Recently on Instagram I highlighted a series of 1970's American children's story books. I posted the endearing, whimsical illustrations but mentioned that I'd left out the troubling illustrations.
Today I point to the problematic photos in the children's books as an instance of how we indoctrinate children in racism, sexism, ablesim, and settler colonialism. Sure, these books were published in 1970. But this indoctrination still goes on today just in different forms. It's hard to not notice these wildly racist illustrations as It’s hard not to notice images of women submitting to men when the World Health Organization just released a report citing that one in four women are sexually or physically assaulted by their partners.
These kid's book pictures are a perfect example of how mythic American stories get perpetuated. They can become associated with the core values we learned at our most vulnerable and live in our head with or without our explicit awareness. These unacknowledged practices of treating black people as dehumanized stereotypes (sexualized, criminalized, less than human and never children) show up, for example, in the form of institutional racism. We've just reached the year anniversary of Breonna Taylor's murder by the police; jury selection is ongoing for the trial of former police officer Derek Chauvin who murdered George Floyd. It's hard to deny that the world still treats women as objects to be controlled by men when the World Health Organization just released a report citing that one in four women are sexually or physically assaulted by their partners.
I’ll start with the story of John Henry. Here’s a summary: big black men exist to work and they love it. They shouldn't wear clothes when they work so we can see their big muscular bodies. They'll choose to work themselves literally to death rather than be replaced by a machine. This is celebrated as a national truth by burying him with his sledgehammer, wrapped in gold, next to the White House in Washington. This allegorized racist stereotype of black men in America is only missing mention of how dangerously threatening his potent sexuality is to white women.
Not only do black men live and love to work, but the earth exists to be manipulated by humans, be it on the level of a man or a machine.
John Henry's strong body is for everyone's visual enjoyment. The white men get to wear clothes.
As for the pictures of women and men? Images of women being threatened or coddled by strong men are the foundation of patriarchy, a system that capitalism depends on to ensure that property can be intergenerationally transmitted and privately owned.
And here we have a classic image of Manifest Destiny, the entitlement white European settlers assumed they had to the pristine, "empty" west. This involved waging war against indigenous people, legislated genocide, and parceling the land into ownable plots. This involved mining, oil pipelines, and tourism. This land was not made for anybody to be entitled to; indigenous people were here first and we did not discover anything.
