The 6 Most Secretly Racist Classic Children's Books
Every piece of art is a product of the society that created it. You can't watch a romantic comedy from the early '90s without getting a little desensitized to the horrible high-waisted jeans and turtleneck/flannel combo that was deemed attractive at the time. Fortunately, we can shield our children from movies that might otherwise lead them to believe that the cast of Friends had successful film careers.
Things get a little trickier when classics of children's literature suddenly let fly with the sort of out-of-the-blue casual racism usually reserved for old Southern men after a few too many drinks.
#6. The Secret Garden
It is the classic tale of a spoiled little girl named Mary whose parents die in India and who is sent back to England and put in the care of her emotionally distant sort of an asshole uncle. As she wanders around her uncle's Castlevania-sized house, she finds a forgotten garden and a small, sickly boy, and with the magical power of flowers and wishes, the sickly boy gets healthier and then her uncle rediscovers the power of love and everyone becomes a better person.
karenharveycox
"You're OK! Off to the mines you go."
The story has been brought to movie and TV screens countless times for a reason. For parents of little girls going through their "I hate everything" stage, it is the perfect piece of propaganda. It seamlessly combines flowers, mansions and everything else that little girls go apeshit for with the exact message that their parents would have taught them if they'd thought of it: If you're nice to your family and go quietly play in the yard, your life will turn into a magical fairy tale.
biblio
"Yeah, I thought that once. Now I'm a groundskeeper."
Oh, and also, black people are the cause of everything that's bad in the world.
The Racism:
In the book, on the first morning after Mary moves into her uncle's mansion, she is awakened by a straight-talking maidservant named Martha. It's the sort of character who would be played by a sassy black lady in a modern American movie, but this is England, so Martha is just sassy and poor. She's so sassy, in fact, that she tells her child-boss Mary that she thought she was going to be black because she came from India. Mary of course throws a temper tantrum, exclaims that blacks "are not people," and bursts into tears.
karenharveycox
And now from racism into a catchy song, just as Disney would do.
Of course, this is Mary at her brattiest. Surely, the wise Martha will correct her, and Mary's racism will be just another part of the person she will leave behind as her face becomes less punchable.
Nope! Unlike Mark Twain's controversial Huck Finn, where the racially insensitive language is offset by Huck and Jim's tender, buddy cop dynamic, Mary's virulent racism is never corrected by anyone or by anything that happens in the book. In fact, Martha uses her role as the voice of reason in the situation to blame Mary's awful behavior on the fact that she is from India, where there are "a lot of blacks there instead of respectable white people."
karenharveycox
"You have to clap your hands three times to make sure they're not hiding in the shadows."
Though it's the last time that black people are explicitly referenced, there's also a strong undercurrent of symbolic racism. For instance, Mary can't begin her journey to self-discovery until Martha changes her out of her black clothes and puts on white clothes, while Mary makes the very odd statement that she hates everything black.
Again, this statement isn't even addressed. Once she changes into white clothing and no longer has to deal with the "black" Indian servants Martha blames for her poor character, Mary heads out into the mansion and begins her journey of discovery.
karenharveycox
"Good news, I found a rope! For ... skipping."
#5. Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes is one of the most beloved and iconic characters in the history of fiction, and if you are wondering what he is doing in this list, then it's because you are only familiar with him through the countless movies and TV shows and not the original books.
The first Sherlock Holmes mystery, A Study in Scarlet, is about how the Mormons are a secret society who kidnap and murder people. OK, but Mormons still get a pretty rough go of it even today. So what if Holmes is like a crime-solving version of Trey Parker and Matt Stone? That is, until you get him around black people, at which point he becomes the obnoxious asshole who thinks the people who keep throwing drinks in his face just don't get his hilarious racial humor.
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"This is where we keep the black slaves. I'm kidding! They're Chinese."
The Racism:
In "The Adventure of the Three Gables," Holmes pursues a former slave named Steve Dixie. When Holmes catches up to Steve, he quickly dismantles him with his trademark analytical inquiry:
"I've wanted to meet you for some time," said Holmes. "I won't ask you to sit down, for I don't like the smell of you, but aren't you Steve Dixie, the bruiser?"
"That's my name, Masser Holmes, and you'll get put through it for sure if you give me any lip."
"It is certainly the last thing you need," said Holmes, staring at our visitor's hideous mouth.
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Holmes' mouth was healthily dusted with tobacco resin and crusted cocaine.
Boom. So in just three sentences, Holmes has ascertained the witness' name and that he is offended when people are racist dicks to him. Meanwhile, everyone else in the room has learned to never bring Holmes to their local black barbershop.
This isn't an isolated incident. In the second Holmes novel, The Sign of the Four, we meet a character named Tonga who is an aborigine from the Andaman Islands. Holmes doesn't even need to smell Tonga to know he doesn't like him, since he's studied up on his people, and therefore knows that "they are naturally hideous, having large, misshapen heads, small fierce eyes and distorted features. Their feet and hands, however, are remarkably small .... They have always been a terror to shipwrecked crews, braining the survivors with their stone-headed clubs, or shooting them with their poisoned arrows. These massacres are invariably concluded by a cannibal feast."
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"I deduced this from the dirty look I got from their women when I insisted I was their God now."
You'd think that a man so well-read and living in the world's largest and most diverse city up to that point in history would have realized that not everyone can be as handsome and kind to foreigners as the (chinless and genocidal) British.
The strangest part is that decades before, Arthur Conan Doyle wrote a story titled "The Adventure of the Yellow Face." Now with a title like that, you would think you need to brace for the worst, but it's actually about a black woman in love with a white man, an inconceivably progressive idea at the time. In addition to a dim-witted narrator, it would appear that erratic racism was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's favorite device for keeping readers off balance.
spiritwritings
"Heads, I hate the Japanese. Tails, I love the Arabs."
#4. Tintin in the Congo
Tintin is the classic Belgian comic book about a young reporter, his dog and his bearded drunken sailor pal. Georges "Herge" Remi, the artist who created Tintin, is difficult to pigeonhole on the racism spectrum. On one hand, he was arrested four times on suspicion of being a Nazi sympathizer. On the other hand, he worked to change the portrayal of Asian people in European fiction from inscrutable and evil lemon-colored quasi humanoids to, you know, people. On the hypothetical third hand, he wrote this book.
Wikipedia
This scene probably won't make it into the Spielberg movie.
The Racism:
On Tintin's journey to the Congo, all of the black people he meets are drawn to look like they're about to take the stage in the most offensive minstrel show ever put on. The Congo in Georges Remi's mind is populated infantile and naive imbeciles who are seemingly designed only to prove that condescension has an equivalent to blind hatred. Tintin and his traveling partner don't mistreat the natives. They find their attempts to build a country adorable, like a chimp that's learned to eat with a knife and fork. It's worth noting here that Tintin isn't nearly as condescending as his traveling partner, a talking dog.
thefilmbrief
That's pretty judgmental for an animal that regularly eats poop.
Herge's portrayal of the Belgian Congo feels more like something out of Dr. Seuss than the famously realistic and "well researched" worlds that Tintin's adventures typically took him through. In one scene, Tintin is driving his car when it's hit by a Congolese train. Of course the car, made by white men, is left completely unscathed, and the train is derailed. It's like a Shel Silverstein poem about how, if you believe hard enough, racism defies physics.
traderreadingorder
"See, Snowy? Black people have a higher center of gravity because of all the smug they keep up in there."
In the comic -- which was published 30 years after Joseph Conrad published Heart of Darkness -- the Congolese people practically drop to their knees and begin worshiping their honky masters, thankful for their presence in the Congo.
hist106-2009spring
Tragically, five minutes later Tintin is burned for witchcraft.
Unfortunately, this was a pretty accurate depiction of how Belgian people viewed their role in the Congo, which they began developing with a "humanitarian assembly" called the African International Association, one of the rare humanitarian assemblies now studied by something called genocide scholars.
traderreadingorder
Belgians were outraged that Tintin made his dog walk.
The Sherlock Holmes portion does not belong here. The portion where he speaks from the Sign of the Four is him reading from an encyclopedia. Doyle was listing out the facts he acquired not his opinion. Doyle also did not mean to show Mormons as vile kidnappers and killers. The villain is Mormon, that is it. Also in the Three Gables the man had a criplled face. Doyle was reflecting the times.
ReplyIn "The Sign of Four" Sherlock Holmes doesn't actually say that the aborigines "are naturally hideous" etc. He's quoting lines from a book. This isn't Doyle, Sherlock or Watson being racist, it's just showing the sign of the times. Did your research just consist of google searching the words 'racism' and 'very old books'?!
Replythe yellow face is about a white woman who falls in love with a black man. I know its nitpicking but were it the other way round there would be no scope for a story.
ReplyLet's not forget that an Indian actor (Deep Roy) played the Oompa Loompa's in the remake of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
Reply"The Adventure of the Three Gables" is actually one of several Holmes stories that is widely believed by literary scholars to have been ghost written--largely because Doyle never used dialect in any other Holmes story. So that could very well be why that story is racist when an earlier story is racially progressive. Research is your friend!
ReplyWhen I was in 5th grade, we had an author study of Roald Dahl. Of course, we read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
ReplyMost of the class had the current editions, but me and a few other kids, for some reason (either we ran out of class copies or we just wanted to have our own copies to read), checked out the ones from the school's library. Keep in mind the elementary school has been around since 1958. When we got to the part about the Oompa Loompas, I was confused, because the words were slightly different, and I remember our teacher had to explain why, ha ha.
Heh, I remember when I was on a Tintin reading binge when in my teens. I remember there were hints of Herge's racism in some of his comics, but nothing too excessive. And then I read Tintin in the Congo. It was shocking and hillarious at the same time. But yeah, I guess you always have to take into account the time and society it was written in, so I guess "shocking" should be replaced with "expected".
ReplyI think it's admirable/unexpectedly sad that you didn't make a point of one of the Golliwogs being named "the N word" as the picture you provided says when it lists their names
ReplyMy 8-year-old kid wanted to know if the Golliwogs were hedgehogs :D
ReplyGeez, I dated a Black woman, I guess I'm going to be gathered up with all the other race traitors once the stormfront guys venture out of their parents' basements.
ReplySince we're on the subject of racism, Rhianna said the N word in one of her songs! As a white person I offence!!1
Reply:)
No, no, no. You're doing it all wrong! The proper response to a black person using the N word is "Hey, how come they're all to use it all the time but when I call them that I get a dirty look?"
So, there's no mention of how Herge treats Native Americans in Tintin in America, the very next book? The scene where Tintin finds the oil well on their land is a funy and sad commentary of the truth.
ReplyOf course, he's no more flattering with Africans in the Red Sea Sharks. The Nelvana series doesn't include this or about 50% of Tintin in America.
Okay article, but Sherlock Holmes isn't a children's book. Murder, corruption, criminals, and cocaine addiction aren't exactly kid stuff...
ReplyExcept that a lot of us read them as children...
As expected, this article was no more profound than the "THAT'S RACIST" you'd find in a freshman English class. It doesn't offer any new perspective, it doesn't offer any solutions, it is just more white guilt managing to experience racism vicariously through fetishizing it.
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesSolutions to age old childrens books?
I didn't know it was a mystery,but since you seem so interested, why don't you solve it for us, Sherlock?
What cakeman said. "Perspective" and "solutions"? It's a comedy article for Cracked, stupid. Not a call to action.
As expected, your comment was no more profound than the "THIS ARTICLE WASN'T THE BEST EVER" you'd find by someone lacking perspective. It doesn't offer any new perspective, it doesn't offer any solutions, it is just more whining by an unfunny douchebag.
That Narnia example is funny, since that same attitude it still prevalent today, especialll among liberals: Muslims aren;t very good unless they becomes Westernized.
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesWatch any Hollywood movie, and you see the same, not just for Middle Easterners but any foreigners: they're only good if they becomes like us.
That's because non-Westernized Muslims have this bad habit of chopping people's hands off, raping women who don't walk the proper number of steps behind their husbands (and then stoning them for adultery), honor-killing children who don't fall in line, and, well, trying to blow up people like us by blowing themselves up in civilian-heavy areas.
In all our attempts at Tolerance and Understanding, we forget that sometimes there's a good reason why certain behaviors are not tolerated by a civilized society.
To SallyForth,
I respectfully disagree with your stupidity.
Those things you cited are very rare in the Muslim world. They do get alot of attention for obvious reasons, the satisfy the smug bigotry of people like you.
As for "civilized behavior", one could argue that blowing whole families up with drones isn't very civilized either, but I doubt butt-boils like you would agree.
Oh Sally. So stupid, so bigoted.
Also liberals mostly have no problem with Muslims, Conservatives are the ones angry at them all, why do you think they call our own president one as if it's an insult?
Oh, wow! There's racism in books that come from a time when racism was the norm! HOLY. FUCKING. SHIT.
ReplyWhen i was tiny i had a beloved golliwog called 'ewog' and i viewed him in the same way as i viewed my other rag dolls. I had a pure white cloth rag doll with yellow hair and a crinoline dress which was just as unrealistic and stereotyped as the golliwog.I did not live in a racist household and have afrocarribean blood and i couldnt believe it when i found out that my old soft toy was disapproved of. I dont think it had a bad effect on me - im not and have never been racist.
ReplyI just read the Casebook of Sherlock Holmes a few months ago. Yeah the part with the black boxer was. . .uncomfortable.
Reply Hide All See All 4 RepliesAlso read Gone With the Wind last year and that book's racism is obvious, but somehow even worse, because of the 'Mammy talk' that renders that character nigh unreadable.
Unless there's something obvious I'm missing in the excerpt from that book that they posted in the article, there was nothing racist about it in the context they presented it.
A man, largely unknown to Sherlock Holmes, has entered his house. Holmes comments he doesn't like the smell of him. This could be taken many ways. Does the guy actually stink? Because that exchange is in perfect context for that. Perhaps, since Holmes is chasing this man, he's learned some unseemly things about Mr. Dixie, and that's what he's referring to. Either way, more context than what was provided here was needed, because to me, that exchange says:
"Are you the man I've been chasing? Well, I know what kind of person you're accused of being(a criminal), so don't take a seat, please."
To which the guest in Mr. Holmes' house replies with:
"Don't be rude to me in your own home, else I will hurt you"
To which Mr. Holmes replies with an insult regarding the guest's hideous mouth. Was the man's mouth actually hideous? I know what was said to Holmes during the excerpt in the article was pretty "hideous" (rude). Anyway, my point in all this rambling is, the Holmes example is by far the worst on this list, whether it's because we don't get to see enough of the exchange between Holmes and Dixie, or if it just wasn't actually racist, I can't say.
How can you call Gone With the Wind "racist"? It is historical fiction. Mammy is a beloved heroine in that book. If they made her speak like a Rhodes scholar would that have appealed to you?
@Veccon, thank you so much for that. He wasn't rude to Steve because he was black, but because the guy was a thug for a gang. Also, as to the Sign of the Four example, there are and were many tribes in Africa and South America with little known customs who had not been much studied at that time, and the more open peoples were more than happy to spread rumors of extreme violence and cannibalism about their rivals.
Furthermore, to read racism into these exchanges flies in the face of stories where race is more explicitly dealt with in a sensitive manner. The writer shows his ignorance when he states The Yellow Face was about a white man in love with a black woman. It was about an even more subversive relationship for the times, a white woman who had married a black man and had a child. After her husband died she returned to England and remarried hiding the child. The new husband discovered the child and accepted her as his own. Holmes was downright weepy about the whole thing.
There is also the case of the Five Orange Pips where Holmes fights the KKK. He is none to kind in his observations regarding their activities. This list should have been cut to five.
Gone with the Wind romanticizes and excuses the Ku Klux Klan.
honestly, the only one of these that is uncomfortably racist is 2#
ReplyHow are these books "secretly" racist? Most if not all of them come from racist times, so it shouldn't be a surprise that they're racist. And if you want to write a historically accurate period piece, racism is hard to avoid.
Reply Hide All See All 4 RepliesSome of the authors should perhaps have known better (Dahl), but you're not clever to have noticed that old kids' books can be pretty racist. What do you expect from a book written in 1940?
There are no such things as "racist times". That's a smug attitude meant to make today's generation feel superior.
Every time had misunderstanding and/or mis-trust of different people.
@ KELGO: Yeah, totally. There were never racist times. Just ask Medgar Evers or a Jew in Poland during the 40's. But you know, those were just "misunderstandings"....Moron.
To The_CoolerQueen,
It's about the attitude not the policies. There is as much "racism" today as 50 years ago, regardless of the fact that the government doesn't act on it.
@ KELGO: You know, people actually like track racism. With like studies and polls and peer-review and everything. This, combined with even a cursory look through history, shows that race relations are better than they were 50 years ago and definitely better than 100 years or more.
This isn't to say that they're aren't still problems, but there's a huge difference between saying "There is still problems" to "We have made no progress". Ending racism is a marathon.