The Story of Little Black Sambo [Paperback]

As a child I marveled at Sambo's ingeniousness in outsmarting the tigers and, in fact, maybe even being smarter than some adults. It never occurred to me that the parents names might be derogatory, if anything the names sounded exotic: Black Jumbo and Black Mumbo. Children are innocent and see things in a clean, clear manner. Whatever is considered "bad" in this book is the manufacture of over-sensitive adults.

This is a great classic and belongs in every library along with Grimm's Fairy Tales and Aesop Fables. One can revisit the magic of childhood through "Little Black Sambo".

How could anyone call a story written by a white English woman in colonial India racist? Indians aren't black and racism only involves black people. Also, I'm white and therefore am tired of all these "politically correct" attacks on things I grew up with. I mean, come on people, a couple hundred years of slavery followed by decades of social and legal inequality that only began to really wane in the 1960s and now you all have a chip on your shoulder! You'd think "Little Black Sambo" was a hurtful racial epithet people routinely used against your granparents or something!

Seriously folks - I remember this story as a kid too (and I'm only 26) and I used to eat at the "Sambo's" pancake houses that used the story on their menus and such. I liked it too, it's a decent kid's story once you take the stereotypical illustrations and racist terms out of it - which people have. I don't think the objection is about the plot of a little boy turning tigers into pancakes. It's the fact that this was a story written by a white person about people that her generation thought were inferior at a time when all dark skinned people were called "black". And the fact that term "Little Black Sambo" later became, logically or not, a racist term used by white people against blacks.

The book shouldn't be banned and older kids and adults should probably read as an example of our history. But little kids can do without the racist imagery that they aren't old enough to process. I don't think it will make them racist, but imagine a classroom with a mixed group of kids. Do you really want them looking at an original version, illustrations and all, possibly making comparisons. "Hey sammy, you look just like Sambo"

There's nothing wrong with modernizing it to make it a little less offensive. Do people sometimes take political correctness too far, absolutely. But do we really have to have an argument over a book that has a title with such a patently racist term? This should be a no brainer.