race matters

good night boston is currently one of tae's favorite books.  tonight, as i was reading it to her, she pointed to one of the characters, and said, "look. tae. tae!"

do i have to tell you who she was pointing at?

ARGH.

i have to credit the illustrator of the book for trying to be culturally sensitive and for trying to represent a diverse population.

BUT.

i have a couple problems with this little book.  first off, this is the "good night students" page.  take a look.  the asian kids are raising their hands.  so is the kid with glasses.  and so is the kid in the wheel chair.  but that's IT.  the other kids of color aren't raising their hands.  is this the beginning of the model minority stereotype?  in a board book?

and, um, what about the eyes?

the asian kids show up one two other pages - once on the swan boats in boston common, and a couple of them show up in a big picture of buildings in boston.  but, there are no asian people running marathons, playing in the boston pops (um, seiji ozawa?), or even at the science museum.  ARGH.  are the asian people in boston being portrayed as nerds and tourists?

and, don't even get me started on the picture of the boston tea party.

i know i'm being a little harsh.  but still, tae identified with that little asian student girl.  she called the girl tae.  if that's not an endorsement of the fact that kids understand race, i don't know what is.

but tae's just barely two.  if she knows this already, what is she going to know about race (and racism) when she's five?  looks like i'll be pushing skin again back in to heavy reading rotation.  sigh.

[and no, it's not because that girl is wearing brown.  it's just not.]

Comments

[Anali]

I'm not familiar with this book, but I see your point. Tae is lucky to have a good mom analyzing the situation, so that you can balance these messages with different books and discussions. So many kids just don't have that.

When I was a kid, my parents were adamant that I had black dolls and not white dolls. As I got older, I started to understand what they were trying to do.

[daddy in a strange land]

Okay, Professor, what am I to make of this? :)

I think I've told you about how The Pumpkin used to point at pics of kids in the Children of Asian America book and call them by her friends names, right?

Well, I just got out of her room (la dra.'s in the middle of her bedtime story routine) and she gave me a demonstration of her latest thing: in a Catholic children's prayer book, with the same characters on each page in different situations, she's naming the characters thusly:

her Chinese American BFF (with short hair) is the little brown-skinned girl with a long braid; her little Chinese-Hawaiian friend is the white boy with red hair; and her little white, blond friend is the African American boy...

And herself? The little blonde girl, of course.

Say what? :)