Jessi race in the bsc and Black history month

[greer]

I think later they tried to not do things like "Let me just say it. Jessi's black. But even if someone was purple and good sitter, we'd still be her friend."

But in the early books there's definitely a tone like you mentioned. Claudia's race was exoticized, Jessi's race was made to seem like something shocking or that needed to be hid. ugh.

[nothingtolose18]

I agree, it did kind of seem like AMM was saying 'OMG, Look at us, we're friends with a black person!! ' and I understand where you're coming from.

By the way, I sincerely hope that my little comment thing that I have under my avatar doesn't offend you - I just put it there to poke fun of the fact that it's so emphasized in the books.

[Penny Lane]

I think it was less the ghostwriter and more that the times changed. When I was growing up, racial stuff was a much bigger deal then it is now. It was very unusual to see inter racial relationships on tv or in books, and people were still adjusting to the civil rights acts. Yes, it was almost 40 years after the civil rights act of 64, but it was still really unusual. During the 80s/early 90s when these were first published, people had to make a genuine effort to include different races and types of people in literature and television and movies. The BSC is a product of it's time -- it was experimenting with the formula for kids books. If you look at other series during this time, most of them had a "token" minority character who was extra good at something.

So while it isn't right, I just want to point out that it isn't necessarily ann m martin's fault. There are a lot of books out there for youth that have anvils dropped in them about how bad racism is. I know that the way it was presented was clumsy, but back then people didn't know how to approach it. Do you say "Jessi is black" -- but that was back when it, like, wasn't okay to just say it like that. Or do you say "Jessi has dark skin?" Well, then people might think she just spends a lot of time at the tanner.

[greer]

^yeah, i remember that too.

[luckymojo]

cpennylane said:

I think it was less the ghostwriter and more that the times changed. When I was growing up, racial stuff was a much bigger deal then it is now. It was very unusual to see inter racial relationships on tv or in books, and people were still adjusting to the civil rights acts. Yes, it was almost 40 years after the civil rights act of 64, but it was still really unusual. During the 80s/early 90s when these were first published, people had to make a genuine effort to include different races and types of people in literature and television and movies. The BSC is a product of it's time -- it was experimenting with the formula for kids books. If you look at other series during this time, most of them had a "token" minority character who was extra good at something.

So while it isn't right, I just want to point out that it isn't necessarily ann m martin's fault. There are a lot of books out there for youth that have anvils dropped in them about how bad racism is. I know that the way it was presented was clumsy, but back then people didn't know how to approach it. Do you say "Jessi is black" -- but that was back when it, like, wasn't okay to just say it like that. Or do you say "Jessi has dark skin?" Well, then people might think she just spends a lot of time at the tanner.

Thats why I brought up Black History month into this.I was talking to this guy and he wants to date me.Since I dont look so much like a black person because of my features,he thought i was guyanese or something.When he ask me my race i said black,he walked away without talking again. >:(Sorry I put my personal business here but I wish all races can be acknowledged as equal in value.That doesnt mean it dont bother me and others as well that Ann M Martin wrote it like that.But I guess that was the times back then.We blacks are going to be looked upon as a minority group for awhile *sigh*

[Deleted]

I know!
Im not Black either but I was always annoyed that all the babysitters when they were introducing the club they always said Jess's Black like it was a bad thing.

[fluffy]

MA4ya, I hope so too!

Anyway, I agree, some of the mentions were really awkward. I remember how in one book they talk about Jessi and Mallory not being allowed by their parents to wear sparkle sweatshirts, followed by 'this is interesting, because Jessi is black and Mal is white'. ACK. Ann M was born in the fifties and I try to attribute things to her sounding like that to her general cluelessness concerning change over time, like her intentions were good.

[sotypical42483]

I think I'm one of the few BSC fans who never had a problem with how they introduced jessi. Yeah they kinda made a big deal about it, but Jessi made a big deal out of it, it reflects her. I don't understand what is wrong with saying "btw Mal is white and Jessi is black" What alternative is there? How else should they have worded it?

[booboobrewer]

^I don't think many people are bothered by "by the way, Mal's white and Jessi's black," it's the "I might as well be straightforward about it," or "I might as well just come out and say it! She's black!" that's more annoying.

I liked when they would word it "by the way," that was better.

[aln1982]

sotypical42483 said:

I think I'm one of the few BSC fans who never had a problem with how they introduced jessi. Yeah they kinda made a big deal about it, but Jessi made a big deal out of it, it reflects her. I don't understand what is wrong with saying "btw Mal is white and Jessi is black" What alternative is there? How else should they have worded it?

I agree. I think it was more AMM and the girls being worried, too, that they would be called racist. After all, how do you phrase it and not offend someone? I always have to worry about that in work. I think the black/white thing tends to be much more sensitive as a subject than the Asian/white thing for various reasons. Not saying people are too sensitive but it's just a sensitive issue and I actually think the books did a good job with it.

[greer]

How do you guys feel about in the later books, when they were always like "jessi has cocoa-colored skin" or whatever? And claudia had almond-eyes. What is with this food-description thing? Do you think it's better to not be like Jessi is black or African-American or whatever, and say that she is "cocoa" and mal is pale?

[secondhandshoes]

I'm black too and as a kid it never bothered me but now that I'm older it does. Probably because I've always been the"token" black kid, and people say that Jessi overreacts but I don't necessarily think that's the case in some books. I come from a town that's 95% white, 2% Asian and so on...so black people ARE treated differently. Jessi wasn't crazy haha.

[blossom114]

When I was a kid I didn't really notice it, but i do now. At my elementary school they had a "deseg" program (seriously that's what they called it) and they bussed in kids from the city. Even though there were some black kids that didn't live in the city that went to my school, most of them were.
That lasted all the way through high school... I didn't really think much of it. There weren't many black families in my neighborhood, but we did live next door to one. They were a nice older couple, but didn't really know them too well. Looking back now, living in Texas, where it's VERY diverse, (more people are of some ethnic background than caucasian at my college.) I'm noticing the differences between here and where I grew up in the suburbs of St. Louis.

[secondhandshoes]

^^Yay for St. Louis suburbs!!

[alula]

I personally don't like descriptors like "cocoa-colored skin" because I feel like it borders on "exotifying the Other," to be all post-modern snotty about it. (And why is it always food?)

Ma_4_ya, have you read the California Diaries? I just read them for the first time and I thought Amalia #3 was a much more thoughtful and realistic take on racial issues than any of the Jessi books.

I feel like I'm not going to say this well, but I sometimes wonder if some of the issue with Jessi is that the discussions of race tend to be very broad and not specific, and part of that was discomfort on the part of the writers. I remember when I read "Hello, Mallory" for the first time and those girls were calling Jessi "Mobobwee," I mostly just thought it was strange, because it didn't seem to me to be the way pre-teen girls in the late 80s would be racist. It's not like I grew up in some kind of multicultural "We are the World," paradise, but even then I thought it was a weird insult because it didn't reflect what girls in that setting would actually say, because I don't think the prevailing racist stereotypes at that point were about black people as immigrants (I assumed that "Mobobwee" was the girls "joking" about what a "real" African name would be.) I would think nasty comments about "welfare queens" or something about Jessi having a stereotypical African-American name (something like "LaKisha," which the "classy" kids in my middle school would probably have considered incredibly tacky), or really, something using outright racial slurs would be more likely. Obviously I understand why the writers wouldn't use those words in BSC books, but I definitely think that unease on the part of the writers made them shy away from depicting really gritting racism, so they were stuck in this nether-world of making a big deal about it, but not really placing it in context--which is one of the reasons why Jessi gets so much flack for times when she perceives or anticipates racism when there's something else going on, because it isn't really established in a meaningful way. (For example, I don't get the feeling that anyone at her dance school really thought much about having a black Swanilda or Aurora--plenty of theatres and dance companies have been doing racially blind casting since before Jessi was born--but I can understand why she might have made that assumption when she was really getting negative vibes from being the youngest in the class and getting the leads.)

I just used a ton of unnecessary quotation marks in this post, I think.