Sunday Dimitri and I went through our junk room to consolidate, purge, and reminisce through all of our childhood papers, toys, and other sundry crap.
I came across an old storybook that I used to love. In it was Little Black Sambo, one of my all-time favorite stories (it ranked right up there with The Poky Little Puppy and The Monster at the End of This Book) It tells the story of Little Black Sambo, a boy who gets systematiclly undressed to appease a group of vain tigers. The tigers fight over which is the grandest tiger in the jungle, race around a tree until they turn into butter, and Sambo takes home the butter for his mom to make pancakes.
Okay, so the story doesn't make much sense, but I distinctly remember reading this story with my mom and dad and I remember exactly where they inflected their voices and exactly how they made sound effects to go along with the story. (Forcing them to read it to me ten million times helps cement those sorts of memories.)
It never occured to me that the story was racist. It honestly never occurred to me that Sambo was black: I just thought that was his name. He was Little Black Sambo the same way that Snow White and Rose Red were character names. (If the three of them stood together, perhaps they made a living representation of the Angolan flag. (look it up if you like, but it's not really worth the punchline))
It also never occured to me that Curious George was a racist book. I never liked Curious George anyway. I always thought of him as a bit too namby-pamby for my tastes. And the man in the yellow hat? Well, we all know about him, don't we?
It's nice to know that kids aren't born bigoted. It takes a demented adult to twist a cute kid's story into something distasteful.
I tossed the book, but I tore out the story of Little Black Sambo. I just can't bring myself to get rid of it.
Posted by Jen at October 18, 2005 12:43 PM