CCBC-Net Archives
RE: In/visibility and If I Ever Get Out of Here
- Contemporary messages sorted: [ by date ] [ by subject ] [ by author ]
From: Charles Bayless <charles.bayless_at_gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 28 Feb 2014 13:21:09 -0500
Sarah Hamburg said: Since the conversation has come back to it and because I think it very much relates to If I Ever Get Out of Here, I wondered if I could direct attention back to Debbie Reese's original post about invisibility (copied below. Sorry about my wacky font.) In it she asks: invisibility *for whom*? I feel like this "for whom. . .
Just having looked at the Google Ngram Viewer for multicultural children’s literature a couple of days ago, it also occurred to me to look at the frequency of terms we use regarding ethnic identity. As I mentioned in my response to Judith regarding the relative invisibility of Native Americans versus Aborigines, it depends on what constitutes invisibility, with the answer being different if we are talking about civil rights focus or commercial/political power.
The same would be true in this instance of invisibility in literature. What do we mean by that? Regardless of the specific definition, we can see how frequently people are talking about something, which isn’t necessarily the same thing, but interesting to know. Ngram Viewer allows you to run comparisons of phrases (Native American, Hispanic, Asian American, African American). When you run that in Ngram on the American Corpus with a two year smoothing in the 1945-2008 time frame, you find some intriguing patterns. Ngram lets you see not only trend lines but also relative frequency as well. The usual Ngram caveats.
That said, the numbers reveal that Asian Americans are the least discussed, with Native Americans referenced three times as often, Hispanics five times as often and African Americans 8.5 times as often (in the roughly ten million books that Google has scanned up to 2008 which constitutes the Ngram corpus).
African American was not commonly used before the mid 1980s. It rose steeply from circa 1985 to a peak in 2005 with a very mild decline from 2005 – 2008. Asian Americans have been the most invisible in the sense of least talked about with a very slow but steady rise from the 1980s onwards. Hispanic had a relatively high base rate and had a steep rise from 1975 to 1995. It has been in steady decline since 1997, down about 40%. I checked to see if Hispanic was being replaced by something more specific like Mexican American, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. The phrase Native American began its climb circa 1975 with a sharp increase circa 1990. Peaked in 1997 and slow decline in frequency since then.
To determine over and under representation, we would normalize on the minority population. Ngram tells us that if we are talking about minorities using standard terminology, 48% of the time we are discussing African Americans, 17% of the time Native Americans, 6% of the time Asian Americans, and 29% of the time we are discussing Hispanics. In contrast, African Americans represent 38% of the minority population in the US, Native Americans 3%, Asians Americans are 15% of the minority population and Hispanics are 44% of the minority population. The consequence is that it appears we are talking about African Americans somewhat in excess of their demographic representation, Native Americans also in excess of proportion and Asian Americans significantly under proportion and Hispanics also significantly under discussed.
In terms of the communities we focus on in the national conversation as reflected in books, it appears African Americans are the most visible, then Hispanic, then Native American and then Asian American. If we were looking at simple census representation, i.e. by headcount, it would be Hispanic and African American about equally (15 and 13% respectively), followed by Asian Americans (circa 5%) and then Native Americans (1-2%).
The slow decline in African American, Hispanic, and Native American terminology shown in Ngram could theoretically be because we are using different terms for each of these groups (such as when we transitioned from Blacks to African Americans in the 1970s) but that doesn’t appear to be the case. We just appear to be talking about groups in terms of group identity less. I would have assumed otherwise but it is not apparent in this data set and my impression may simply be a product of contextual selection.
Again, all this shows us is a narrow glimpse into what is. It doesn’t say anything about what ought to be. We have no insight as to whether the references in books are positive or authentic or real, or any of the issues which have been mentioned as important. There is no way from this data to assess whether this is the “right” amount of group identified conversation we ought to be having.
Just as one final reality check, I wanted to see who we are actually talking about, using our main trading partners as an initial guess (Germany, Britain, Canada, Mexico, China, Japan, Brazil, and India), along with Native American as a baseline reference. Using the American Corpus, and not too surprisingly, China dominates our conversation and we reference China about 12 times more often than we do Native Americans. Britain, Germany, India, Mexico, Japan, and Canada are all clustered together, each discussed about eight times as much as Native Americans (and about three times as much as we discuss African Americans). We talk about Brazil nearly 2.5 times as much as we discuss Native Americans, but we talk about African Americans about 20% more than we discuss Brazil. Overall, we are talking about any one of our international partners about five times more than we are talking about our own internal ethnic groupings. I have no framework by which to assess whether any of those relative degrees of discussion are good or bad. They simply are. This information does suggest the risks associated with confirmation bias. If we are part of a forum discussing A & B (ex. Hispanics and Native Americans), it easy to lose sight of the fact that there might be ten other forums discussing Y & Z (India and China).
This data also implies that contra some of our earlier discussion, Americans are actually pretty diverse and multicultural in their interests and what they read and write about. Of course, this data is for all books and not just children’s literature. But that takes us back to a couple of points made earlier in the conversation, i.e. tunnel vision and confirmation bias. The substantial focus within the children’s literature community tends to be on literary fiction even though literary fiction represents only 4% of the market of all books. Almost certainly the bulk of discussion of China and Brazil et al is sourced in nonfiction literature. So it might be quite true that children’s literature books are much less diverse and multicultural than the remaining 96% of books that are not literary fiction or perhaps much less diverse than the rest of the market that is not children’s books.
No answers but interesting food for thought and speculation.
Charles
Date: Fri, 28 Feb 2014 13:21:09 -0500
Sarah Hamburg said: Since the conversation has come back to it and because I think it very much relates to If I Ever Get Out of Here, I wondered if I could direct attention back to Debbie Reese's original post about invisibility (copied below. Sorry about my wacky font.) In it she asks: invisibility *for whom*? I feel like this "for whom. . .
Just having looked at the Google Ngram Viewer for multicultural children’s literature a couple of days ago, it also occurred to me to look at the frequency of terms we use regarding ethnic identity. As I mentioned in my response to Judith regarding the relative invisibility of Native Americans versus Aborigines, it depends on what constitutes invisibility, with the answer being different if we are talking about civil rights focus or commercial/political power.
The same would be true in this instance of invisibility in literature. What do we mean by that? Regardless of the specific definition, we can see how frequently people are talking about something, which isn’t necessarily the same thing, but interesting to know. Ngram Viewer allows you to run comparisons of phrases (Native American, Hispanic, Asian American, African American). When you run that in Ngram on the American Corpus with a two year smoothing in the 1945-2008 time frame, you find some intriguing patterns. Ngram lets you see not only trend lines but also relative frequency as well. The usual Ngram caveats.
That said, the numbers reveal that Asian Americans are the least discussed, with Native Americans referenced three times as often, Hispanics five times as often and African Americans 8.5 times as often (in the roughly ten million books that Google has scanned up to 2008 which constitutes the Ngram corpus).
African American was not commonly used before the mid 1980s. It rose steeply from circa 1985 to a peak in 2005 with a very mild decline from 2005 – 2008. Asian Americans have been the most invisible in the sense of least talked about with a very slow but steady rise from the 1980s onwards. Hispanic had a relatively high base rate and had a steep rise from 1975 to 1995. It has been in steady decline since 1997, down about 40%. I checked to see if Hispanic was being replaced by something more specific like Mexican American, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. The phrase Native American began its climb circa 1975 with a sharp increase circa 1990. Peaked in 1997 and slow decline in frequency since then.
To determine over and under representation, we would normalize on the minority population. Ngram tells us that if we are talking about minorities using standard terminology, 48% of the time we are discussing African Americans, 17% of the time Native Americans, 6% of the time Asian Americans, and 29% of the time we are discussing Hispanics. In contrast, African Americans represent 38% of the minority population in the US, Native Americans 3%, Asians Americans are 15% of the minority population and Hispanics are 44% of the minority population. The consequence is that it appears we are talking about African Americans somewhat in excess of their demographic representation, Native Americans also in excess of proportion and Asian Americans significantly under proportion and Hispanics also significantly under discussed.
In terms of the communities we focus on in the national conversation as reflected in books, it appears African Americans are the most visible, then Hispanic, then Native American and then Asian American. If we were looking at simple census representation, i.e. by headcount, it would be Hispanic and African American about equally (15 and 13% respectively), followed by Asian Americans (circa 5%) and then Native Americans (1-2%).
The slow decline in African American, Hispanic, and Native American terminology shown in Ngram could theoretically be because we are using different terms for each of these groups (such as when we transitioned from Blacks to African Americans in the 1970s) but that doesn’t appear to be the case. We just appear to be talking about groups in terms of group identity less. I would have assumed otherwise but it is not apparent in this data set and my impression may simply be a product of contextual selection.
Again, all this shows us is a narrow glimpse into what is. It doesn’t say anything about what ought to be. We have no insight as to whether the references in books are positive or authentic or real, or any of the issues which have been mentioned as important. There is no way from this data to assess whether this is the “right” amount of group identified conversation we ought to be having.
Just as one final reality check, I wanted to see who we are actually talking about, using our main trading partners as an initial guess (Germany, Britain, Canada, Mexico, China, Japan, Brazil, and India), along with Native American as a baseline reference. Using the American Corpus, and not too surprisingly, China dominates our conversation and we reference China about 12 times more often than we do Native Americans. Britain, Germany, India, Mexico, Japan, and Canada are all clustered together, each discussed about eight times as much as Native Americans (and about three times as much as we discuss African Americans). We talk about Brazil nearly 2.5 times as much as we discuss Native Americans, but we talk about African Americans about 20% more than we discuss Brazil. Overall, we are talking about any one of our international partners about five times more than we are talking about our own internal ethnic groupings. I have no framework by which to assess whether any of those relative degrees of discussion are good or bad. They simply are. This information does suggest the risks associated with confirmation bias. If we are part of a forum discussing A & B (ex. Hispanics and Native Americans), it easy to lose sight of the fact that there might be ten other forums discussing Y & Z (India and China).
This data also implies that contra some of our earlier discussion, Americans are actually pretty diverse and multicultural in their interests and what they read and write about. Of course, this data is for all books and not just children’s literature. But that takes us back to a couple of points made earlier in the conversation, i.e. tunnel vision and confirmation bias. The substantial focus within the children’s literature community tends to be on literary fiction even though literary fiction represents only 4% of the market of all books. Almost certainly the bulk of discussion of China and Brazil et al is sourced in nonfiction literature. So it might be quite true that children’s literature books are much less diverse and multicultural than the remaining 96% of books that are not literary fiction or perhaps much less diverse than the rest of the market that is not children’s books.
No answers but interesting food for thought and speculation.
Charles
---
You are currently subscribed to ccbc-net as: ccbc-archive_at_post.education.wisc.edu.
To post to the list, send message to: ccbc-net_at_lists.wisc.edu
To receive messages in digest format, send a message to...
ccbc-net-request_at_lists.wisc.edu
...and include only this command in the body of the message:
set ccbc-net digest
CCBC-Net Archives
The CCBC-Net archives are available to all CCBC-Net listserv members. The archives are organized by month and year. A list of discussion topics (including month/year) is available at http://www.education.wisc.edu/ccbc/ccbcnet/archives.asp
To access the archives, go to:
http://ccbc.education.wisc.edu/ccbc-net
and enter the following:
username: ccbc-net
password: Look4Posts
Received on Fri 28 Feb 2014 12:30:21 PM CST
