T.J. Harden
08-22-2009, 06:27 AM
'Tintin' Deemed Racist, Removed From Shelves (http://www.nypress.com/blog-4906-tintin-deemed-racist-removed-from-shelves.html)
A banned book in Brooklyn, New York City, NY, USA? In a move that pushes us closer to totalitarianism, Brooklyn's chief librarian condemned 'Tintin Au Congo,' one book in the nearly 80-year-old series by Georges (Herge) Remi, the Daily News reports.
After a reader complained that it was "racially offensive," library authorities decided the book depicted Africans as "monkeys" and chose to remove it from library shelves. It is now locked behind secret doors in Brooklyn's central library and can be viewed only by appointment.
While it's true that Herge's work seems to promote an imperialist and racist attitude towards African people, what's more offensive is that librarians don't think readers are mature enough to understand the racism as a product of its time. The Tintin books are beloved classics, and their racist elements can in fact be instructive. The News quotes Brooklyn resident Karina Estedan, who supports the ban, as saying, "The public library caters to the sensitivity of the community. People are trying to erase the mistakes of the past." Those "mistakes" are still alive in the present, and erasing their documentation dooms us to repeat them.
It's no secret that classic—and modern—works of literature depict and even condone offensive attitudes. The Odyssey, that greatest of great texts, supports a misogynistic attitude. Even Sixteen Candles, the John Hughes classic, portrays an Asian exchange student in an extremely and relentlessly racist manner. Banning one book isn't going to solve anything
A banned book in Brooklyn, New York City, NY, USA? In a move that pushes us closer to totalitarianism, Brooklyn's chief librarian condemned 'Tintin Au Congo,' one book in the nearly 80-year-old series by Georges (Herge) Remi, the Daily News reports.
After a reader complained that it was "racially offensive," library authorities decided the book depicted Africans as "monkeys" and chose to remove it from library shelves. It is now locked behind secret doors in Brooklyn's central library and can be viewed only by appointment.
While it's true that Herge's work seems to promote an imperialist and racist attitude towards African people, what's more offensive is that librarians don't think readers are mature enough to understand the racism as a product of its time. The Tintin books are beloved classics, and their racist elements can in fact be instructive. The News quotes Brooklyn resident Karina Estedan, who supports the ban, as saying, "The public library caters to the sensitivity of the community. People are trying to erase the mistakes of the past." Those "mistakes" are still alive in the present, and erasing their documentation dooms us to repeat them.
It's no secret that classic—and modern—works of literature depict and even condone offensive attitudes. The Odyssey, that greatest of great texts, supports a misogynistic attitude. Even Sixteen Candles, the John Hughes classic, portrays an Asian exchange student in an extremely and relentlessly racist manner. Banning one book isn't going to solve anything