And an explanation of the specific substitutions made. Like, why erase Rudyard Kipling instead of having a conversation about the historical context of racism.
Similar example: Tintin in Congo is by today's standards absolutely racist, but reflects the era when it was published. The last decade the (Belgian) publisher was sued multiple times to try and force it off the shelves.
Also: calls to remove statues of King Leopold II (who committed horrible atrocities in "his" Congolese colony).
In both cases, why not leave access to the original books/statue/... intact but add an introductory section on why this is no longer appropriate today. Or place a contrasting statue, opposite King Leopold II, that embodies the struggle for independence / the colonial horrors / the blight that is racism / etc.
Overall it feels like there's a drive to remove "inappropriate" materials from society, instead of leaving them accessible as living proof of the mistakes that were made, and to provide backstory, context, and the "appropriate" contemporary view.
I share this view, but I also recognize that as a white dude, what is to me a learning opportunity about the things that folks (who mostly look like me) have done in the past isn't necessarily seen that way by everyone.
Unfortunately, even if you get a whole mess of folks of different backgrounds to have an honest and meaningful conversation about what to do about these many things, you aren't going to please everybody. The easiest solution is to just remove the materials rather than having to continuously justify leaving them available and reinterpret the historical context for them from a contemporary standpoint.
The easiest solution is to just remove the materials
It is racists, more than anyone, who wish to hide the historical roots of racism. That we might find it impossible to recognise it's impending revival.
Society has larger problems if a few kids books and some statues were all that was preventing a slide into violent racism.
2. Mao stated himself in his revolutionary speech that they would indoctrinate the next generation if the current one was unwilling, and this is a perfect example of that applied.
Mind you, Leopold was a horrible person, did horrible things and the Belgian monarchy and state have only recently begun to issue apologies for their atrocities. The debate on statues is settled, except in the minds of those who glorify wrongdoing.
The other difference is agency - there exists a legal successor to the belgian monarchy and a legal successor to the powers of the monarchy in the form of the belgian state. These have power today to acknowledge and right the wrongs of the past. In contrast, Georges Remi and Roald Dahl are both dead, unable to correct their errors.
Leopold II isn’t far down the list from Hitler and Stalin.
P.S. Leopold II came to power because he was the heir in a hereditary monarchy, we don’t need a statue of a genocidal aristocrat to know hereditary monarchy with actual governing power is bad.
Edit: I didn't want to litter the thread with copypaste, but my reply to a similar comment was:
In 1960s Germany, students where so outraged by the absence of Nazism from their history curriculum that they turned violent. They rioted, bombed, and killed because they felt they where being denied their right to learn their recent history. And they blamed this on the fact that their teachers and parents had been Nazis and thought they where trying to erase their crimes. In a flash of cruel irony, the state's desire to shelter the students from political violence ignited it again in the streets and in the hearts of their students.That’s fine, but putting up a statue of someone is usually seen as celebrating them. We aren’t hiding from what Hitler or Stalin did, so why don’t we have statues of them?
Perhaps it is the reason why the Reichstag still today has a mailbox with Hitler's name on it.
Another really cool feature is the this hall of mailboxes which was designed by a french artist and includes a mailbox for every democratically elected official in German history. The hall also contains officials such as Hitler and Goebbels because they were democratically elected but they often have to repair the box because people visiting will often punch and kick their boxes
The only place a statue of him belongs is in an exhibit on the worst actions taken against fellow humans.
Roald Dahl is a very interesting target here, editing "fat" out of the description of Augustus Gloop, I assume, was to be more gentle towards more portly folks. The character seemed to have a real eating disorder though, those are real issues that real people also suffer with. Does a discussion of bulimia and anorexia need to accompany Charlie and the Chocolate Factory? Is it read at an age appropriate for that? Was this edit even material? It seems like the real theme is one of greed and humbleness and the eating disorder is just a foil.
(Probably because they judge Joseph Conrad by the outdated language he used, rather than by the ideas and values he presented. Because they are shallow fools.)
> A certain enormous buck n*** encountered in Haiti fixed my conception of blind, furious, unreasoning rage, as manifested in the human animal to the end of my days. Of the n*** I used to dream for years afterwards.
Nowhere in it do I find any sort criticism of the harms that were done. He describes the awful conditions in the Congo, but does not necessarily oppose them
The language he uses to describe the Africans is hostile at best. A poignant example is the part about the "insolent black head" peaking through the doorway while Kurtz lay dying
Not saying that Penguin should've removed his name because that's a different argument, but I have no idea how/where you're getting anticolonialism out of Conrad and I'd genuinely like to know
Edit: what did I get out of HOD? The death of God. Kurtz goes out to a corner of the Earth that was yet to be corrupted by capitalism. Marlow goes on a journey with no message in particular, he's a witness to the historical event
Have a look at the later criticism and counter criticism. Chinua Achebe and then Cedric Watts in particular. It turns out to be complicated.
Wikipedia editors dedicate an entire article to one persons essay on racist themes in Conrad's book. While Karl Marx racism is ignored, dismissed as anachronism or rebuked as irrelevant. Even worthy of forgiveness, in light of the greater good his work bestowed on the world.
People say, “You claim to be Marxists, but did you know that Marx was a racist?” We say, “He probably was a racist: he made a statement once about the marriage of a white woman and a black man, and he called the black man a gorilla or something like that.” The Marxists claim he was only kidding and that the statement shows Marx’s closeness to the man, but of course that is nonsense. So it does seem that Marx was a racist.
Now if you are a Marxist, then Marx’s racism affects your own judgment because a Marxist is someone who worships Marx and the thought of Marx. Remember, though, that Marx himself said, “I am not a Marxist.” Such Marxists cherish the conclusions which Marx arrived at through his method, but they throw away the method itself—leaving themselves in a totally static posture. That is why most Marxists really are historical materialists: they look to the past to get answers for the future, and that does not work.
If you are a dialectical materialist, however, Marx’s racism does not matter. You do not believe in the conclusions of one person but in the validity of a mode of thought; and we in the Party, as dialectical materialists, recognize Karl Marx as one of the great contributors to that mode of thought. Whether or not Marx was a racist is irrelevant and immaterial to whether or not the system of thinking he helped to develop delivers truths about processes in the material world. And this is true in all disciplines. In every discipline you find people who have distorted visions and are at a low state of consciousness who nonetheless have flashes of insight and produce ideas worth considering. For instance, John B. Watson once stated that his favorite pastime was hunting and hanging n*****s, yet he made great forward strides in the analysis and investigations of conditioned responses.
Huey P Newton
Maybe there's someone around you can ask who Kipling is, but there's a good chance they either don't know the issues or are going to be unwilling to have a conversation about the historical context of racism with some child over a one sentence mention of Kipling. More likely, the child will continue reading the book gaining at most a recommendation for future reading.
I don't know if that small recommendation should be changed, but I don't see it's inclusion as some potential learning moment. The line has been in the book for thirty years, and I doubt it's taught many children about the historical context of racism.
The line has been in the book for thirty years, and I doubt it's taught many children about the historical context of racism.
This sounds like critical race theory. That gets people far more fired up than changing a few words in some kids books ever will.