We are writing in response to a letter from Northampton resident David Ball, who pokes fun at a recent comment in which the author, a white man, recounted what cartoons of Asians taught him at a young age (“Nobody ever became by reading to the racist Dr. Seuss ”, April 7th.
Like many, we still mourn the Korean and Sino-American women killed in Atlanta last month – mothers, daughters, and grandmothers, all so much more than any cartoon could convey. The letter claims that the columnist “obviously has no trace of anti-Asian prejudice in his body”. It’s such a strangely intimate claim. We don’t know either of the writers, but we’ve seen exactly what an ounce of prejudice could look and feel like many times.
Our families have met many, many people whose ideas about other people here and in other countries have been influenced by cartoons taken at home, in war propaganda, in films or in books.
Do all children “surely” “instinctively” reject racist cartoons, as Ball claims? If so, we would not have been yelled at – in Northampton, Amherst and nearby towns – to go back to another country. Our children did not have elementary school students mocking them with ridiculous noises, distorting their eyes, and trying to force them to say they were Chinese. While the former president encouraged racist violence, this everyday experience occurred long before that.
When our children see a racist caricature in a children’s book, they find that this is how many, many people – writers, artists, and other children in the community, and the librarians, teachers, and booksellers who gave them these books – see them. How does that feel for a little kid?
And a culture that allows for an image like this is likely to allow a lot more similar images in many other types of media, all of which have a reinforcing effect on viewers of all races – stereotypes and the general notion that Asians are “other” , reinforced “less than” and interchangeable.
Some parents, like the columnist’s father, certainly exhort their children to oppose racism wherever they see it. Many clearly do not. Like all non-white children, ours learn to distinguish between accumulated ignorance and malice. However, it is not necessary to make room for either of the two in the local newspaper.
Jennifer Page, Joy Ohm, Megan Paik and Mia Kim Sullivan live in Northampton
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