Laura Ingalls Wilder's name removed from book award over racism concerns

originally posted by: karmicecstasy
I think people who want to willingly forget history are the dumbest cretins on the planet.

However, we are talking about an author who had no problem amending her own work in her own lifetime. So I doubt she would care that someone changed the name of an award. Just my two cents. Someone else more triggerable than I can carry this flag forward. Call me when they ban her books or publishers decide to changer her words.

I wonder who was the curmudgeon who figured out the award was in her name and wanted to P.C. cleanse it?

I guess the Harvey Weinstein Scholarship for Struggling Actresses will have to get a new name too? It's helped so many........

originally posted by: pavil
a reply to: howtonhawky

Who knew Little House on the Prarie was racist?

The show gave the Waltons a run for squeaky cleanliness.

Damm Nazis.

Wait till they Tee off on Mark Twain, if they haven't already.

Little house on the prairie attempted to show you life of settlers. One part of that life was hating indians many called them savages. Thought they were not real people this is just historical fact. But slowly as we try to white wash history these details become lost.

To change the name of the award because her books dealt with racism is silly. Should be the opisit they should be used to discuss racism.

Has anyone here read mark Twain he uses the name negro throughout his books . Why because it was within context for the time period. Shame instead of opening dialogs we try to cebsor the subject.

a reply to: howtonhawky

What exactly are you doing to stop this awards name being changed? Its already happened. Were you protesting at the meeting were the vote happened to change the name of the award? Or did you only care when a news story told you too.

If they banned the books. I would be against it. I admit my first instinct wouldn't be to run to the internet foaming at the mouth to make a post on ATS. I believe these days the kids call that virtue signalling. But I would speak out against it in my own way.

What exactly have they got away with? Have a bunch of children books, or any books been outright banned. Where are these banned books, most books I know of that have been banned in this country, were banned for religious moral reasons. Books that were too explicit. How many new editions, of old books, with entirely rewritten words, words rewritten to fit into modern notions of what is PC, are published each year?

Or are you conflating other things with this award name change? When you say what they already got away with. Do you mean the statues thing. I also think its dumb to remove statues. Because I believe removing statues does not change history. The events still happened and I can learn about them in history books. So it is absolutely dumb to take down statues. Because the event still happened. Taking down a statue does not change the past. Those kind of temporal powers do not exist yet.

So what exactly are you talking about? The clues I would need are banned books and/or amended books in large numbers. So I can be positive its actually a real thing and not a thing in your head.

a reply to: karmicecstasy

I made a thread.lol

I just found out about them removing the honor from little house.

The school books are constantly being changed

a reply to: pavil

Years ago.

a reply to: howtonhawky

Did they remove the honor from Little House on the Prairie? Laura Ingalls Wilder was the first recipient of the award. If when they changed the name of the award they also retroactively took away the honor of her having received the award. That changes things. That is actually trying to change history. That I would disagree with. But I did not read that they took away the award from her, just that they changed the name of the Award.

The school books are a slightly different thing. You constantly have new editions coming out because publishers want to be able to continually sell new versions, for greater profit. Instead of having schools re-use older editions. So with each new edition, you have the book being updated with the historical spin of whatever time the school book was published in.

But I do think everything could use a little less spin and a little more fact.

a reply to: karmicecstasy

Did they remove the honor from Little House on the Prairie?

I was just quoting the member here that has went totally against the op.

They summed it up as removing the honor.

you make some sense from a different pov.

i enjoy that

no one wants to touch my bet comment with a ten foot pole.

how long will we let the current racism continue?

So when do they plan on burning her books in the town square?

That's the obvious next step...

no wasn't funded by her anything... it was named in her honor, now they changed the name of the prize to this: Children’s Literature Legacy Award.

a reply to: odzeandennz

well then really who gives a crap....lol

a reply to: pavil

I personally would not of changed the awards name. What kind of weak individual must you be, if you have anxiety and uncomfortableness over the name of a literary award. So much so that you have to demand the name changes.

I just also can't be bothered to get up in arms over a literary award name change and become the curmudgeon who demands it be changed back. The two thought processes go hand in hand. I care for neither. So I'm stuck in the middle.

nm

a reply to: howtonhawky

Obviously, they can change the name of the award if they want...

But I would be so much more impressed if they used Mrs. Wilder as a shining example of how we can and have grown as people. In later years, Mrs. Wilder not only changed the offensive reference in her book, she also apologized for doing so originally. And this was at a time when it was quite socially acceptable in many circles to be openly racist. It was the courage and strength and integrity of people like Mrs. Wilder who have encouraged and inspired others to do better and to be better. We have come so far, because of people like Mrs. Wilder.

She deserves better and so do we all.

a reply to: odzeandennz

You sure seem to have gleaned a whole lot about my emotional state from a text message lol..

a reply to: odzeandennz

More white-washing.

So because she wrote stories that were true to their time. What did you expect? Settlers who were PC to the Natives? She gets punished posthumously because she and her work are being judged by modern standards.

Guess what? Those times weren't PC and she was correct to not write about them that way.

originally posted by: pavil

originally posted by: karmicecstasy
I think people who want to willingly forget history are the dumbest cretins on the planet.

However, we are talking about an author who had no problem amending her own work in her own lifetime. So I doubt she would care that someone changed the name of an award. Just my two cents. Someone else more triggerable than I can carry this flag forward. Call me when they ban her books or publishers decide to changer her words.

I wonder who was the curmudgeon who figured out the award was in her name and wanted to P.C. cleanse it?

I guess the Harvey Weinstein Scholarship for Struggling Actresses will have to get a new name too? It's helped so many........

I read this point in an Op-Ed about the gal who "discovered" Einstein's racism in his diary and is now trying to get him shamed postumously for it. It's easy to discover the supposed moral failings of the great achievers of the past. It's much harder to do what they did and actually, you know, achieve something. I mean she bases this on two private statements he wrote about Asians during his travels that he never once spoke aloud to anyone and no one knew anything about until this diary was suddenly unearthed. Which is more important? All of Einstein's great scientific work in theoretical physics or two errant statements on his perceptions of people in Asia in a private diary that no one knew about until quite recently?

Whoever started this fuss is standing on LIW's shoulders and greatness to amplify his or her own perceived moral purity without having really achieved anything of his or her own. All he or she did is point a finger.

a reply to: ketsuko

Except she herself regretted the words she used. In a time when no one was clamoring for her to change anything. She self edited her books before she died. She thought she was not correct. So I don't think she is rolling over in her grave, over a name change to a literary award.

Its still dumb that they changed the name of the award. But everyone needs to stop falling on their swords over this. Its a non issue. No one banned her books or changed a word of her writing. So everyone can get off her shoulders trying to prove their moral superiority. The idiots who wanted the award name changed, and the people coming to Laura Ingalls Wilder's defense over the perceived whitewashing of her works, when she actually white-washed it herself first, decades before everyone found out today that this particular literary award even existed.

a reply to: karmicecstasy

You know ... if it was one isolated incident, if might be a non-story, but it's not one isolated incident is it?

This is part of a pattern. This part and parcel of the portraits of the former heads of Harvard Med School being removed because the current felt they were too white and male and it made the environment too intimidating and not inclusive enough to female med students of med students of color. It's like the publishing company who decided to put out a "sanitized" version of Huck Finn. It's like the drive to remove the names of public figures of the past from everything because someone doesn't like anything about them because they don't stand up to modern standards of SJW wokeness.

So, by itself ... maybe you have a point, but this is a wider pattern and troubling because of that alone.

a reply to: ketsuko

Its just such a minor thing. Its a literary award named after someone. So because that was the first name of the award. It has to be the only name until the end of time? No one touched her actual legacy. Her books can still be bought. As far as I know, her name still stands as a winner of the award.

On top of that we are talking about someone who self censored themselves later in life. You have people coming in, whitewash this, whitewash that. People who obviously knew nothing about the author or the award until two seconds after they saw the headline of the article in the OP. Or they would know the author whitewashed their own work. So someone who politically corrected their own work. We are now going to make into a martyr against political correctness. It just makes no sense to me. It only makes sense in the context of people getting triggered and looking to score some political points for whatever "side" they are on.

This would not even be a thing if people were not mad about other things. In a vacuum it means absolutely nothing that a douchey high horse riding literary award committee decided to change the name of their award. I bet if the Guardian article had simply read, Laura Ingalls Wilder's name removed from book award. No one on here would of even cared or noticed it happened. But because it included the word racism, everyone is going to get all hyper-actively hyper-political over it.

I just see no difference between the cry babies crying that the name should of been changed and the cry babies crying that the name was changed. Until today none of them cared a single iota about Laura Ingalls Wilder or her legacy.

Of course in a wider context it is troubling that people seem to want to forget history. But forgetting history is not the same as erasing it entirely. Statues, portraits, plaques, names of awards. I think its dumb and shortsighted to want to remove/change that stuff to fit into modern ideas about political correctness. I would not advocate or choose to do any of that. But none of it actually changes history. I can go out and learn the history of anything I want without repercussion. These type of non issues just show us who the people are who strive for ignorance over knowledge.

Like I said to another poster. Call me when they ban her books. Or they make laws that make it illegal, to learn about the civil war in ways that are not statue based, or to learn about the contributions the heads of Harvard Medical school have made to modern medicine in ways that are not portrait based. Or when they burn all the non modern abridged copies of Huck Finn. Until then it is just making mountains out of molehills. An overreaction to an overreaction.

a reply to: howtonhawky

Who's rewriting history?