From: kaaugust at students.wisc.edu <kaaugust>
Date: Sat, 7 Sep 1996 19:18:31 +0100

Earlier in the Spring, Julius Lester refelcted upon the controversy surrounding Little Balck Sambo with this post to the Multicultural Education Listserve. I thought CCBC folks might enjoy reading his thoughts:

Forwarded post from Julius Lester:

As the author of a forthcoming book being referred to on the list, I hesitate to join the discussion because (1) I do not want to give the impression that I am joining the discussion to covertly publicize the book, and (2) I do not want to inhibit discussion of the book when it comes out. However, one comment about the book needs correcting, as well as one about Bannerman. I write to correct those and to share some of what went into the new telling of "Little Black Sambo" which Jerry Pinkney has illustrated. And I want to share some more thoughts on racism. I hope that what I say here will not inhibit people from writing whatever they wish about the book or anything else I have written or will write. Please don't worry about "not wanting to hurt my feelings." I am an adult and hold no one responsible for my feelings except myself.

First, thank you to Linnea Henderson for her reposting of my contribution to the LBJ discussion of last June. Thankfully, I was able to read it without embarrassment and with a sigh of relief that I still agree with what I wrote then.

First, let me address the inaccuracies:

Carol Hurst wrote:

"Most of us know that Helen Bannerman wrote Little Black Sambo unaware of the fact that she was combining Indian and African people and also unaware of the racial put-downs it contained."

Posterity has not been kind to Helen Bannerman. She was an educated woman. She was well aware of what she was doing in placing a black boy in India. She was creating fantasy.

It is ironic that there has been a thread on the list about fantasy and the resistance of children to it, and yet, for so long it has gone unrecognized that "Little Black Sambo" is fantasy, set neither in Africa or India. Let me quote a couple of passages from Elizabeth Hay's now out-of-print biography, "Sambo Sahib: The Story of Little Black Sambo and Helen Bannerman", (Barnes & Noble, 1981).

The first is from a review which appeared in The Spectator on 12/2/1899, the time of the original publication of LBS. The review indicates that at the time of publication the book was perceived as fantasy, a perception that was lost fairly quickly:

[The book] "was not written with one eye on parents and guardians, or the inconsistency of mixing up the African type of black with delightful adventures with tigers in an Indian jungle would never have been allowed to pass. As it is, Little Black Sambo makes his simple and direct appeal in the great realm of make?lieve without paying the slightest attention to the unities or caring in the least about anything but the amusement of the little boys and girls for whom he was so obviously created." (p. 28)

The second quote is in the words of the biographer:

"The geographical inconsistencies of Helen's books...have been widely criticized....Helen's letters make it clear that far from being so ignorant as to confuse an African with an Indian she was able to distinguish between the racial groups within India.

"Why then did a person who was both well travelled and scholarly write a book which contains aspects of both Africa and India? The explanation is that she was writing, not for publication, but for her own daughters. She wanted to set her story somewhere far away and exotic; she chose an imaginary jungle-land and people it with what were to her daughters a far-away kind of people. To have made the setting India would have been too humdrum and familiar for them. Then, because she had a liking for terrifying tigers, she brought them in as the villains. She was far too good a naturalist not to be aware that tigers are found in India but not in Africa; no matter. Her jungle-land was an imaginary one, and tigers, which for her were symbolic dragons, were essential to the story." (p. 28-9)

Fairrosa wrote:

"This year we are seeing two newly adapted versions of LBS -- one retold by Julius Lester, set in Africa, and illustrated by Jerry Pinkney in large picture book format.The other slightly altered and illustrated by Fred Marcellino, smaller picture book format, set in India."

I have not seen the Marcellino book but please, please, please, the new telling Jerry and I have done is NOT, I repeat NOT SET IN AFRICA. This is important to us because before we undertook this project Jerry had talked to me about the absence of picture books of fantasy that featured black children. So when I began thinking about a new telling of LBS, I consciously set out to create a black fantasy. Thus, the first sentence of "Sam and the Tigers", the title of my new telling is, "Once upon a time there was a place called Sam-sam-sa-mara, where the animals and the people lived and worked together like they didn't know they weren't supposed to." If there is a place in Africa called Sam-sam-sa-ma-ra, I did not know of it.

The story has always been a fantasy, which should be obvious since tigers do not talk to little boys and ask for their clothes. It is no wonder that children have difficulty with fantasy if we adults are unable to recognize it. In "Sam and the Tigers" I have extended the fantasy by bringing in other animals as talking characters so there will be no question this time that it is a fantasy.

The second matter I want to address is the perennial one of racism.

Jim Maroon wrote:

"I have a copy. One of the first books I bought for my daughter. And I'm not about to part with it for any amount of money. :-)"

"Julius Lester's previous comments in another thread notwithstanding, there is nothing intrinsically racist about either the text or the illustrations. If exaggerated features were sufficient grounds for censorship, James Marshall and James Stevens and Dr. Seuss are all in BIG trouble. And if being written in a racist society is grounds for branding a book racist, then there is no such thing as a NON-racist book, especially in the USA."

Dick macgillivray wrote:

"I'd like to register my puzzlement over the alleged racism in LBS as well. I realize that as a privileged white middle class, middle-aged male I am at a distinct disadvantage in responding to the sensitivity markers in this story and its illustrations, but even so, I don't regard myself as unintelligent or unfeeling."

One of the reasons it is difficult for blacks and whites to talk about racism is that, more often than not, blacks shout "Racism" too readily and whites too readily deny its existence. The result is a painful lack of communication and understanding, mistrust and suspicion.

Part of the difficulty comes because the charge of racism carries with it the sentence of moral condemnation. No one wants to feel morally condemned. The charge of racism feels like an attack upon one's core, and when people are attacked they defend themselves. That is normal.

However, what if racism were merely a description of the attitude of racial superiority as exemplified in a given situation? In other words, what if racism were seen as something objective rather than as a subjective moral failing? I believe that this is how it is for many, many whites. Those who are rabid and malicious racists are not the norm and quite naturally, someone will resent being considered such simply because he or she likes LBS. For reasons too complex to go into here, many blacks do not make such distinctions and I wish they would. It would help create a better atmosphere that might help improve communications between the races.

If one sees racism as descriptive and situation-specific rather than moral and total, then we, blacks and whites, can acknowledge that the names of the characters and Bannerman's illustrations demean blacks. This is not because Bannerman was a rabid racist but because of the times in which the book was published and subsequent historical associations. Acknowledging the racism in LBS does not mean one must deny one's love for the book. Jerry and I both loved the story but not all elements of its presentation.

Margot Louis was correct when she wrote:

"I re-read Little Black Sambo recently (someone has put the original text on the Internet) and was slightly surprised to realize that the _story_ is not at all racist. What is racist is the association with very destructive stereotypes of blacks as greedy, and the repulsive images (these used to be widely available household items, used as piggy?nks, shoehorns, etc.) of blacks with immense grinning mouths, which often were actually called
"Little Black Sambos"--a kind of commercial spin-off from the story, perhaps. The story itself is about a rather clever little boy with a healthy appetite and a good survival instinct. Changing the name of the hero would help a lot, and the rationale behind shifting the story to India would be to get away from the destructive associations which have been foisted upon the story, but which the tale, I think, really does not set out to exploit. Compare the degeneration of the figure of Uncle Tom, who starts out in Harriet Beecher Stowe's _Uncle Tom's Cabin_ as a very fine
(if to our tastes sickeningly pious) man, but who was represented in such a slavering, fawning, grinning way in the dramatizations of the work that he has become the symbol of a black who appeases the whites in a disgusting
"Yes Massa" style."


When a black person says that something is racist and a white person responds by saying it is not, the message the black person receives is that the white person does not want to listen, that the white person is not taking the black person seriously. Blacks know racism because we suffer its conscious hurts. Whites are hurt by racism, too, but they do not feel it consciously. If whites are willing to respect blacks when they say there is "racism" in LBS, and seek to learn what it is blacks object to and why, then it will be easier for blacks to acknowledge that it is also a wonderful story.

Finally, I would like to share with you my dedication for "Sam and the Tigers":

"To the Internet and those on rec.arts.book.children and Child.Lit"

It was on r.a.b.c that I saw a post that said Jerry Pinkney was working on a new version of LBS. My first thought was that Jerry wouldn't dare do that without asking me to write it. I called him the next morning and he laughed and said he had been speaking somewhere and in response to a question mentioned off-handedly that there should be a new version but he wasn't working on it. I breathed a sigh of relief and said, "Well, how would you feel about our doing it?" It was also on r.a.b.c that I first participated in a lengthy thread on LBS and then about six months afterward a similar discussion took place here. Both discussions helped me clarify my thinking about the book, the issue of racism in it, and most importantly, why so many white people loved the book and why that was OK.

So, I can say in all honesty that "Sam and the Tigers" would not exist without the Internet and especially all of you on Child.Lit whose posts helped me think through a lot of the problems around the book and how to approach a new telling. The love many of you expressed for the book convinced me that the endeavor was worth undertaking.



Julius Lester lester at judnea.umass.edu
Received on Sat 07 Sep 1996 01:18:31 PM CDT