"Critical Multiculturalism & Racism in Children's Literature"

In Emma B. Duren’s journal article, “Critical Multiculturalism & Racism in Children’s Literature”, she presents the argument that many children unconsciously overlook the political implications of their whiteness and fail to recognize it as an unearned privilege. This facet is one that the majority of students, and adults alike, do not understand. I believe that this statement is very true; many whites are uneducated about other races, ethnicities, and cultures, as they are often overlooked or pushed aside as a controversial topic. Due to this issue, Duren stresses the importance of exposing elementary students to experiences of other people and their cultures through literature, as they typically have limited experiences with people of different backgrounds and ethnicities, and literature is a good way to prompt dialogue in the classroom about such topics. Duren makes the point that due to this lack of exposure stereotypes are often a child’s only knowledge of other races. Multicultural literature allows students to hear different perspectives or experiences that they may not have otherwise heard and provides them with the opportunity to learn about racial and ethnic groups as well as “examine their own stereotypes and prejudices”. Duren states that the use of multiculturalism in children’s literature is not only beneficial to white students, but that it also provides students of color with representations of their own experiences. Because traditional children’s literature typically does not focus on issues of diversity, multiculturalism, or racism children who experience such issues in their own lives are often left with no reflection of their own experiences. In her critique of five “multicultural” books, Duren notes that they merely “reviewed reinforced existing concepts of how racism functions in this country” rather than challenging or critically explaining such racism. Duren also makes the claim that the majority of children’s literature presents racism as a southern issue and a thing of the past which no longer exists. In response to this, Duren believes that literature regarding issues of racism need to be explored in a more contemporary setting as “children need to see themselves in a more racially mixed society in order to understand the social, economic, and political construction of race”. Duren states the need for “honest dialogue about race” which she believes should be introduced to children at a young age. I could not agree with Duren more. While I believe that there are many pieces of literature which place racism in a historical context that are beneficial to teaching such issues, there are very few pieces of children’s literature which place a focus on racism and issues of multiculturalism set in a modern or contemporary setting. As Duren mentions, there needs to be a greater attempt to create literature which exposes issues of racism and stereotypes which are present today. Educating students about such issues can be very difficult to do, in fact by no means is it expected to be easy; but there needs to be a greater effort on the behalf of authors and educators alike to expose children to these issues at a young age in an attempt to evoke discussion about, and change within, our current status as a completely unified and integrated country.



Works Cited

Duren, Emma B. "Critical Multiculturalism & Racism in Children's Literature." Multicultural Education 7 (2000): 16-19.