{"id":39612,"date":"2015-01-21T21:15:48","date_gmt":"2015-01-21T21:15:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=39612"},"modified":"2015-01-21T21:37:08","modified_gmt":"2015-01-21T21:37:08","slug":"where-are-all-the-interracial-childrens-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=39612","title":{"rendered":"Where are all the interracial children\u2019s books?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Where are all the interracial children\u2019s books?<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

The Washington Post<\/a>
\n2015-01-20<\/p>\n

Nevin Martell<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Browsing the shelves of the children\u2019s section at bookstores can be a depressing experience for the parent of an interracial youngster. I\u2019m a mutt mixture Caucasian with roots going back to Western Europe<\/a> and beyond, while my wife is from Ghana<\/a>. We are constantly on the lookout for stories featuring characters with whom our interracial son can visually identify. It would just be nice for him to pick up a book and think to himself, \u201cHey, that little guy looks like me.\u201d Sadly, he doesn\u2019t get to do that very often.<\/p>\n

Though there is a growing number of racially diverse characters popping up on picture book pages \u2013 and the passionate social media campaign #WeNeedDiverseBooks hopes to inspire even more of them \u2013 there is a depressing dearth of interracial ones. This is somewhat surprising given how many families are interracial these days. According to the United States Census Bureau<\/a>, \u201cinterracial or interethnic opposite-sex married couple households grew by 28 percent over the decade from 7 percent in 2000 to 10 percent in 2010.\u201d Additionally, there were 275,500 interracial marriages in 2010 out of a total of 2,096,000. Heck, there\u2019s even a TV show about an interracial family and it\u2019s on a major network \u2013 ABC\u2019s \u201cThe Fosters<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t to say that there aren\u2019t any children\u2019s books starring interracial characters. There are some wonderful options, including \u201cBlack, White, Just Right!<\/a>\u201d by Marguerite W. Davol and illustrated by Irene Trivas, \u201cBlack is Brown is Tan<\/a>\u201d by Arnold Adoff with illustrations by Emily Arnold McCully and Phil Mandelbaum\u2019s \u201cYou Be Me, I\u2019ll Be You<\/a>.\u201d A current favorite is \u201cThe Case for Loving: The Fight for Interracial Marriage<\/a>,\u201d which chronicles the 1967 Supreme Court case Loving v. Virginia<\/em><\/a>, in which a biracial couple successfully challenged the state\u2019s law against interracial marriage…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Where are all the interracial children\u2019s books? The Washington Post 2015-01-20 Nevin Martell Browsing the shelves of the children\u2019s section at bookstores can be a depressing experience for the parent of an interracial youngster. I\u2019m a mutt mixture Caucasian with roots going back to Western Europe and beyond, while my wife is from Ghana. We […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,414,1196,8,20],"tags":[19127,2875,2581],"class_list":["post-39612","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-family","category-literary-criticism","category-media-archive","category-usa","tag-nevin-martell","tag-the-washington-post","tag-washington-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39612","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39612"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39612\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}