Tintin Re-Racked In Australia, Too

It looks like Border's re-racking program of Tintin in the Congo, instigated by a British commission's complaints that the depictions of African characters were unacceptably racist despite the contextual text provided at the beginning of the latest release, has gone international with preemptive re-shelvings of the book in Australia.

This kind of story makes me barf in my mouth a bit. I understand and sympathize with the notion that the book has unacceptably racist elements indicative of a time and a place we're better off now being past. But I don't understand why re-shelving it helps. It doesn't make the book's treatment of folks from Africa less racist, and it's adults who had the objections in the first place. I think kids can process material without slavishly copying it or seeing it as a ringing endorsement which should not be questioned. At least the kids I know can do this. They didn't get that way by being sealed in plastic until their critical faculties developed by magic. The book in question seems to me to have added value, because it allows kids to engage the idea of history being wrong. Maybe it's different when you have kids of your own, but it seems to me if you're going to expose your kids to books at all, sooner or later they're going to confront issues, circumstances and beliefs that are not a ringing endorsement of their own versions of these things. That was such a huge factor in the education I got through my own reading that I'm sad some kids will be denied this particular lesson.
 
posted 3:22 am PST | Permalink
 

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