for serious

Last week in my children's lit class this was one of our assigned readings. It's partly a "pourquoi" story about how birds all have some black on them. But that's not really the point of the story. All of the colorful birds want to be like blackbird; at one point they do a dance and sing "Beak to beak, peck, peck peck,/ Spread your wings, stretch your neck./ Black is beautiful, uh-huh!/ Black is beautiful, uh-huh!"

Some reasons why I like this book: attractive cut paper illustrations, fun sing-song text, and, number one, message. Last week when we talked about the book, most of my classmates liked it too. Some people were uncomfortable with the message, however, feeling like it left out non-black people. At the time none of us really stood up for the message, including me, even though I felt rightetously indignant about their reactions. Apparently someone emailed my professor to say that he or she was unhappy with the way the discussion had gone, that no one had stood up for the black is beautiful message.

So we talked about it again today. Several of us pointed out the fact that many children's books have a "white is beautiful, black is bad" message. Snow White is one of the most obvious examples; my professor also mentioned a 1966 Caldecott honor book, Tom Tit Tot, a Rumplestiltskin retelling that refers to the evil presence in the book as the "black thing." How many books are read to African American children that tell them, in essence, that they are bad and evil? Here is one very rare example of a book that does the opposite. I really don't think that white children, whose skin color privileges them in so many aspects of life, will be hurt by hearing the message that black is beautiful.

As my professor says, our goal should be for every child to recognize a positive image of him or herself in a book, as well as for children to learn about others who are different from them. One of the things that reading does is to teach us about ourselves and those around us. Do we want those images to be stereotypical or self-esteem building? The idea is not to insulate children from racism, but to do our best to avoid instilling prejudice or low self-esteem through the books we share with them. Unless adults are willing to have honest discussions with the children in their lives, they might want to avoid reading them books that compare African American girls to dogs.