The Great Cancellation

[Brian Peacock]

To document the worst of teh woke, apparently.

Enid Blyton books ‘racist & xenophobic’, English Heritage says after Black Lives Matter review of children’s author

CELEBRATED children's author Enid Blyton's work is "racist and xenophobic", according to English Heritage.

An article on English Heritage's website about the late Famous Five author noted that her work "has been criticised during her lifetime and after for its racism, xenophobia and lack of literary merit".

It noted that her story The Little Black Doll was criticised after "the doll of the title, Sambo, is only accepted by his owner once his 'ugly black face' is washed 'clean' by rain".

English Heritage also claimed Blyton was rejected by the Royal Mint for commemoration on the 50p coin because she was "a racist, sexist, homophobe and not a very well-regarded writer".

However, the organisation confirmed it has "no plans whatsoever" to remove a blue plaque for Blyton.

The author is commemorated with a plaque from the heritage organisation outside her former home in Chessington, south-west London.

English Heritage made a pledge to review all of its blue plaques after the Black Lives Matter protests last year.

After the biography of the writer hit the headlines, the organisation tweeted a defence of the article.

"Our 1997 Blue Plaque to Enid Blyton is back in the news along with our online bio of the children's author, whose books are loved by many," it said.

"We can fit about 19 words on each plaque. Our website provides a fuller picture of the person's life, including any uncomfortable aspects.

"We have no plans whatsoever to remove any of our blue plaques.

"We'll continue to update our website so that the story behind each plaque - and each person - is told in full."...

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/15305906/ ... laque-blm/

Interestingly, despite the headline the article doesn't actually claim that BLM cancelled the author, who it also turns out hasn't actually been cancelled by English Heritage either.

[Hermit]

Ben Hill's next article will be titled "Reverse racism: How Critical Theory makes little white children feel bad about being white".

[Woodbutcher]

I read her books in Finland in the early sixties. Loved them.

[Brian Peacock]

I read them all to my daughter: The Famous Five, The Secret Seven, The Magic Faraway Tree, Simon Shoots the Smiling Sambos....

[JimC]

I preferred Biggles...

"Chocks away, chaps!"

[Hermit]

Much of my pre-teen reading were the stories by Karl May, a prolific story teller of his adventures in the American Old West with Winnetou and Old Shatterhand as main protagonists and in the Orient and Middle East with fictional characters Kara Ben Nemsi and Hadschi Halef Omar. Later on I found out that everything he knew about those regions came from the libraries of prisons he was frequently incarcerated in between 1860 and 1875 for petty theft and fraud.

[NineBerry]

Because of the speed of changes in language and culture, every generation of children should have their own new stories. When children become older and are able to understand differences between overcome past ideas and current ideas they can read older stuff as well.

[Hermit]

Because of the speed of changes in language and culture, every generation of children should have their own new stories. When children become older and are able to understand differences between overcome past ideas and current ideas they can read older stuff as well.

May's books were what I wanted to read. They were still immensely popular in the early 60s. We used to swap them at school. I read at least a dozen of his novels, but grew out of them before long all on my own, and moved on to science fiction, Greek and Nordic legends and contemporary stuff. And that was just fiction. I also read heaps of non-fiction, such as the books by Eibl-Eibesfeldt, Grzimek, stuff on evolution, prehistory and whatever else was going at the time. Current affairs were not neglected either. The first book I ever bought with my own pocket money was a German translation of Robert F. Kennedy's account of the Cuban missile crisis. I was a voracious reader and everything was of interest to me.

[NineBerry]

What was your age? With children I refer to people under the age of maybe 12.

[Hermit]

What was your age? With children I refer to people under the age of maybe 12.

Much of my pre-teen reading were the stories by ...

In my first year of primary school we were not taught what each letter of the alphabet sounded like, or how to chain those letters up to form words. We were taught to read by being presented with entire words and expected to learn reading like that. This put me behind the eight-ball. I basically had to teach myself. The first book I ever read on my own was Saint-Exupéry's The Little Prince. (Of course I did not realise at the time that it consisted of a series of metaphors, so I took the vignettes literally. They were fascinating just the same.) It took me an eternity to get through it, for I had to pull each word apart letter by letter and reconstruct it all on my own. By the time I finished reading it I got the hang of it. That would have been some time in my second year, so I was about seven or eight years old.

Around that time I had my first girlfriend, about whom I only remember three things now. 1) Her name was Beate. 2) She had sandy-coloured hair cut in the then fashionable Bobby style. 3) One afternoon we were hiding in a bush fashioned into a hidey-hole of sorts while I read from a book to her. I don't recall what book it was, but there's a good chance it was one of Karl May's.

[Brian Peacock]

Blyton was of her time. The stories were a cracking read for children but were riddled with class assumptions, and casual racism and sexism, but each generation of parents rereads the stories that were read to them when they were children and addg some more into the mix with their own kids - and things move on. Blyton's books are not a political manual.

Over time books might be subtly edited here or there or dropped from the catalogue, as we've seen with Roald Dahl and Dr Seuss recently. So what? Enid Blyton as an individual was a bit if a nightmare with some racist opinions that went beyond the casual norms of her time. Pointing this out or acknowledging is doesn't amount to cancelling her or her work, nor does it make everyone who read or listened to those stories a racist - and they shouldn't feel affronted by it or presume they're being accused of being something they're not.

And yet those sensitive souls on the Right do feel affronted, and outraged, as if the mere mention of some problematic elements in Blyton's work or views is an attack in everything they hold dear and sacred - an attack on a beloved British literary icon; an attack on their ("our") identity as right-thinking British patriots.

My question to the #OUTRAGED is: why is the pointing out of a bit of historical racism so offensive to you, and what do you think tour objection to the pointing out of some historical racism communicates to society about your own views on race and racism today?

[NineBerry]

What was your age? With children I refer to people under the age of maybe 12.

Much of my pre-teen reading were the stories by ...

In my first year of primary school we were not taught what each letter of the alphabet sounded like, or how to chain those letters up to form words. We were taught to read by being presented with entire words and expected to learn reading like that. This put me behind the eight-ball. I basically had to teach myself. The first book I ever read on my own was Saint-Exupéry's The Little Prince. (Of course I did not realise at the time that it consisted of a series of metaphors, so I took the vignettes literally. They were fascinating just the same.) It took me an eternity to get through it, for I had to pull each word apart letter by letter and reconstruct it all on my own. By the time I finished reading it I got the hang of it. That would have been some time in my second year, so I was about seven or eight years old.

Around that time I had my first girlfriend, about whom I only remember three things now. 1) Her name was Beate. 2) She had sandy-coloured hair cut in the then fashionable Bobby style. 3) One afternoon we were hiding in a bush fashioned into a hidey-hole of sorts while I read from a book to her. I don't recall what book it was, but there's a good chance it was one of Karl May's.

So you already were an old man during childhood.

[Brian Peacock]

[Hermit]

So you already were an old man during childhood.

Yes. I lead my life in reverse. I hardly read anything any more and have not had a girlfriend for years. Once I lose control of my bladder and bowel muscles I expect to live for a couple more years swaddled in diapers, then die.

[JimC]

Actually, my favourite books as a child, even more than Biggles, were the Swallows and Amazons series by Arthur Ransome. After that, My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell, then I moved into SF...