[hildea]

Originally Posted by Question Mark

That's your interpretation. The quote from Dr. Seuss which Lynx-lynx uncovered suggests that that was not the intention:

I assume that wasn't the intention, yes. But intentions aren't magic.

But the Chinese man has the exact same pose as the magician. I don't see that he is treated any differently. Now, running down a street while eating with chopsticks is odd. Just as is running down the street while doing magic tricks.

Magician isn't an ethnic group. (Do I really have to point that out?)
Compare the portrayal of Chinese people with the portrayal of white people on that page. Can you still say with a straight face that they are similar?

Should Indians be offended that the Indian figure in the book is riding atop an elephant? Isn't that stereotypical?

Hm, maybe? On the other hand, I don't see anything in the drawings that prevent us from interpreting any of the characters as Indian -- the guy with the beard or the magician or the top hat people or... There may of course be nuances I'm missing in the drawings.

What should we make of the fact that there were no female characters in the book? Does that tell children that women are not important?

Yes. Of course. I'm baffled that you need to ask. But publishers are seldom considering withdrawing old books for that reason, because we're more used to blatant gender imbalance in media.

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

When I was a child, at least for a few years, biography was my favorite genres. By the theory that occupational diversity needs to be present in every title, we could stop printing, and stop selling on Ebay, all juvenile biographies, since no one book shows it.

Do you seriously think that's what I'm talking about? I can try to explain better, if you sincerely don't understand me. If you're just trying to score rhetorical points I won't bother.

Provide a wider perspective. If the librarian finds that almost all of their children's books treat people of color as weird and exotic -- which would mean it was an extraordinarily weird library -- the remedy is to supplement with other kinds of books. But if hardly any of their books show people of color as weird and exotic -- or just to make sure a wide range of perspectives are in their collection -- they should, if they can afford it, buy the withdrawn titles while still available.

I think we mostly agree here: Libraries should provide a wider perspective, and provide many different points of view. I sincerely doubt that oldfashioned and outdated views of race are anywhere near extinction in modern libraries, so I doubt there's any need to go out of their way to provide more such books. On the other hand, publishing statistics show that white characters and white authors are still overrepresented in publishing compared to other ethnic groups. I'm glad you agree that libraries should go out of their way to get more books from non-white perspectives.