Classics that avoid racism.

@stuckersr – I’ve been on this forum for years now and there have been only a handful of posts with hot button issues, often posted by newer forum members. I’ve no problem having dialogue about issues like this respectfully, but if you post on one, don’t be surprised if not everyone agrees with your line of thinking fully. You shared your point of view. I shared mine. It’s fine that we disagree, and it is in no way disrespectful to do so. Dialogue includes disagreements. I understand you’re looking for good books, not a debate, but I think this issue is worthy of discussing. 

You wrote:

I don’t understand why kids of any nationality are being taught that books are ‘great books’, when, in the books, the ‘honorable’ characters demean people based on skin color. And I can’t explain that to him. 

There is a difference between a sugar-coated book and one that is personally painful.  I’m assuming you know the history with Black people in America.  He is learning about it too. Reading those books would be akin to being a bully – I will not poke him with a needle, to teach him a lesson.  

Perhaps I inferred incorrectly from your posts, which is not unheard of in an online forum, about those who enjoy these books accepting racism. However, I will answer the above question for us, I teach my children the ‘great books’ because the “honorable” and the “dishonorable” characters often have something to teach us. No one is perfect and to negate the value of a person or a character based on one flaw, for lack of a better word, would necessitate never learning anything from anyone. There are too many examples of this to list. All characters real or fictional are flawed in some way because of their humanity. That awful sin nature thing coming back. We all have our own perspectives borne out of our personal experiences which will mean that things affect us differently. I guess I am trying to wrap my head around why this particular flaw makes literature untouchable while other flaws are accepted. Personal differences? It’s ok if I don’t get it, but I have black friends who have enjoyed these books as much as I have. Perhaps, I’ll chat with a couple of friends to see if they can shed some light for me in some way.

I know the history of black people in America. I’ve traveled to Goree Island and other parts of Senegal, W. Africa and learned about the role Africans themselves played in the slave trade. That is just as tragic. Slavery, segregation, racism – all of it is a travesty. I’m just simply thinking all this through and can’t think of a single character flaw that would make a whole section of great books off limits for my family. By way of personal example, I loved Francine Rivers’ Redeeming Love. It was a tough read for me because of my past, but I still extracted great value from this book. Did it “poke me with a needle in places”, absolutely, but it was probably the best example of God’s redemption in this area of my life. For that, I’m grateful. 

I honestly mean no disrespect toward your point of view. I agree with the scripture that hating is sin. That’s my point. One can hate within his own race as easily as outside of it.

I am not trying to goad you into debate that you aren’t interested in, but simply sharing another point of view. 

As for books, I can share some that have been enjoyed in our home around this age, but because my perspective is different, they may not meet your expectations. Perhaps it may give you some to look into. These would be appropriate in our home for 4th – 6th grade or so. I will readily admit that my memory is not terrific, so if there is something offensive in these suggestions, it is unintentional.

• Lassie Come Home
• A Christmas Carol by Dickens
• Follow My Leader by Garfield
• The Cricket of Times Square 
• The Hobbitt by Tolkien
• The Borrowers series
• Princess and the Goblin by MacDonald
• Gentle Ben  by Morey

Again, I hope you find what you’re looking for. 

Blessings,

Christie

 ETA – 

@TailorMade, I could have written your post in parts, too. Thanks for sharing. Thanks, too, for the book recommendation. 

@stuckersr – I can tell that you are a loving mom, while I don’t agree with your methodology, I fully support your right to decide what’s right for your family. My husband and I love our children, too, and we’ve taken a different approach. We’re showing them by books and first hand experiences the ugly side of life while in the shelter of our care. We done ministry in developing third world that showed my children a level of poverty that is unknown here in the USA. It was not pleasant or comfortable for them, but it was life-changing. They have hearts for those less fortunate. In fact, Audio Adrenaline’s “Kings and Queens” song and video have become sort of an anthem in our home. I sincerely wish you the best.  

Thank you for these links, Christie. I think it is important to challenge thinking on all sides. In light of the day’s discussions, I would like to quote Aristotle: “It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”

Reading a book doesn’t automatically mean you agree with the ideas in that book. We can gain examples of both good and bad character through living literature. And it is perfectly ok to read a book with your child and openly discuss when a character is disrespectful of authority, or tells a lie, or acts selfishly, or has racist language or ideas. We should be having these types of open dialogue with our children anyway!

It is my humble opinion that we are raising thinkers. It is our responsibility and our right to expose our children to a vast array of thoughts, teach them a biblical worldview, and pray like crazy. I, for one, am not going to discount good literature because it may have some characters or behaviors that aren’t sunshine and rainbows. I would much rather discuss these worldly concepts from the safety and comfort of our couch than for my child to encounter a situation as a young adult that I didn’t adequately prepare him for. I think, as Charlotte did as well, that we grossly underestimate our children’s abilities to comprehend and process ideas. I hope and pray that I am raising a young man and a young woman who can choose for themselves what they will accept as Truth because I raised them to seek it with all their hearts.

Blessings,

Lindsey

This has been a fascinating topic. I’m sorry that some were offended by other’s comments.  At the end of the day we all have to answer to God – we need to keep that in mind.

What struck me heavily was the comment (I forget who made it) that reading about bad things is a way to learn about bad things, deal with them before having to live through a bad event.  Or if you’ve lived through a bad event, reading about a bad thing afterwards can help you come to terms with it and “deal” with it.

I confess to skipping pages in some books because the subject matter is too hard for me to deal with….at some points in a person’s life that’s okay.  At other times, it’s laziness or cowardice to shy away from dealing with the issue presented.  No one knows at which point another person is —so please don’t mis-read my comments.

This is why I read my girls fairy tales.  I don’t want to focus on the hocus pocus (but you all realize that dark powers exist and some people do use them), but it’s a platform for teaching my girls.  Another posted mentioned that she’d rather they learn the bad stuff at home….YES!!!  That’s precisely why we are to shelter our children as God shelters us.  Bad stuff happens, but He shelters us. He comes along side us and teaches us.

For me, it’s about the same as reading a book with bad language.  I prefer to not read those books; however, if I stayed away from every book with bad language, I would have missed out on some awfully deep thinking about some hard topics.

Great discussion, ladies.

Regarding this comment by sahm:

“The Thornton Burgess books have a character blacky the crow for example and as I recall use anthropomorphism to imposes races on the animal characters such that the “black” animals have negative traits.”

When parents today object to Burgess on racial grounds, they usually name Blacky the Crow, and complain that he has character flaws. But was Blacky coded as black? First, it was not common in 1910, when Blacky first appeared in “Old Mother West Wind”, nor in 1922 when he starred in his own book, to refer to people of African descent as “black”. The polite, respectful terms in common use back then were “colored” and the more formal “Negro”. “Black” in that sense did not come into common usage until decades later (1960s I think). Coding a character as the race that polite, respectful people then knew as “colored” by naming him “Blacky” would have been strange. Second, Blacky does not talk differently than most of the characters. He does not talk anything like the characters said to be from “Down South”. Third, most major Burgess characters, at least in the early decades, had character flaws. That was an important part of what made most of them interesting characters (Mrs. Quack and Lightfoot the Deer were exceptions; they were too busy fleeing from and suffering from hunters to have time for learning from character flaws). Young readers read of the character’s flaws, saw the consequences when those characters got their comeuppance, and learned by proxy. It would be strange if the lead character in a book of those years, Blacky the Crow, was a saint who always made wise choices yet did not spend all his time fleeing hunters. What would the book be about?

It’s true that the 1922 book “Blacky the Crow” is difficult to read in places today because it sounds oddly racial. But that’s because the word “black” is used differently today than it was in 1922. To bring the book back to its original meaning, substitute “dark” or “mischievous” wherever it is uncomfortable today to read “black”, or just omit the adjective altogether. Or just don’t read that particular book; Burgess wrote many, many others.

There were a few other characters who were given regionalized southern black speech. Did they have character flaws? Of course they did, just like the others (except for those too busy fleeing hunters). It would be strange if they did not.

Burgess was very progressive in terms of race relations. In one of the then very popular books he wrote for Boy Scouts, at a time when most Boy Scout troops were racially segregated and would be for decades to come, he had a racially integrated Boy Scout troop in which a racist white boy learns to accept and respect the black member of their troop. When integration came to Boy Scouts in the 1940s, the adults who led that change had probably read that book as boys.

In one of his animal story books published in the 1910s, Burgess is at pains to show a character being polite and respectful when he approaches a character from “Down South” to ask him a question. Burgess was modeling respectful behavior by whites toward blacks which many of his young readers would have had little opportunity to observe in the adults in their lives. His characters from “Down South” interact as equals and friends with the others.

Burgess was hugely popular in the 1910s and 1920s, and the overwhelming majority of Americans then were conservative Protestant Christians. There is no record of Christians complaining about Burgess then. To the contrary, his books were seen as being in harmony with Christian values. I read a letter to the editor in a newspaper of the time from a church Sunday School teacher who was using Burgess’ animal stories in Sunday School classes to teach moral values to young children.

I’m not sure why my formatting is so weird. Here’s the booklist link again:

<span style=”line-height: 1.5;”> http://astore.amazon.com/mamrex-20 </span>

I mean ‘villain’; and the performing arts were still highly regarded in Nazi Germany, but it was woven into and perverted with the evil ideology (stolen art; only a cetain type of music which glorified the perfect Nordic society-ex: Wagner)

Also, if you remember in The Long Winter, it was Pa who believed and complemented the Sioux who warned about the impending winter, speaking up in a public gathering about it, if I recall correctly, and Pa prepared better than the others, as did Almanzo and his brother, as a result

As with a new generation, Laura did not have the same memories and experiences as Ma and neither did Pa (which shows in the stories that his views are different than Ma’s); so Laura received Church instruction on how to deal with people, as well as instruction from her Pa and Ma on other Christian-like behavior

I can’t imagine the fear I would’ve had if I were Ma and the kids, without Pa there, when their home was invaded. Especially, with the true accounts of aggression, theft (of children, women, and stock), rape, and murder which existed at the time.

So, perhaps it would be wise to not be too self-righteous towards Ma and her prejudices, which were based on her life experience and the context of her times .

I doubt many of us can remotely relate to this situation, yet we sit back and judge her. We must tread carefully.