“The Apartheid of Children’s Literature”
“But what it means is that when kids today face the realities of our world, our global economies, our integrations and overlappings, they all do so without a proper map. They are navigating the streets and avenues of their lives with an inadequate, outdated chart, and we wonder why they feel lost. They are threatened by difference, and desperately try to wish the world into some more familiar form. As for children of color, they recognize the boundaries being imposed upon their imaginations, and are certain to imagine themselves well within the borders they are offered, to color themselves inside the lines.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/16/opinion/sunday/the-apartheid-of-childrens-literature.html
This is so beautifully written.
Issues of low representation in the media tend to focus on the harm to that underrepresented group — I love this essay because it breaks it down and makes it bigger: Misrepresentation means that everyone is miseducated and everyone makes decisions without enough information, and the implications are very interesting to think about.
