Log In

Home
    - Create Journal
    - Update
    - Download

LiveJournal
    - News
    - Paid Accounts
    - Contributors

Customize
    - Customize Journal
    - Create Style
    - Edit Style

Find Users
    - Random!
    - By Region
    - By Interest
    - Search

Edit ...
    - Personal Info &
      Settings
    - Your Friends
    - Old Entries
    - Your Pictures
    - Your Password

Developer Area

Need Help?
    - Lost Password?
    - Freq. Asked
      Questions
    - Support Area



Sep (lord of all I survey) ([info]sepiamagpie) wrote in [info]unfunny_fandom,
@ 2011-01-01 21:21:00


Previous Entry  Add to memories!  Tell a Friend!  Next Entry
Twitter rant: Read bottom to top
To begin with, a sock twitter account for Laura Ingalls Wilder (the writer of the Little House On The Prairie books) was giving out the tweets of her family for New Year's.

Here's the one for her Ma:

HalfPintIngalls Laura Ingalls Wilder:

Ma's resolutions: knit more; be less racist.

Well... anyway, a nineteen tweet rant from another user followed. It's sort of epic.


troposphere
troposphr troposphere
:



@HalfPintIngalls @sippey 'Be less racist'? That's what I call a cheap, defamatory shot. I read those books 100s of times, and

the only racism one can take away is whatever pre-existed in your own racist, bigoted head,

wherein you ascribe to an individual you've never met character traits based on nothing other than their skin color.

'Ma resolves to be less racist.' HAHAHA, that's teh funny.

If you'd actually read the books you would know that a black doctor treated them when they were all sick; that they

had never seen a black person before. You're incapable of reading any text & not injecting your defamatory illogic

whether or not the text in any way supports it. Bcs you were never college-educated, only college-indoctrinated

and taught to label all whites as racist and evil, and that the Indians/'First Nations'/Native Americans never went

around scalping one another, because you were brainwashed into believing any person of color is morally superior

You know who needs to make a new years resolution to be less racist? YOU do.

You don't understand, and therefore mock, people who actually apprehend God (the REAL God, not your crappy morally

relativistic 1, which you actually created in YOUR own image, whether they lived a century or two ago, a millennia

or 2 or 4 ago, or are one of your own contemporaries. In this regard you are hopelessly ignorant and blind; having

no idea of why you are even here in the first place. Blind, misled, and believing only in your psychobabble B.S.

What else have you been "taught"? To smear & denigrate the WASP pioneers/founders who made this country

the greatest nation in the history of mankind -- actually, they were only instruments of GOD, which you do not &

will never comprehend, because you don't know God and in fact have been taught to be actively hostile towards Him.

People like you, who have no comprehension of the what or why of the most basic principles of what this country is

about are simply tools, useful idiots, in the hands of those who seek to destroy America -- the REAL America, not

the bastardized, self-hating, self-loathing, apologetic, Marxist/Fascist false Obamatopia you seek to compel your

fellow citizens into climbing aboard that space-shuttle-disaster-in-the-making piece of crap Marxist state where

you believe there will be no more HAHA-Racist-HAHA Ma's -- only sub-human fascist slave-drones like yourselves.



(please note, the reason that it's formatted like this is because it was a series of nineteen tweets, which can only be 140 characters in length and each time they had to include the name of the people they were addressing)

And what does our dear Laura Ingalls Wilder have to say?

Laura Ingalls Wilder
HalfPintIngalls Laura Ingalls Wilder
:


@troposphr You really ought to have Dr. Tann look at that muskrat bite because you're foaming at the mouth.

And that's that.

I think it's hilarious, in the same way I think watching my cat totally lose it on a paper crane is hilarious, but the topic of racism and racism in the Little House books as potential for discussion is definitely unfunny, so I put it here.


(Read comments) - (Post a new comment)


[info]amadi
2011-01-02 11:52 am UTC (link)
There's lots of casual anti-Indian sentiment, just in the othering language that's used, but there is much worse, from stories of Indians wearing the skins of freshly killed skunks, somehow allegedly impervious to the scent that makes white people gag, to four different repetitions, usually by the saintly Ma, of the horrid phrase "the only good Indian is a dead Indian."

Debbie Reese, an Indian author and educator has a series of posts on the topic of the Little House series on her great blog American Indians in Children's Literature. You can scroll down for the list of links on the far right sidebar.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)


[info]esorlehcar
2011-01-02 10:37 pm UTC (link)
I was amazed, rereading the books a few years ago, at how horribly and casually racist the books were (they give the Narnia books a run for their money, which is saying something). There's plenty to love about the books--I still delight in the detailed how-to instructions--but god, there's so much painful stuff mixed in with the good (and I can't remember where I read this, but apparently the earliest versions of the books were even worse--the one thing I specifically remember that was later excised was the claim, not long after the Ingalls has encountered a band of Indians, that Laura was so proud and amazed that they were the only "people" who had ever been on this land).

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)


[info]amadi
2011-01-02 11:02 pm UTC (link)
Reese covers that, it was an edit made from the 1935 editions to the 1954 (or '58) editions, where "there were no people, only Indians" was changed to "there were no settlers, only Indians."

I'm still working on how the former was acceptable even in 1935.

Fortunately, there area lot of "pioneer days" stories being written these days, some by Indian writers, that aren't "authentic recollections" like the LHOP books, but aren't bonecrushingly offensive, either.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)


[info]esorlehcar
2011-01-02 11:25 pm UTC (link)
That was it, thank you. Damned faulty memory.

(Reply to this)(Parent)


[info]snarkhunter
2011-01-03 09:16 pm UTC (link)
I'm very conflicted about Reese's commentary. Because while I absolutely love what she's doing--especially in terms of making more accurate portrayals more well-known, and asking us to critique and reexamine our assumptions about a beloved text, I am deeply uncomfortable with the fact that there is a push to remove the books entirely from elementary school libraries.

I don't think we should let the negative portrayals stand without comment, but I also don't think we're doing children any favors by ignoring some of the racial attitudes of the time. And I'm not sure you're going to find books written from that pov about the frontier by people who were there that don't have negative portrayals and racist language. (That does not make it okay.) I think the better response is balance--read LHOP alongside a Native American account of the period.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)


[info]amadi
2011-01-04 12:04 am UTC (link)
Removed from elementary school libraries is different from being removed from elementary school (or, given the depth of the topic, perhaps middle school) curricula.

The former gives young kids access to the material without any adult guidance about the context and content, allowing them to take these dehumanizing texts on board without any critical countermeasures. The latter gives an opportunity to critique and examine the text both within its time period and through contemporary lenses.

I have absolutely no problem with a school librarian saying "this is not a book that kids under age 11 are going to have access to read without supervision" based upon content. That's a school librarian's job. Just as graphic erotic content isn't on an elementary library's shelves, there's no reason why graphically racist content needs to be either.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)


[info]snarkhunter
2011-01-04 12:26 am UTC (link)
Having been an advanced reader myself (Little House in the Big Woods was my favorite book when I was six), I tend to bristle at what strikes me as censorship of kids' reading. Pull it behind the desk, maybe, but even that makes me twitch.

I don't know how to say this next thing without coming off like a privileged asshat, and maybe I am being one, but the problem with classic children's lit is that most of it contains disturbingly racist or sexist or classist imagery. The Secret Garden, for instance, is not at all just to the people of India, and A Little Princess is, IMHO, worse. Anne of Green Gables and most of LM Montgomery's work is very, very anti-French-Canadian and anti-Italian. Caddie Woodlawn contains racist portrayals of Native Americans. Little Women is deeply sexist in some troubling ways. Don't get me started on Peter Pan. And, of course, there's Huckleberry Finn, which is racist even while protesting some of that racism. That doesn't mean we should ignore it, but I'm also not convinced that removing all of the objectionable literature from the children's bookshelves is the way to go, either. Because while there are some wonderful modern texts that aren't as problematic, a lot of things are also being lost.

I think the struggle is that we have to find a way to accept and acknowledge our racist past (and present) without losing the things that we should preserve from that past, or allowing the racism to stand unchallenged. I'm not comfortable with just removing the ugliness and taking the beauty right with it, but I'm not sure what the solution is, either.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)


[info]cmdr_zoom
2011-01-04 12:45 am UTC (link)
and how many of those modern texts are just as problematic, or will come to be seen as such as attitudes continue to change?

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)


[info]snarkhunter
2011-01-04 12:48 am UTC (link)
Well, and that's a whole other set of problems. Plus, problematic by whose definition?

(Not that I don't think the Little House books are not problematic. They are. There's serious racism there...but unfortunately, they do reflect the attitudes of the times and places in which they were set and written.)

(Reply to this)(Parent)


[info]theorclair
2011-01-04 02:15 am UTC (link)
A lot of them will be. That's the nature of change.

I don't know what specifically will become problematic, but many texts will. That's why they need to be put in the context for the time.

(Reply to this)(Parent)


[info]amadi
2011-01-04 12:58 am UTC (link)
See, the brilliant thing about children's literature is that good, solid literature that doesn't have storylines full of racist, classist, sexist and ableist depictions is being produced every year.

Your suggestion seems to me to be that we must find a way to cling to these classics for the sake of themselves, that because they're "classic" they're automatically important for impressionable kids to take on board, and must therefore be freely available because, well, because they're there, and they're famous and perhaps won awards during less enlightened times.

Why do kids need to read books that dehumanize minorities or women or people with disabilities in vile ways? Just because those books are famous? Because they're (allegedly) otherwise well-written? Because they're "beloved?" Because there was once a TV show or movie adaptation?

Why not fill school library shelves with the thousands of books that aren't filled with objectionable material, books that help exemplify today's values to today's kids, living in today's world and needing to learn how to navigate a life wherein racism, sexism and other manifestations of privilege-borne bigotry are increasingly intolerable, and certainly shouldn't be subtly (or not so subtly) reinforced through the books we give them to read as entertainment?

If classics must exist in kids' orbits just on the merit of being "classic" then why not have them in the classroom where they can be addressed with full view on their artistic merits and their problems?

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)


[info]theorclair
2011-01-04 02:10 am UTC (link)
Because people did think those things in the past? Blackface "minstrelsy" was one considered a perfectly acceptable form of entertainment. That doesn't mean it should still be. But it also doesn't mean it's okay to ignore the fact it once was.

Those depictions of the time show what people thought at the time. I can see cutting parts out that have no relevance to the plot line, like with the Lofting example above, but the whole point of the Little House books is to show the "colonization" of the prairie. The best way to show any "less enlightened time" is to show it the way it was, warts and all. Otherwise we fall victim to the idea the past was somehow perfect.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)


[info]amadi
2011-01-04 03:01 am UTC (link)
Yes, but there's a difference between being watching a minstrel show and engaging it solely as a form of entertainment and being taught about minstrel shows and discussing them in an academic/critical way. Hence the distinction between books available for free reading in a library for the youngest readers and books that are a part of a literature curriculum.

I absolutely encourage using fiction as a means of opening discussion about history, both larger history and artistic history. I think it's a brilliant way to get people interested in the past. My own engagement with ideas that I've incorporated in my life due to their environmental benefits initially came, ironically, from the Little House books.

But when encountering these harmful aspects of the past, like undiluted racism or sexism, young kids need and deserve adult guidance that they're not necessarily going to get when reading a book that they simply pulled off of the shelf of the school library.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

(no subject) - [info]phosfate, 2011-01-04 02:01 pm UTC
(no subject) - [info]tez, 2011-01-04 06:43 pm UTC
(no subject) - [info]missdaisy, 2011-01-04 08:39 pm UTC
(no subject) - [info]ekaterinv, 2011-01-04 09:16 pm UTC
(no subject) - [info]quantumreality, 2011-01-05 01:47 pm UTC
(no subject) - [info]txvoodoo, 2011-01-12 06:35 pm UTC

[info]snarkhunter
2011-01-04 03:07 am UTC (link)
Because there's only one The Secret Garden. Because the story in itself--a story about learning to love and respect oneself, about the beauty of Yorkshire and finding healing in nature--is beautiful and worthwile. It's not because a book is a classic that it's valuable. It's because a book is valuable that it's a classic.

I would be a much emptier person if I'd never read The Secret Garden or Anne of Green Gables or, yes, even Little House on the Prairie as a child. I'm not blind to their problems. But I don't love them because they're classics. I love them because I find the stories beautiful, despite their flaws, and I have loved being able to share them with the children in my life.

I'm sorry if I'm misrepresenting your position here, but surely you're not actually suggesting that we throw out any book that might have objectionable content. Because if that's true, then I, for one, am out of a job, since I specialize in 19th-century British literature. I am hard-pressed to find literature there that isn't offensive. And, you know, there goes Shakespeare. (If you're going to protest that you're talking about elementary school, my fifth-grade class read and performed Macbeth.) And yet I still intend to give my niece and nephew Alice in Wonderland as soon as they're old enough. (Filled with misogynistic imagery, but somehow still delightful to me.)

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)


[info]amadi
2011-01-04 05:37 am UTC (link)
One more time...

There is a difference between engaging with problematic content as entertainment and engaging with it from an academic or critical perspective.

So yes I am suggesting that for the youngest readers, in elementary schools, we do in fact, keep these well-known problematic texts off of library shelves (like we do with countless media we deem inappropriate for young children) where they will be engaged with as entertainment first and foremost, and instead make them, to the extent that they must be engaged in the elementary years at all, a part of a literature curriculum where they can be encountered with guidance and through a contemporary lens.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

(no subject) - [info]snarkhunter, 2011-01-04 07:59 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]amadi, 2011-01-04 08:18 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]snarkhunter, 2011-01-04 08:23 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]amadi, 2011-01-04 08:41 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]snarkhunter, 2011-01-04 05:51 pm UTC
(no subject) - [info]platedlizard, 2011-01-04 08:59 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]octopedingenue, 2011-01-14 06:31 pm UTC
(no subject) - [info]amadi, 2011-01-04 05:40 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]platedlizard, 2011-01-04 07:39 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]ekaterinv, 2011-01-04 07:44 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]platedlizard, 2011-01-04 07:48 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]ekaterinv, 2011-01-04 07:51 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]platedlizard, 2011-01-04 07:58 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]ekaterinv, 2011-01-04 08:07 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]platedlizard, 2011-01-04 08:01 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]snarkhunter, 2011-01-04 08:20 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]sandglass, 2011-01-04 09:50 pm UTC
(no subject) - [info]ekaterinv, 2011-01-04 10:03 pm UTC
(no subject) - [info]sandglass, 2011-01-04 10:04 pm UTC
(no subject) - [info]ekaterinv, 2011-01-04 10:35 pm UTC
(no subject) - [info]tehrin, 2011-01-04 10:01 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]ekaterinv, 2011-01-04 10:25 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]missdaisy, 2011-01-04 05:11 pm UTC
(no subject) - [info]sneer, 2011-01-05 07:44 pm UTC
(no subject) - [info]blue_penguin, 2011-01-05 07:59 pm UTC
(no subject) - [info]ekaterinv, 2011-01-04 07:43 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]snarkhunter, 2011-01-04 07:57 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]ms_treesap, 2011-01-06 03:00 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]snarkhunter, 2011-01-04 08:00 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]platedlizard, 2011-01-04 08:10 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]snarkhunter, 2011-01-04 08:18 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]ekaterinv, 2011-01-04 08:20 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]snarkhunter, 2011-01-04 08:23 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]cmdr_zoom, 2011-01-04 05:41 pm UTC
(no subject) - [info]tehrin, 2011-01-04 10:05 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]witty, 2011-01-05 02:10 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]serafina20, 2011-01-06 08:42 pm UTC
(no subject) - [info]phosfate, 2011-01-04 02:05 pm UTC
(no subject) - [info]anonyrat, 2011-01-04 04:12 pm UTC
(no subject) - [info]tez, 2011-01-04 06:31 pm UTC
(no subject) - [info]theorclair, 2011-01-04 11:22 pm UTC
(no subject) - [info]tehrin, 2011-01-05 01:03 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]evilsqueakers, 2011-01-05 09:21 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]sneer, 2011-01-05 05:12 pm UTC
(no subject) - [info]chash, 2011-01-05 09:01 pm UTC
(no subject) - [info]ms_treesap, 2011-01-06 02:59 am UTC

[info]wankprophet
2011-01-04 09:17 am UTC (link)
Everything else aside -- I'll let y'all slap it out -- are you seriously, without a trace of irony, asking why we don't make a conscious effort to fill library shelves with deliberately indoctrinational materials? Regardless of best intentions, there's a difference between trying to teach certain social values and trying to turn a library into a postmodern Goskomizdat.

Also, it sounds really, really, reeeeeeeaaaaaallllly boring. By and large, the goddamned longhaired nogoodnik hippies were pretty damned dull writers. I except "Watership Down," of course, since I'm not sure Richard Adams was really much of a hippie. And, more importantly, killer bunnies are always awesome

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

(no subject) - [info]sepiamagpie, 2011-01-04 09:18 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]wankprophet, 2011-01-04 09:28 am UTC
also has a killer bunny - [info]snarkhunter, 2011-01-04 05:35 pm UTC
Re: also has a killer bunny - [info]wankprophet, 2011-01-04 09:22 pm UTC
Re: also has a killer bunny - [info]melannen, 2011-01-05 03:23 am UTC

[info]phuck_u
2011-01-04 01:45 pm UTC (link)
WON'T SOMEBODY THINK OF THE CHEEELLLLDRRUUNNNNNNN

(Reply to this)(Parent)


[info]sandglass
2011-01-04 09:45 pm UTC (link)
You=awesome.

(Reply to this)(Parent)


[info]aaron_agonistes
2011-01-05 01:14 am UTC (link)
The former encourages children to learn about the world around them (and the world the way it used to be), which is not always a sunshiney beautiful place.

The latter drains all the joy out of a story and guarantees that the child will never pick that book up again.

You can (and should) absolutely talk in class about racism and sexism and classism using literature as examples, but if you make it so that that is the only situation under which a child can have access to that literature, you've completely destroyed everything good about the book and reduced it to its negative aspects.

(Reply to this)(Parent)


[info]cmdr_zoom
2011-01-05 06:37 pm UTC (link)
This ChildhoodExperience(tm) has been reviewed by the Moral Authority as well as your local school board and found to be APPROPRIATE FOR ALL AGES.

Reminder: a parent or authorized parental representative is required to supply Context and Moral Guidance before and after all ChildhoodExperience(tm) activities. Failure to do so may result in penalties up to and including loss of parental rights or revocation of professional license.

THE MORAL AUTHORITY: We're Watching Out For You

(Reply to this)(Parent)


[info]sailorcoruscant
2011-01-04 12:05 pm UTC (link)
I can't be the only one to think that one of the better solutions to these problems would be to reissue such classic books with lots of footnotes, rather than keep them out of libraries. I loved books with footnotes as a kid, I made sure to read every one so I could be sure I understood every nuance of the text.

Not to mention that if I'd had to wait until my class covered problematic texts I would have been bored out of my skull with little left to read. I was the kid reading several years above my level and spending most lunches and afternoons in the library because I wanted to read every book while I still had access to them.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)


[info]snarkhunter
2011-01-04 05:36 pm UTC (link)
Yes!! Me too.

And the thing about a lot of "classics" is that the language itself is more challenging, which further develops reading skills and, dare I say it? Critical thinking skills.

(Reply to this)(Parent)


[info]esorlehcar
2011-01-04 06:03 pm UTC (link)
I was the kid reading several years above my level and spending most lunches and afternoons in the library because I wanted to read every book while I still had access to them.

That was me, as well, and while I understand [info]amadi's larger point, my own childhood would have been so much poorer had it been stripped of problematic texts (the Narnia books, the Little House series, A Little Princess and The Secret Garden, and everything L.M. Montgomery ever wrote, all of which I literally reread until the books feel apart).

I don't know. I get why the idea of removing sexist and racist literature from elementary school libraries can be appealing, from both an adult and a child standpoint (Kipling's If, which I read when I was seven or eight, was the first time I remember being so pissed off a book that I wanted to hurl it across the room), and I absolutely get why people would prefer children not read problematic texts without an explanation of why they're problematic. But depriving children of everything written before about mid-last century without an accompanying teacher explaining why the books are bad can't be the answer.

(Reply to this)(Parent)


[info]chibikaijuu
2011-01-08 06:55 am UTC (link)
I was definitely the kind of kid who read the forwards and essays included in the classic literature that I read, and the first time I read Alice's Adventures In Wonderland, it was the annotated version (not that there is a lot of deconstruction there, but still). Children's classics are still around because children still love them, because they have merit beyond their mere presentation of a story (if books were really that interchangeable literature would be a very bleak field indeed). Of course they're problematic, but any intelligent child will probably pick up on some of it regardless (I adored The Chronicles of Narnia as a child, but was instinctively bothered by parts, even if at the time I didn't quite understand why), and if they're presented with information and discussion of *why* they're problematic, that extra lesson will certainly sink in. It is possible to enjoy a work for itself and then go on to analyze it critically.

(Reply to this)(Parent)


[info]catmoran
2011-01-03 09:54 pm UTC (link)
Thanks for that link, she and her commenters have some interesting info on the Little House books.

(Reply to this)(Parent)


(Read comments) -

 
   
Privacy Policy - COPPA
Legal Disclaimer - Site Map