09/20/2009 : UPDATE
Due to overwhelming recent attention brought to this blog as a result from the Brooklyn Library’s decision to censor Tintin in the Congo, I thought I would write a postscript (4 months later). Having spent a mere 3 months as a white woman in the Democratic Republic of Congo I in no way meant to speak for or represent the Congolese people’s interpretations of racism. Through my own experiences I deduced that the reaction to Tintin in the Congo was sharply different than it was in the USA, but I did not have the time, language skills, or anthropological background to research this thoroughly. I wrote that blog post as a means of sharing my experiences with friends and family, and the astounding publicity that resulted is a perfect example of a technologically modern world where what we write on the internet becomes public property.
However, while we’re on the subject, I personally do not condone the Brooklyn Public Library’s censorship of Tintin in the Congo. As a human race, how are we to ever move forward without acknowledging and learning from our own mistakes and misinterpretations? Herge wrote the Tintin books in the 1920s, with the intention of creating exciting and visually stunning stories that dealt with the world’s political and social issues of the time. When libraries ban one Tintin book, where will they stop? Who is to say that Tintin in the Congo is more racist or offensive than Tintin in America (which refers to Native Americans as redskins swinging tomahawks—but through the story really exposes the robbing of tribal lands by white men for financial oil gain)? Once censorship of these books starts occurring, where are the lines drawn, and in drawing those lines are we holding one issue above another?
More than anything I hope that through all of the furor that is being raised in the blogosphere and news sources surrounding the Tintin books, dialogues will be occuring surrounding racism, learning from one’s history, what we choose to teach our children about the world we’ve worked so hard to move forward in, and how, in modern society, censorship of books can enhance or restrict our potential to progress.
