My best friend (in fact the only friend that has been consistently my
friend for 58 years), Rohit Das, who was
born in Scotland in the same hospital as me, has Indian parents (and, in
fact, he bides in India just now),
used to read Little Black Sambo with me, and we used to laugh together.
We also went through all of Angela Banner's
other books in that series about Black Jumbo, Black Mumbo and so on.
Now my friend's skin is the same colour as that of Little Black Sambo.
Neither he nor I (I was red-haired and
pink) were ever consious that we were laughing at anything promoting
racial stereotypes. I remember I told my
Mum that I wanted to climb up a tree to see if that would attract tigers
that would turn into butter.
I own the complete set of Angela Banner's books and fully intend to read
them to any grandchildren who come along.
This could be fun as my younger son (3/8 Bulgarian, 1/8 Albanian, 3/8
Scots, 1/8 English) looks set to marry a
wonderful young lady from California (1/2 Taiwan Chinese, 1/4 Jamaican
Chinese, 1/4 Chigro); in all probability
producing kids that I will love to bits.
When I was 2 I asked my Mum what was wrong with me because my skin was
not black like Rohit's.
If some of these types who go on endlessly about anything that might be
vaguely construed as 'racist' were capable of
slightly more subtle thought they might examine intentions: after all if
we all judged people on what they looked like most
of us would be out of a job and starving.
On 6.06.20 23:29, PEL via use-livecode wrote:
Children,
As you all remember, I did a lot of work with a certain nation-wide restaurant chain
<https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/06/us/restaurant-name-trnd/index.html> in the 80s.
I ate cherry pancakes at over 300 locations - including the original in Santa
Barbara. I knew both “Sam” and “Bo”.
Back then the company fought fiercely to protect the name - which was composed
of the founders: Sam Battistone and Newell “Bo” Bohnet. They pointed out,
correctly, that “Little Black Sambo” was Indian, not African. And it was
obvious that most protesters had not “read” the book.
Yet, recognizing that in our fact-free age, image counts a lot, the kids have
made a good move. I think Sam and Bo would understand.
Suddenly I’m hungry for cherry pancakes… Road Trip to Santa Barbara, anyone?
Dad
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