You know what's funny? I always hated multiethnic dolls because they never had a brown haired, brown eyed white girl. Which is funny, because it may well be the most common combination in America.

Brown eyes were covered by the black, hispanic and asian dolls so they didn't feel they needed to make a white doll with them.

If there was a brown-haired white doll in addition to red and blond, then she had green eyes.

I feel very oppressed. Who can I complain to?

On a more serious note, in grad school, we were asked to randomly watch a bunch of kids shows and see what race the main characters were. Everyone was shocked when 75% of the characters were white. So I said I'd checked the census, and 76% (or some such) was white, and whites were underrepresented by a point or two. So everyone hated me and called me a racist.

Actually, when compared to the democraphic data, hispanics were overrepresented in our data by I think about 4%. The underrepresented ones were the Asians.

I was sort of thinking about this today. A group I am part of at work has adopted a family for Christmas. I assume they are Hispanic since it was noted the parents only speak Spanish. There are a lot of Hispanic people living in the area. And I though we have very few Hispanic people working for us...and about then a group walked by and they were all Hispanic but one....and then I realized they were employees from another site. Thinking about it a bit more I realized the company had lots of Hispanic people working for them, just at our offices in countries where being Hispanic is the norm.

I am not sure what I got out of that...some how it seemed interesting. The contrast, I guess.

Some things struck me about the family... they don't have money for heat...the oldest daughter enjoys listening to music on her ipod...and they just had another kid

Mario Cortez-Pacheco, age 8: "I see a lot of people that don't have a lot of color," he said.

He doesn't see white people as being a different color; he sees them as lacking color. That quote doesn't sound like the thinking of an 8-year-old. It sounds more like the concoction of a racially biased writer, or a bigoted attitude being transferred from Bayard Taylor Elementary "educators" to school children.

Is it racist to refer to all races but one as "people of color", as if that one race does not have "color"? Is it racist, or just ignorant, to use the terms "multicultural" and "diversity" in reference to all races but one, as if people of that one race have no culture? (Especially when that one race itself represents a great diversity of cultures) Do Latinos know who their Latin ancestors were, and where they came from?

In A Preface to Paradise Lost, C S Lewis contrasts the characters of Adam and Satan, as developed in Milton’s work:

"Adam talks about God, the Forbidden tree, sleep, the difference between beast and man, his plans for the morrow, the stars and the angels. He discusses dreams and clouds, the sun, the moon, and the planets, the winds and the birds. He relates his own creation and celebrates the beauty and majesty of Eve…Adam, though locally confined to a small park on a small planet, has interests that embrace ‘all the choir of heaven and all the furniture of earth.’ Satan has been in the heaven of Heavens and in the abyss of Hell, and surveyed all that lies between them, and in that whole immensity has found only one thing that interests Satan.. And that “one thing” is, of course, Satan himself…his position and the wrongs he believes have been done to him. “Satan’s monomaniac concern with himself and his supposed rights and wrongs is a necessity of the Satanic predicament…”

This monomaniac focus on self..the assumption that nothing can be of interest unless it is a direct reflection of one's own life...is something that today's "educators" seem fanatically determined to inculcate.

A black man walks into a cafe one early morning and noticed that he was the only black man there. As he sat down, he noticed a white man behind him.

The white man said, “Colored people are not allowed here…”
The black man turned around and stood up.

He then said:
“When I was born I was black,”
“When I grew up I was black,”
“When I'm sick I'm black,”
“When I go out in the sun I'm black,”
“When I'm cold I'm black,”
“When I die I'll be black.”

“But you sir...”

“When you're born you're pink,”
“When you grow up you're white,”
“When you're sick, you're green,”
“When you go out in the sun you turn red,”
“When you're cold you turn blue,”
“And when you die you turn gray.”

“And you have the nerve to call me colored!!!”

So there's that, anyway.

Professional grievance mongers at work, creating outrage where none exists. Those ethnic studies degrees have to be used for something.

The Nickelodeon cartoon character Doug Funny has a friend Skeeter. Skeeter is Blue. Who can relate to that?

This sounds like an excellent opportunity for someone to write good children's books that happen to have Hispanic characters. They can compete with millions of other books for the meager funds of a school library. I was a school librarian for a few years and this was definitely on my radar, and I know teachers think about it, too. However, I would certainly not spend the few dollars I had on crappy books just because there was a 'colorful' face on the front. I am not even sure what a Hispanic face looks like, and you just had a post on that topic.

The great society is here...anytime that happens, like in the exploitation free Soviet U., E. Germany or N. Korea, where everybody is equal, it becomes bad for all.

Personally I remember reading the Hobbit as a kid, I self identified with the characters (mainly the Dwarves) and they weren't even human. Same with Dr Seuss.

A second thing to note, Harry Potter, Narnia, Hobbit, currently some of the biggest childrens lit successes. They were imported. So if the parents want hispanic kids books, import some from Mexico, Central + South America, or don't they have kids lit there. As for language differences, kids books should be the easiest to translate, ok maybe not Dr Seuss, although frankly leaving in Spanish would probably be pushed for too.

If people were buying books with hispanic main characters people would write them.

My favorite novel Starship Troopers has a Filipino main character.

But if a books main point is the race of the participants then its not a good book

The notion that being Hispanic must mean you have brown or olive skin is completely bonkers. I worked with a woman who had been born and raised in Argentina by parents born and raised in Argentina, with grandparents born and raised in Argentina. She was blond and fair-skinned. Sophia Vergara of "Modern Family" fame is naturally a blond. The producers made her color her hair so she would look more "Hispanic".
The stupid is strong in today's educational establishment.

the saddest part of all this, is that you take a kid who hasn't yet found a love for reading, and tell him there is a specific reason why he never will...

Instead of encouraging him to read. read it all. read from everywhere, read anything.

Diversity is important, but sometimes it can go overboard or down right strange. Some even try and force it.

Take Marvel Comics with it's Ultimate line of comics. The series is a bit darker, then it's regular comics. So after a while Peter Parker aka Spider-Man aka Wall Crawling Menace is killed. They want to replace the character Spider-Man. Have to sell comics. So how do they replace the classic white middle class kid from the burbs. Choose a Hispanic/Black teenage kid, whose best friend is a fat little Asian kid. Hey I would have taken a black spider-man or even Hispanic or even heck Chinese. The mix race gig just seems so forced.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spider-Man_%28Miles_Morales%29

You can't force good stories. I was thinking of the same of why not get some good books from Hispanic countries.

You want to have a more rounded books for kids of all colors, here is a thought. The publishing companies. The problem is many publishing companies are very woman/gay centric (sorry Amy, if this offends). So they tend to like book and publish books that relate to the publishers. They do not always relate with many people outside of supposed main stream society which to the modern publishing industry is New York and LA.
Some companies like Baen publishing have made money by seeing this and breaking out of the rut. Baen has many books that men like to read. Bane has become a bit of the classic pulp fiction for Men but more Sci-Fi and Fantasy.

Also make books kids can enjoy. Do not try to find the next Newbery award winning young adult book with requisite tragic/special characters. Make books that kids will enjoy. Like Harry Potter or Twilight series. Both are not great literature, but great reads. Well not the Twilight for me.

Even better is e-books and self publishing. Letting the people choose what is a cool, not some editor or publisher who can not relate and tries to choose what is in. Capitalism, baby! It works.

Just my opinion, from a guy whose favorite author is Gordon Korman a sort of known young adult kids author about Canada and later New York.

Joe J: "So if the parents want hispanic kids books, import some from Mexico, Central + South America..."

That sounds simple and logical.

The problem is, they don't want books that portray people with brown faces as constituents of a male chauvinist, superstitious, Catholic religious culture characterized by poverty, exploitation, political corruption and violent, organized crime.

They want books that portray people with brown faces as the righteous backbone of a politically correct, feminist, technologically advanced, Western European-like society that naturally evolved from some wise, maternal, nurturing, traditional Latin American fantasy culture that never existed.

The books they want don't exist, and the kind of people who would like to write them don't know the difference between literary art and boring propaganda.

Since I'm writing a book, have a blog about writing, go to a local writer's circle, and generally hang out online at lots of writing/writers' sites, let's think about this from a writer's POV (point of view).

The best writing advice is usually considered to be "write what you know." Notice that the "exception" authors listed had some Hispanic names in there?

Now, let's take a look at some popular kids series books:

Magic Tree House (Mary Pope Osbourn)
Katie Kazoo (Nancy Kurlik)
Judy Moody (Megan McDonald)
Roscoe Riley (Katherine Applegate)
...

Notice a pattern? People are writing what they know - mostly (I'm fairly certain there aren't any actual tree houses, or a Katie running around as a hamster).

So, if somebody is so set that we "need" kids books with protagonists in XYZ demographic, maybe they need to promote writing childrens' books to XYZ demographic people.

I don't remember reading many picture books as a kid, I didn't like them... the got in the way of my picturing things myself.

Mind, this is also why my main characters are dragons, half-panther creatures, and similar... because no one is going to worry about casting the right number of minorities/etc when it's made into a movie :)

As an aside... having answered about going to work in cars (not pirates) a zillion times now, I think I want to write about some one who goes to work in a pirate. Not sure how I'll make that work...

Kids who see their parents read will read. (Eventually.) I sincerely doubt that Tiger Moms are pleading with librarians for more books with Chinese/Korean/Vietnamese characters. I think this is the usual pap from 2nd rate teachers who can't inspire kids, can't motivate them, can't really teach, so they look for excuses.

My kids are half hispanic. Tanner than me, whiter than dad. They used to self-identify as white, now they seem to be identifying more with hispanic. Books have nothing to do with it.

And maybe it's just me, here in Texas, but hispanics are EVERYWHERE! All over tv, radio, the library. Come on, Dora has beaten the pants off Sesame Street for christ sake. Every sign in thos town is written in english and spanish-except the ones only in spanish.

God forbid that someone write a series kids adore with hispanic characters instead of just moaning, though, right?

Shannon,

You can start with this. Well off, anal retentive business man accidentally saves pirate's life while vacationing in the Caribbean. The pirate insists he owes the business man his life and returns to NYC with him. The pirate insists on giving the business man a piggy back ride whenever they are going some place - the business man pulls on the pirate's earrings to steer. Because they are so different all kinds of hilarious odd couple type things happen to them.

I remember going to the local library when my boys were little. There were tons of multi-ethnic books that tackled issues such as death, divorce, or 2 dads. Ugh! They were purchased with a grant to promote multiculturalism.

I wanted fairy tales, fables, Eric Carle books, and other literature. I wanted the story to be compelling. I started focusing on books with personified animals. Surely every race can relate to the Three Little Pigs, Uncle Remus, Winnie the Poo, Good Night Moon, and Charlotte's Web.

The multicultural books pushed these books out. I think these boring 1 dimensional books kill the love of reading. I want to enjoy reading. I don't want to have a viewpoint thrust upon me. Great books can be read on several different levels. I enjoyed Charlotte's Web as much as my 5 year old. I found myself in awe of Charlotte's grave and self-sacrifice.

When children are past the picture book stage, literature allows them to experience all walks of life "first hand." The more great writing that we can encourage, the better. When we have an "agenda" when looking at books. We get in trouble.

About the only thing I can say about this is that it is envy/identity politics with a politically correct twist.

"raised in Argentina by parents born and raised in Argentina"

I like you pointing that out. Argentinians are descendants from Italians, Spanish and some are even good old ANGLO SAXON stock.

My best friend is Hispanic but of English descent, and Im Hispanic of mostly Arab descent. Hispanics can look like any race and in the popular soaps they either look like Euro or Middle Eastern. They NEVER look brown.

It's silly to think Hispanics only come in one color or are one race. Certainly the Hispanics in the US tend to be lower class Mexicans and this causes the confusion.

I hated reading those Hispanic themed books anyways like House on Mango street. Shitty writing. But I loved this book about Aztecs written by a white guy.

Isn't it more than a little bit stupid to insist that Hispanic authors abound in English markets?

That's like complaining because JK Rowling didn't write Harry Potter in Mandarin.

Purple, I get a laugh out of artificial "Hispanic" label too. I used to live in south Florida, and the Cubans there hated being referred to as "Hispanic" because they didn't want to be lumped in with the Mexicans. Although there was a lunatic fringe, most of the Cubans were hard-working people who wanted to assimilate and make a better life for themselves.

Some time ago, my wife and I had a discussion about characters on TV shows. We were watching a medical drama; she's in the medical field and she was critiquing the realism of the medical aspects of the show. I pointed out to her that there wasn't a single recurring character on any TV series on the air who was an engineer, nor was engineering ever portrayed anywhere other than some small-audience non-fiction shows like Modern Marvels. (This was before "The Big Bang Theory" and the character of Leonard. Still, I only recall one scene in one episode where Leonard was actually doing anything that resembled engineering.)

That floored her. She thought about it some, and admitted that it was rather weird -- a whole aspect of modern life that was just flat missing from television. I pointed out that if you were a young child, and your parents weren't in the field, how would you know that such a thing as engineering even exists? After all, it's never mentioned in grade school, so if you don't see it on TV or in movies, it effectively doesn't exist.

Cousin Dave said:

**(This was before "The Big Bang Theory" and the character of Leonard. Still, I only recall one scene in one episode where Leonard was actually doing anything that resembled engineering.)**

That's because Leonard is not an engineer. He is an experimental physicist. ;-) Howard is the engineer and the only one with a Master's degree.

Sorry! We love that show!!

"This monomaniac focus on self..the assumption that nothing can be of interest unless it is a direct reflection of one's own life...is something that today's "educators" seem fanatically determined to inculcate."

David, that's how you raise people to be consumers. First you make it all about me, me, me, and then you have someone who will spend every dime gratifying his own wants. A marketer's dream.

Correction: Howard is the only one with JUST a Master's degree. They all have Master's. Except Penny.

Actually NicoleK, they probably don't have Masters degrees. If you make the decision to get a PhD, you don't need to the Masters first. People who have both, like my husband are people who aren't sure they want to continue, or who want a fall back just in case they can't finish for some reason. I could write book about the trouble my husband had with some of the members of his committee when finishing his dissertation. He almost quit that close to the finish line.

Where my husband went, you got the Masters on the way to the Phd. Most people didn't bother going to the ceremony or anything, but technically they had it. When you passed your quals, you had one.

Kids who see their parents read will read. (Eventually.) I sincerely doubt that Tiger Moms are pleading with librarians for more books with Chinese/Korean/Vietnamese characters. I think this is the usual pap from 2nd rate teachers who can't inspire kids, can't motivate them, can't really teach, so they look for excuses.

Posted by: KateC at December 6, 2012 7:02 PM
___________________________________

Yes, well, how DO you, as a teacher, convince a kid to read when the kid is SURROUNDED by classmates who don't - and has parents who don't even enjoy it?

This is why I won't have kids.

And, again:

jorge, San Diego
A chicano kid with professional parents is going to read just as well as an anglo kid with professional parents. Whatever "pictures" his second grade teacher shows him will have nothing to do with it. Whether there are books at home will have everything to do with it.

I grew up reading 'Watership Down', 'Rats of Nimh' and 'Call of the Wild' and identified with the animal characters in the book -- some weren't even human.

Shameless plug (sorry Amy, but at least it's topical) -

The kids-are-more-likely-to-read-if-parents-read thing is one reason I started a website to help adults find reading material they'll like (there are lots of sites for parents to find stuff for kids).

So, if you like to read, go check it out. It's for fiction YA & adult. FindStuff2Read.com.

New reviews and excerpts coming in the next week.

I ended up with a degree in math, and a Master's in Biostatistics. I didn't know what engineering was until about halfway through college (I kept picturing the guy driving a train!).

Had I known, I would likely have applied only to Engineering schools (and probably have gotten lots of juicy scholarships 'cause I'm a girl).

---
I kinda like the suggestion, but I'm not sure about the piggyback part. Some "deep thinker" will probably interpret that as some sort of homosexual agenda thing, and not an obscure way to change the answer to Amy's "are you human" question.

Kids who see their parents read will read. (Eventually.) I sincerely doubt that Tiger Moms are pleading with librarians for more books with Chinese/Korean/Vietnamese characters. I think this is the usual pap from 2nd rate teachers who can't inspire kids, can't motivate them, can't really teach, so they look for excuses.

Posted by: KateC at December 6, 2012 7:02 PM
___________________________________

Yes, well, how DO you, as a teacher, convince a kid to read when the kid is SURROUNDED by classmates who don't - and has parents who don't even enjoy it?
___________________________________

And, as the famous teacher Rafe Esquith wrote in the 2003 book "There Are No Shortcuts":

"I'm sorry to say this, but there are times when even superhuman effort will not save a child from his environment or himself. It's not the job of the teacher to save a child's soul; it is the teacher's job to provide an opportunity for the child to save his own soul."