Imaginary Worlds Where Everyone Is the Same Colour
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Kate Agnew, The Guardian (Manchester), October 7, 2008
In the early-90s I was working as a children’s bookseller in Cambridge when a teacher asked me to suggest a book for her to read to her first year juniors class. I can’t remember which book I pulled from the shelves, but her reaction sticks in my mind—a blunt refusal to consider the book I’d recommended. It had a black child on the cover and there were no black children in her class. Newly arrived from bustling, multicultural London, I didn’t know which was more shocking—her attitude, or the lack of diversity in her class. She was not, I was relieved to find, typical of Cambridge teachers, but her reaction was a salutary reminder of the insidiously narrow-minded parochialism of too much of the children’s books market.
In the 1980s, Grenada-born Verna Wilkins was even more horrified when her son brought home from school a “This Is Me” project in which his face had been painted pink; the teacher had given everyone the same “flesh-colour” paints. His explanation—it had to be that colour to be in a book—lingered in his mother’s mind as she founded Tamarind Books, a company devoted to publishing multicultural children’s books.
Wilkins was very aware of the potential “dangers of omission”, conscious of what can happen to children who “don’t develop a sense of self”. For black kids, “things begin to deteriorate by the age of 10”. Pondering the factors behind the high exclusion rate among black teenagers, she comments that “learning has no value if it is not grounded in your own experience. Children need to see their own world reflected in what they read”. Black children being excluded from the learning materials in their primary schools is, she believes, the first step on a slippery slope to rising school exclusions.
Under-represented
A report by the Diversity in Publishing network found that people from black and minority ethnic (BME) backgrounds were significantly under-represented in the publishing industry. Even ethnically diverse London boroughs only have a small number of BME literacy coordinators. The situation troubles Joy Donaldson, primary teaching and learning consultant for the London borough of Camden. “There’s not enough material available from mainstream sources,” she says. Developing community cohesion is a key governmental objective and inclusion is central to its delivery. “What better way than through books?”
Donaldson deplores how few books feature Asian children in a central role, and notes that too many books featuring BME families tend to be written from an African-American or African-Caribbean perspective. Black British children are not, she says, seeing their experience reflected in books. One honorable exception is Kofi Wanted To Be A Bad Bwoy by Mushirah Wilson, a book that she finds particularly successful with disaffected boys. She also applauds the fact that more good quality non-fiction is being published, citing Wilkins’ biography of murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence.
When I ask what else Donaldson recommends, she laughingly rattles through a list of what she calls “the usuals”: Handa’s Surprise by Eileen Browne, So Much! by Trish Cooke and Mary Hoffman’s Amazing Grace. These are books that most primary schools are aware of, though Donaldson speaks deprecatingly of those schools where BME-focused books come out for October’s Black History Month, only to get “tidied away” come November.
She likes to introduce schools to Fruits: A Caribbean Counting Poem by Valerie Bloom, The Best Mum by Sarah Nash, and I Love My Hair! by Natasha Tarpley. Conscious that there are still not enough dual heritage books, she’s fond of My Two Grannies by Floella Benjamin in which two very different childhoods are interwoven with gently comic domestic contretemps.
For Deborah Alexander, a year 2 teacher at Bounds Green infants, a London school where most pupils come from a minority ethnic group, what really matters is having “high quality books that portray ordinary children and everyday events”.
Dual heritage
The Bounds Green children particularly enjoy the Charlie and Lola series, in which Lola’s best friend Lotta is black. Choosing books both for her class and for her dual heritage children at home, she looks for a strong text and well-executed illustrations. Like Donaldson, she is an enthusiastic advocate of Fly, Eagle, Fly!, an African tale retold by Christopher Gregorowski. Popular with her class is Wake Up, World!, a book that explores the early morning experiences of children around the world.
As I trawl US publishing lists looking for books to supplement the meagre British offerings for Black History Month, it’s hard not to be despondent about what still seems to me a lack of relevant titles from British publishers. Wilkins, though, is upbeat. This month Tamarind Books is celebrating its move to Random House, and she is expanding its list. Even better is the effect of Wilkins’ presence at the high profile Random House on other publishers. “They’ve had to up their image,” she says proudly, “There’s so much to do still. But the change is happening.”
(Posted on October 7, 2008)
Comments
If only the British had JUST LISTENED to Enoch Powell.
Posted by at 7:04 PM on October 7
“Newly arrived from bustling, multicultural London, I didn’t know which was more shocking—her attitude, or the lack of diversity in her class.”
Which highlights the fact that it is indeed disgusting to know that there are idiots like this teaching children.
She’s one of the finest examples of propaganda anywhere in the UK, but she has equals galore in this country who are every bit as imbecilic, and they’re just as proud of it as she is.
I’m pretty sure all of them have similar hallucinations about a rainbow utopia.
Posted by q at 7:58 PM on October 7
Seems as though Great Britain is leading the world in pc nonsense.
Posted by at 8:23 PM on October 7
“Newly arrived from bustling, multicultural London, I didn’t know which was more shocking—her attitude, or the lack of diversity in her class.”
Ever notice that people, including a lot of silly whites like this lady, always bash a place that is all white for its’ lack of diversity. All white places are often described, at least here in the US and most likely there too, as insular, dull, or sleepy? Yet this is never said about an all-black or all-latino etc. community. Why these are described as “vibrant”, “colorful” or are just called communities. I’ll tell you what, I’ll take a dull, sleepy white community, one where you don’t hear police sirens all night, one where there isn’t a shooting or stabbing every day and one where there isn’t a crack house on every corner!
Posted by at 9:33 PM on October 7
Britian is history, might as well just go ahead without them!
Posted by Trisket at 11:32 PM on October 7
The reason there are not as many books by blacks about blacks is very simple, blacks do not write very much, nor do they read very much. It is known as the free market.
Posted by ciccio at 11:38 PM on October 7
“I’m pretty sure all of them have similar hallucinations about a rainbow utopia.”
I had to laugh out loud at that one. “hallucinations about a rainbow utopia”. Priceless.
“Why these are described as “vibrant”, “colorful” or are just called communities.”
For me, vibrant is a code for loud, chaotic, and dangerous. It’s a warning much like Martin Luther King JR. Blvd.
And I’m with you. Give me my dull and boring neighborhood of yore. I long for the days when I didn’t hear about the three black men who robbed a second credit union with automatic weapons.
Where diversity is, so too is crime and violence.
Posted by sbuffalonative at 11:54 PM on October 7
“I can’t remember which book I pulled from the shelves, but her reaction sticks in my mind—a blunt refusal to consider the book I’d recommended. It had a black child on the cover and there were no black children in her class.”
Reverse the races involved: A black teacher is handed a book with a white child pictured on the cover and responds that she wants a book with a black child on the cover for her all black class and Ms. Agnew would sing the praises of black pride and empowerment.
This type of illogic is self insulating.
Posted by at 3:58 AM on October 8
Did I understand from this story that there is a “Black History Month” in Britain?
In other words, Britain has now acquired a black history to study? What black history?
Posted by browser at 7:06 AM on October 8
It doesn’t take long for a non-white minority to start making demands from the white race when they move to indigenous white countries. Now when non-whites go to smaller English towns they are appalled there isn’t more vibrant diversity to make them feel at home.
What if whites moved to China and started demanding the schools have children’s books with white children on the covers, and then made a fuss that whites people aren’t in every town and hamlet in China? How would that go over with the Chinese?
English people, you are being conquered.
Posted by at 7:22 AM on October 8
If Ms.Kate Agnew from the Guardian newspaper really wants more diversity with blacks, why doesn’t she come over here to the good ol USA. Why we can give Ms.Agnew all the diversity and contact with blacks that she so craves. Ms.Agnew can rent a nice apartment and live and work in South Central Los Angeles or perhaps the inner city of Detroit,Chicago’s South Side or the South Bronx would be more to Ms.Agnew’s liking? She can enjoy a lovely evening listening to the pop pop pop of gunfire from the drive-bys. She can get accosted by groups of men when she ventures down the street. She can talk to those lovely drug dealers and gang bangers hanging around up and down her street and have an exciting evening people watching at all of the crack houses. Yes, Ms. Agnew would love it.
Seriously, wouldn’t you just love to force dopey white people who fawn over the blacks like Ms.Agnew to have to live and work in a black neighborhood for a year. All of her type ought to have to do that.
Posted by KC at 8:37 AM on October 8
Yes, I would love to live in a world where everyone is white
Posted by at 10:14 AM on October 8
If africans want to read african books, perhaps they should write a few. Black households are not renown for having books at home but bust a gut if african books are not made available at school. Blacks could just read daily news reports about events in their wonderful africa instead of playing violent computer games in a haze of ‘spliff’ smoke. They could study all about child soldiers in africa and how to kill their own parents and rape young girls during tribal election fever. A good school project for the african kids would be to write about their own experiences with neibourhood crime and then collect the stories for the class to read aloud. I doubt if many more than two or three would be bothered to complete the assignment without involving their own family so it shouldn’t take too long. White kids at the same school should do the same, there’s enough of them hanging around trying to emulate afro-caribbean accents, waving their fingers in gang signals and cowering under hooded tops. We call them whiggers.
Posted by Yorkshireman at 11:30 AM on October 8
They told us that multiracial countries wouldn’t cost us anything. They’d just make us better.
Then they demanded that we have books with black children’s pictures. No chnage there.
Then they demanded that we rename our holidays and stop saying “Merry Christmas.” No change there.
Then they demanded that we stop singing Christmas carols in schools. No chnage there.
Then they demanded that we force businesses to hire them instead of you, because they’re skin color is different. No change there.
Then they demanded that we start giving billions of dollars/Euros/pounds of OUR taxes TO them. No change there.
Then they demanded that we welcome them in our neighborhoods, even when they make us feel unwelcome in our own. No change there.
Then they demanded that we tolerate them and not “profile” them when they start committing crimes in our neighborhood. No change there.
Then they demanded that we not “profile” them when they started blowing up subways and flying airplanes into buildings. No change there.
Then they demanded that we turn our countries into police states in order to prevent the crime caused by welcoming them into our country. No change there.
Then they demanded that we start giving them hundreds of billions in loans for homes that they couldn’t afford, and the economy collapsed. No change there.
Gee, they were right - multiracial countries haven’t caused a bit of damage. Let’s keep re-electing the people who suggested it.
Posted by Alan at 11:51 AM on October 8
I will say this again, the EU in general and the UK in particular are ruled by inbred elites who are clinically insane. This inexplicable and unprecedented treasonous pandering to Muslims is proof of this and these ruling elites need to be dethroned and placed in mental institutions for the rest of their lives.
Muslims are the enemies of all the non-Islamic people on this earth. Every soldier knows that killing the enemies of ones country is not an act of murder and this applies equally to a nation’s civilians as well…
Posted by at 12:54 PM on October 8
Maybe Kate Agnew should get a teaching job in an inner-city high school in Detroit, Washington D.C., Camden, NJ, or East St. Louis, IL. Then let her try to get her students read the Bantu-oriented books cited in the article. That’s when the fun would REALLY start.
Who does this woman think she is, the female Conrack?
Posted by Soprano Fan at 12:57 PM on October 8
KC….this is a perfect idea. Ms Agnew will probably die of fright her first night in a place like LA or Detroit. One gunshot in the night would do the trick!!
Posted by lucylou at 2:25 PM on October 8
Chinese characters/faces are almost totally absent from children’s literature in Britain, but, strangely, this does not appear to be, for them, “….the first step on a slippery slope to rising school exclusions.”
I wonder why this is.
Posted by Joe English at 3:42 PM on October 8
Watched the movie “Notes on a Scandal” yesterday. I couldn’t believe all the blacks in the London schoolyard. How did all those goofs get into Great Britain? More importantly, who let them all in? Horrifying.
Posted by sandstorm at 6:19 PM on October 8
Reply to sandstorm:
It was the Labour party, Britain’s loony left-wing socialist/ Marxist party that let them in. They are virtually wholly responsible for turning the U.K. from a multi-millenium homogeneous society into a racial-stew/train-wreck over the past six decades. The first thing they did when they got their first majority government was to open Britain’s door to a flood of blacks. This was in 1948. Needless to say they didn’t TELL the British people they were going to do this. They bitterly opposed acts by the conservatives in 1962 to shut down non-White immigration. Every time they have been in power they have flooded Britain with non-Whites. Since 1997 when they again most recently resumed power they have unleashed what can only be called a tsunami of non-Whites upon Britain. As socialist/Marxists they loath the society they inhabit and want to dramatically transform it out of all recognition. They also know almost all non-Whites will vote for them. Simply put they are dissolving the British people and electing a new one. Meanwhile the British sheeple, unarmed and muzzeled by notorious “anti-racist” laws seem at a loss to do anything to stop their racial disposession and slow conquest of their country from them. The two really inexplicable things are how the Labour party have been able to maintain this image of being “the party of the common working man in Britain” when in reality they have done more harm to the ordinary British people then any force in Britain’s history. The other mystery is why any British people would vote for these society, heritage, nation-destroying, race-traitors.
Posted by at 8:45 AM on October 9
To Browser;
You are absolutely right,what black history?
This has not stopped the Blairite media/legal elites that have
now gained total control over every institution in the UK
from government ministries to women’s institutes from re-writing
the history of these islands.In lie after repeated lie we have been told to believe that thousands of black people have lived on these shores since Roman times.As if to reinforce this ludicrous untruth
the media now sees fit to pepper historical dramas{The Tudors notoriously} with black and asian actors.Thank you Mr Blair/Brown
Posted by at 4:35 PM on October 9
“As if to reinforce this ludicrous untruth
the media now sees fit to pepper historical dramas{The Tudors notoriously} with black and asian actors.”
~~~~~~~
How ridiculous. If she knew, the great Queen Elizabeth (a Tudor) would be rolling in her grave. As I recall reading, it was she who had banned blacks from living in England.
Posted by at 1:54 AM on October 12