And yet ... beyond political correctness

Rochman, Hazel

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/649 Copy

Description

Title

And yet ... beyond political correctness

Author(s)

Rochman, Hazel

Issue Date

1993

Keyword(s)

Children --Books and reading

Abstract

"The greatest danger from the politically correct bullies is that they create a backlash, and that backlash is often self-righteous support for the way things are. Whether we are weary or indignant, we wish the whiners would just go away. Or we focus on the absurd, and then we can ignore real issues of prejudice and hatred that keep people apart. Ethnic cleansing is the latest euphemism: It's an attack on multiculturalism, and it isn't funny at all. Books can make a difference in dispelling prejudice and building community: not with role models and recipes, not with noble messages about the human family, but with enthralling stories that make us imagine the lives of others. A good story lets you know people as individuals in all their particularity and conflict; and once you see someone as a person flawed, complex, striving you've reached beyond stereotype. In reviewing children's books, we have to resist the extremes: the mindless conformity to the p.c. of multiculturalism, and also the backlash. As with that other current fad, ""whole language,"" the pretentious jargon is only now catching up with what we've been doing all along selecting and promoting great books from everywhere, stories that grab us and extend our view of ourselves."

Publisher

Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Series/Report Name or Number

Allerton Park Institute (34nd : 1992)

ISSN

0536-4604

Type of Resource

text

Language

en

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