Little House on the Prairie evicted as Black Panther fans take aim at the Cat in the Hat
Little House on the Racist Prairie! BBC News, June 25:
The US Association for Library Service to Children has removed Laura Ingalls Wilder’s name from one of its awards over racist views and … “anti-Native and anti-Black sentiments in her work” … The medal will be renamed as the Children’s Literature Legacy Award.
Racist? Dedra McDonald Birzer, National Review, June 26:
(Little House on the Prairie) makes clear the homesteading conundrum that the U.S. government created … The Ingalls are squatters, and the Osage must decide what to do … Talking … about the Osage war council, Pa declares: “Indians would be as peaceable as anybody else if they were let alone. On the other hand, they had been moved west so many times that naturally they hated white folks.” … Wilder depicts the Osage departure with sadness and dignity: “Then the very last pony went by. But Pa and Ma and Laura and Mary still stayed in the doorway, looking, till that long line of Indians slowly pulled itself over the western edge of the world. And nothing was left but silence and emptiness. All the world seemed very quiet and lonely.”
Watch out, Cat! Alison Flood, The Guardian, yesterday:
The ALA (American Library Association) is now looking … (at) other prizes, including the Geisel award … named for Theodore Geisel or The Cat in the Hat author … under recent scrutiny … (for) illustrations “steeped in racist propaganda, caricatures, and harmful stereotypes”.
Cat excluded! Stephen Sawchuk, Education Week, October 4, 2017:
The Cat in the Hat… owes a debt to blackface vaudeville, and was based on a black woman who worked as an elevator operator, said Philip Nel, a professor of English at Kansas State University. And while the cat brings liveliness to two children on a dreary day, he is also clearly marked as not belonging in their white household … “(Geisel) is an example of how even progressive, anti-racist people can act in ways that are racist.”
Not racist. Kat Chow, National Public Radio, June 25:
The author Jacqueline Woodson, known for award-winning books including Brown Girl Dreaming … will be the first honoree of the newly named Children’s Literature Legacy Award.
Worshipping Angela Davis. Bliss Broyard, Elle.com, August 13, 2016:
Brown Girl Dreaming is a gorgeous … memoir for middle schoolers … in which Woodson writes herself into the country’s history, from the protests of her early childhood in the civil rights era … to her Angela Davis-worshipping adolescence.
Angela Davis worship? Yakira Levi, chicagodefender.com, yesterday:
(Former Black Panther and US Communist Party member Angela Davis said at a recent rally) “people in struggle all around the world can look to the Palestinians for that steadfastness and that persistence and that belief that freedom is still on the horizon” … (She celebrated Black Panthers) David Rice and Ed Poindexter of the … 1970 bombing that killed … police officer Larry Minard … Leonard Peltier … convicted for the deaths of two FBI agents … (former Black Panther) Mumia Abu-Jamal … sentenced in the 1981 case of police officer Daniel Faulkner’s death … “We worked to prevent the deportation of Rasmea Odeh (Palestinian activist) … (involved) in two bombings in Jerusalem in 1969 that killed two people … we were not entirely successful …” said Davis. “(But) we who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes.”