From: Debbie Reese <dreese.nambe_at_gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 19 Feb 2013 06:40:35 -0600

Charles--There are empirical studies that point to the problems we're discussing.

(1) Stephanie Fryberg and several of her colleagues (U Arizona, Stanford, U Michigan) have done psychological studies that measure the pre- and post-test self-efficacy of students (Native and non-Native) when they were shown a series of slides that included stereotypical images of American Indians. Here's one of their articles: e2008.pdf

That research is very frightening because it tells us that those images hurt Native students self-efficacy, but that they give a boost to the non-Native students. It is why I devote so much attention to stereotypes (to use Charles words "tearing down an offering... deemed inauthentic") and why we must stop producing them and stop justifying them in the literature we provide to children. The cost of that justification is to keep the power structures intact. There's other studies that point to how hard it is to unlearn things we learned when we were young.

(2) Studies of the impact of the Mexican American Studies program at Tucson demonstrate that students who were immersed in materials by/about Mexican Americans came to school at higher rates, got better grades, and, graduated at higher rates. An independent study, ordered by the State by those who wanted to shut down the program, concluded that the program ought to be replicated. The State then tried to discredit the study. Here's the link: The State had enough power in the end to shut down the program and materials were taken out of the classrooms during the day when kids were in the classrooms.

So, if we're looking for empirical studies, I've shared two. While I'm glad there's research on this, I'll also note that I'm uneasy with a power structure that demands proof that books by and about people of color matter. Its kind of like saying "ouch" and having someone in power say "buck up" when the person saying ouch is a person of color, but offering more to the person saying 'ouch' when they're not a person of color. The 'ouch/prove it' has been proven in discrimination over loans, housing, promotions... This is the sort of thing that is taken up by McIntosh in the White Privilege article that Cheryl Klein's blog post pointed to. Here's that link:


And---there's almost always a critique of conversations like this that

people who speak up are emotional and angry, which is seen as inappropriate. A lot of people will use that to characterization to ignore the content of the objections. Its disappointing to me when people engage in that sort of dismissal because women who fought for women's rights were treated that way by men. There was an NPR program about Betty Friedan's work that talks about anger: http://m.npr.org/news/Books/171309154

Thanks, Ebony, for pointing to the Parenthesis forum. I've been thinking about 'what counts' in regard to literate/illiterate and how it aligns with civilized/primitive. Indigenous peoples around the world have been using symbols for thousands of years, and yet their cultures are called primitive because they weren't "lettered." Someone (Denny Taylor, maybe?) writes about how poor/minority children are called illiterate but points to how well those children process symbols in their environment.

Debbie


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Debbie Reese, PhD Tribally enrolled: Nambe Pueblo

Email: dreese.nambe_at_gmail.com

Website: American Indians in Children's Literature _at_ http://americanindiansinchildrensliterature.net

Now: Studying for MLIS at San Jose State University Then: Assistant Professor in American Indian Studies, University of Illinois
Received on Tue 19 Feb 2013 06:40:35 AM CST