to censor DD's books by ripping inappropriate pages out?!

[morningpaper]

Not the ones with people copulating, like in my biology textbooks of yore.

We have a children's compendium (very new) which contains the story of Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby.

Surely this is just a racist stereotype with possibly worrying racist undertones?

Am I being over-sensitive or should I snip-snip-snip?

yes quite jux, i had lots of those books from my mum's childhood. they were just stories about children from other countries turning marauding tigers into pancakes etc.

mp i try to only have nice books around, ie good story and illustrations. what is the rest of your compendium like?

I don't understand why Brer Rabbit is being interpreted as racist?
He's a Trickster figure, which is an important motif in folk tales, and the Tar baby in the sory was exactly that, a trap for the trickster.
Slave tales often have a weaker character winning over the strong and powerful by using his wits, and some of the tales show the trickster outwitted. Otherwise he'd be too annoying and full of himself.

Perhaps a book of all the OTHER slave tales is in order? There are a lot of really good ones. My family had a beautiful one with illustrations and some of the actual songs written out.

I lived in the Deep South and trust me, Brer Rabbit was NOT the biggest racism -even the casual flavour- influence, not by a looong shot.

Like it or not, these tales are part of someone's culture. You can choose to expose your child to that culture or not, but letting racists who have borrowed bits of the language stop you from telling the tales to your child means that the racists won. They claimed the words and made them theirs.

(as a side note, the schoolkids more likely heard "nigger" from hip-hop music, which I consider much more casually racist - make of that what you will)

errrrrrrrrrr... really? Is the tar baby anything to do with a black baby? I didn't know. If you watch the film it obviously is a trap, made from tar. Surely your daughter wont use that term after reading the book?

FWIW, the decision to remove 'Song of the South' from the Disney video library had nothing to do with Brer Rabbit. It was about the Uncle Remus character.

The only real criticism I have seen of Brer Rabbit is that it uses the colloquial slave-language, but then, so does Mark Twain. Huckleberry Finn has a LOT of racist stereotypes, but it's required reading in American schools right along with Black Like Me.

I know your DD doesn't have a stake in this, but as an American, even a white one, to me removing these stories is like saying that this period and this culture didn't exist, which is a shame IMHO.

Sorry, you've touched a bit of a nerve with me it seems.

I'd look carefully through the rest of the compendium, because if the issue is about the interpretation of the illustrator rather than the story per sey, then there might be other things you don't like in there too.

I usually read books before my children do (not because I m a control freak, but because I love children's books - actually I am a bit of a control freak, I love good children's book and hate bad ones, so don't pass them on/buy them).

I'm not sure that allowing your six year old to read something you consider dodgy with the expectation that you can undo any potential damage with a quick chat is quite the way that I'd go. So I would remove the book or cut out those pages if you think the rest of it is fine and your dd is enjoying it.

Good for your dd to be reading so well at six too!

I used to love that book. I also loved Enid Blyton books. I haven't turned out to be a raging racist who believes that women are only there to cook and clear up after men (unless you are a dubious tomboy/lesbian in which case you are let off the hook). I knew they were just stories.

I never believed that very hungry caterpillars would eat chocolate cake - I'd seen caterpillars, I knew they only ate leaves. It was a story. I never believed that hedgehogs took in laundry. It was a story. I didn't believe chairs could fly. It was a story.

And as an adult I don't believe that Leonardo da Vinci left messages in his work. It's a story. I don't believe the wrong man was hanged in Paris to save his doppelganger. It's a story. I don't believe discworld actually exists. They are stories.

If your child understands the difference between reality and fiction the chances are that they will relate to tar babies in the same way they do to hobbits. A character in a story. Of course, if they start pointing at black people whilst yelling 'tar baby!' you have a problem. But I really wouldn't worry until then.

ps Where does Moby Dick stand in this PC world? Everyone knows that hunting whales is bad...

Oh MP, I am that you think this way in some ways, but understand in others. When I was a child back in the dim and distant, things like gollies and little black sambo and all that were just stories. It never occurred to me for a second that they were were anything to do with real life. The tar baby - I still wouldn't have thought of that as racist now either (although haven't read it for a long time - maybe I would if I re-read it). Perhaps I am naive too - but you can overthink these things, I feel.

Personally I didn't think too much of them replacing the golly in Noddy with a monkey - now that had the potential to be offensive.

Please don't mutilate your book, as others have said - if you make a fuss over it, your DD will think more about it than she needs to at this stage.

(Do children today still "do" racism? I thought the multi-cultural aspect was starting to make it obsolete at that age)

It's completely unnecessary. "tar baby' is not used in this country as a racial slur, whether or not it is in the states. She won't have heard tar baby used in that way, and I highly doubt she will make any connection herself (I didn't, I also grew up in somerset if it makes you feel better). The tar baby was never intended to represent a black baby and was only later used in that way, but seriously, none of the children at her school will know that expression, I doubt any of them are reading Brer Rabbit.
If it's the illustration you don't like then remove it if you must, but not the story. I wouldn't, unless it's a truly hideous racial stereotype.