What do you do? Remember the book fondly and know that as an adult you turned out well enough to question it and know better.

Unfortunately there is a lot of this floating around in the things that made up our childhoods. Rewatched Snow White as an adult? Dopey does an impression of an Asian that you could never get away with today. I think we need to understand that unforunate as these things were they are the product of a different time. Be glad that things have changed for the better, at least in some ways.

I think these books rather than being banned or hidden away should be used as great teaching tools. Of course, the kids have to be old enough to understand but things like this are great vehicles for talking about issues like racism in an understandable way for children.

The lot of you should be ashamed of slandering a good man with these cheap, equivocal accusations of racism. In your hunt for racists in the most innocent circles, you are saying a lot more about yourselves than about George Selden. What has american society come to? A delusional place where one is now hunted for having the audacity to portray a Chinese man with an accent? Have you ever met a first generation Chinese immigrant, because that is how they talk, in NYC, San Francisco etc.

Do you know that when one does a search with Google for this endearing book, your blog eventually comes up with the line "What do you do when a book you loved as a child turns out to be... well... a bit racist?" You are responsible for this content being broadcast. The answer is, "no" this man was not a racist. So take this god damn article off the Internet without taking this conversation in the direction of "at least, it is great that we created a conversation". If I had the time and if you were something other than blogging parasites, I would sue you for slander.

"Have you ever met a first generation Chinese immigrant, because that is how they talk, in NYC, San Francisco etc."

...No, "they" don't. Nice try, though, on defending the alleged accuracy of clearly racist stereotypes (note I am calling the *stereotype* racist, please and thank you).

@Myriam: despite your disclaimer and clumsy manipulation of rhetoric your agenda is quite clear and personal. You are not calling me a racist... just someone who defends racist ideas... No thank you and you are not welcome.

And I notice that your moving the conversation away from Sai Fong is admittance that it was an unacceptable element to support your accusation of "bit racism".

Now that that is cleared up, I will say that I did not linger on Tucker as an antisemitic stereotype because your article did not provide enough elements for me to judge whether his character is indeed offensive or not.

Whether you like to accept noting it or not, there are relatively many producers of Jewish faith in america's entertainment industry. Should Tucker have been an Eskimo?

Even if this character does happen to not be particularly well fleshed out, lacks depth, is a gross caricature etc. your sum of evidence is unreceivable. Your motives, as well as those of good souls such as Miriam, J et al are much more suspect than the content of this book.

@Myriam: the majority of arriving Chinese immigrants struggle with pronunciation, something you will admit despite your acquaintance with select individuals whose speech is flawless. While it is not a universal trait (can there be such a thing?), it is statistically common enough for it to be an accurate portrayal of a Chinese Man in New York City. Again, it is clutching at straws to associate a man (George Selden) and his work as racist because of such elements and is telling of the commenting body's ideology.

Your veiled attempt at accusing me of racism-by-association is as personal as anonymous navigators can be on the Internet, I highlighted it as thus for you were trying to pass it off as a discourse on stereotypes.

I'd also like to hear a reply to Nathan's excellent breakdown of racism as a social structure rather than simply an individual act.

Selden is a public figure, not a private individual. He has produced something for public consumption with the implicit assumption that he will be critiqued for it. He is ONLY being challenged on what he deliberately chose to put out into the world under his own name.

That aside, please stop dodging my other comment.

@Nathan K-L: you certainly are eager. To uphold George Selden as a contributor towards racism against non-whites is a conclusion that says more about your moral compass than his. A children's book will naturally have simplification, perhaps even unfortunate imperfections. But seeing racial prejudice the slightest portrayal of difference is akin to a witch hunt.

Literary criticism is one thing, but accusations of racism are a serious matter which is why they should not be cast lightly.

@Jen Selk: your comment on "Eskimo" as a pejorative ethnic slur was priceless.

Truthfully, having just read the book with my son, I didn't even consider the implications of possible racial stereotypes. Sai Fong was one of my most favoritely voiced characters. Stereotypical? Yes. But delightful in both characterization and character.

I can't speak to the author's motive or frame of mind when he wrote the book or gave voice to the characters. I will just say that I think it sad that we lack appreciation for the unique diversity of immigrant people groups and are uncomfortable when their remarkable differences are highlighted or incorporated into a character. Is it wrong to be captivated by the lilt or intonation of an accent? To find beauty in another culture, something worth emulating and incarnating in a character? Must we only accept characterizations that portray a "melting-pot" citizen? I love the color and diversity in our world and the day that authors, screenwriters and playwrights are shunned for elevating and portraying it... when every book, play or movie can only contain Americanized symbols of Americanized culture... well, that's almost a bit of reverse racism in action, isn't it?

I'm a bit late to this thread, but I have some thoughts as the Caucasian parent of two half-Chinese kids. I've read this book to both of them.

First of all, Selden worked with stereotypes because he was writing a kids boook. They're more archetypes than sterotypes. Kids in NY in 1960 wold have seen people like the Bellini's and Sai Fong all the time.

You have to remember this was 1960. The Immigration Act of 1965 which opened the gates to form the Chinatowns you know today was 5 years into the future when the book was published. The prior Magnuson Act was only 17 years old, and it permitted only 105 Chinese per year to immigrate legally. Until the then Chinese Exclusion Act forbade Chinese men below a certain (very high) income level to bring wives into the country. And after Madame Chiang Kai Shek lobbied FDR to get the Magnuson Act passed it was still a band-aid: 105 wives per year was not a lot of females from 1943 - 1965. Hence the so-called "Bachelor Society" where men from poor families would give up their shot at children to work in America and send money home to their brothers' families for the good of the clan. Most of those old guys came from poor families in Canton, and yes, they really did talk like that (I'm an old fart, I met a few of those leftovers in the 1970s, yes they did talk like that - some of it was non-facility with English, some of it was defensive, just as Louie Armstrong played the clown on stage to deflect racism, they played the exotic Easterner to fit in with racist expectations in the rest of society). Now, did Selden play the accent up? Sure, he was writing for kids, and he used the same Mickey Mouse accents those kids heard from Chinamen on the movie screen.

The key for me in analyzing the book was: how was Sai Fong treated in the rest of the book? Selden threw words of correct Chinese into the mouth of Sai when Mario met him the second time with his Chinese friend. Would someone making a racist sterotype bother to show that person having a fluency in their own language by actually asking someone Chinese (I assume Selden spoke no Chinese) how you would say a particular phrase and actually putting it into the book? Maybe you skipped over those syllables because they look like nonsense, but they are a pretty decent, if not a scholarly, transliteration of Chinese. Knowing that, does it change your perception of the silly English accent? I think, and maybe I'm talking out of my ass here, but my assumption is that Selden was showing the glaring disparity between Sai Fong's competency in Chinese society and the way American society had held him down and covered up that competency. Especially when in that same scene Selden makes a point of showing Mario to be the ignorant one when he can do nothing but appreciate the beauty of the Chinese calligraphy in the book, understanding nothing until Sai translates. Sai also shows him how to use chopsticks in that scene, another competency the white kid lacked.

That to me, in reading the book to my kids, was a teaching moment, and I stopped reading the book to explain to my kids how the Chinese in Sai's time were excluded from most of society and denied access to education that would have made their accents less thick. I explained about the Exclusion Act and why Sai had no wife.

To go further, how else was Sai's character portrayed ? He's kind, regal, a good cook, wise, generous, and loyal (he and his friend come to see Chester's concerts every day). Put in that perspective, in 1960, was that overall, a positive or negative portrayal of a Chinaman? Would we do the accent a little different today? Yeah, Chinese immigrants come from places other than Canton these days, and they get ESOL classes. Sai's accent is no longer true to our ears. But as I said, it was a historical teaching moment to my kids.

With that in perspective, without the trigger that Selden is racist to the Chinese, do you then assume Tucker is a Jewish Sterotype? It never crossed my mind because not a single word of Yiddish, not an Oy or a Vey, does Tucker utter. There was absolutely no "New York Jew" trigger that I gathered other than Tucker's obsession with money. Am I missing something? Did I skip something? Other than parsimoniousness, Tucker is not sterotypically Jewish that I remember. And let me tell you, my company is headquartered in Manhattan - all the Yuppie scum who move to New York, White, Black, Jewish, Indian or Chinese - are obsessed with money. I read Tucker as a New Yorker through and through, but not as Jewish.

Similarly, the Bellinis speak real Italian in places. Selden cares about them and their culture. He konws what folk songs would appeal to them (Come Back to Sorrento). Are there some sterotypes? Yeah, well, a lot of Italians do like opera, and it fit with the story. Sure, the fat wife and skinny husband is a sterotype, but once again, not one that was totally divorced from reality in 1960, with the lack of exercise options for women.

The on

Just wanted to come back to thank JTS for his thoughtful comment. See folks? You can disagree and make your point without being obnoxious. Take a page from JTS's book.