Are Roald Dahl Books Racist?

[DangerousBeanz]

I've been reading a thread on a Facebook page where someone asked for recommendations for children's books. Someone suggested Roald Dahl as a good choice for characters who didn't conform to gender stereotypes, and another contributer said his books were racist.
Now I've never noticed any racism, but it kind of kicked off a bit and the recommended was told that if she couldn't see the problem she was part of the problem even though she only asked for examples of how and said she'd never noticed that aspect to the stories.
I didn't like to ask how and which books in case I got slagged off too.
So AIBU in thinking Roald Dahl children's books are fab and not racist or have I really missed something?

I discovered what Agatha Christie originally called And Then There Were None the other day. That sent my tea down the wrong way.

Yes, that one. But obviously in German... and it’s one of the rudest words one could use in the German language in that context, tbh.

It's over 20 years since I last went to Germany, but do they still sell those cakes/biscuits which include that word with 'kiss' at the end? I remember being shocked even then, but they were very mainstream.

Lewis Carroll (Alice in Wonderland) was, like most of the artistic class of his era, probably high on laudanum when he wrote his marvellous novel. There is also plenty of suggestion that he had a sexual proclivity for children, as shown in his artistic sketches of young girls.

Much more recently, Germaine Greer authored a book full of pictures of naked underage boys through history. She described the book as "full of pictures of 'ravishing' pre-adult boys with hairless chests, wide-apart legs and slim waists" and said "I know that the only people who are supposed to like looking at pictures of boys are a subgroup of gay men, well, I'd like to reclaim for women the right to appreciate the short-lived beauty of boys, real boys, not simpering 30-year-olds with shaved chests."

Ugh - to Carroll and Greer.

I discovered what Agatha Christie originally called And Then There Were None the other day. That sent my tea down the wrong way.

It was based on an old rhyme (maybe even a nursery rhyme??) of the same name. Not saying that she was right to call it that, but she was using an established phrase rather than coming up with it anew herself. IIRC, the title was first changed from the very offensive original title to a still-offensive alternative, with the N-word replaced by 'Indians', before it was eventually known by its current name, which, IMHO, would actually have been a much more exciting and evocative title from the start, even if the racist terms hadn't been such.

@Lucylululu

Oh everything and everyone is racist these days and if you disagree then you're racist too! The oompa loompas are racist because they're like slaves 😂😂😂Now I've heard everything!

@Lucylululu

Have you actually read any of his direct quotes?!

Dahl was quite an unpleasant person in many ways, I'm not sure why racism or anti-Semitism are the ones that make it an offence to read his books.

Lots of good or great authors and artists or scientists or political theorists or philosophers can be quite unpleasant, sexist, or racist, or philanderers, egomaniacs, nasty to their children, whatever.

But I don't really see anything to be gained from getting rid of what they produced. I'd also suggest that if people are convinced that they themselves, and the artists etc they prove of, lead really blameless lives, they need to look a little more closely at the human condition. Or wait 100 years and it will be clear to see as they will have moved on to other vices of the mind.

Lots of good or great authors and artists or scientists or political theorists or philosophers can be quite unpleasant, sexist, or racist, or philanderers, egomaniacs, nasty to their children, whatever.

Enid Blyton was the epitome of this.

@ScipioAfricanus

I think not the n-word as it is used today but the old-fashioned version which starts ne-?

Don’t want to be offensive and say it but it isn’t as offensive. I believe it’s used in Gone With the Wind?

Gone With the Wind is offensive within itself But yes the word n@gro is extremely offensive

If the overall consensus on this forum is that Roald Dahl books are racist. What then? Will you no longer read them? What about other authors which had different ideas to us in the past? Will you stop reading them too.

Best thing is to narrow your mind and limit your child's enjoyment of stories to simple themes. Hopefully that should make all the evil in the world go away.

I was discussing something like this with my 9yo the other da. In many fantasy series, made up worlds, the 'West' are always the good side and East is always bad.. Think Calormenes in Narnia, Mordor.. Almost every fantasy series I ever read was like it. Obvs Tolkien and Lewis were of that generation when Muslims, the Middle East etc were associated automatically with something a bit 'off'. Anything not white British basically. However, provided this is understood in context I don't think the books should be consigned to history.

No I don't think his books are racist. But he did apparently say something antisemitic.

Our family reads RD books, but we tell our DCs that he hated Jews. This doesn't mean his books were bad. We say the same about George Orwell. It would be a bit different if Jews played a major part in any of the works.

RacistBaddiel - did you see that hundreds of Ethiopians were brought to Israel only last week? A bit of an odd thing for a state to do if it hates people of colour.

I do wonder if we’ll be left with much old literature to enjoy if we keep judging long dead authors by the standards of today and decide to cancel them as a result of things said or done that offend our modern sensibilities.

Times change and attitudes change. The attitudes of the 2020s are not where attitudes will stay.

There may be things that we think, do and say today that we think nothing of or even think are good which may cause great offence to future generations for reasons we have not even thought of.

Better to keep the books, enjoy the stories and have the conversations with your children about changing attitudes.

@PoorYorick

"In the version first published, [the Oompa-Loompas were] a tribe of 3,000 amiable black pygmies who have been imported by Mr. Willy Wonka from ‘the very deepest and darkest part of the African jungle where no white man had been before.’ Mr. Wonka keeps them in the factory, where they have replaced the sacked white workers. Wonka’s little slaves are delighted with their new circumstances, and particularly with their diet of chocolate. Before they lived on green caterpillars, beetles, eucalyptus leaves, ‘and the bark of the bong-bong tree.'”

Source.

Anyone who doesn't think this is quite standard textbook racism is either dangerously stupid or rather bigoted themselves. I'd be inclined to the kinder option of the two, if I could decide which one it was.

Yes, but does that not mean that works was a racist on enslaving them? I appreciate he appears to be a great moralist, self appointedly judging the children who won the tickets as to their moral worth. Oh boy surely an issue for feminist thought?

@ElliePhillips

I didn't know Dahl had been so anti-simitic. That is very disappointing.

But should it diminish the enjoyability of the books?

Jane Austen. Wrote in the eighteenth century. Where does she challenge the then legal slavery? How many black characters in her novels? And we have the audacity to put her on our currency? ( This is being sarcastic)

The thing about the original oompah lumpa thing or however you spell it... It doesn't mean he thought those things were good things or approved of them. Authors don't personally approve of or think every action or every thing in the stories they write are good things, do they. I think Charlie and the Chocolate Factory/Willie Wonka is/was supposed to be dark in all sorts of ways, like several of his other great books. Maybe it was even supposed to be a criticism of racism, slavery etc.

I think it's very bizarre and wrong that people are calling him sexist too if it's based on characters or something in his fiction books. I don't know what leads them to think that tbh, I don't know anything about his personal life if that's the reason why.

If there is something racist or sexist or something racist or sexist happens in a fiction book, some people really think this means the author is racist/sexist? What about other bad things that happen in fiction books? What if there are murders, rape or child abuse? What do you think of authors who constantly write stories about murders? What do you think of whoever writes certain tv shows/films that have dark/bad things in them?

As for considering their personal life, I don't know how far you should go. It's personal choice how one reacts to the information. Considering how many creatives, scientists etc had terrible views and actions, there might not be much left if you cancel everyone and their work. I don't know how many people pre-2019 would survive considering every day is getting stricter and stricter and something new that is offensive. Yes Roald Dahl was apparently antisemitic if those quotes are accurate. It's individual choice how one reacts to that information, and if someone still wants to read his books/give them to their children that doesn't make them antisemitic or approving of antisemitism. What tv etc should do about showing/celebrating his work, I don't know. They should educate people about this antisemitism. Showing his work... well, that can be looked at as separate from the personal life. There's plenty work that would disappear if we were going to examine everyone for what is unacceptable today, especially those from decades ago.

For a man who was so explicity racsist in his views he does write about many people who triumph over their oppressors.

And yes, he had a very dark turn of mind.

He acknowledged his later life anto semitism, was at least that much self aware and his granchildren have also acknowledged and apologised for it - though why they should apologise or be expected to do anything other than abhor it I am not sure.

As others have said, it is impossible to contine to judge anyone from previous centuries by today's mores. None of them would stand up to scrutiny!

Instead of trying to whitewash them we should accept them and see them as a milestone in how views have changed, teach our kids to see them for what they really are - and to know that in one hundred years our views will be seen in a similarly disapproving light!

Btw I'm not saying roald dahl's antisemitism would've been acceptable at the time he said/wrote it, and only unacceptable today. Absolutely not.

I don't think his books are racist but since he was an unashamed anti semite, I personally have never bought them for my own children in the same way I wouldn't buy the books of murderers, rapists or child abusers.
I wouldn't judge anyone who does have his books but I didn't want my kids to read the words of a racist. There are plenty of other good child authors.

Also I don't think it was acceptable to suggest that Hitler was justified in attempting to wipe out the Jewish people. Not when he said it, not now and not ever.

@Pinkypink

I don’t think that’s what he actually said, but don’t let fact get in the way of a good argument! 😘

"Even a little stinker like Hitler didn't pick on them (Jews) for no reason."
That's what he actually said.

I know this is an old thread but pretty interesting to read in light of BLM and the recent news article of Dahl's family apologising for his anti-semitism.

I'm surprised nobody mentioned My Uncle Oswald which was one of his novels for adults. The sentence "And the w*gs weren't too much trouble as long as one kept the old shambok handy all the time" comes up in the first chapter. The context is a conversation between two wealthy white men in London Chelsea. A Major who was stationed in Sudan reveals the existence of "blister beetles" to young Uncle Oswald. They work like viagra and Oswald builds up a fortune selling pills to rich men.

Censored the w-word just in case it might lead to deletion, it's an old slur for non-white people, similar to using the n-word today. A shambok is a heavy leather whip, originally used on slaves. The w-word occurs at least once again in the book.

The novel is contentious on many levels, as the plot revolves around Uncle Oswald using an extremely attractive female friend as bait. She secretly drugs rich and famous men with the blister beetle who then end up "raping" her and she can steal their sperm. The sperm would then be sold to wealthy bored women who secretly want children by geniuses (Monet, Picasso, Freud, Royalty etc).

@WeBuiltThisBuffetOnSausageRoll

Lots of good or great authors and artists or scientists or political theorists or philosophers can be quite unpleasant, sexist, or racist, or philanderers, egomaniacs, nasty to their children, whatever.

Enid Blyton was the epitome of this.

See, I think of someone like James Watson, who advocated aborting those of low intelligence, among other things, as pretty much the epitome of that. People don't talk about ignoring his scientific insights, though.

@PoorYorick

"In the version first published, [the Oompa-Loompas were] a tribe of 3,000 amiable black pygmies who have been imported by Mr. Willy Wonka from ‘the very deepest and darkest part of the African jungle where no white man had been before.’ Mr. Wonka keeps them in the factory, where they have replaced the sacked white workers. Wonka’s little slaves are delighted with their new circumstances, and particularly with their diet of chocolate. Before they lived on green caterpillars, beetles, eucalyptus leaves, ‘and the bark of the bong-bong tree.'”

Source.

Anyone who doesn't think this is quite standard textbook racism is either dangerously stupid or rather bigoted themselves. I'd be inclined to the kinder option of the two, if I could decide which one it was.

The main reason the Oompa Loompas were happy to leave their jungle was not the poor food, but they were oppressed by the horrible Wangdoodles, Snozzwangers, and some others I can't remember, who ate their children.

Wonka should be the darling of the modern progressive, sponsoring environmental refugees, and employing them rather than the inadequate local white working class.