Hello, children!
A young friend
was reading one of the more obscure Oz books by L. Frank Baum to her son, and
she came to a part, a character, which she considered racist. She stopped
reading and set the book down.
When she talked
about this, it made me reflect on how I was raised. No one ever did not read a
book to me because it was racist.
I was at an
estate sale here on the island a few years ago and saw a book titled “Little
Brown Koko,” and I thought, wow! I had that book when I was little.
The book cover
was bright blue, with a colorful picture on the front of Little Brown Koko and
his Mammy (think Aunt Jemima, or Hattie
McDaniels in “Gone with the Wind”).
I picked the book
up and began reading. Oh! Holy gazoly carp shucks! I could not believe my eyes.
These stories were written in the clueless racist void of their time, by a
woman named Blanche Seale Hunt. She wrote the Little Brown Koko stories for a
radio show that ran through the 1930s until 1941. They were little morality
tales for the (white) boys and girls. In my experience raising kids, the
Berenstain Bears did a much better job of morality tales, for all boys and
girls, as well as non-binary children, but don’t get me started.
Seeing that book
60 years down the road made me realize – again - how children my age and
younger were and are raised with the bland acceptance of the racism which is
the norm in our society.
That is why we white
Americans are so dense about what is racist and what is not, and how hard it is
to open our eyes to the things we took for granted in our understanding of life
and our society.
If you asked us as
children if we were racist, we would probably ask, what’s a racist?
Then we would
say, oh, heck no. Don’t be silly.
Long story even
longer, L. Frank Baum, who wrote the Oz books, was writing at a time (19th
century) when racism was simply the way it was. Lincoln issued the Emancipation
Proclamation in 1863, and then the Union had to win the Civil War to make it
stick.
Rick’s Aunt Dodie
wanted Rick to uproot the family and move us back to Ohio, where Rick and I and
the kids would be close to his mother’s family. She was surprised when he told
her he couldn’t move back to Ohio because of the racism there.
“But, Ricky, that’s
just the way it is,” she said, and she was correct.
I don’t think
Little Brown Koko is coming out in any new printings. Even most white people
would understand why not.
Then there are
the Uncle Remus stories by Joel Chandler Harris, although I believe the Uncle
Remus stories had a much wider circulation and more complex history than Little
Brown Koko.
Those stories are
based on African folklore that Harris first heard at Turnwold Plantation where
he went to work at the age of fourteen. Harris spent his time off in the
slave quarters. His background as an outsider - the illegitimate, red-headed
son of an Irish immigrant – made him feel more connected and comfortable with
the slaves. He absorbed the stories, language, and inflections of the slaves he
knew there. Their stories later became the foundation and inspiration for
Harris's Tales of Uncle Remus.
Thing is, Uncle
Remus is a retired old slave telling stories in slave dialect to the rosy
cheeked white children who lived in the big house. Uncle Remus’s stories of
Brer Rabbit and the other animals – Brer Fox and Brer Bear - were Joel Chandler
Harris’s attempt to preserve the African stories he had heard from the slaves.
His efforts are
not appreciated now.
Walt Disney made
a film, “The Song of the South,” of the Uncle Remus stories, and published
comic books with Brer Rabbit, that wily trickster, which I read when I was a
child.
The trickster is
a common character in world folklore, but Brer Rabbit does not get much press
anymore. Don’t look for “The Song of the South,” to be re-released anytime
soon, or for anyone to do a cover of, “Zippity Doo Dah,” either, which is a
darn catchy tune.
Times have
changed, but based on what I’ve seen, I doubt there will ever be true equality
of the races in America - not for a long, long time, anyway. Some people need
to look down on other people to feel better about themselves.
I think that those
of us who realize that we absorbed racism, and we are carriers, need to change
what we can, as we can.
I am not saying
that will be easy. We are such well-meaning, clueless people, most of us; but
we are responsible for our beliefs and behaviors all the same. Dang, huh?