A review by paperbacksandpines
Was the Cat in the Hat Black?: The Hidden Racism of Children's Literature, and the Need for Diverse Books by Philip Nel

4.0

America is again entering a period of civil rights activism because racism is resilient, sneaky, and endlessly adaptable. In other words, racism endures because racism is structural: it’s embedded in culture, and in institutions.

I took my time in getting to this book because one of my favorite childhood authors, Dr. Seuss, was mentioned in the title and I knew he wouldn't come off well in the book and how could I defend an author who introduced me to my love of reading?

Nel had some harsh truths to deliver.

Whites have not had to build tolerance for racial discomfort and thus when racial discomfort arises, whites typically respond as if something is ‘wrong,’ and blame the person or event that triggered the discomfort (usually a person of color).

Nel focused on five areas of structural racism in the world of children’s books: the subtle persistence of racial caricature, how anti-racist revisionism sustains racist ideas, racial invisibility as a form of racism, racial erasures via whitewashed young adult book covers, and genre-coding in the children's publishing industry.

Authors like Seuss are "what happens when race gets displaced, re-coded, hidden. It is about how racist ideologies persist in the literature and culture of childhood, frequently in ways that we fail to notice on a conscious level. It is about how race is present especially when it seems to be absent."

Some authors' work has been bowdlerized in recent years, such as Twain, with the exchanging of the n-word for slave, completely changing the meaning of the text and the work itself. My understanding of Nel's take on racists texts are that it would be a toss up of banning them from libraries or teaching students to look critically at these books, and continuing to cause damage readers of color.

Nel exposes the publishing industry's argument that books by people of color in a certain genre or with a POC on the cover won't sell. They don't admit that they're using hiring via nepotism, filling quotas for writers of color within genres, or that they are driven by the economic bottom line.

As the primary beneficiaries of structural racism, White people have the strongest moral obligation to work toward dismantling it. As John Metta writes, “White people are in a position of power in this country because of racism. The question is: Are they brave enough to use that power to speak against the system that gave it to them?.

One of my favorite things about this book is that he gave multiple examples of children's books in recently history with examples of racism but that he also gave examples of books written by POC which were overlooked by the publishing industry and were self published or who don't fit the mold of one of the three genres they've been pigeonholed into by the publishing industry.

Nel encourages white writers, publishers, teachers, and librarians to do better and even better, he gives a list of places to go to accomplish this. This book is going to remind me that I need to look at my read alouds I share with my class and look at the ratio of books written by white writers versus everyone else. I'll now be looking at books I choose with a closer eye for structural racism.

My only critique is that the book became repetitive at times. I remember reading specific phrases and asking myself hadn't I just read that phrase word for word a few pages ago? Other than that, this book was entirely worthwhile.