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Carl T. Bergstrom's posts Post Back to profile
Carl T. Bergstrom

Here is a must-read post from children's author Maggie Tokuda-Hall on how Scholastic offered to publish her book — all she had to do was remove all mention of racism.

Sure, they're banning books in Tennessee and Texas. But it's not just the books that get published and then banned from the library. It's all the books that don't get published in the first place.

Those banning books know publishers like Scholastic pull this cowardly bullshit. It's their game plan.

prettyokmaggie.com/blog/2023/4

Cover of Maggie Tokuda-Hall's Love in the Library
13 Apr 2023 at 3:12 | Open on fediscience.org
28 comments
ProtectiveHen
KnowAttitude

@ct_bergstrom Scholastic's been getting their arm twisted by this kind of thing wfaa.com/article/news/educatio Imagine that, a multinational with a 100 year history, the world's largest publisher and distributor of children's books and print and digital educational materials for pre-K to grade 12, intimidated by a texas school district. It is fear in the executive suite.

13 Apr 2023 at 3:43 | Open on m.ai6yr.org
David Mitchell :CApride:

@ct_bergstrom

What a beautiful thing to read (the writing not the circumstance). I hope more authors are able to take a principled stand like this without experiencing serious repercussions on their career. We can help by buying a copy of this book: we should all fill our libraries with books deemed worthy of censoring or banning.

13 Apr 2023 at 4:04 | Open on mstdn.ca
Fifi Lamoura

@ct_bergstrom The chilling effect, as it's known.

13 Apr 2023 at 4:21 | Open on eldritch.cafe
IamWahl
Allyson Williams
Adrian Morales
Marco V Morelli

@ct_bergstrom As an editor, I wonder if there could have been a way to acknowledge the racism that is the context for this story, without fanning the polarization that is ripping this country apart. Is racism strictly an "American tradition" as the author writes? Isn't there racism in Europe, in Asia, in the Middle East? If we recognize that racism is a deeply human problem, can we address the issue more effectively—without inciting the predictable backlash from conservatives who feel attacked?

13 Apr 2023 at 5:37 | Open on cosmos.social
Joris Meys

@madrush @ct_bergstrom As a Belgian with a jewish grandmother that lived through WWII as a kid, and a half-german wife whose still-alive granny lived through WWII on the other side:

No. You either recognise your history and move on, or stick with the dirty stain forever.

13 Apr 2023 at 5:54 | Open on mstdn.social
Marco V Morelli

@JorisMeys @ct_bergstrom That's a good point. I don't mean to absolve the specifically American history of racism, but to contextualize it within a human story that involves ethnocentric violence going back to the ancient world. The problem is deeper than any one nation, and the current approach doesn't seem to be working but rather intensifying the wrong attitudes. If we recognize racism as a human problem, then we share a common ground from which to transform our societies, I would hope.

13 Apr 2023 at 6:14 | Open on cosmos.social
Aisha Sie, MD/PhD

@madrush @JorisMeys @ct_bergstrom Speaking as an Asian European: yes, of course racism is rampant out here too, of course that's a wider human problem. However, the WWII incarceration of Japanese Americans is a trauma very specific to that Asian America diaspora due to the very specific context that it happened in, that we lack. To take that context away entirely doesn't do justice to that very specific pain to this very specific group.

Generalizing racism in my experience has only gotten white people to dismiss it as too abstract and large to deal with, or worse, to see racism as traditional to wider society so why is it a problem at all. We _need_ specific contexts of specific pains to keep the experience human and taken seriously.

We need to sum up those specific contexts, not strip them away.

@madrush @JorisMeys @ct_bergstrom Speaking as an Asian European: yes, of course racism is rampant out here too, of course that's a wider human problem. However, the WWII incarceration of Japanese Americans is a trauma very specific to that Asian America diaspora due to the very specific context that it happened in, that we lack. To take that context away entirely doesn't do justice to that very specific pain to this very specific group.

13 Apr 2023 at 6:31 | Open on tech.lgbt
Petra van Cronenburg

@aishasie Thank you for this comment and for your answer, @JorisMeys - these are the precious moments in social media where I can learn and widen my horizon.

@madrush @ct_bergstrom

13 Apr 2023 at 10:20 | Open on mastodon.online
Joris Meys

@madrush @ct_bergstrom same goes for antisemitism. Think Dreyfus affair. Yet, Germany managed to get rid of the stain of Nazism by not only acknowledging its history, but also acknowledging that there's still people to this day that think Hitler was right. Germany has the strictest anti-Nazism laws I know. A Nazi salute in public can end you in jail, and rightfully so.

They don't negotiate or "contextualize". And neither should the US.

13 Apr 2023 at 9:11 | Open on mstdn.social
Melanie (they, she)

@madrush @ct_bergstrom centering the feelings of the currently rampaging authoritarians has not worked for decades. Or I should say it has worked to maintain the status quo. At some point, we have to stand up for the people who are being actively harmed. We are well past that point.

13 Apr 2023 at 6:32 | Open on queer.party
Amy Petty

@madrush @ct_bergstrom At no point does the author suggest that racism is strictly American, and did you actually bother to read her post in the link? She states outright that she considered whether she could or should rewrite her author's note. You seem to think that didn't occur to her.

13 Apr 2023 at 6:57 | Open on historians.social
Fish Id Wardrobe

@madrush @ct_bergstrom That seems very unlikely. And: of course it's an American tradition. That doesn't mean it's not also, say, a British tradition.

13 Apr 2023 at 7:42 | Open on mastodon.me.uk
Maiden of Utrecht

@madrush @ct_bergstrom yes, there are forms of #racism all around the world, but the specific nature + characteristics of it are generally deeply rooted in local culture and history. There will never be a one-size solution for eradicating it all. IMO the most efficient/effective is for each society to clear racism out of its *own* yard in a way that aligns with universal principles of a right to equitable (or at least equal) treatment and respect for all individuals

13 Apr 2023 at 8:49 | Open on toot.community
Narmer

@ct_bergstrom often companies omit racism in a bid to be 'non-political', as they think that will sell them more books. Yet, the omission of racism *is* profoundly political. If they don't recognise that choosing to omit experiences that percolate society through mundane means, then racism and other inequalities will continue to pervade the structures of society, resulting in unquestioned 'structural violence'. Not to detract from the insidiousness of these actions.

13 Apr 2023 at 7:26 | Open on mastodon.world
AnOrdinaryWriter

@ct_bergstrom Please tell me there's another way for authors to publish their works on mass without having to change their story to help the big corporations?

I know self publishing is a thing through Amazon, but one, it's Amazon and two, unless you're good at marketing it's really difficult to get your story seen through self publishing.

Is there anyone else who can help us tell the stories we want to tell?

13 Apr 2023 at 7:27 | Open on mastodon.au
awwaiid (Brock Wilcox)

@AnOrdinaryWriter @ct_bergstrom also children's books are probably more impactful as physical prints, which I'm guessing is a higher barrier of mfg, distribution, etc than digital

13 Apr 2023 at 10:53 | Open on mastodon.social
Tim Ward ⭐🇪🇺🔶 #FBPE

@ct_bergstrom I knew someone (a long time ago) who claimed to have a book with the definitive explanation of, and solution to, The Irish Problem.

He said he couldn't find anyone willing to publish it.

He reckoned this was because no publisher wanted to be bombed, so they were self-censoring.

(An alternative explanation, of course, might have been that none thought his book was good enough to be worth publishing.)

13 Apr 2023 at 7:31 | Open on c.im
Alan Braggins

@TimWardCam "my solution will provoke bombings" and "my solution isn't very good, and publishers recognise that" aren't mutually exclusive, so he could have been part right.

13 Apr 2023 at 8:18 | Open on mastodon.social
Tim Ward ⭐🇪🇺🔶 #FBPE

@armb It wasn't that he couldn't write, as something else he wrote and was passed around the family as a typescript was well above the writing quality of yer average modern self-published book.

13 Apr 2023 at 8:22 | Open on c.im
great eepe :flag:
Ben Thompson

@ct_bergstrom that's quite a read. Thanks for sharing. Will be adding her books to my and my kids reading list.

13 Apr 2023 at 8:40 | Open on mastodon.scot
EVHaste
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