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?

@TheSmallClangerWhistlesAgain

He was an extremely odd man in real life and I can easily imagine him being quite unpleasant when he wanted to be.

Thinking about The Witches and orthodox Jewish women though, isn't one of the trademarks of a witch that she never wears sensible shoes, in order to disguise the fact that she had square feet with no toes?

The Witches is ideologically quite interesting. The witches are evil and female, but Grandmother is a fabulous female character who subverts Dahl's usual "nasty old bat" treatment of older women.

You could easily see the witches as unrepentant Nazi allegories, and Grandmother as an ageing Simon Wiesenthal character.

The ending of the book is one of the most subtle and moving I've read, too.

With a lot of these kinds of children's authors who give more than a bunch of didactic indoctrination in their books, certain people just really can't stand it. If the author respects the child readers enough to present the story in a way that lets them come to their own conclusions, or shows evil or ambiguity, or darkness, without shoving the "right" response in the reader's face, they decide it's a bad book.

Dahl, Shel Silverstein, Wilder, even William Stieg to some extent have all suffered from this treatment. To the point you see these critics imagining the message of a book is actually the opposite of what the author intended, because the author doesn't straight out tell the reader the moral of the story, or because there are several conclusions the reader might come to.

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.

Wow - that's far worse than Blyton, although I think she still holds her end up where authors are concerned. With her, it's just so casual and nonchalant.

Staying with scientists, Charles Darwin is another one: people tend not to mention his belief that white men were the most evolved of the species and that women, black and Asian people were inferior specimens. I know that millions of others have held these prejudices throughout the centuries, but he actually proposed it as scientifically-provable theory.

And, at the time, Darwin could provide irrefutable evidence supporting his theory.

A bit like the original IQ test the criteria were particularly slanted towards middle class, white, Englishness!

Darwin's theory was the beginning of comparative sociology, our understanding of the diversity and richness of different societies. He'd been wrong in many things before that but, as with most of his theories, he set the scene for far greater scientific understanding.

@Pinkypink

Correct. That is what he said.
That isn’t suggesting that Hitler was justified in wiping them out, though, is it?

Blyton had a progressive side. George from Famous Five was always fighting against pre-determined gender roles and the five often made friends with travellers and circus folk, which would have been unthinkable for most prejudiced middle class types in the 50s.

St Clares and Mallory Towers were all about how girls could become strong reliable capable women (not little housewives- the snobby housewifey types were always deprecated) and as for the Naughtiest Girl, the school was positively socialist- a mixed boarding school where the kids had to put all their money in a box at the beginning of term and every child, rich or poor, got two shillings a week from the box!

SamG76 will Ethiopian Jews in Israel continue to experience forced contraception injections, whites only neighborhoods, their blood rejected by Israeli hospitals as unclean and Tel Aviv's racially segregated kindegartens? See link..
mronline.org/2020/12/04/a-racist-endeavour-zionist-israels-black-jewish-victims-of-color/

Racistbaddiel - that last article is a set of tendentious half truths that would embarrass Ken Livingstone. If they hate blacks so much why go to lots of trouble to bring in Ethopians?

I don’t think the books are racist, but he himself was a known Antisemite.

His books are wonderful for children though, and I’ve got some for DS.

There is a massive problem of prejudice against ethiopian jews in Israel. That article above is nonsense but there is the usual terror of reporting negatively on israel elsewhere.

Good report for Vice

Just read your user name and wondering what your real motive is 'Racistbaddiel'?

@WeBuiltThisBuffetOnSausageRoll

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.

Wow - that's far worse than Blyton, although I think she still holds her end up where authors are concerned. With her, it's just so casual and nonchalant.

Staying with scientists, Charles Darwin is another one: people tend not to mention his belief that white men were the most evolved of the species and that women, black and Asian people were inferior specimens. I know that millions of others have held these prejudices throughout the centuries, but he actually proposed it as scientifically-provable theory.

Well yes, but he would have to - if he thought it was true, it would presumably have a scientific explanation.

There was a lot of scientific racism at that time, but I'm not convinced we are that far from it now. Look at dog breeding in it's modern carnation - it developed at the same time from the same ideas, that is when the KC was founded. It's principles say that by breeding for the best specimen of type without mixing you will get the best, most perfect, dogs. (And the founders of the KC were all very involved in the eugenics movement - they were different manifestations of the same idea.)

We now know that scientifically that is untrue, that kind of "purity" is neither very helpful, or even all that real. But many many people still believe it about dogs. Identity politics has also brought back the spectre of race essentialism to a scary degree.

Part of the problem of othering the people who had these ideas, and failing to acknowledge, or even really look into, why they might have found them compelling, is that it allows us to imagine that we are very different in our thinking. Often that's not true, and so bad ideas go unrecognised. It's much safer all round when we recognise that a lot of morally questionable ideas are in some way very compelling, and good smart people may fall prey to them.

As far as the Zionism element - I think that's an example of where it's become not allowable to talk about the nature of the reservations many people had about the Israeli state. The thing about the Ethiopians is maybe related but not the centre of it. Nor is it really about the distinction between Jews as a people or individuals, and the bad actions of the government, though some people clearly make that distinction. When Dhal is talking about Zionism, as I read it he is talking about the idea of a nation state with ethnicity as what defines or allows membership. That's historically been a major argument of those conserned with Zionism as a concept, but it's been some years since I've heard it spoken of intelligently, or even in an adult way, on the left.

Didn't he invent something to drain fluid off the brain to relieve pressure? What a complex human being.

Yes, he did blubber, to relieve the pain of one of his children with hydrocephalus. He also produced vaccination campaigns to promote them after one of his daughters died of measles.

He was a bit of a shit in other ways but sometimes wonderful, like most humans. If we retrospectively ban books for outdated ideas wewon't really have much children's lit before about 1990 left.

@phlebasconsidered

Exactly. Even Harry Potter has been removed from some libraries because the powers that be don’t like JKR’s views on trans rights.

Are public figures not alllowed to have opinions any more unless they compile with some list of “permitted” views?

I’m sure placed like China do things like this with celebs who do not toe the lie.

As far as the Zionism element - I think that's an example of where it's become not allowable to talk about the nature of the reservations many people had about the Israeli state.

I completely agree. I have huge reservations about elements of the Chinese, Russian, US and UK governments (to choose just four) and how they conduct their affairs, but that in no way means that I have any feelings of hatred or racism towards the people from those countries (the latter of which includes me).

Maybe it's a bit of a stretch, but it brings to mind when Sharon Shoesmith was roundly condemned by the general public for her perceived serious failures and she quickly played the 'you're only persecuting me like this because I'm a woman and so you must hate women' card.

No-one is preventing anyone from talking about Israel/Zionism. What many people object to (and this is reflected in IHRA and EHRC reports) is the pathological hatred of Israel that seems to be a feature of a lot of discourse, which doesn't appear to happen with other countries. And inevitably this expands into looking at who are Israel's defenders, then media bias, then Jewish/ Zionist influence, etc etc...

I haven't read them all but from what I can remember he paints farmers in an absolutely terrible light 😛

Oompa loompas as slaves, really!? You'll be going for FC's elves next.

The academic article about Israel's systemic oppression of Black Jews - including forced contraception injections, neighborhoods operating whites only housing policies, the blood donations of Black Jews rejected as unclean, Tel Aviv's racially segregated kindergartens - is fully sourced, footnoted and interlinked to the original source sites.
Those cited testifying to Israeli system racism include Haaretz, The Jerusalem Post, and Times of Israel.
See for yourselves...
mronline.org/2020/12/04/a-racist-endeavour-zionist-israels-black-jewish-victims-of-color/

I haven't read his adult books but I don't think there is any racism in the children's books.
How on earth would anyone know Charlie was meant to be black? I don't think it's mentioned in the book.
The books were written in the 80s when things were different but I still can't really see the racism

@samG76

No-one is preventing anyone from talking about Israel/Zionism. What many people object to (and this is reflected in IHRA and EHRC reports) is the pathological hatred of Israel that seems to be a feature of a lot of discourse, which doesn't appear to happen with other countries. And inevitably this expands into looking at who are Israel's defenders, then media bias, then Jewish/ Zionist influence, etc etc...

I'm no sure it's entirely true that people don't ever talk about other nations with that kind of nastiness. Though Israel certainly gets a good deal of it.

However, if people made the arguments that I suggested in my posts, even though they would be treated perfectly seriously if they were made about Scotland, or the Balkans, or Canada, you would have people pointing you to official definitions of anti-Semitism, and you'd be in real danger of being fired or ejected if you were a person in public life.

Obviously, Israel should be treated the same as other racist white settler societies - Rhodesia, Apartheid South Africa for example. You can't excuse white colonial and apartheid domination by religious fundamentalism.
White colonial conquest is of course white racial conquest.
It's worth recalling that because colonialism is such an evil, in the post war era Britain and the former colonial powers decolonised, and gave countries back to their indigenous peoples. And the UN defined the white colonial ideology of Zionism as a form of racism.
Post Iraq war the west and public rhetoric has sunk pretty low since then.

Racist Baddiel - you know, don't you, that most Israelis are descended from people who lived in the Middle East for centuries. And they are not white any more than the Palestinians (unless you accept some Critical Race theory crap). so your Rhodesian/South African argument doesn't hold water.