Chapter 3. Racism: All Things White and Beautiful
References and Notes for Chapter 3
Select Bibliography & Recommended Booklist
A particularly strong aspect of the indoctrination carried on in children's literature is that of racism. It'll be useful, first of all, to consider the English language itself.
It still has to be brought to the conscious attention of most native speakers of the language that the word `black', when not used in a purely literal sense, has overwhelmingly pejorative associations. Meanings are, for the most part, connected with evil, as in `the black arts' and `black magic'; death, as in `the black death' and `the black flag'; disgrace, as in `black books', `black mark', `black list', `black sheep', `to blackball' and `to blacken'; and have criminal connotations, as in `blackmail' and `Black Maria'. Other associations, such as 'black-leg', `blackguard' and `a black look' merely add to the negative picture which is filled out by such phrases as `the nigger in the woodpile'. Words associated with blackness, such as `dark', `pitch', `shadow' and `night', and phrases and sayings based on them, have similar connotations. With the word `white', it's just the opposite. Although there are exceptions, the linguistic associations are overwhelmingly with goodness, beauty and purity. Most Indo-European languages seem to follow a similar pattern. In Czech and Russian, the words for `black' and `devil' are similar, while further afield, certain aspects of this pattern
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of associations can be found, even in Chinese. The idea that such a situation arose through the association of fear with the darkness of night before racial contacts had taken place on a large scale doesn't, of course, contradict the idea that real psychological damage is caused by this type of semi-conscious racism built into everyday language.
Adult literature, as might be expected, is full of such figurative and symbolic usages - where it isn't openly racist. Shylock and Fagin, Othello and Caliban all deserve a second look, for there's no need for anyone to accept racism in literature, not even if expressed in deathless blank verse.
Children's literature, especially that intended for very small children, gives rise to particularly difficult problems as it more often works on a symbolic and unconscious level. It's difficult to combat racism instilled in this way by argument, as small children aren't able to cope with the necessary ideas. It's only possible to combat such racism effectively through literature for children which embodies civilised attitudes carried at the same emotional and symbolic level. Here, however, it's necessary first to give some account of racism in children's literature as it affects black people.
There are, clearly, different degrees of racism to be found, some more vicious and destructive than others. I've chosen examples to show as great a variety as possible. They range from fairly realistic stories to outrightt fantasies and from unconscious to open racism. I don't think it follows, though, that the more real and overt kinds are the more harmful. It's at least arguable that the less apparent racism is - that is, the more it's carried in symbolic terms - the more psychologically damaging it can be. The fact that the more symbolic forms are usually intended for younger children may be an important part of the argument since such children are all the more impressionable. And when we speak of psychological destruction, it should be understood that racism, in children's fiction as elsewhere, is harmful to all people, black or white, or whatever colour they may be, though, of course, non-white people obviously suffer from its effects far more.
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The world of fiction for very small children often includes recognisable elements from a child's everyday life. Naturally, it's important for a young reader, as for any other, to be able to identify with what's being read. Thus, we can account for the popularity of toys as characters in fiction for small children. Though bears figure largely in folk and fairy tales, it's the teddy bear as a traditional and very popular toy that must have given rise to the numerous fictional bears. The golliwog also started as a toy and now, it seems, no fictional `nursery' is complete without one. Essentially, a golliwog is a doll with crudely stylised racial characteristics which are African in type. He belongs to the patronising and condescending category of racism which includes `coons' and `nigger' minstrels. If we feel affection for him at all it's such as we might feel for a pet animal.
Enid Blyton, however, in the Noddy stories, gives the reader or the listener little opportunity to develop any such affection. Here, the golliwogs are usually `naughty' and constitute a threat to Noddy, with whom the child is obviously meant to identify. The association of the golliwogs with fear and darkness is clearly seen in the following passages from Here comes Noddy Again :
At twelve o'clock that night Noddy got out his little car. He jumped when a voice came out of the darkness. `Are you ready? I'm here?' [sic]
It was the golliwog. He was so black that Noddy couldn't see him, and bumped into him when he walked out to find him.
`Oh, sorry,' he said. `Yes, I'm ready. Here is the car. Jump in.'
The golliwog climbed in. Noddy switched on the lights of the little car. They weren't very good, only just enough to see by as he went down the streets of Toy-Town. The golliwog began to sing a peculiar song.
`It isn't very good
In the Dark Dark Wood,
`Don't sing that,' said Noddy. `You make me nervous. I shall drive into a tree or something. Be quiet, Golliwog.'
So the golliwog was quiet, but he kept making little chuckling noises which Noddy didn't like at all.
`I wish I hadn't come,' he thought. `I do wish I hadn't come !'
Once in `the Dark Dark Wood', Noddy becomes even more nervous:
`Where's this party of yours?' asked Noddy. `I don't want to drive any deeper into the wood.'
`Well, stop just here, then,' said the golliwog, and Noddy stopped. Where was the party? And the band? Where were the lights, and happy voices?
`It's so quiet,' he said to the golliwog. `Where is this party?'
`There isn't a party,' said the golliwog in a very nasty sort of voice. `This is a trap, Noddy. We want your car for ourselves. Get out at once P
Noddy couldn't move an inch. He was so full of alarm that he couldn't say a word. A trap ! Whose trap? And why did they want his car?
Then things happened very quickly. Three black faces suddenly appeared in the light of the car's lamps, and three golliwogs came running to the car. In a trice they had hold of poor Noddy and pulled him right out of his little car.
The golliwog who had come with him took the wheel, laughing loudly. `What did I tell you?' he said. `It isn't very good in the Dark Dark Wood ! Hey, you others, there's room for one beside me and two sitting on the back of the car.'
In the middle of the night When there isn't any light; It isn't very good In the Dark Dark Wood.'
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98 Catching Them Young: Sex, Race and Class
`Wait a minute,' said one of the other golliwogs. `This little driver has got some rather nice clothes on. We might as well have those, too!"
'Oooh yes,' said another golliwog. `I'll have his lovely hat - it's got a jingle-bell at the top.'
`And I'll have his shirt and tie,' said a third golliwog. He pulled them off poor little Noddy. Then the driver leaned out and told the others to get him Noddy's dear little trousers and shoes.
[We should note that the black people are taking Noddy's property from him.]
Soon Noddy had no clothes on at all. He wriggled and shouted and wailed. `No, no, no ! I want my hat, I want my shirt. You bad, wicked golliwogs ! How dare you steal my things?'
But it wasn't a bit of good. What could the little nodding man do against four big strong golliwogs? Nothing at all.
The golliwogs piled into the little red and yellow car. Two were in front, two sat in the back of the car. One of them had Noddy's hat on. The moon shone down on it suddenly through the trees and Noddy wailed loudly.
`My dear little hat ! Oh, do, do leave me that!"
'Ha, ha, ho, ho P laughed the bad golliwogs and drove off at top speed. `R-r-r-r-r-r !' went the little car, and the sound grew fainter and fainter, till at last it couldn't be heard any more.
Noddy was all alone in the Dark Wood. He remembered the song of the golliwog. `It isn't very good in the Dark Dark Wood,' and he stood up, trembling.
'Help!' he called. `Oh, help, help, HELP ! I'm little Noddy and I'm all alone and LOST!"'
The child reader or listener can be left in little doubt as to where his or her sympathies should lie. The emotionally loaded epithets applied to Noddy -`poor' and `poor little' - are even
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carried over to his possessions, his `dear little trousers and shoes', his `dear little hat' and his `little red and yellow car'. This manipulation of the emotions is strongly backed up by the coloured illustrations. There is, for instance, a full-page picture of two villainous-looking golliwogs ripping the clothes off Noddy while the other two look on with broad smiles on their faces. The illustration following the extract just quoted shows a pathetic and frightened Noddy, naked in the dark wood. (A young acquaintance of mine found this book in my house when he was about four-and-a-half years old. He couldn't read but brought the book to his mother pointing to the picture just mentioned. `Oh, look Mammy P he said, in some distress. Then he hammered his fist on the picture on the facing page, which showed the golliwogs driving off and Noddy on the ground. So the message got across, through pictures alone.) Retribution follows, of course, and the golliwogs are tracked down, tied up in a big sack and carried off to prison by the policeman.[2]
It has to be emphasised, perhaps, that there's nothing necessarily wrong in a black doll, as such. We need to centre our concern upon two things. Firstly, as already touched upon, the golliwog is a racial caricature, of an African type. Since its first literary appearance, in the USA in The Adventures of Two Dutch Dolls (1895) by Bertha Upton, with illustrations by her sister Florence, it's been remarkably standardised, both as a toy and in illustrations. It's interesting that Florence Upton was apparently inspired by a grotesque doll belonging to her grandmother. Secondly, we have to consider the role played by golliwogs in literature. As in the Noddy extract, they're normally cast in `naughty', evil and menacing roles - that is, where they're not merely merry coons. Blyton, in her simple way, found their blackness a sufficient cause for dislike, as at the beginning of the first story in The Three Golliwogs :`There were once three golliwogs who were most unhappy in the nursery cupboard. None of the other toys liked them, and nobody ever played with them, because their little mistress, Angela, didn't like their black faces.' The three golliwogs here are called Golly, Woggie and Nigger[3] and nine of the eleven stories in the book are based
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upon mistaken identity as the three all look alike, of course. That's another irritating thing about black people.
Before passing on, two small details should be added here, to complete the picture as far as Blyton's concerned. The association of the golliwogs with fear has been mentioned in reference to the Noddy extract. Two references from two of her books intended for much older children confirm the connection and associate the fear with black faces, in particular. In Five Fall into Adventure, a book which will be analysed in greater detail later, Anne, one of the `Five', wakes up at night :
She felt for her torch, and switched it on.
The light fell on the window first, and Anne saw something that gave her a terrible shock. She screamed loudly, and dropped her torch in fright. George woke up at once. Timmy came bounding up the stairs.
'Julian!' wailed Anne. `Come quickly. I saw a face at the window, a horrible, dreadful face looking in at me!'... Anne was trembling, and Julian put his arm round her comfortingly.
`What was this dreadful face like?' he asked her. Anne shivered in his arm.
`I didn't see very much ... It had nasty gleaming eyes, and it looked very dark - perhaps it was a black man's
face ! Oh, I was frightened !'4
The reference to a black face is entirely gratuitous. There isn't a black person in the book, even. Another example of gratuitous racism from Blyton occurs in The Mystery of the Spiteful Letters : Frederick Algernon Trotteville, leader of the five `Find-Outers' and otherwise known as Fatty, has been disguising himself to play a joke on Constable Goon. Afterwards, referring back to the incident, he tells the others, `One day I'm going to make myself up as a black boy and give you all a fright.'
Little Black Sambo isn't a doll, but the illustrations of him in the many books in which he's featured show him as a racial caricature of a black boy. Here again, we have the fuzzy
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hair, the large, round eyes and the wide (and simple) grin which give the game away, as much in respect of Sambo's race as of his relatives - the Kentucky Minstrels, the coons and the black servants of early Hollywood films. Here we have the condescending, the patronising end of racism, where the principals are merry, simple, childlike people - at best, amusing and at worst, stupid. In a racial context, they are the counterparts of working-class characters in a class context as portrayed in, for instance, The Family From One End Street. The two stereotypes are acceptable in this form : one to white racist sentiments and the other to middle-class attitudes. Children - white children, that is - can laugh at Sambo's antics and feel superior.
The Story of Little Black Sambo, the first of the series, was published in London in 1899 and the following year in the USA. Its success was such that Helen Bannerman, the author, was encouraged to produce a number of similar books with, titles such as The Story of Little Black Mingo and The Story of Little Black Quasha.[5] All were illustrated by the author. They've been widely translated, and since 19 11 The Story of Little Black Sambo, along with the others, has been published in Britain by Chatto and Windus. Over a period of eight years recently, its sales averaged 28,500 copies per year, amounting altogether to more than a quarter of a million, which is good business, if nothing else. The fact that the characters are more like African stereotypes while the setting is, vaguely, India is, perhaps, one of the lesser problems presented by the series.
In The Story of Little Black Sambo, the hero goes for a walk in the jungle, wearing `a beautiful little Red Coat' and `a pair of beautiful little Blue Trousers' made for him by his mother, Black Mumbo. He's also wearing `a lovely little Pair of Purple Shoes with Crimson Soles and Crimson Linings' and carries `a beautiful Green Umbrella'. These were bought for him in the bazaar by his father, Black Jumbo. Meeting various tigers, one after another, who wish to eat him up, Little Black Sambo fobs them off, in turn, with all these possessions, giving
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the jacket to one tiger, the umbrella to another, and so on, until he's stripped to his underpants. Each tiger thinks it will be the grandest tiger in the jungle with whatever Little Black Sambo has surrendered to it but when they all meet together there is, of course, a dispute amongst them and, clutching one another's tails, they all rush faster and faster round a tree until there's nothing left but a big pool of melted butter, or 'ghi'. Black Jumbo finds the ghi and takes it home where Black Mumbo makes a huge heap of pancakes with it and Little Black Sambo eats a hundred and sixty-nine.
The book has been much criticised in recent years, but I think that not enough attention has been paid to the illustrations. After all, the story is almost identical with the Swedish folk tale, Little Lisa' - so close that coincidence must be ruled out - and Bannerman must have got it from this source. Apart from changing the setting, she only added the pictures and the mumbo-jumbo.
All the stories in the series are about food and eating, and follow a basic pattern : firstly, animals threaten to eat up the children; then the animals are outwitted or fobbed off by some means; thirdly, there's the food, or a feast, which the children or friendly animals have and, lastly the hostile animals melt away, tear one another to shreds, are blown into fragments or dismembered or eat one another up and so cancel themselves out. (The order of the third and fourth elements may be reversed.) This pattern holds good, even for Pat and the Spider: The Biter Bit which is about a little white boy, not a caricature, dressed in a sailor suit.
Bannerman, whose husband was an army doctor, lived in India for most of her adult life. A radio programme of a few years ago, which was concerned largely with the letters she sent to her children who were being educated in Britain, gave an interesting insight into her attitudes. At one point, she related how an Indian cook, who had been dismissed from the Bannermans' service, stayed on to impersonate (as she alleged) the new one, who hadn't arrived. `They're all just alike,' said Dr Bannerman. `So they are,' agreed his wife.
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Before leaving Little Black Sambo, it's interesting to relate a story from a primary school in North London. The school, with a partially black population, had had the usual trouble with the white children bandying about the names 'blackie' and 'wog'. Then one day, the school put up posters showing Little Black Sambo, and 'Sambo' was added to the list. If the school had been using the Adventures in Reading series, published by the Oxford University Press, the pupils might possibly have read two stories by Gertrude Keir, The Old Mill and The Circus, where a monkey called Sambo appears, on one occasion dressed in a bright red jacket with silver buttons. It's not difficult to imagine what fun this linking of events could have given rise to amongst the children. `Ifs and ans', you might think, but isn't it by the constant and maybe sometimes chance assembling of , hosts of such details that racist attitudes are built up? Sambo is a name normally applied to people of African race : here, it's applied to a monkey. What kind of psychological associations do we expect children to form? If, later, the same children had seen some of the programmes in the television series, Love Thy Neighbour they would have seen the same kind of namecalling presented as entertainment. And on the table at breakfast or tea-time, these same children might well notice a jar of Robertson's jam or marmalade with the usual golliwog grinning at them. Some people like to think that such things have no significance but it's an increasingly hard line to defend.
The Epaminondas stories, by Constance Egan, are favourites of long standing, with an interesting history. Their first appearance in written literature was in 1911 I in Stories to tell to Children by Sara Cone Bryant. This included Epaminondas and his Auntie described as `A Negro nonsense tale from the Southern States of America'. Epaminondas is a type of the foolish or silly hero very common in folk literature but what's most important here is that the stories were taken over, expanded and developed by white people for the entertainment, largely, of white children. Furthermore, unlike many simple `heroes', Epaminondas doesn't triumph, and the story may well represent, even in the original folk form, a'housing' (to use
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Paulo Freire's term) of the ideology of the oppressor in the oppressed. The stories show a greater degree of realism, both in text and illustrations, than the Little Black Sambo stories but the hero is still of the simple type. In Epaminondas Helps in the Garden, Epaminondas's Mammy plants some peas, saying she hopes they'll come up quick and then goes off to take her eggs to the market leaving the little boy to look after things. She tells him not to let the hens get into the vegetable garden because, if they do, `they'll have the peas up in no time.' Later, Epaminondas, growing rather confused, chases the hens into the garden in order to make the peas come up :`"Oh ! Mammy," he says when she returns, "I thought the hens would help the peas to grow. I minded wot you said, Mammy, an' I was to take special care of them hens. An' I did, I drove them specially into the garden to help the peas come up quick." ' His Mammy calls him `just one foolish, foolish piccaninny' but she relents at his tears and they kiss and make up.
Here, we can recognise another type of racism presented through the literary stereotypes of the coal-black mammy and the little piccaninny. A.E.Kennedy's illustrations bear this out very strongly. The Mammy, who's very fat, wears a long blue and white dress with a large, white apron. On her head she wears a large scarf, dotted with red and tied at the front. Some kind of flat, red footwear completes the picture. Epaminondas is rather spindly, has short, red trousers, a red-striped shirt and no shoes. Both are coal-black with big, rather round eyes and enormously thick, red lips. (The hens are realistically drawn.) An illustration towards the end of the story shows, in profile, the mother and son kissing. Their lips are so thick, however, that the rest of their faces are still about four to six inches apart. Actually, a good deal of human warmth comes over in the story at the time of Epaminondas's distress at his mistake and his reconciliation with his mother. It's a pity that it's presented in a form derived from the concept of the `plantation nigger'.
Interestingly, a group of infant teachers, conducting research into the influence of certain stories on their pupils,
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reported of the children's reaction to Eaminondas and the Eggs :`They were ready to gloat as Epaminondas broke the eggs. [7] Perhaps these children, a few years later on in life, will become acquainted with the mischievous and ill-founded theories of Jensen, Eysenck and others, which are supposed to show that people of African race have `intelligence' inferior to whites. Of course, such psychologists assume that they know what `intelligence' is, and, further, that what they take to be `intelligence' should be accepted by others. It's rather a pity that Epaminondas, along with so many other fictional characters, lends support to such theories.
Moving on to a more overt and yet more offensive aspect of racism, we move also to an older age range. Hugh Lofting's Dr Dolittle has been on the go for mare than fifty years now. The twelve books featuring him have been hailed as children's classics and several million copies have been sold in English alone. The first title published, The Story of Doctor Dolittle, came out in 1922 and has been translated into twelve languages : I examined a copy of the 26th English impression, issued by the publishers, Jonathan Cape, in I959. Here, it isn't necessary to survey in detail the racism and white supremacist attitudes which permeate the series. It'll only be necessary to look at the character of Prince Bumpo, a major figure who turns up in three of the stories, and in particular, at a certain event in his life which happens in The Story of Doctor Dolittle. Prince Bumpo is the son of the King of the Jolliginki. The names, as elsewhere in Lofting's work, set the tone. It would, perhaps, be rather difflcult to have serious characters with names like that, or like King Koko, King Kakaboochi or Chief Nyam-Nyam. However, they never appear in serious roles but always as comic, childlike, simple-minded figures of fun. Prince Bumpo, funny fellow that he is, wishes to be white and with blue eyes, too, as we learn in The Story of Doctor Dolittle. His father has imprisoned Dolittle and most of his animal friends as they were on their way home after curing the sick monkeys of Africa. Polynesia, the parrot, who has escaped imprisonment,sees from a tree, Prince Bumpo come into the garden.
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The Prince lies down on a seat to read fairy stories. After a while, he lays down the book and Polynesia hears him musing : `If I were only a white prince!' Polynesia puts on a small high voice pretending to be 'Tripsitinka, the Queen of the Fairies'. She tells Bumpo that the `famous wizard, John Dolittle' can change Bumpo into `the whitest prince that ever won fair lady !' Then, Polynesia goes back to Dolittle and says to him, `You must turn this coon white' and tells him to do it in exchange for their release. Dolittle is doubtful about whether he can perform this task, but thinks, `perhaps zinc ointment, as a temporary measure, spread thick . . .' Bumpo comes to the prison and explains that, years before, he'd travelled to find the Sleeping Beauty whom he'd read about in a book. He found her and kissed her as the book said he should, `But,' he says, `when she saw my face, she cried out, "Oh, he's black!" And she ran away and wouldn't marry me.' (Jip, the dog, is of the opinion, as we learn later, that Bumpo probably mistook some `farmer's fat wife' for the Sleeping Beauty.) Bumpo settles for having his face, only, changed to white, and his eyes to blue, while he, for his part, is to help the prisoners to escape. He has to dip his face into a bowl where a lot of medicines have been mixed up. Then, we read, `the Prince's face had turned as white as snow, and his eyes, which had been mud-coloured, were a manly grey! ... When John Dolittle lent him a little looking-glass to see himself in, he sang for joy and began dancing around the prison.' Dolittle is doubtful about whether the medicine will last and says, `Most likely he will be as black as ever when he wakes up in the morning ... But then again he might stay white. . . Poor Bumpo !'
Dolittle, we learn at the end, is going to put everything to rights by sending Bumpo some candy. The message is clear : the black man, quite naturally, wishes to be white but he can never become white, with all that whiteness signifies, no matter how hard he tries and how great his longing. Of course, it is silly for Burnpo to wish to be white but for reasons other than those Lofting sets forth in the crude symbolism of this story.
Here, we come upon a pattern familiar in the world of
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literature as a whole - the transmogrification, shape-shifting, or magic change - though it's more common in folk and children's literature, where the change is brought about by the magic potion or the kiss. The frog, the beast, the black man are all prisoners, waiting for release. Within the larger pattern of physical change, there's an area where the symbolism carries racial associations. Of course, the change obvious to the eye merely signals some more profound change, some entry to a new life or a better world once the spell, however figurative it might be, is broken. But poor Bumpo ! When he began, the wicked fairy got among the genes and touched them with melanin. How can he ever hope to change? `And The Sleeping Beauty?' the Doctor asks Polynesia in The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle, `did he ever find her? /`Well, he brought back something which he said was The Sleeping Beauty. Myself, I think it was an albino niggeress.' Poor Bumpo ! It should be noted that in his own illustrations to the stories, Lofting always portrayed black people as grotesque.
Finally, before leaving Lofting in this context, it's both curious and sad to relate that the man who wrote the episode of Bumpo's `change' wrote also the words :
If we make children see that all races, given equal physical and mental chances for development, have about the same batting averages of good and bad, we shall have laid another very substantial foundation stone in the edifice of peace and internationalism.
We can now follow this particular pattern, of the racially significent change, through two further examples which, although the settings are very different from that of Lofting's story, show a remarkable similarity on a symbolical level.
The Little Black Doll by Enid Blyton was first published in i937 and was re-issued in 1965 by World Distributors, Manchester, with new illustrations. The copy I used was bought in t972 and the book may still be on sale. The story begins :
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Sambo had a black face with very white teeth, black hair, a red coat, and blue trousers. He belonged to Matty - but she didn't like him.
`I think you are ugly, Sambo,' she said. `I don't like your black face. I don't mind Golly's face being black, because gollies always are - but I don't like your face.'
Sambo was very sad. He couldn't help being black and all the other toys said the same as Matty. They didn't like him either.
They wouldn't let him join their games, ride in the train or even sit in the little toy deck-chair that they all loved. The humming top wouldn't hum for him, and the clockwork mouse ran away, because it was afraid of his black face.
Sambo felt angry and unhappy. How could he help being a black doll? It wasn't fair to punish people for what they couldn't help.
He decides to run away and slips out of the house at night. After tramping along for a while, he begins to feel cold, `for his red coat was not very thick'. He shivers and sneezes and decides he's caught a cold. Unfortunately, he's come out without a handkerchief but help is at hand when he meets a pixie :
She had silver wings that shone in the moonlight and the prettiest pointed face, with big pointed ears that stuck up through her shining hair. `I have a little toadstool house in the hedge here. Come in a minute and I'll find you a handkerchief,' said the pixie.
Sambo was delighted. It was lovely to hear some one talking to him so kindly. He followed the pixie and stared in surprise at the neat little house in the hedge. It was an enormous toadstool, with a door neatly cut in the stalk, and two small windows in the top part.
`I'm afraid,' said the pixie, `you will think my house is most untidy. But the little brown mouse, who is my servant, has had to go and look after her mother, who is ill. So I've had no one to see to things.'
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The device of the cold and the handkerchief leads to Sambo's opportunity to prove his worth, though as a servant :
She opened a drawer and gave him a clean white hanky with tiny silver stars in the corners.
`I say! said Sambo, `this is too good for me ! And I don't know how I'll be able to wash it.'
`Well, keep it,' said the pixie. `I've plenty!'
'You are kind!' said the black doll. `Can't I do anything for you? Let me tidy up. I am good at sweeping.'
`I think you are kind, now!' said the pixie. `You've got such a kind face.'
`But it's black,' said Sambo mournfully.
`I don't see that it matters what colour your face is if your heart is kind. I do wish you would stay with me till my mouse comes back. I've a party on tomorrow, and I'll never get done in time!'
Sambo blew his nose with joy. To stay in this dear little house and help the pretty little pixie !
Soon he had told her all his troubles, and had arranged to stay and do the housework till the mouse came back. He had a dreadful cold, but he didn't care ! Here was some one who liked him at last !
Sambo devotes himself to looking after the pixie's house but she catches his cold and becomes very ill. Eventually, he decides he must fetch the doctor (a nearby gnome) and, braving thunder, lightning and pouring rain - such is his love for the pixie - he runs across the field and brings the doctor back with him. The gnome
gave the pixie some medicine that made her feel better at once - and she turned to thank Sambo.
But she didn't say a word ! Instead, she stared and stared ! For the rain had soaked all the black off his face and body, and he was as pink as the pixie ! Yes, really !
'Oh!' squealed the pixie, in delight. `You aren't black
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any more, Sambo. You've got the dearest, pinkest, kindest face that ever I saw!'
Sambo could hardly believe his ears. He was a nice looking doll now, as good as any other. He was pleased.
The little mouse came back the next day, so Sambo had to say good-bye.
`I shall often come and see you,' he said. `I have had a lovely time here. I am going back to the nursery now, and perhaps the toys will like me, now that I am no longer different.'
This proves to be the case :
`You are a brave doll !' they told him. `We wouldn't have gone out in that thunderstorm ! Please be friends with us, we're sorry we made you run away. We couldn't see your kind heart under your black skin!'
`Well, that was foolish of you,' said Sambo. `But I forgive you, perhaps you can no more help being foolish than I could help being black ! I do wonder what Matty will say when she sees me!'
Well, Matty didn't know Sambo at all ! When she found him in the toy cupboard the next day, all pink and shining, she couldn't think who he was ! But she liked him very much, and now she plays with him as much as with the other toys. No wonder he's happy - little pink Sambo![8]
Some details are familiar from the books by Blyton referred to earlier - the black face which is disliked or feared and the idea of the social outcast. More important, however, is the symbolic message (which here, however, is fairly explicit and overt) - that blackness is a stigma which has to be removed before Sambo can be accepted. He has to suffer, act as a servant and undergo the ritual purification by water. Then he becomes `a nice-looking doll . . . as good as any other' and thinks that perhaps the toys will like him now that he's `no longer different'. The primitive fear of something or someone different is part of the powerful conservative complex which pervades the
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whole of Blyton's work and racism has its place in this. The fact that the other toys failed to detect Sambo's kind heart under his black skin does little to alter the overall effect of the story. At the end, Sambo is `pink' and the others are prepared to show affection towards him. He has had to change : that's what is significant. Two other points seem to me to be worth noting in this story : one is that, as in the incident concerning Prince Bumpo already referred to, the ancient instrument of change, the magic potion, also occurs here though in the form of medicine and more indirectly; the second point concerns Matty's remarks at the very beginning about Golly's black face being (just) acceptable because that's part of the natural order of things, while, in the case of Sambo, it's implied that, somehow, it's his fault that he's black - in spite of the statement in the next paragraph that he `couldn't help being black'. At first sight, this seems curiously muddled, but if we see it in the context of an idea outlined earlier, in which we found that black people at the level of the golliwog, the merry coon and the `nigger' minstrel were assimilable to white racist sentiments, the position becomes clearer [9] Blyton's Sambo has some pretensions to being a recognisable human being. He's not a golliwog but `a black doll' and the illustrations bear this out strongly just as, elsewhere, they bring out the spirit of the text. The pixie, for instance, is of a distinct blond, Nordic type. Although there's a wide choice, it would be difficult to find a story more psychologically destructive, to white as well as to black children.
In 1976, Collins brought out, in their Armada books, a new edition of Story Party at Green Hedges, a collection of Blyton's stories including Little Black Doll. In this edition, a very confused attempt has been made to give this story a face-lift. The episode of the pixie has been completely left out and Sambo, washed white by the rain, is brought back to the nursery by the toys, who have undergone a change of heart towards him. They now wish he was black, as before, and restore him to his former self by rubbing his face with black ink. This blackwashing attempt doesn't seem much of an improvement to me
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and although the racism of the original has been toned down, Sambo is still subject to the whims of the other toys. Probably, in a few years' time, there'll be a new version in which he'll be painted in black and white stripes, but cosmetics - of any kind - are no treatment for cancer.
The Black Penny by Alan Drake (1971) is the least explicit and overt, in racial terms, of all the examples we've been looking at although, in symbolic terms, it provides very close confirmation of the pattern which has emerged from the last two books. (It couldn't be considered, I think, as one of the more harmful stories.) As far as explicitness goes, this story is only one stage on from the basic racism built into the English language which was noted at the outset of this chapter.
The story, for children of about eight years of age, tells of how David gets a new money-box. He says that all the coins he puts into it must be new and shiny, too, but one day he's given a very old penny which is almost black. Although he likes the penny and puts it into his box, it isn't liked by the other coins :
`I ask you!' said the fivepenny coin and pulled a face.
`Black ! Pooh!' . .
The fifty pence piece frowned very hard.
`I am not sure that he should be here at all,' he said. `All of us are shiny and bright. He is dirty and black.'
When David and his parents go for a drive into the country, however, it's the black penny which saves them when the car breaks down. A waterplug has blown out and the old penny is just the size to fit into the plughole. This enables the family to reach a garage. David says, of the black penny, `I am going to keep it for ever. I will polish it. It will look new and shiny.' His father, however, has the idea of gilding the old penny and, when this is done, the old penny has a very different reception from the other coins :
They bowed. They all made room for the gold coin ... `What a beautiful gold coat you have!' said the five-penny piece. `You must be a very high person indeed.' The old penny tells them, `I am still that old, black, out-of-date penny underneath.. . I am sorry about that,' he said. But he did not look it. You and I know why.
Yes, we know why he didn't look sorry about his change from black to gold. The pattern - the move from rejection, through a powerful visual change, to acceptance - is a familiar one. It's worth noting that the idea of a test, a proving of worth, is common to the two examples just quoted : Sambo has to prove his devotion to the pixie by braving the rain and the black penny's worth is shown when the car breaks down. Each, in an emergency, was tried and found to be not wanting. After this initiation rite, they could move on to better lives. Here, the fact that the colour change is mixed up with other elements, such as the old-new component and the idea of status and hierarchy amongst the coins, is merely incidental. It's worth remarking, too, that, in the original version of the story, there was no differentiation between the black penny and the other coins in terms of the old, and decimal, currencies to obscure the issue. Racism, in any case, is a part, though a very large one, of the notion of hierarchy which often seems, still, to form the basic framework of human thinking, though it relates more to the less-than-human ancestry of humanity than to anything that might be called civilised. It is remarkable how, twentythree centuries later, The Black Penny should recall Plato's Republic and his men of gold, silver and bronze.
Two novels for older children - those in their lower teens, perhaps - can give us a very good idea of what discussion has centred on in recent times. Sounder by William H.Armstrong and Theodore Taylor's The Cay were both published in 1969 in the United States; both were hailed as outstanding, the first winning the Newbery Medal and the second five lesser awards; both have been published in Britain, in hardback and paperback editions; Sounder was made into a film, already seen in Britain, and there's a television version of The Cay.
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Sounder tells of a black sharecropping family in the United States, ground down by poverty and white oppression. In spite of all their trials, the story has a curious, unemotional, distanced atmosphere. The only one to show much emotion in the story is Sounder, the dog, who intervenes when the father is arrested by the white law officers for stealing to feed his family. (The fact that, in such situations, many wrongs were often internalised and emotions curbed, for self-protection, scarcely explains the rather numb characters. They're more likely explained by the fact that it's a religious family.) A lot of questions need to be asked about this book. Why's it called Sounder? Why is the dog the only one to be given a name? - the people are merely referred to in such terms as `the woman', `the man' and `the boy'. Albert V.Schwartz, in an article about the book, puts this in a wider context and one we've already touched on in the case of Bannerman :
Within the white world, deep-seated prejudice has long denied human individualisation to the Black person. At the time of the story's historical setting, white people avoided calling Black people by their names; usually they substituted such terms as uncle, auntie, boy, Sambo; or they called every Black person by the same name. The absence of name helped to avoid the use of the polite salutation [1O]
Why does the boy seem more concerned about the loss of the dog than about the loss of his father? When, after years of imprisonment, the man limps home, crippled as a result of a dynamite blast in a prison quarry, why does the family, unlike the dog, show so little reaction? It scarcely seems to fit the occasion. Why is there even less reaction to the father's death? Other things add to the anonymous, impersonal atmosphere of this story. We're told, for instance, that `The boy did not remember his age.' The fact that the family scarcely have any contacts with other black people emphasises still further this atmosphere. It all seems to take place in a kind of aquarium.
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It's strange that such a story should have been so acclaimed in a country where, in general, the debate on racism in books is so much more advanced than in Britain. Here, in fact, it's hardly begun.
Most of the story of The Cay takes place on a small, Caribbean island (a cay) over thirty years ago. Here, the author sets up his thesis which is supposed to show the gradual enlightenment of the white, eleven-year-old, racist Phillip. (Islands are very popular for fictional experiments because writers can isolate the factors they wish to deal with.) On this one, Phillip and Timothy, an elderly West Indian, are stranded. We can look at each in turn, to see what happens. Phillip Enright is established as a racist at the beginning. He's repelled by the smell, the appearance and the touch of Timothy. However, he's very dependent upon the experienced seaman for survival and becomes even more so when he goes blind. This is symbolic because the most important aspect of his blindness is that he's colour blind. The reader is clearly meant to date his conversion from this point. As for Timothy, we first meet him as an `ugly' `Negro', who's afterwards referred to as a 'black man'. Later we learn from him his first name, which, he says, is the only name he has. A master-servant relationship is immediately set up when the two meet, Timothy calling Phillip `young bahss'. Later, Phillip asks Timothy to call him by his first name. Eventually, according to the old literary cliché, found in race, class and sex contexts in about that order of frequency, the `inferior' gives her/his life for the `superior' : Timothy, in a storm, sacrifices his life protecting Phillip. The author doesn't make very much of his death and this, together with the fact that, unlike Phillip, he doesn't seem to have relatives or friends anywhere, or if he does they don't matter, again gives a sort of isolated, fish-tank effect. At the end we're expected to believe that Phillip is a changed character but it obviously doesn't go very deep.
Now, especially in the light of the earlier examples we've studied, it may be easier to comprehend the account an infant headmistress gave of a small West Indian girl who covered herself with white chalk and then announced proudly, `I'm a
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little white girl now.' Also, Bernard Coard's account - in How the West Indian Child is made Educationally Sub-normal in the British School System - of how black children portrayed themselves, and him, as white in their paintings and drawings, begins to be understandable. The attitudes and values expressed in the kind of literature we've been considering naturally lead to this kind of self-rejection. When such warped concepts are presented through the powerful medium of literature, and reinforced by the child's environment and through other media, not forgetting geography and history textbooks in school, it isn't difficult to understand how such incidents happen. At the very least, a black child can find little to identify with in literature and little that's recognisable as her or his own culture. Looking into literature, for such children, is like looking into a mirror and either not seeing your face reflected back or, worse, seeing a distorted mask.
Some people find difficulty in believing that very small children are race-conscious and since we've been considering dolls, some reference to sociological research making use of them may be instructive here. In the United States, where there's a long tradition of valuable research into the sociological and psychological aspects of racism, the results of the first experiments involving children and dolls were published as long ago as 1947. Kenneth B.Clark and Mamie P.Clark in their article, `Racial Identification and Preference in Negro Children' report as follows :
Dolls Test : The subjects were presented with four dolls identical in every respect save skin color. Two of these dolls were brown with black hair and two were white with yellow hair. In the experimental situation these dolls were unclothed except for white diapers. The position of the head, hands, and legs on all the dolls was the same. For half of the subjects the dolls were presented in the order : white, colored, white, colored. For the other half the order of presentation was reversed. In the experimental situation the subjects were asked to respond to the
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following requests by choosing one of the dolls and giving it to the experimenter :
I. Give me the doll that you like to play with -
(a) like best.
2. Give me the doll that is a nice doll.
3. Give me the doll that looks bad.
4. Give me the doll that is a nice color.
5. Give me the doll that looks like a white child.
6. Give me the doll that looks like a colored child.
7. Give me the doll that looks like a Negro child.
8. Give me the doll that looks like you."'
253 black children were involved in this experiment. In age, they ranged from three to seven years. They were, roughly, equally distributed between the northern and southern states and according to sex and, as regards skin colour, by far the majority were classified as `medium', the next highest total being `dark'.
Ignoring the variations according to age, their own skin colour and the area where the children lived, all of which variations were, however, recorded, the experimenters found that the majority of the children preferred the white doll and rejected the colored doll. Furthermore, `59 per cent of these children indicated that the colored doll "looks bad" while only 17 per cent stated that the white doll "looks bad" ... Only 38 per cent of the children thought that the brown doll was a "nice color"..' Some of the remarks the children made during the experiment are at once pitiful, funny and horrifying :
On the whole, the rejection of the brown doll and the preference for the white doll, when explained at all, were explained in rather simple, concrete terms : for white doll preference -"cause he's pretty' or ' cause he's white'; for rejection of the brown doll -`'cause he's ugly' or `'cause it don't look pretty' or "cause him black' or `got black on him'.A northern five-year-old dark child felt compelled to explain his identification with the brown doll by making the following unsolicited statement:
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`I burned my face and made it spoil.' A seven-year-old northern light child went to great pains to explain that he is actually white but : `I look brown because I got a sun-tan in the summer.' [12]
The children's words oddly strike through the detached, scientific prose of the study but their actions speak louder still `some of the children who were free and relaxed in the beginning of the experiment broke down and cried or became somewhat negativistic during the latter part when they were required to make self-identifications. Indeed, two children ran out of the testing room, unconsolable, convulsed in tears.' In case anyone should wonder what this has to do with the situation in present-day Britain, I can report that David Milner recently carried out similar experiments with dolls in Britain, and his results confirmed, in considerable detail, the findings of the Clarks' study. Milner worked with three groups of children Asian, English and West Indian, and reported that, when the children were asked to say which doll they would `rather be', 100 per cent of the English children, 82 per cent of the West Indians and 65 per cent of the Asians chose the white figure instead of, in the case of the black children, the relevant figure in terms of race." In fact, a great deal of research has been done on the foundations of racial attitudes in both black and white children in, for instance, South Africa, New Zealand, Mexico and Hong Kong. All the evidence seems to show that the patterns of racism : the deprivation of cultural identity; the creation of self-rejection; the relegation to sub-human status - are everywhere and always the same.
I've felt it necessary to quote the findings of these experiments in some detail because many people - and amongst them, depressingly, a great number of teachers - are reluctant to admit that small children are affected by racism and more reluctant still to admit that racist attitudes can be transmitted via literature. Faced with the kind of evidence we have drawn from children's literature, it's rather hard to contend that racism is not actually present, though many people insist on being blind to it. Again, even when it's conceded that children's literature is often racist, the point of view is often advanced that, nevertheless, this does no harm as it is, for the most part, at a sub conscious or symbolic level. There can be little doubt that people can be influenced subconsciously - the evidence from subliminal advertising and research into learning during sleep would seem to confirm this. However, it seems reasonable to believe, quite simply, that we are influenced by whatever hay pens to us and that the more subconscious an influence is the more dangerous it can be.
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We've been considering the child readers who are on the receiving end of the attitudes and values present in what authors write. It need not be supposed that the writers themselves are conscious of the values they hold. They would all, no doubt, be highly indignant at the charge of racism. After all, very few people will admit to being racists - it's usually at a subconscious level. An incident from my own personal experience brought this home to me very forcefully. I'd been advising a student on teaching practice and had been observing her work with a class of children of about eight-years-old. One particular English lesson involved the writing of accurate descriptions. The student had found six large pictures of faces and had set these up on the blackboard at the front of the class. Then, she'd asked the children to imagine that these were pictures of people wanted by the police. The children were to choose one and write a description so that the person could be identified. Although I wasn't particularly happy about this enlisting of the children in vigilante roles, I let that pass. What I was more concerned about was the fact that all the pictures were of black men. (The fact that they were all pictures of men is something I only realised later.) At the time, I concentrated on the fact that they were all pictures of black men. When I pointed this out to the student, she was amazed. Clearly, it had never occurred to her, and she told me that she had merely leafed through copies of magazines and selected what she thought to be suitable pictures. Things being what they are, it's scarcely possible to believe that there could have been an overwhelming
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number of pictures of black people in the magazines in question - rather the reverse. I pointed out that the children were being asked to associate criminality with blackness. (The fact that black people are usually disproportionately represented in prisons in mixed-race countries is a vital, but perhaps different, question.) It's only fair to add that the student was very concerned when she realised the significance of what she'd done and she did her best, in subsequent lessons, to bring about a better sense of values in the children's minds. This was not a student who wished ill to any child, white or black. She had simply, and unconsciously, absorbed the values of the society in which she'd grown up and was in the process of transmitting them. The end of the story is also instructive. The student confided to me that she'd discussed the matter, later, with other members of the staff. All, except one, thought that I'd been making a fuss about nothing.
The charge of making a fuss about nothing is a familiar one to those concerned with values in children's literature. As far as racism is concerned, the charge often appears in the more serious form of `stirring it up'. These elements came out very strongly in the Little Black Sambo controversy of 1972 which began when Bridget Harris of the Teachers Against Racism group gave a statement on Little Black Sambo to The Times which was to print an article on the new, boxed set of the complete works of Helen Bannerman. The statement aroused a storm of fury from outraged readers who had loved Little Black Sambo when they were children and who thought that Teachers Against Racism were seeing harm where none existed. The Times published at least twenty letters attacking the position outlined by Harris and only three in favour. It's interesting to compare this ratio with the conclusion arrived at by E.J.B.Rose in Colour and Citizenship - that only 17 per cent of the population are not racially prejudiced - though the letters might be seen, rather, as revealing the views of The Times' readership. More important, however, is the fact that the three letters were all from black people. One of them was Dorothy Kuya, senior Community Relations Officer in Liverpool, who has done a great deal of valuable work in bringing about a conscious awareness of racism in children's books.
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She wrote :
The days have gone when the British could talk of Sambos, greasers, wogs, niggers and Chinks, and not find one of them behind him, refusing to accept his description and demanding to be treated with dignity.
We now have to take note that we live in a multi-racial society, and need to consider not whether the white children find LBS lovable, or the white teachers think it `a good repetitive tale', but whether the black child and teacher feel the same way.
As a Black Briton, born and educated in this country, I detested LBS as much as I did the other textbooks which presented non-white people as living entirely in primitive conditions and having no culture. I did not relate to him, but the white children in my class identified me with him. [14]
What strikes me is that so many writers of the other letters apparently found it enough to assert that they, personally, had found the stories, or Little Black Sambo, charming, lovable, amusing, interesting or enjoyable. This kind of view often goes with an it-never-did-any-harm-to-me attitude. But what are such arguments - if they can be called that - supposed to prove? Both these attitudes are quite beside the point. It's what all racist books have done to all children over a long period of time that matters. Whether a particular child was affected by a particular book or not is irrelevant. People exposed to infectious diseases don't always catch them. Also, of course, we don't have to take their word for it when people say a book never did them any harm. .
Although there's little enough to choose from, fortunately it's possible to report that some positive attempts have been made within the field of children's literature to bring about a better state of affairs than the one we've been examining. It seems to me that they vary in the degree of success achieved
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and that, within the positive, as within the negative field, there are variations in ideological viewpoint. It's important to remember that the battle, especially as far as small children are concerned, must be conducted on a symbolic level. After all, it would be difficult to discuss the racism of The Little Black Doll with a six-year-old, who wouldn't be capable of the necessary reasoning.
Judy and Jasmin by Jenefer R.Joseph, which is a story intended for children of about six years of age, is an attempt, although, I think, one based on a mistaken attitude, to bring about a positive sense of values with regard to race. It provides perhaps, the most obvious, if the lowest, starting-point for an examination of the more positive side. The story is of two small girls who are friends. Judy is, apparently, British, and Jasmin is Indian. The only indication of race comes at the very beginning where we are told that Judy had `curly, fair hair' and that Jasmin had her hair in a 'long, straight, black plait', though the attractive illustrations show the two girls as of clearly different colours. We see a picture of the house where, semi-detached, they live side by side, we see them skipping together and we see them going to school with their mothers differentiated only, apart from their skin colour, by the colour of their raincoats and boots, though Jasmin's mother wears a sari and Judy's mother wears `western' dress. At school, they go into a tent and change dresses so that, `When they crawled out again, Judy was wearing Jasmin's yellow dress, and Jasmin ,vas wearing Judy's red dress.' Further, when they lie down to rest `after lunch', each takes the other's bed. Throughout the rest of the day, the other children get the two girls muddled and we are told that `even their teacher wasn't sure which was Judy and which was Jasmin.' At the end, however, their mothers correctly claim their respective daughters and they all go home again. On one level, it's strange that the illustrations flatly contradict the story. No-one, looking at the pictures, could have any doubt as to the identity of the two children. On another level, it can be seen that this, in literary terms, is the equivalent of the integrationist attitude towards those groups who have
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emigrated to Britain since the second world war. Jasmin's racial identity is completely ignored, in the face of all obvious evidence. It may be better to be ignored than despised, as Sambo, the Little Black Doll, was but it's still not a solution.
Nor do the picture books of Ezra Jack Keats, for children of about the same age, offer a solution, in racial terms, though they are well-intentioned and beautifully illustrated by the author. In such stories as Snowy Day, Whistle for Willie and Goggles, there's certainly no attempt to pretend that the black children are white. They are black enough, but it's only skin deep. Nothing would be affected in Keats's stories if the characters were white. The whole social, political and cultural significance of being black is left out. In fact, as Ray Anthony Shepard remarked in the United States' publication, Interracial Books for Children, "'Snowy Day" said that Black kids were human by presenting them as colored white kids.' The symbolic significance of the snow becomes apparent. The message seems to be that it's a white world but that black people can enter into it, integrate with it, with success and enjoyment. However, notwithstanding these reservations, it has to be remembered that Keats's stories represent a positive achievement, as is overwhelmingly obvious when they are compared with Little Black Sambo, the Epaminondas series and The Little Black Doll. Here is no simple little `coon', no doll despised in his very blackness and nor is there any caricature either in words or pictures.
It is Stevie by John Steptoe, however, which seems to me to succeed in every way. The story is meant for children of about nine years old but it operates at such a depth of human understanding that anybody might wonder whether the term, children's literature, is really valid. Certainly, although the children in the story are black, and it's set in the United States, I'd expect almost any child to be able to identify with Bobby (who tells the story in his own language) on a simple, human level. It's a story of Bobby's encounter with jealousy and of how he learns something from it. We see it start at the beginning of the story :
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One day my momma told me, `You know you're gonna have a little friend come stay with you.'
And I said, `Who is it?'
And she said, `You know my friend Mrs Mack? Well, she has to work all week and I'm gonna keep her little boy.'
I asked, `For how long?'
She said, `He'll stay all week and his mother will come pick him up on Saturdays.'[15]
We see jealousy and resentment growing in Bobby :
I could never go anywhere without my mother sayin' `Take Stevie with you now.'
`But why I gotta take him everywhere I go?' I'd say.
`Now if you were stayin' with someone you wouldn't want them to treat you mean,' my mother told me.
`Why don't you and Stevie try to play nice?'
Yeah, but I always been nice to him with his old spoiled self. He's always gotta have his way anyway. I had to take him out to play with me and my friends ...
`Ha, ha. Bobby the baby-sitter,' my friends said.[16]
We see, after Stevie has gone and things have returned to normal, Bobby reflecting on what happened :
We used to have some good times together.
I think he liked my momma better than his own, 'cause
he used to call his mother `Mother' and he called my
momma `Mommy'.
Aw, no ! I let my cornflakes get soggy thinkin' about him.
In the end he concludes :
He was a nice little guy.
He was kinda like a little brother. Little Stevie.
The black experience is there and, at the same time, is unimportant, unobtrusive. The story contains a common humanity, all too uncommon in the world of children's literature.
To move to an older age range again and to very recent works, we have two novels of a rare excellence, The Slave Dncer by Paula Fox and Nobody's Family is Going to Change by Louise Fitzhugh. Both originated in the United States and have now been published in Britain, the first in i974, and the second in i976. From the point of view of attitudes to race, it's very interesting to compare them with The Cay and Sounder - and fair to add that The Slave Dancer, like Sounder, was awarded the Newbery Medal.
Nobody's Family is Going to Change is about children's rights, though it moves on to women's rights fairly late in the book. It happens to be about a black, middle-class family, as well. However, this is not to say much about it. What's chiefly remarkable in this story is the psychological insight of the author shown in her creation of characters, especially that of Emma, the eleven-year-old compulsive eater with the overwhelming ambition to become a lawyer. Especially compelling are the few pages at the climax of the story when Emma realises that her father doesn't want her to be a lawyer and, in fact, doesn't love her. She'll always be a loser, she realises, as long as she wishes to gain his love and until she stops `being a mess to please him'. She sees she has to come to terms with this and change herself to cope with it because her family, both her father and her mother, is not going to change. If the book gives rise to any doubt at all, it is that such great insight might not be possible for an eleven-year-old. Perhaps, though, we should have the humility to think, and hope, that it might.
The Slave Dancer is a novel of great horror and as great humanity. It seems to me that it approaches perfection as a work of art. The story is of Jessie, a white boy thirteen-year sold, who's kidnapped in his home town of New Orleans and taken on a voyage in an illegal slaver in 1840. His job is to play his fife and `dance the slaves' to exercise them during the long return journey across the Atlantic. At the end of the voyage, he's one of two survivors but his life is changed for ever. He tells us, `At first, I made a promise to myself : I would do nothing that was connected ever so faintly with the importing and sale and use of slaves. But I soon discovered that everything I considered bore, somewhere along the way, the imprint of black hands.'
References and Notes for Chapter 3
I. Enid Blyton, Here Comes Noddy Again, London, Sampson Low, Marston and Co. and Richards Press, undated, pp. 36-43.
2. Noddy returned to television in the spring of I975 in a new series of programmes about twenty years after his first - but without the golliwogs. They were removed by Ruth Boswell, the adaptor, who also admitted the nastiness of the original Noddy and was trying to give him a better image.
3. In the edition published by Pan Books in I973 their names were changed to Wiggie, Waggie and Wollie. An expurgated hardback edition is also available.
4. Enid Blyton, Five Fall into Adventure, Leicester, Brockhampton Press 1968, pp. 28-30
5. This name comes from the Ashanti or Fanti (West African) name Kwasi which was taken to the West Indies and used as a general term for Africans. Here, as with the name 'Sambo', and as in the illustrations, Bannerman shows she's thinking in stereotypes, even to the extent of not distinguishing between African and Asian peoples.
6. I'm indebted to Leila Berg for pointing this out.
7. Various authors, `The influence of certain stories on groups of East Suffolk children aged 4-8 years', School Librarian, vol. I I no. 2, July 1962, p.123.
8. Enid Blyton, The Little Black Doll, Manchester, World Distributors 1965, (pages unnumbered).
9. The contradiction can't be resolved, however. Compare Angela's attitude to her three golliwogs, p. 81.
I0. Children's Rights Workshop (eds), Racist and Sexist Images in Children's Books, London, Writers and Readers Publishing Cooperative I975, p. 27.
I I. T.M.Newcomb and E.L.Hartley (eds), Readings in Social Psychology, New York, Holt I947, P. 169.
12. ibid. p. 1978
13. . David Milner, Children and Race, Harmondsworth, Penguin 1975, PP 117-126.
14. Dorothy Kuya, `Little Black Sambo', Letter to The Times, I May I972, P• 15.
15- John Steptoe, Stevie, Harmondsworth, Longman Young 1970, (pages unnumbered).
16. ibid.
