I really don’t understand the criticism of censorship. If the ALS wants to change the name of the award, why shouldn’t they be able to? It’s their award.
Their core mission is to lobby for federal funding for library services. In that role they are certainly open to public commentary on their decisions.
Ideas that are then are reflected by the member libraries across the nation. It’s more complicated and complex. It’s not the local Elks club. They have power of persuasion over thousands of educators and public institutions.
And the criticism isn’t around censorship. That’s the popular conflation here on this thread. It’s about political and social opinion of an elite class determining what is or is not appropriate within their world view. And in many instances it obviously ok. Like the civil war statues. In this case I simply believe it’s gross over reach.
I’m not sure exactly what you are trying to say. Just to be clear:
There are many folks who don’t believe it’s obviously okay to take down civil war statues. They find it a gross overreach and disrespectful of ancestors. Some of them are good people I respect greatly, but disagree with vehemently on this issue. That’s why it’s an ongoing controversy where I live.
And some who don’t want to lose the statues are academics, frequently called elite lately in various places.
I am pretty clear on what I am saying.
The written word in a piece of fiction or art is a subtle subject. It is open to interpretation and differing viewpoints. But for me there is an ideological point of view that is being manifest by removing the award name. And this view is primarily is based on the interpretation of self selected few.
Civil war statues for me are different. Slavery was not an abstract concept. It wasn’t trying to decipher meaning from a set of words. It was the physical imprisonment of fellow human beings for personal economic profit.
For me everyone has the right to free speech within the bounds of the law. It stops for me when that manifests itself in physical deprivation of life and liberty.
And the symbols which memorialize the losing side of that particular debate are not sacrosanct. Actually the inverse is true.
But that’s enough of what I think. And would prefer if folks made their points and left me out of it. I’m not here to debate individuals. It’s against the TOS of CC.
Now that someone has pointed out the charter of the ALS, I am even more opposed to the renaming. For some the local library IS the bookstore. Many cannot afford to go on Amazon or Barnes and Nobles and buy what they like for their kids ( esp if they are voracious readers). Likewise, when classic books ( for lack of a better name) are taken out of the school curriculum many will NEVER read them. If you are a poetry fan…Let’s say that Edgar Allen Poe suddenly comes under scrutiny. Suddenly an entire generation loses out on the macabre genius of his poetry. By extension, take books with terrible characters and situations out of the public realm and suddenly you have a blank page filled with only those books someone has deemed suitable until they too are one day deemed unsuitable. Too few people deciding for too many.
I am a fierce proponent of free speech even if it’s something I detest. My opinions should not silence someone else. (liable and other related terms withstanding).
I also find it odd that people expect LIW books to have refuted Ma’s racists comments within a work of fiction. ( You don’t discuss this within a fictional book, a historical narrative maybe but not in a kids book).
or to have refuted ma in a later work as a counter balance. As suggested dickens did, keeping him in the good graces those monitoring such things.
It’s fiction.
It’s a character with flaws and perhaps embodying something she detested personally but observed widely. How do we know.
You know, I’m pretty sure I have heard that phrase, “the only good Indiannis a dead Indian” somewhere OTHER than the Little House books. Her Mom probably did say that. Did she “have to” include it? Well, she didn’t “have to” include anything. Did she “have to” talk about the Sabbath, when some people aren’t Christian? Or make such a big deal about Christmas itself? Why didn’t she include a little Hanukkah scene. Couldn’t the storekeeper have been Jewish? Or…would that have been bad?
This is silly stuff. That’s really how they talked back then. Not everyone felt the same way about Indians; it is possible that Ma might have had a particular Native American person that she DID feel comfortable with…and still have been afraid of and biased against her IDEA of “Indians”…like many people today. My Dad lives my SIL, and my niece, who are black. He really likes SIL’s Dad. And he hasnother black friends. Yet he still says the “n” word, especially when recalling stories of his youth growth by up in Hell’s Kitchen. Lots of stories of getting beat up, chasing, and in general, a lot of conflict between the poor Irish and the poor blacks. It is uncomfortable, but it was his life, and it was a rough one. In general, prejudice arises not from lack of familiarity, but from history. He has a history with black people that I don’t share. Being New Yorkers, when I was a kid it never would have occurred to me that anyone would be prejudiced against Native Americans in the present day. Then I visited my cousins in Kansas, and their earnings about Indians and “the Res” echoed my Dad’s words about the “ghetto”. Same stereotypes.
Then I went to Japan. They don’t know anything about NA, and black Marines are considered a “fashion accessory” to young Japanese women in certain places. But Koreans? SAME stereotypes- but add “smells of garlic” to the other ones.
When different groups of people run up against each other, there is friction, especially when competing for resources. One group is winning, one group is defending…that is where bias or prejudice comes from. And the book Laura is just giving you a view into that world. Would you rather remain ignorant? Or have at least an idea of what it was like?
I think it is very valuable for young people to recognize that many adults who are good on the whole have some significant flaws. Categorization of people as good or evil works only in the most extreme cases. Most good people they encounter will have short-comings and weaknesses. Seeing this in children’s literature can help people cope with it closer to themselves. It also lets people recognize that there may be some good in a person whose behavior is on balance bad.
In addition to that, I think it is really important for young people to learn that no region of the country has a monopoly on moral behavior.
The state history taught in the schools in the states covered by the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 (including part of Minnesota, though not DeSmet, I think) tends to be heavy on pride in the fact that slavery was outlawed in these states (as if one could inherit moral virtue just by living in a place).
The history of the dispossession of Native Americans in the region is rather sketchier. My recollection is that Ohio History as taught in my school covered topics related to Native Americans something like this: Mound builders, Simon Kenton leaps off a cliff, massacre of Christian Native Americans at Gnadenhutten, Newcomer and Newcomerstown, River Raisin, then the Native Americans inexplicably disappear from the region and its history.
Better coverage of the problems associated with seizure of lands by the settlers coming into Native American regions is all to the good. Context is needed of course, but the Little House books provide a regional entree to the topic that may otherwise be missing.
In a similar vein, I did not think that anyone in the state of New York could have owned slaves, but this is not true historically.
It takes a lot of work to craft a perfect snowflake. But Laura Ingalls? A new low for PC I would say.
I would err on the side of dangerousness and read the books. Perhaps unfiltered water on Saturdays as well to satisfy the wild hair. And a dash of gluten now and then just to show off.
It seems that the only suitable books nowadays are fantasies, properly vetted of course.
I love her books. I read them over and over as a kid. Yep, Ma didn’t like the Indians. She had no control over their actions and she had heard a lot of stories. She was a tough woman who lived in challenging times. Ma was scared of the Indians as many people were. Think about it, she was left pretty much defenseless when Pa was away. I can’t imagine how scary it would be to be left with young children, miles away from a neighbor (no phones!) and no way to know if your husband will make it back. Laura and Pa respected and admired the Indians, I think they would have ridden away with the Indians if they could have. Ma and Mary were scared of them. Laura (or Rose) wrote these books to reflect the times.
Remember Dr Tann? He was the African American doctor who came and saved the Ingalls.
I loved the can do spirit of these books and as a child, (well, even now) I could imagine how life was in the 1880’s.
I also loved the illustrations by Garth Williams.
I can only say that when I read the books as a child, it was clear to me that Ma had a fear and dislike of native Americans that was not shared by Laura and Pa, and that Laura found this to be a flaw. It was also clear to me that the Ingalls family had trespassed on Native treaty lands. I was also well aware as a child of the history of mistreatment of Natives, broken treaties, etc. Maybe I was weird or unusual, but I usually sympathized with the Indians, not the cowboys. 
I remember my mother saying to me, re Thanksgiving, that Indians had no reason to celebrate it. It made me think.
We read favorite children’s books to our son when he was little that were rife with ethnocentricity, making fun of religions other than Christianity, etc, yet had wonderful content: VM Hillyer’s “A Child’s History of the World” and “A Child’s Geography of the World”. But when reading aloud, we stopped and pointed out such attitudes, and discussed them. Critical thinking can and should start before kindergarten
I’d be a heck of a lot more worried about the distortions of history peddled by Disney movies such as Pocahontas, because a lot of little kids swallow that stuff unquestioningly.
I would also point out that if books were to be condemned because of reflections of realistic sexist, classist and ethnically prejudiced attitudes, there would be virtually nothing on the shelves.
I think this group has made fools of themselves.
I don’t doubt this. The question is, are more children like you were, or are more children like I was?
Bringing up Thanksgiving is a great point.
There are legitimate and non-trivial reasons to question the reasons behind nearly all of our national holidays, and why some groups might feel uncomfortable celebrating them. Columbus day is obvious, and his atrocities are extreme enough that I do think that’s one that should be phased out.
But let’s go through it: Washington’s Birthday/Lincoln’s Birthday/President’s Day - Washington owned slaves. Lincoln was insufficiently committed to freeing the slaves, and expressed racist sentiments.
Independence Day - Given that we appropriated the land from Native Americans, the commemoration whitewashes a historical crime. July 4, 1776 did not mean independence for hundreds of thousands of slaves. Some Native and African Americans might rightfully be loath to celebrate.
Memorial Day/Veteran’s Day - Some of the military actions in which US troops have taken part, historically, were just. Some of them were not, at least in the opinions of many. A blanket celebration of those who have served represents unreflective jingoism at its worst, and amounts to the further exploitation of veterans who may be viewed as victims of government misrepresentations and lack of social and economic privilege.
Thanksgiving - Represents a sanitized, self-congratulatory view of the relationship between settlers and Native peoples.
Labor Day - Two of the labor groups credited with spearheading the movement behind the holiday, The Knights of Labor and the AFL, tolerated segregation among their southern affiliates, and actively campaigned for the Chinese Exclusion Act and other nativist policies. They also had an iffy record on gender issues.
MLK Day - First of all, it says something that we don’t have “Malcolm X” day; part of the reason we’ve chosen to enshrine King is because he is a racial leader whose message was palatable to whites. But then there’s also King’s response to a teenager who wrote into a column King wrote asking for help dealing with his attraction to other boys. King’s response was compassionate, for his time - but he suggested that the boy see a psychiatrist, said that the boy’s feeling “was probably not an innate tendency, but something that has been culturally acquired,” and added encouragingly that “You are already on the right road to a solution, since you honestly recognize the problem and have a desire to solve it.”
These problems vary in severity, but none, I think, are trivial or frivolous points. There are counterarguments for each - but all of them would risk invalidating the perspective of a minority who felt excluded or marginalized by the celebration of days explicitly not designed for them and people who hated or disrespected core aspects of their identity.
A knee-jerk refusal to all reconsideration of our culture heroes and celebrations is not the answer. But neither is conceding to every objection that might be raised to the point where we have no one and nothing left to celebrate but people who reflect precisely our own views – at least until they become problematic as well.