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Just this past week I heard someone on the radio pointing out how those people who embrace the Theory of Evolution with its premise of Survival of the Fittest set themselves, like Knut of old, to hold back the tide of the fittest. Of course, he was talking about Social Darwinism [Ooo! Bad bad bad!] while I – not being all that social – tend to focus on the effort to eradicate fitter and more successful invasive plants and animals from the woodland where they are driving out the less fit native species, changing things. The contradictions pile up – how did the nice native species get to dominate the woodland but by eradicating their predecessors, and who brought the invasive species, and why aren’t we eradicating Norteamericanos of European extraction who took over the habitat of Norteamericanos of Color, and how come we overlook the fact that when the ancestors of the Norteamericanos of Color crossed the land bridge they – being fitter and more successful – wiped out slews of worthy and desirable native species. And just why is anyone protecting the wild horse?
But these mental exercises are child’s play for anyone born and bred on Animal Farm – not, of course, the bad old Animal Farm with the swine in charge, but the better, kinder Animal Farm where the sheep hold sway. Shall we discuss censorship as moment?
Here on Animal Farm we know that censorship is a Bad. Our libraries stand on the bridge defying the forces that would burn our books – Thou Shalt Not Pass. Every year they have a display of books that bigots would have banned. Our media stand fast against the McCarthyite tactics that would penalize free speech and the publication or broadcasting of what would offend the narrow minded. Our universities – but I already talked about sifting and winnowing. I will just add that we in academia hold to the principle that academics must not be gagged, there is and shall be freedom of debate.
Of course, our embracing Freedom of Speech and rejection of censorship should not extend to Hate Speech. Speaking wrongly of any of the groups that ate not to be spoken wrongly about is a genuine Bad Thing for which we have zero tolerance. And of course, we cannot allow anyone in academia to continue teaching things that the academic community knows to be wrong. Our news media may choose, in their wisdom, to quote people who say Bad things, but they have an obligation to label such Bad things and their speakers in such a way that the audience cannot fail to know they are to be rejected.
But back to the library, which is what set this off. From time to time I have thought about, and mentioned in my discourses with various compatriots, The Story of Simpson and Sampson by Munro Leaf, read in days long past and never forgotten. From the same pen as the justly famous Ferdinand the Bull, it is the tale of twin brothers in medieval days. One dedicated to doing the right and chivalrous thing, the other equally determined to play the villain and wreak havoc. The thrust of the story is, they are both equally incompetent – the would-be do-gooder makes trouble for everybody, the would-be evil-doer improves everyone’s lot. Very much a parable for our time on the vanity of inept good intentions [like stamping out the Lesser Wood Myrtle while pulling up invasive Garlic Mustard]. But – let us face it – arguably not a message that those who mean us well and want to train little children to do good will like to hear.
Thinking of this book, I checked to see if the Matthews library had a copy. No. I checked the Rockton Library. No. I checked other libraries in the state in vain. I looked in larger cities around the country. Every library had at least a few books by Leaf. But I could only find three that had Simpson and Sampson, and one of those was in Canada.
Is it coincidence that the story with the inconvenient message is the one that is almost forgotten? I think not. Check out Little Black Sambo. Our library has no copy of the pre-1950 editions. The Toronto library – one of the few which has Simpson and Sampson – has several, but only the reissued and the heavily modified editions circulate. Look up Little Black Sambo in their catalog, and you are also pointed to Nicholas Tucker’s Suitable for Children: Controversies in Children’s Literature and other similar books. You see, Sambo – a clever and resourceful Indian boy who escapes from death by tiger – was seen [by people who did not know where tigers live] as a racist slur against African-Americans. Everybody knows how minorities resent being portrayed as clever and resourceful.
There are lots of other examples I could – the revisionist takes on Dr. Doolittle and Uncle Remus, the vanishing of parts of the Little House series, the bowdlerization of Shakespeare. I do not think that the softly and silently vanishing away of Simpson and Sampson involves the same conscious censorship – on the part of people who professionally abhor censorship – as Little Black Sambo. But popular taste moves – sometimes with and sometimes against the counsel of educators, sometimes urged by the educators and sometimes spontaneously. A nearly all male story, with non-ethnic characters, showing how action and good intentions are not enough – well, it is not quite what we are looking for. And libraries tend to move books that nobody borrows first into storage areas, then out of what is after all a finite collection.
Who can blame them?
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