Are Kids' Books Reflecting Apartheid or a General Lack of Color?

Below is an interesting and thoughtful piece on children's books in general and books with people of color in particular.  Have a look.

A survey of children's literature by the Cooperative Children’s Book Center has found that of 3,200 books surveyed (out of an estimated 5,000 books published) in 2013, only 93 were about African-Americans.African-American children’s book authors Walter Dean Myers and his son Christopher Myers are both concerned about the lack of diversity in children’s literature. (Malin Fezehal)

That dismal statistic prompted African-American children’s book author Walter Dean Myers and his son Christopher Myers to write side-by-side op-ed pieces for The New York Times.

Dean and Christopher Myers

Walter Dean Myers’s piece asked “Where Are the People of Color in Children’s Books?” while Christopher Myers characterized the situation as an “The Apartheid of Children’s Literature.”

I am determined to use my life as a template for these kids. If I can do this, so can they. ---Walter Dean Myers
                                   
As Christopher Myers tells Here & Now’s Robin Young, the issue is not only that children of color need to see people who look like themselves in these books, but also that “these books are used as fantasy, these books are used as ways that kids can make road maps for their own lives, and if we don’t give them proper road maps, where are they going to end up?”

New Data: Less Than 3 Percent of Children's Books Surveyed in 2013 Were About African Americans

A shocking statistic provided by Cooperative Children’s Book Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Education:   Of some 3,200 children’s books surveyed in 2013 by the Cooperative Children’s Book Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Education, only 93 were about black people.

In a country where African Americans comprise at least 13 percent of the population, less than 3 percent of the new children’s books received by the Center in 2013 were about black people and even fewer were by black authors – about 2 percent. 

In 1994, the center began also tracking books by and about American Indians, Asians, and Latinos and found similarly dispiriting figures: Of the 3,200 children’s books it surveyed in 2013, 93 were about blacks, 34 about American Indians, 69 about Asians and Pacific Americans, and 57 about Latinos.

Perhaps the most troubling trend is how little the numbers have changed since the center began tracking them in 1985 and 1994, for blacks, and other minority groups, respectively.We educators realize that when parts of our society are scarcely represented in the books we read, we’re less inclined to know,relate to, and value those groups.

 Even more troubling, when minority readers, especially children, don’t see themselves represented in the books they read, they don’t receive the validation and affirmation of self that reading provides.

Children’s book author Walter Dean Myers, author of “Monster” and a former Library of CongressNational Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, recently told his story in a poignant op-ed in the Times.

Myers says he grew up in Harlem reading what many kids read – comic books, bible stories, “The Little
Engine That Could,” “Goldilocks,” then Robin Hood, then Shakespeare, Mistral, and Balzac.

As I discovered who I was, a black teenager in a white-dominated world, I saw that these characters, these lives, were not mine,” Myers writes. “I didn’t want to become the 'black' representative, or some shining example of diversity. What I wanted, needed really, was to become an integral and valued part of the mosaic that I saw around me.

With that realization, he stopped reading, stopped going to school, and joined the Army. His post-Army days were “a drunken stumble through life,” rescued, ultimately, by writing and books.

Myers read “Sonny’s Blues,” by James Baldwin, a story about black
people in Harlem. Myers “didn’t love the story,” but it was life-changing nonetheless.

“By humanizing the people who were like me, Baldwin’s story also humanized me. The story gave me a permission that I didn’t know I needed, the permission to write about my own landscape, my own map.”

To fill the void he encountered as a youth, Myers began writing his own children’s books about black kids. Black kids accustomed to stories by white authors about white kids in white environments are often elated by his books, he says.

“They have been struck by the recognition of themselves in the story, a validation of their existence as human beings, an acknowledgment of their value by someone who understands who they are.”

We need to write, promote, and lionize books for African-American kids.  It is pivotal for the good of our society as a whole.