CHICAGO, Sept 1 — American publishers of children’s literature publishers are increasingly making efforts to combat racist clichés, by including more characters from diverse backgrounds in their collections. But this remains insufficient, according to a study recently published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics.
The study in question was carried out by researchers at Columbia University and the University of Chicago. It reveals that children’s books published in the USA continue to underrepresent people from minority backgrounds, despite repeated efforts by authors and publishers to offer literature for all ages that is representative and inclusive.
The authors of this research came to this conclusion by using machine-learning-based tools to measure representation of skin colour, race, gender and age of characters appearing in “influential” children’s books. This term refers to books that have won one of the literary prizes awarded by the Association for Library Service to Children since the 1920s. Indeed, these awards make them likely to have been read by many American children, whether in the classroom, the library or at home.
The data highlighted the fact that only 2 per cent of “influential” children’s books published between 1923 and 2019 featured black characters. This statistic is all the more alarming given that African-Americans represented 13.6 per cent of the US population for that time period. Similarly, 4 per cent of characters appearing in children’s literature titles of the period were of Hispanic origin (compared with 19 per cent of the US population).
While the researchers found that there are more female characters in children’s books than in the past, these characters appear more in illustrations than in text. A distinction that suggests “greater symbolic inclusion in pictures than substantive inclusion in stories,” reads the study.
Another notable difference is that children’s literature often depicts children whose skin colour is lighter than that of adults, without there being any biological explanation for this. In other words, mainstream children’s books tend not to reflect the diversity of today’s world. Male characters are overrepresented, as are those with white skin.
Children’s literature plays a fundamental role in making young children aware of the cultural and linguistic richness of our societies. Hence the importance of imagining characters that any child can identify with. Unfortunately, many young readers are not fortunate enough to find physical similarities with the heroes and heroines of their favourite books. Some 45 per cent of black children and teenagers living in the UK say they have struggled to find books in which characters look like them, according to a 2020 National Literacy Trust survey. A lack of representation most damaging to the construction of these young people. — ETX Studio
