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Fast Forward Fifty Years:

The New York Times Revisits the Topic with "Where Are the People of Color in Children's Books?" and "The Apartheid of Children's Literature" 

(2014)

On March 15, Walter Dean Myers and Christopher Myers, notable father and son talents of Young Adult and Children't literature and illustrations, authored two separate pieces in response to the freshly released numbers on diversity in children's publishing released by the Cooperative Children's Book Center (CCBC). The disappointing numbers are reprinted at the beginning of both articles:

 

"Of 3200 children's books published in 2013, just 93 were about black people..."

 

While both articles speak of personal thoughts and reflections on these disheartening numbers, W.D. Myers's piece seems to particularly remind the reader of Larrick's original 1965 piece (although neither article specifically addresses the earlier piece). In his piece, W.D. Myers stresses the hole in his life that affected him growing up in the "all-white world of children's literature" of which Larrick wrote: 

 

"To an extent I found who I was in the books I read.... But there was something missing.... As I discovered who I was, a black teenager in a white-dominated world, I saw that these characters, these lives, were not mine.... What I wanted, needed really, was to become an integral and valued part of the mosaic that I saw around me." 

 

W.D. Myer goes on to discuss the listlessness and even restlessness he felt without literary reflections of color. He brings his article full circle when he finally describes the moments of connection he sees in the faces of his own young readers: "They have been struck by the recognition of themselves in the story, a validation of their existence as human beings, an acknowledgement of their value by someone who understands who they are." 

 

 

Christopher Myers's article explores this topic by describing the dearth of diversity in children's literature as an "apartheid of literature--in which characters of color are limited to the townships of occasional historical books that concern themselves with the legacies of civil rights and slavery but are never given a pass card to traverse the lands of adventure, curisotiy, imagination or personal growth." It's notable to compare this relegation of characters of color to historical texts to a similar point made by Larrick about a lack of the contemporary in children's books for children of color. 

 

While his father's describes the issue using the mirror/reflection metaphors often discussed with multicultural children's literature (and coined by children's literature scholar Rudine Sims Bishop), C. Myers instead describes children's texts as providing a map that allows children to see how the world is shaped and where they might go in the future. He describes that children of color today are either being shown that they aren't a part of the map of the world--that they have, in essence, no place or future--or are being shown rather limited paths that they might take. Such omissions and limitations are detrimental to children: "They are navigating the streets and avenues of their lives with an inadqueate, outdated chart, and we wonder why they feel lost." 

 

Both father and son revive the discussion surrounding the dilemmas as Larrick wrote about them years before. This isn't to say that the topic has gone unaddressed for the last several decades; teachers, parents, scholars, authors, and librarians have been tirelessly fighting for the cause. But something about the discussions surrounding it this time feels different, more electrified. Is it merely a fifity year fluke destined to be remain unsolved or game changer for the problem? If the latter, what makes this time different? 

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