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The Culture of Make-Believe in Kidlit

By Sakena Patterson


As many Americans cling to the prospect of a post-racial society in the wake of its first African American president, children growing up in the United States may find they are unable to fully comprehend the significance of this political milestone. For young Americans today, an unburdened, limitless, and diverse reality is all they’ve ever known. But identities are complexly crafted from a variety of different sources, and many children’s understanding of their position in America will start with the books they read.

In Suffer the Little Children: Uses of the Past in Jewish and African American Children’s Literature, Jodi Eichler-Levine, an Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, warns us that “books for tots are anything but innocent.” She takes a fair and scholarly approach to the way Jewish and African American stories transmit core cultural beliefs to the children and adults who read them, and opens a dialogue about America’s complicated — and often brutal — history of racial, ethnic, and religious oppression.

But what is the cost of passing on tales of Jewish and African American sacrifice and suffering that are whitewashed or inaccurate?

A chronological look at Jewish and African American children’s literature shows that cultural assimilation became synonymous with patriotism. From the American Revolution to 9/11, minorities have had to align themselves with a largely white, Protestant American population in order to distance themselves from a perceived enemy. One way this was achieved was by writing children’s books about Jewish and African Americans that minimize their cultural differences to white, Protestant Americans. This cultural downplaying stripped away anything that might portray a black or Jewish child as “too ethnic” by watering down Judaism or reimaging black stereotypes as comical and, therefore, non-threatening.

Children’s books are often the way white Americans are introduced to Jewish and African American history and culture. This is problematic because, while a black or Jewish family may have family or oral histories to add dimensions to the readings, most white children must rely only on what a story conveys. Eichler-Levine makes it clear that all children are in danger of absorbing messages about minority groups that are manipulative and sometimes downright false.

For example, in Crispus Attucks: Boy of Valor (1965), Dharathula Millender attempts to make African Americans a part of the founding narrative of the United States by portraying Attucks as a patriot. While the goal is commendable, how it is achieved is troubling.

Many historians believe that Crispus Attucks, an ex-slave, was the first person killed during the Boston Massacre in 1770. This event is widely viewed to have prompted the American War of Independence five years later. However, as Eichler-Levine points out, little is known about the circumstances of Attucks’ life and death. His entire childhood is imagined by Millender in order to create a story that will appeal to and reinforce national pride in young readers. Creating a fictional childhood for an American hero isn’t new, but in this case it is done to portray Attucks as a martyr who is willing to die for his country’s freedom.

Millender’s biography isn’t the only book about Attucks to emphasize his supposed patriotic motives. In The Cost of Freedom: Crispus Attucks and the Boston Massacre (2004), Joanne Mattern invents dialog where Attucks says he fought for American liberty because he had been a slave: “I was a slave long ago, Matt. It is a bad life. Now it seems the colonists are slaves to the British. This can’t go on. People need to be free.”

While it may be clear to an adult that this dialog is make-believe, a child might understand it to be an authentic part of history. Without addressing the reality that many blacks fought for their own freedom rather than the freedom of the country, stories like Mattern’s not only gloss over the history of American slavery, but also of African American resistance.

Suffer the Little Children is an incredible resource for teachers, historians, and writers of children’s stories who want to correct the distortion of Jewish and African American histories in the stories for a new generation. The best way for a child to understand and welcome a mix of cultures and religions isn’t by promoting their erasure through assimilation, but by creating a society where diversity is embraced. In a society that favors acceptance, we have a better chance of moving toward a country that truly values liberty and justice for all.

Sakena Patterson is a freelance writer based in her hometown of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She returned to Pittsburgh after a seven-year spree in Los Angeles, where she earned an MFA in fiction from Antioch University. Twitter: @misspatterson Tumblr: sakpatt.tumblr.com

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Covering (Up) Mental Illness in the Black Community


African American woman
Photo by alainlm

From Metta World Peace to Rudy Eugene, African Americans confronting mental health challenges are often portrayed as isolated examples of crazy or deranged people rather than members of a marginalized community suffering an illness. Beyond the black blogosphere and social networking events, the dismal state of black mental health treatment and awareness hasn’t been adequately covered by mainstream media.

Journalists, writers, and experts cite many reasons why mainstream media doesn’t cover African American mental health responsibly or consistently. Among them are racism, lack of context about how African Americans interact with the health care system, and stigmas that remain entrenched in the black community and discourage those who struggle with depression, schizophrenia, or other mental health problems from discussing them. Rarely do mainstream media outlets have the luxury of assigning a reporter to cover only mental health since most are now responsible for several beats simultaneously.

“Mental health in general has been a sub-beat in the mainstream media,” says journalist Amy Alexander, coauthor of Lay My Burden Down: Suicide and the Mental Health Crisis among African Americans. “It used to be that no one would write about mental health, and the way it would be covered would be piecemeal in the context of a report coming out from the Centers for Disease Control [and Prevention] or the National Institutes of Health. Or you would see a story pop up around a horrific event.”

Since Alexander’s book was published, little has changed. The bizarre case of Rudy Eugene, an African American in Miami who chewed off a homeless man’s face in May before being shot to death, made “bath salts” a buzz phrase nationwide. Eugene took his clothes off along the MacArthur Causeway from Miami Beach before attacking Ronald Poppo in what the Miami Herald called a “ghoulish, drawn-out assault in plain view on a city sidewalk.”

The head of the Miami police union publicly speculated that “bath salts,” synthetic stimulants believed to be the cause of psychotic episodes elsewhere around the country, prompted Eugene’s actions. But, according to the Miami-Dade Medical Examiner’s office, only marijuana was found in his system.

More likely, Kristen Gwynne wrote for Alternet, is that Eugene had a history of mental illness. “But pinning a tragedy to a drug scare is easier (and perhaps more lucrative) than explaining a nonexistent safety net for the mentally ill,” she wrote. “Bath salts, the mainstream media naively believes, can be banned and eradicated. Treating mental illness is a far more complicated story.”

Other than sensationalized portraits of individuals, the only consistent coverage of mental illness in the black community focuses on the psychological fallout of depression and other mental health issues facing black celebrities. These portrayals are opportunities for mainstream media to explore larger questions about the escalating suicide rate among black men, the entrenched stigma of appearing weak and vulnerable in the black community by seeking help, and the dearth of African American mental health professionals. Journalist and author Ellis Cose says these examples explore “celebrities much more so than the black community.”

Even when the topic is more about black celebrity than race, mental illness, particularly in famous athletes, is viewed as “evidence of a criminal character,” says David J. Leonard, author of After Artest: The NBA and the Assault on Blackness and associate professor in the Department of Critical Culture, Gender, and Race Studies at Washington State University.

“Media go immediately to focusing on the purported pathologies of the players themselves and don’t want to see what the broader context is,” Leonard says. “The history of race and mental health is a history of racism and the white medical establishment demonizing and criminalizing the black community through writing about their ‘abnormal personalities’ and being ‘crazy.’”

That history plays out in mainstream media coverage, but it also affects public discussions about mental health because it has so often been used to justify exclusion, segregation, and inequality in mental health treatment for African Americans. Recently, Bassey Ikpi, a writer and blogger working on a book about her bipolar disorder diagnosis in 2004, founded The Siwe Project, a global nonprofit for African Americans to share experiences about mental health in the black community. On social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, African Americans worldwide share stories of navigating mental health in a culture that actively discourages blacks from seeking talk therapy, Ikpi says.

At least partial resistance to mainstream reporting on black mental health is tied to blacks’ historical stoicism and belief that religion can serve as a substitute for professional therapy or, when necessary, medication.

“We have survived Jim Crow, beating, lynchings, and fire hoses,” says Mychal Denzel Smith, a mental health advocate, commentator, and writer. “We pride ourselves on strength. I spoke at a high school, and the teacher said, ‘Black folks just don’t have time to be depressed.’”

The Siwe Project is an important starting point for conversation outside mainstream media about the importance of self-care, Smith says.

“It’s about taking control and being proactive in defining our narrative for us instead of waiting for other people to do it. We know that there’s something wrong in our community. We have to be more proactive in addressing these issues and making sure that we take our health into account.”

Originally published by the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education.

Dear Reader, In The Fray is a nonprofit staffed by volunteers. If you liked this piece, could you please donate $10? If you want to help, you can also: