The following comment came in from reader Shanti over the weekend, on Laura Welser’s post of May 6, 2009: “Should Little House Be Banned?”
this is a late comment – I came here by way of a Google search on racism in the Little House books. I grew up on these books, but just re-read them in preparation for giving the books to my niece for her 7th birthday. (Her mom is my step-sister and has never read the books.) I was convinced I was going to give them to her, but now I’m not so sure.
My issues are not as deeply with the portrayal of Native Americans, because Pa in particular always provides a thoughtful, reasoned response to Ma’s dislike. They concern me, but my larger issue is with the songs about “darkies,” or those sung in an obviously parody of Southern black language and the minstrel show later in the series. There is no balancing argument as there is about Native Americans. If it were my own child, I’d use it as a learning opportunity, but giving it to someone else’s child, even my sister’s child, makes me pause to consider.
I suspect that I will send two birthday gifts – the first book separately with a note for her mom to read it herself and decide if she wants her daughter to read the rest of the series.
I admit, while firmly convinced that Laura’s portrayal of Native Americans is not destructively racist, I don’t know quite what to think about the “darkies” of Little Town on the Prairie. My daughter hasn’t gotten to this book yet — we’ve been derailed by a summer reading contest where her progress is measured by the book rather than by the page, so single long chapter books are being passed over in favor of dozens of short ones. But Shanti’s comment has gotten me thinking that maybe I ought to prepare my daughter for this portrayal.
But if I’m going to prepare her, what should I say? This is where I get stuck. Until now, whenever I’ve been faced with educating my daughter on various aspects of How The World Is, no matter how much hemming and hawing I do or how cleverly I try to craft words in my head, ultimately I’ve decided to do and say nothing until she does. Kids don’t know that injustice exists until it affects them or it’s pointed out to them. Kids who are different from her — the overweight kid in fourth grade, her African-American classmate, the two kids in her school on permanent crutches — are simply part of her life. If she asks questions, I answer. But basically she doesn’t notice or compare or judge. It’s simply How Things Are.
But she’s only six. There is going to be a time where she hears or sees something that doesn’t square with this ideal. And that’s when we’ll have a discussion. I’m willing to wait.
Plus, I should admit something. I was painfully aware of racism as a child. (That’s not the admission.) But the way I recognized it was through epithets. And as a child, to me, “darky” was not an epithet I recognized at all — never mind recognized as derogatory. I didn’t think of “darky” as being tantamount to “black man.” And I certainly didn’t equate it with the epithets I did hear in my daily life, which would have been derivations of Negro. Maybe that was naive of me, but children are naive. I just accepted the “darky” role as something Pa impersonated, the way I accepted him impersonating a bullfrog or mad dog or a “common tater on the ax.” It was nothing more and nothing less than play.
Of course the truth was a different story, but I keep asking myself this question: why provide an explanation for the ugliness of a truth if the ugliness isn’t apparent to begin with?
I don’t know. What do you all think?