It’s either very silly, very sad, or very dangerous. The American Library Association made a decision to rescind an award made to Laura Ingalls Wilder many years ago for her “Little House on the Prairie” series. Evidently Ms. Wilders
depiction of Native Americans was not inclusive, friendly, sensitive, or whatever adjective you want to use that librarians across the nation might want to use. We can’t read Huckleberry Finn or Tom Sawyer anymore without being accused of being racist. “Gone With the Wind” is considered horrible. Now one of the generations most favorite series of books is probably on the point of being banned. Amy Farrah Fowler, and Sheldon Cooper are going to have to have another set of books that they can discuss and have a themed dinner over. Sheldon’s pioneer cooking for Amy as one of their dates was a disaster when they both got sick from food poisoning. Now I guess they will have to admit that Laura Ingalls Wilder poisoned their minds and made them all raging racists at the same time. Walnut Grove Minnesota, one of the places to which the peripatetic Ingalls family moved, may have to go to a reeducation camp somewhere in Minnesota to learn how to think properly about folks like the Ingalls and how bad the books are. I think there are some camps like that in Minnesota.
The seemingly never ending push toward racial identity politics and racial blackmail extends even into mission work. There is always a background noise of the elite (usually white) that consider missionaries and the missionary endeavor itself as basically racist. It also is an underlying discussion concerning mercy work, that it is racist as well. Caring for folks in developing countries to make fat rich people in America feel good about themselves is a racist and immoral position that some folks actually think is taken in churches. I actually heard someone say that when we participate in relief work and care for the orphans and widows overseas, we are doing it so that they stay there in poverty rather than try and come here to America to find a better life. This is fascinating and frightening stuff. Motives are interesting things. Most people are not aware of the myriad motives and reasons they have for doing anything, but when some have pre -judged all that you do as racist before you even do something we are living in a strange world indeed.
