Challenging old classics is the literary equivalent of replacing statues of racist figures.
Lately, I’ve heard from several parents, educators, and librarians who want to prevent white children from imbibing prejudice. When I suggest that one simple step we can take is to proactively encourage young people to read diverse books, there’s agreement. When I suggest another equally easy step is to stop supporting racist classics, I meet resistance.
Immense and complex problems face us as a nation today—and I’m not trying to trivialize them. Changing the stories we read (or don’t read) won’t change society overnight, but I do believe it will help curb insidious biases from perpetuating in future generations. If we’re serious about preventing children from growing into adults who indulge in exclusionary behavior or ignore supremacist institutions and traditions, we must take small steps that are within our control, while demanding larger changes.
Powerful books can transport us to different places and times and also transplant us, temporarily, into a character’s body. Protagonists haunt us, move us, and sometimes spur us to act by sowing empathy and respect for diversity.
Conversely, exposing young people to stories in which racism, sexism, ableism, anti-Semitism, and other forms of hate are the norm may sow seeds of bias that can grow into indifference or prejudice.
Racism in classics can’t be negated merely by alerting young readers to its presence. Unless we have the time, energy, attention, expertise, and ability to foster nuanced conversations in which even the shyest readers feel empowered to engage if they choose, we may hurt, not help. Pressuring readers of color to speak up also removes free choice and can be harmful.
Even if we establish safe environments for discussion, classics privilege white readers. If we say that we love Mary of The Secret Garden, who considers Indians to be Blacks and says that Blacks “are not people—they’re servants,” we’re excusing and overlooking her openly expressed hatred. To Kill A Mockingbird exemplifies the white savior stereotype. Uncle Tom’s Cabin broke out of the horrifically narrow confines of the era when it was written—but can it be considered progressive today? Isn’t it more important to pay attention to books written by more recent Black authors, and include both titles that speak about the history of enslavement, and also, equally, books that celebrate Black joy? Consider whether, if Holden Caulfield had been a dark-skinned teen, his behavior (which includes hiring a prostitute) would have been considered threatening, inappropriate and even criminal—or if he’d have received the level of approbation and adoration from white readers that he’s enjoyed. Ask if absolving Shakespeare of responsibility by mentioning that he lived at a time when hate-ridden sentiments prevailed, risks sending a subliminal message that academic excellence outweighs hateful rhetoric.
Read: Little House, Big Problem: What To Do with “Classic” Books That Are Also Racist
Insisting on exposing diverse children to racist classics in which they see characters like themselves demeaned, or, at best, entirely excluded, is not just insensitive, but downright cruel. Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie endorses terrible historical injustices. It also, like most fairytales, perpetuates the myth that dark skin isn’t beautiful. Such ideas can damage the self-esteem of readers with diverse backgrounds.
Reading can be a key to success. If we want to nurture readers of color, we must get rid of racist classics in homes, bookstores, and English classrooms.
I’m not advocating we ban classics. Or erase the past. Classics are undoubtedly examples of excellent writing, or they wouldn’t have survived the test of time. I’m just suggesting we study classics in social studies classrooms, where inherent ideas of inequity are exposed and examined; where Huckleberry Finn may be viewed as an example of literature that showcases the white lens. Delay the study of classics until readers are mature enough to question, debate, and defy subtle assertions. Dissect classics in college by setting aside time to delve into both literary merits and problematic assumptions. Redefine parochial notions of what “well-read” means; after all, British children are unaware of many celebrated American authors.
When we defend classics, we’re sometimes just defending childhood memories. I wholeheartedly agree that Pippi Longstocking has many merits, but before putting her on a pedestal, re-read the series, while imagining you’re dark-skinned or reading an unabridged version aloud to children with diverse backgrounds. Mightn’t Pippi move aside to make place for other spunky characters whose fathers aren’t white kings of black cannibal tribes?
Poe, Melville, Faulkner…there’s a long list of brilliant white writers who belong to an exclusive club that remains suspicious of and usually refuses to admit diverse authors. But brilliance isn’t a thing of the past. If we focus on excellence alone, we’ll embrace works that enrich our experience of language while deepening our compassion and expanding our minds. And yes, standards of excellence in reading and writing can be achieved using newer books—as work by educators like Donalyn Miller and Julia Torres suggests.
Let’s recognize books vetted by resources such as We Need Diverse Books and LatinX in Kidlit. Let’s actively add to shelves and reading lists, books that win awards celebrating excellence and honoring diversity, such as the Walter Award, Coretta Scott King Award, South Asian Book Award, Schneider Family Book Award, and Lamba Literary Award. Let’s curate books that can become future classics.
Library budgets are limited. So is every reader’s time. Keeping racist books out of young readers’ hands won’t prevent them from growing into racists, but it may encourage them to read books with egalitarian worldviews.
Challenging old classics is the literary equivalent of replacing statues of racist figures.
Read: Kid Lit Authors (Re)Make History
I just looked up Uncle Tom's Cabin. This is what was written about the story/book; "Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly, is an anti-slavery novel by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe. Published in 1852, the novel "helped lay the groundwork for the Civil War", according to Will Kaufman. Stowe, a Connecticut-born teacher at the Hartford Female Seminary and an active abolitionist, featured the character of Uncle Tom, a long-suffering black slave around whom the stories of other characters revolve. The sentimental novel depicts the reality of slavery while also asserting that Christian love can overcome something as destructive as enslavement of fellow human beings. Uncle Tom's Cabin was the best-selling novel of the 19th century and the second best-selling book of that century, following the Bible. It is credited with helping fuel the abolitionist cause in the 1850s. In the first year after it was published, 300,000 copies of the book were sold in the United States; one million copies in Great Britain. In 1855, three years after it was published, it was called "the most popular novel of our day." The impact attributed to the book is great, reinforced by a story that when Abraham Lincoln met Stowe at the start of the Civil War, Lincoln declared, "So this is the little lady who started this great war." The quote is apocryphal; it did not appear in print until 1896, and it has been argued that "The long-term durability of Lincoln's greeting as an anecdote in literary studies and Stowe scholarship can perhaps be explained in part by the desire among many contemporary intellectuals ... to affirm the role of literature as an agent of social change." In my humble opinion this would be a good book to read perhaps by older children with an explanation of the civil war and why. Most of the classics depict the era at the time of the writing and is history of that time. I believe it's a matter of using the books you describe as a teaching tool to relate that the books were what people believed at the time of the writing and that education has helped people to know the truth of the characters who are written about negatively. Without the negative we cannot show the positive, the truth about various racist writings. People need to understand the reality of the stories without destroying them. I agree with one speaker about the offensive statues. Leave the statues but add the historical truth to it. This is history but this is what we have learned since that time. I am a librarian in a small prison for males. We have a means for our patrons to object to any book in our library. I had Uncle Tom's Cabin in our collection until someone spilled something on it and it was removed. However, it was well read by our population and never objected to. I strive to purchase alternating view points and classics with historical value. We also have publication committees in all of our facilities. One of the things we analyze in a book is if the material promotes or encourages anything against any particular races, people, beliefs. Our panel consists of a number of departments in the facility so there is no one person making a decision to prevent personal prejudices which most people have.
Uncle Tom’s Cabin awoke empathy with its portrayals of families torn apart. Yes, the first family introduced to us looks white: that helped white readers identify with Eliza. Later (and this is the scene that stays with me most) we encounter the woman who drowns herself upon learning that she has been sold away from her husband, and her child sold away from both of them. Out of its historical context this book may not make sense. But its impact shouldn’t be minimized.
Ms. Venkatraman is not providing a fair representation of THE SECRET GARDEN. The brief excerpt she presents comes from a part of the book in which the Yorkshire character Martha rebukes Mary instantly for her prejudiced statement, in the context of a conversation about "black people" - a conversation in which Martha recounts all the positive things she has read about black people - and concludes with the statement that she was disappointed that Mary was not "black"!
And of course, the whole theme of THE SECRET GARDEN is the rejuvenation and transformation of Mary, from a nasty, spoiled, selfish little girl to a person capable of empathy and love.
As someone who also grew up in India and moved to the US, I do not understand what you hope to achieve by wiping away American history because it makes you uncomfortable. The thing is this attitude of pretending some unpleasant and disturbing history didn’t happen and letting our children skip lessons hasn’t served India well. Every time I go back I see history repeating itself. Entire mountains in the North East of India have disappeared so that the French can build roads somewhere else in the world in order for them to profit. More white colonialism. If you know your history you will understand why that is wrong. My grand father was a freedom fighter and my family never hid the violent history of British colonialism. This repeating of history is because India spent decades wiping their colonial history pretending that cities such as Mumbai didn’t have a significant role to play during the British Raj and was always a fishing village. When studying history in Mumbai as a student, they made Shivaji the true colonial freedom fighter and downplayed the Indian Independence movement. We now have white woke people turn around and tell us Indians that we are privileged even though our grand parents until very recently lived under colonialism and we were enslaved long after the civil war ended in the US. And plenty of Indians sit there and agree. It’s because their history is not taught to them. Mary in Secret Garden reminds us of the inhumanity of the British Raj. It doesn’t let white woke people pretend that the British Raj was benevolent. I don’t want my child to ever think that he is privileged so should shut up about the racism he faces as a brown child in a white country. What you are encouraging is an “I don’t see color” version of history and not one where it should be an opportunity for children to learn the true history of the world. Because it will let them understand the dominoes that fell for them to be where they are. Those who deny history are doomed to repeat it. And that’s exactly what’s happening in India.
The classics lay the foundations for Western literature, without which there would be no YA novels, many of which borrow from them. Writers from Homer to Shakespeare taught people to think. Maybe that's what the literary cancel culture is really afraid of. Or maybe they shouldn't watch Animaniacs, either?
Why not go to the root and root out icons of the mercantilist class who *ran* the slave trade and the convenient *branding* system that racism offered? And the slavebreeding that grew out of the eugenic racist slave codes made by the mercantilists. Established 1662.
The (almost literal) heirs to those triangulating mercantilists are those who run today's current eugenics industrial complex. Their ilk helped sponsor, among other things, the legalization of abortion in the land of "created equal" , and the maoist erasure of history in china that allowed forced abortions to proceed.
Oh and by the way the confederates (and Jim crow segregators) were virtually all democrat. Can we erase that monument?
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