Oh China, they ought to name a drink after you

[marnanightingale]

...It is depressing to have to point out, yet again, that there is a distinction between having the legal right to say something & having the moral right not to be held accountable for what you say. Being asked to apologise for saying something unconscionable is not the same as being stripped of the legal right to say it. It’s really not very fucking complicated. Cry Free Speech in such contexts, you are demanding the right to speak any bilge you wish without apology or fear of comeback. You are demanding not legal rights but an end to debate about & criticism of what you say. When did bigotry get so needy? This assertive & idiotic failure to understand that juridical permissibility backed up by the state is not the horizon of politics or morality is absurdly resilient.)
...
Who, after all, could forget the monstrous erasure performed by Stalin on Trotsky, by putting a warning sticker on him & refusing to shelve him alongside The Gruffalo?
...
It is a strange, depraved morality that chooses relentless fidelity to racist texts over consideration of the day-to-day lives of children & others.

No. I cannot extract. I cannot asplain. I cannot sum up. I can only say "Go. Go and Read."

This post was originally posted on Dreamwidth. where there are comments. Comment here or there as you prefer.

Comments

[sabotabby]

I think I'll name one of my invented drinks after him. The problem is that no one but me ever seems to like my invented drinks.

Also, this has nothing to do with the post (which is awesome, as always) but it's driving me crazy trying to figure out what typeface he's using on that blog.

[benet.livejournal.com]

Unless Google Chrome Developer Tools are steering me horribly wrong: Goudy Bookletter 1911.

[thnidu.livejournal.com]

Oh, /'či:nə/! I couldn't figure out what China /'čai:nə/ had to do with any of that text. Then I clicked on it... and it clicked.

[auriaephiala.livejournal.com]

As a kid I read an amazing amount of really sketchy stuff, including Little Black Sambo (to be quite honest, the racist stuff in that book went completely over my head, just like the Christian references in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe). I was not into either allegory or seeing resonances outside the story. It probably would have been better if an adult with a little bit more life experience had pointed this out.

The Tintin books were some of the earliest I ever read -- but in fact Tintin in the Congo wasn't available (nor was Tintin in the Land of the Soviets). And Le Lotus Bleu was only available in French. So, in fact, editors had already recognized that those three books were not really proper children's fiction -- and for damn good reasons too.

I don't see the problem with noting in a forward to the book that _Tintin in the Congo_ reflects racist attitudes and is not suitable for children. The fact that these were common Belgian attitudes of the time explains them (partially) but doesn't make them any more acceptable these days.