. On the one hand, that's reasonable enough: nobody likes to be called names; insulting people will not change their minds. On the other hand, their viewpoint is racist: they don't want to have to share the waterpark, or the library, with people who look different from them.

'Race' is an important socio-political concept all right, even though there is not one iota of scientific support for it. It's a monstrously evil concept that causes nothing but harm, but there's probably no getting rid of it, because our species is a bunch of stupid monkeys, and that's just how we roll.

[conuly]

As for hypocrisy, it's like narcissism or anosognosia: the more a person has it, the less able they are to grok that they do have it.

Sure, but I still want to do it.

It's a monstrously evil concept that causes nothing but harm, but there's probably no getting rid of it, because our species is a bunch of stupid monkeys, and that's just how we roll.

Apes. We're apes. No tails.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Apes, right. Monkeys' cousins, or possibly uncles.

More and more, I think the Elder Gods were right to chain Prometheus to a rock, with the vulture and all, for putting fire in the hands of hairless chimpanzees. If he was really foresighted, as his name implies, then that was an act of malicious destructiveness greater even than Loki's getting Baldur killed.

"Sure, but I still want to do it."

"It is not logical, but it is often true."

[conuly]

More and more, I think the Elder Gods were right to chain Prometheus to a rock, with the vulture and all, for putting fire in the hands of hairless chimpanzees. If he was really foresighted, as his name implies, then that was an act of malicious destructiveness greater even than Loki's getting Baldur killed.

I still can't get over the astonishing coincidence that it's the liver the vulture eats, and the liver is the only internal organ that regenerates. (At least in humans.)

But the Titans are the elder gods, aren't they?

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

True enough, the Titans (of whom Prometheus was one) were older than the Olympian Gods. I was thinking 'elder' relative to the gods (such as they are) of our own era.

It's an interesting coincidence, but I don't see that it signifies anything. I doubt the ancient Greeks had any way to know that the human liver can potentially regenerate.

[conuly]

Signifies nothing, but it's the weird coincidences that will keep me up at night. Like all great apes I am a PATTERN SEEKING MONSTER. (And you don't need to tell me, I know - it'd be a lot weirder if there were no coincidences.)

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

A lot of people say and believe that there are no coincidences - that "everything happens for a reason", all part of the Great Cosmic Plan eternally and irrevocably frozen in Calvinite.

If that's the case, then the makers of the Plan were probably Lovecraft's fictional Elder Gods, who loved to make Patterns of such unspeakable eldritch beauty and horror that all who look upon them are driven mad, if they weren't already, or madder if they were.

Lucky for us, there's no convincing evidence that that is the case, so we're almost certainly safe - at least from Cthulhu rising from the sea, the worst-case scenario that really puts all other possible disasters (nuclear war, asteroid strike, super-volcano, etc.) in reassuring perspective. So sleep tight! ;~D

[conuly]

A lot of people say and believe that there are no coincidences - that "everything happens for a reason", all part of the Great Cosmic Plan eternally and irrevocably frozen in Calvinite.

Yeah, those people either haven't given the issue enough thought, or they've given it entirely too much thought.