CHILDREN'S LITERATURE AND ENTERTAINMENT: AN UNSPOKEN NARRATIVE
It’s a Saturday in my household. And on most Saturdays, the routine looks something like this:
Woken up by my two year old sitting on my face
Morning workout
Breakfast with the family
Afternoon activities
IF the boys have been on their best behavior, a trip to the book store
Dinner
Family movie night (reserved for Saturdays only)
This Satuday’s visit to the book store and movie night prep, sobered me a bit. As my oldest son Aiden gets older and progresses his reading skills, I’m on the hunt for episodic book collections that he can grab onto. As for movies, I’m always seeking positive content that helps him and his younger brother see themselves in a good light.
So here we go - first stop - Harry Potter. All of the parents at work LOVE this series. Books and movies. Complex sentence compilations. Mind bending stories of magic, heroism, and bravery. The problem - all the characters, or at least any of the featured characters are represented visually as white, mostly privileged with British accents. On to the next children’s series The Land of Stories, The Chronicles of Prydain, Julie B Jones, Nate The Great, The Bad Guys, Dogman…such wonderful and fun literature - truly. There’s only one problem - I can’t seem to find any black characters, notably any black male characters - young or old in the stories. For young black male readers - like my son Aiden - if left to see the world only through what’s read - it’s hard for him to imagine or even know of a world where black males have a place. They simply do not exist in most of today’s children literature and film.
Later in the evening, we sit down for movie night. Oh, Disney - they’ve got great content. Frozen (all white cast), The Incredibles (the hero family is white), The Beaty and The Beast (won’t even go there), Dumbo (let us not forget the Jim Crow character), oh! Peter Pan (skip to the “what makes the Red Man Red’ racist song).
Maybe I’m just not looking in the right areas? Or maybe I’m just not aware of the plethora of black characters written within the lines of America’s great children’s novels and portrayed in kid’s movie content? So, I look to research to understand what I may or may not be missing.
In a piece called “I see white people” written by the Cooperative Children’s Book Center - they address my observations with hard research. Get ready for sobering realities of their 2013 data…
Of 191 picture books received that year, only 7.8% all these books featured a child of color, not just black, anyone non white or non human, as the protaganist
Of the 650 fiction titles received that year that also included humans as main characters, a whopping 614 featured white characters, and just 36 feature people of color as main characters. That amounts to just 5.27% of the total.
In total of the 1183 books published midway through 2013 about human beings, 124 of those books featured people of color. That's 10.48% OR 168% of an under index vs the representation of people of color in the United States of America
In recent 2015 research by the CCBC the summary data still looks troubling.
I also looked up a bit of history on Disney - Of all the Disney animated films (as of 2016) only 11 have featured a main character that was not white. And more disturbing is that of the actual actors portraying these roles most if not many of the nonwhite voices we hear are that of animals or non human characters.
Some may argue that this is because of a low number of black authors and film makers. Some may argue that its due to a lack of interest in black stories by publishing houses and studios. There could be a number of reasons, but the most obvious is that American writers and directors are passing along a troubling sense of superiority onto ALL children. One that subconsciously omits positive self imagery for non white children. One that, for the many young white children I know, eliminates an opportunity for them to see their heroes and inspiration in anyone other than other white children. It’s a bit of a leap, but this literary and entertainment challenge, can contribute to our country’s subconscious bias in that, no your white co-worker isn’t racist, but he or she also hasn’t read or watched much if any content that allows them to see you as their boss, or as someone to aspire to. It’s just not programmed into their psyche. So as our children grow up and are interrupted during their speech in class, not chosen by their teachers when their hand is raised, overlooked in their college classrooms, and disregarded in the work place - it’s not from a place of malice, it’s from a place of ambivalence. Remember - in Harry Potter, almost 90% of all non fiction literature - people of color are INVISIBLE. We simply don’t exist in the minds of many young white child, teenage, and adult minds - not in a relatable sense. And for our young black children - they haven’t seen themselves in any form of positive or leading light in prominent American culture so yes, there’s a good sense that their self confidence will be low. That they will seek white women as their love interests, that they won’t take the big leaps into challenging experiences because - to them - those experiences aren’t made for black boys and girls.
Our tone at Breakin Dad is one of support, vulnerability, and reality. This piece and the story we’re hoping to tell isn’t one of divisiveness or victimhood, but a wake up call to our collective societal subconscious. What we write, what we put on screen, the imagery our children see can make a world of a difference in the unity and love built into future generations. The opportunity exists today to make that change for our children. We encourage dads and parents of all races to lift their kids to new definitions of positive imagery that expands beyond singular definitions and we hope this article raised a bit more awareness of why this is important.