Comment by alexey-salmin | Hacker News Reader

Comment by alexey-salmin | Hacker News Reader

> And here is a lovely classic children’s book — from 1960 — that’s about two little girls, and a witch, who has a baby, and a spelling bee, an actual bee that spells things. And there’s a minor part of the story where the girls are putting on their Halloween costumes, and one is a witch, and the other is “a little Chinese girl … and she had makeup on her face.”

> I think we agree at this point that a nationality is not a super-cool Halloween costume, but I’m not clear on whether Clarissa’s putting on yellowface or has just borrowed her mother’s lipstick. And so how do we handle this? This is not Huckleberry Finn — it’s not a book about race, where we talk about the history and the controversy. Should we be concerned with this type of incidental racism in an ebook that we’re selling today, one that looks just like the new, and hopefully more enlightened, children’s ebooks we’re publishing in 2015?

That's something I never understood: rewriting books from the past to match recent cultural trends. What happened happened, whether you like it or not. (I also don't really get the Halloween costume controversy, but I acknowledge there's something to debate there, unlike with the history-rewriting topic which is just dumb).

You really don't understand why editors decided to rename Agatha Christie's 1939 book Ten Little Niggers in 1985?

Or is that a "recent cultural trend" where you can understand why publishers followed the trend and made a change?

Because once someone admits that change was okay, it's no longer a question of principles and just a series of judgment calls that different people will make differently.

Publishers make changes to ensure books keep selling.

They are human and don't always make the right decision. But they aren't doing it for any reason other than profit.

My daughters are Asian I wouldn't buy them a children's book where "be Chinese" is considered an acceptable Halloween costume.

The publishers would probably prefer I consider purchasing it.

Her book was based on a poem of the same name, written in the 1800's, in which ten children come to an untimely death.

Famously, Christie set out to deliberately write her most technically challenging book, having ten people murdered on an island in a manner in keeping with the poem, whilst still keeping the reader guessing whodunnit. Most readers agree it was her best book by far.

The idea that the book is racist simply because of it's title is a rather modern phenomena (not to mention changing the title and poem somewhat hides her original challenge).

Nobody in this thread has said the book is racist. The question was whether you can see the motivation of retitling from a publishers (or for that matter booksellers) perspective. If you want people to buy the book, the old name is a turn off whether the content is raciest or not.

> If you want people to buy the book, the old name is a turn off whether the content is raciest or not.

This depends on the audience. For some people it is a turn off to adopt the title to a woke zeitgeist.

You’re right of course. Some people will buy the non-woke title as a protest vote of sorts. And others will go out of their way to get an old copy out of a non-political sense of loyalty (some of these people were already buying the book as a historical object though and would have preferred a used copy to start).

But it is not just about people buying the book knowing it changed, or buying it because it changed. It’s about coming across a title like that cold, without knowing any context. (Remember: the aspiration of a publisher is always to have the book become more popular with new formerly uninterested audiences). It’s an empirical question whether that title will do better than a retitle but my money is on the title without the most fraught words in the English language on the cover.

Yeah but I tend not to care about the opinions of people who wish racial slurs had a more prominent place in modern society.

It is, if nothing else, convenient that I don't have to say one of the worst slurs in American English every time I discuss Agatha Christie's body of work.

It's worth noting that, for that reason, the book was released as "And Then There Were None" in its first US edition in 1940; the use of the original title until 1985 is a UK thing.

> Yeah but I tend not to care about the opinions of people who wish racial slurs had a more prominent place in modern society.

But I do tend to care about the opinions of people who wish that works of the past are not manipulated to fit the current zeitgeist - in particular if it is claimed or suggest that this is the work as written by the author.

> who wish racial slurs had a more prominent place in modern society.

Nobody is wishing they had a more prominent place today, nor in the future. Rather, there is a need not to edit the past, lest we forget it.

> "And Then There Were None" in its first US edition in 1940; the use of the original title until 1985 is a UK thing.

I suggest that is because in the USA, particularly in the south, political sensitivities about such a title would be difficult to overcome and the association with an old British poem would be completely lost.

> the association with an old British poem

Wait, are you sure about that? Wikipedia says "an 1869 minstrel song". I had assumed it was a song from the USA that happened to be fairly well known in Britain.

Also I have the impression that the word "nigger" is not traditional in British English. The first time I came across the word was when reading Mark Twain. I had previously heard several words used for referring to darker-skinned people but not that one. Of course that's just my experience from one part of the country.

> Yeah but I tend not to care about the opinions of people who wish racial slurs had a more prominent place in modern society.

As a black American, I'm forced to care about the efforts of people to retcon pervasive racism out of history, or relegate it to one-dimensional "bad guys." This will not save my children from racism, instead it will make them absolutely bewildered by the pervasive racism they will face, and make them blame themselves.

Rewriting crimes out of history does not help victims, it helps perpetrators.

Perhaps this will make my willingness to alter a title seem somewhat arbitrary, but I do agree on the whole. I don't think that media should be edited to remove racist or otherwise outmodded content; for example, I would never suggest altering the language of Huckleberry Finn, or the racist content found in some classic Looney Tunes. We can and should be forced to reckon with the history of racism, and our children should be taught context alongside content. Perhaps what got me in this instance is the use of modern "woke" terminology to refer to, in the case of Agatha Christie's novel, a decision that was made decades ago. Further, I don't think it's correct to assume that all editorial decisions are made in pandering to the "woke zeitgeist," whatever that means.

Who said the title implied the book was racist? Nobody said that, you're making things up.

You just don't put that word on the cover of a book due to "changing cultural trends"

Your last sentence contradicts your first!

No, it doesn't.

> My daughters are Asian I wouldn't buy them a children's book where "be Chinese" is considered an acceptable Halloween costume.

There also exist people who would rather avoid buying books where the publisher changed the content in 1984 style to appease the woke moaners.

It's sad to see your factual statement downvoted.

There was indeed a huge backlash in the UK, amongst authors and the public, when publishers sought to edit classic children's books by Roald Dahl and Enid Blyton to make them politically correct. Children a quite capable of understanding something was written at a different time.

> Children a quite capable of understanding something was written at a different time.

Even if some person is certain that this is not the case, the child's parents hopefully are capable of explaining this to their children. :-)

Even if it was the case, but it is kind of massively easier to pick a book where you do not have to explain that.

Sometimes you just want to read a book and children books are not all that much fun for adults anyway. You might not want to then have to go into explaining that racism was normal for the author, but we think differently jadda jadda ... it is additional completely pointless complication for what was supposed to be good night story.

I could not disagree with you more.

It is something you will need to explain to children at some point, and doing so over a light hearted story is an ideal approach. Shying away from the difficulties of bringing up a child isn't something you should be doing.

Besides, the best children's books are also fun for adults! (I raise you Roald Dahl's 'Boy' and Judith Kerr's 'The Tiger Who Came to Tea')

> the best children's books are also fun for adults!

Also Kipling's Just So stories. My eldest loved me to read them to him and it was no chore at all.

No it is not ideal and that argument does not make sense at all. It would be explaining something mostly off main topic of the story. And I would rather explain it on something real rather then randomly.

And I am not always interested in research about the original reason - how much author was or was not racist.

I don't know how you define best children's book. I found most of then boring and kids taste was not the same as my taste.

If you do not find it fun to read with your children and enjoy the stories equally you may want to consider picking different books or doing something else with them. They will pick up on it, and grow up to think you do not like to spend time with them - and later take that “truth” turned core belief to other relationships.

I kind of did not liked most of them. And the ones I kind of liked were still something I would not read if I did not had to.

If only those people would read

The people who secretly rewrite literature do not take a vote from readers before they do it. They "know better." They'll tell you that it's really just administrative, they're "updating the language."

Also consider that maybe the parent comment would not have bought the book in 1984 either, for the same reason.

> Also consider that maybe the parent comment would not have bought the book in 1984 either, for the same reason.

With 1984, I meant the book by George Orwell where newspaper articles of the past are permanently changed (and any references to the existence of the old versions are destroyed) to fit the daily political climate/narrative.

> would not have bought the book in 1984 either

In a conversation about censorship being used to alter past events, I'm somewhat surprised you didn't understand the reference. Can I suggest this is a book you read as a matter of some importance:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four

There is a difference between consciously erasing the past in the 1984-novel style, and re-releasing an updated version of a book. The important thing being that the original texts are still available - we aren't seizing original editions from homes and burning them.

Admittedly that's actually a more complicated when it comes to electronic texts which may be automatically updated.

Sure, perhaps you rename the book, and maybe they even changed the word inside the book. The term is accidental (as far as I know) to the mystery and the story.

But removing nigger from Huckleberry Finn would greatly destroy the purpose and means of that work - someone has to make that decision and weigh it.

> 1985

You mean 1940. (Its original publication in the US.)

> Because once someone admits that change was okay

You seem to be going with the assumption that everyone is on board—that they agree that that change was okay (had it actually happened, that is).

I fail to understand why a story about a child innocently dressing up as someone from another culture is perceived by some Americans as racist.

It’s never really resonated with me either. But I think this thread has a good example in it: a patent not wanting their child to read a book in which people consider “you” to be an acceptable costume (making you feel strange or uncomfortable, since kids often don’t like being singled out or noted as different — especially not in a way meant to exaggerate and lean in to stereotypes). This is doubly true when the kids may already feel self conscious about their race due to any existing racism they personally encounter in the society.

Counterpoint: St. Paddy's day - where a lot of people dress up and claim to be Irish.

Or when someone dresses up as a 1920 gangster, just always happen to Italian...

It's really the same rule of thumb of stand-up comedy: punching up vs punching down. Western European and North American pan-national stereotypes are typically comfortably 'up' (though targeting specific ethnicities can become 'down').

Well, this kind of adds up because the "punching up vs punching down" rule never made sense to me either.

What a ridiculous statement!

Perhaps you would like to give us all a 'hierarchy of the races' so we can all judge who punches up or down? You can call it the Rassenkunde des deutschen Volkes.

ah come on. It's halloween. Brothers dress up as their sisters, sisters dress up as their brothers, kids dress up as their neighbours.

You are an acceptable costume. Face it. But context matters. The reading kid is not singled out, nobody is making this negative. It could also be perceived as a celebration 'hey I want to be like my adopted asian sister, she is cool'.

Live and let live, and give context if the kid is asking questions. But don't censor because you feel like a special snowflake

Kids dress up as their siblings?

I haven't seen that, but at work we all once dressed as our boss once, and several times I've had friends have dressed up as me.

It’s about thinking of people stereotypically, there might be a way to do it not so bad but it never is

See these examples

https://www.culturalsurvival.org/sites/default/files/nmai-sp...

http://www.slate.com/content/dam/slate/blogs/browbeat/2013/1...

https://risetowin.org/assets/img/what-we-do/educate/resource...

One reason why authors should self-publish is to prevent their books from being bowdlerized by the publisher in the future. You can't predict what will cause future "morality enforcers" to faint. Self publishing also means you can publish things that the current "sensitivity readers" (i.e. censors) would never let you publish.

Of course, this isn't foolproof because your descendants or heirs might also be willing to bowdlerize your work or even take it out of print altogether. So another option would be to just release all of your copyrighted works into the public domain upon your death allowing anybody who cares to publish uncensored copies.

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