For Young Latino Readers, an Image Is Missing

New York Times ^ | December 4, 2012 | MOTOKO RICH

[ConservativeStatement]

PHILADELPHIA — Like many of his third-grade classmates, Mario Cortez-Pacheco likes reading the “Magic Tree House” series, about a brother and a sister who take adventurous trips back in time. He also loves the popular “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” graphic novels.

But Mario, 8, has noticed something about these and many of the other books he encounters in his classroom at Bayard Taylor Elementary here: most of the main characters are white. “I see a lot of people that don’t have a lot of color,” he said.

[OneWingedShark]

Hm, if only they taught history: the tail of Santa Anna and the Alamo comes to mind... followed by the tail of The Battle of San Jacinto.

[GeronL]

send them coloring books, they can make the characters black, brown, purple, pink, green or whatever color they want

[GeronL]

The content of the shows is horrible but those actor kids are being sexualized in real life

[Psycho_Bunny]

“But Mario, 8, has noticed something about these and many of the other books he encounters in his classroom at Bayard Taylor Elementary here: most of the main characters are white. “I see a lot of people that don’t have a lot of color,” he said.”

8 year-olds don’t think that way. It’s taught to them by their racist parents and teachers.

[GeronL]

Shows like MTV “Skins” where they had actual minors naked and doing sex scenes.

Then supposedly innocent shows like “ICarly” where the actresses are naked on set, for real. Needlessly and pointlessly...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZBaEuD5eXw

She was about 16

[Chode]

BINGO!!!

[ebersole]

I was thinking the exact same thing.
Calling all successful Mexican (black, asian etc) children’s authors and Mexican (black, asian etc.) illustrators and Mexican (black, asian) colorists....The children need you

[annieokie]

MAXINE on the election:

It seems that once again all us white folks have missed a great opportunity.

While the Blacks and Mexican people attended Obama's campaign rallies, we should have broken into their homes and gotten all our shit back.**

[ConservativeStatement]

I mentioned a deceased friend in the past, he escaped Cuba, died in his 40s about five years ago. He was so conservative, his beliefs were in his obituary. He'd be laughing at all this garbage.

[Chode]

it's for the chilren...

[GeronL]

He can laugh, he’s dead... we still have to live here temporarily and it’s not funny any more. Yet.

[ViLaLuz]

I call BS. An 8-year old would not say that.

[Ezekiel]

I didn't get to the rest of the article because of the login, but the intro reads like it leads to an extremely sarcastic spoof of a hyper-ethnocentric world filled with superficial, entitled, easily-offended ingrates.

Unfortunately I suspect that this Mario kid has been programmed this way in real life.

[Jeff Chandler]

[FlingWingFlyer]

Geeez. Eight years old and already an ignorant little racist bigot. He’s going to have one hell of a career ahead of him as a murdering gangbanger.

[petitfour]

Capitalism is amazing. Maybe someone will write some books about pink and blue children going on adventures, and maybe someone will publish these books without pictures but with graphic descriptions of skin color. And maybe the millions of pink and blue families will purchase the books so it will be worth the cost of production for the publisher.

[USNBandit]

So I guess the people putting out Dora the explorer, Go Diego Go, Handy Manny, etc., haven’t put out any books.

[SeminoleCounty]

Funny this article never mentions that most of Spanish language TV and media is mainly full of white, European, non-Mestizo, non-Mullato, non-Black people

Mexican TV is even more racist....Mexico is over 90% Mestizo, but most of the actors on Mexican TV shows are very European...many have non-Spanish surnames

This article is nothing but anti-White, anti-Anglo, Hispanic Ku Klux Klan racism. There is so much more racism in the Spanish community than in the White Anglo community

[Razz Barry]

For the early elementary grades, lists of suggested books contain some written by African-American authors about black characters, but few by Latino writers or featuring Hispanic characters. Now, in response to concerns registered by the Southern Poverty Law Center and others, the architects of the Common Core are developing a more diverse supplemental list. “We have really taken a careful look, and really think there is a problem,” said Susan Pimentel, one of the lead writers of the standards for English language and literacy. “We are determined to make this right.”

Make it right? I think what you want to do is lie to people. It's the s.o.s. our educational system has been doing for, at least, thirty years. Trying to lifting one group by devaluing the contributions of white Americans. Tell these children the truth. Their ancestors turned their countries into third world cesspools, so their parents left and came here. They bypassed about thirty Spanish speaking countries in the Western Hemisphere to get to one of two English speaking countries. If you don't tell people the truth they'll never learn from the mistakes of others.

[Cronos]

this doesn't make sense -- I read Jungle book as a kid and also various adventures of various ethnic kids. As a kid one can imagine being white, black, brown, Asian, African, Arab whatever

Why can't a black or hispanic kid imagine themselves to be English? Or Ancient Roman? Or a wizard?

Or, even if they read Babar, to be an elephant?