Zaretta Hammond says that, "One of the biggest challenges I hear from teachers is that they can't find quality books with African American (or Latino, for that matter) characters." I think she misses an important cultural group when she doesn't purposefully include Native Americans in that challenge as well. Teaching in a school that serves 100% native youth, that challenge is even more difficult prompting Tribal members to quite often refer to themselves as the "minority of minorities".
We have National Hispanic Heritage Month, Black History Month, and Native American Heritage Month. As each of these recognized months approaches, teachers scramble to find appropriate books to read that feature lead characters from these communities of color.
One of the public debates about a diverse offering of books is that many of the culturally diverse books featuring people of color is that the books are only about sports or protest/social justice. Buses, boycotts, protests, basketball, baseball, you name it. Everything appears in these diverse books far more often than just the fine, rich literature and stories that can help build understanding and help all students recognize the commonalities we have as humankind.
While Zaretta Hammond says that the themes for books featuring African Americans are the most often limited, I would challenge that by saying that Latinos, Native Americans, Alaska Natives, Asians, and most groups from communities of color are absent on book store shelves or our school libraries.
In reality, humankind is diverse. Our schools serve diverse groups of students. Our classroom and school libraries should reflect that reality. We must broaden our criteria for inclusion, both from who the characters are to what kinds of text we are providing, from literature to informational.
Sometimes the exclusion of story lines and an accurate representation of communities of color can lead to backlash. For example, when Scholastic released a children's book called, A Birthday Cake for George Washington, by Ramin Ganeshram and illustrated by Vanessa Brantley-Newton, featuring smiling slaves baking a cake for George Washington, a virtual firestorm erupted. The back cover featured George Washington and his chef, an enslaved black man named Hercules, standing arm in arm like bosom buddies. Hercules's words were, "An honor and a privilege, sir...Happy Birthday, Mr. President."
The image and the quote perpetuate the false narrative that the institution of slavery was filled with African Americans happily serving their masters. The story never tells the reader that the conditions on George Washington's plantation were so horrible that Hercules escaped on Washington's birthday the following year, despite having to leave his children behind!
Scholastic didn't respond publicly to this backlash until a grassroots social media campaign by librarians, social justice organizations
, #BlackLivesMatters activists, journalists, and others took them to task and Scholastic recalled the book. But in spite of the dust up, you can probably bet that some teacher, somewhere was reading A Birthday Cake for George Washington, completely unaware of the message being perpetuated.
When you are selecting books for your libraries, please consider the following:
Does the theme perpetuate a stereotype?
Is the text "enabling?" Does the text promote a healthy psyche for ALL students, reflect an awareness of the real world in a validating manner, focus on the resilience of culturally and linguistically diverse communities, and serve as a road map to help navigate racial, language, and gender politics in society?
Does the book tell the truth about the various and diverse experiences our diverse communities have in America? Or, does it downplay them and continue to marginalize these same communities?
Part Two will help you locate quality resources to build diversity into your classroom and school libraries.
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