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Recently, I’ve read a couple books set in fantasy worlds that reverse the skin-tone power dynamic of our world: where dark-haired and dark-skinned people oppress and discriminate against paler, blonder folk. Both are fine books—The Shifter by Janice Hardy and Stealing Death by Janet Lee Carey—and neither oversimplify race relations or relies on our constructs of black and white in describing their characters and ethnic groups, but it does make me wonder about the message we’re sending to minority kids through books like these.

There are, of course, reasons for presenting a world that flips our racial structures on their head—to help white children identify with the oppressed, to remind people that our racial dynamics are historical constructs rather than natural truths, or just because that’s the way the author pictured it—but it also says to dark-skinned readers that they are always somehow wrong. In our world they are fighting an uphill battle against racism, stereotypes, and generations of economic disparity, but when they turn to the escapism of fantasy, they are faced with worlds in which people who look like them are the overseers and the oppressors, and, as usual, the hero is white. They are good books, but the message these books have for white readers is different than the message they have for people of color, and both messages are important to consider.

Yesterday we posted a video on the frustrations of biracial people being put into little boxes. Taking a very different view is Michele Elam, with a thought-provoking article about the pitfalls of “mark one or more races” on the census.

On her blog, author Shannon Hale takes a look at the lack of girls in children’s movies, the limited roles they play, and an appeal to parents: take your sons to movies with girl heroes. The same goes for books and the same goes for other types of diversity: give the children you know books with heroes who don’t look like them.

Race-Talk has an in-depth look at drug policy and the way it contributes to racial disparity in the U.S. There’s some speculation on why drug policy evolved the way it did, but also a concrete look at its effects.

In the speculative fiction world, Asimov’s has an essay on Western speculative fiction authors writing about non-Western cultures; Rose Fox at Genreville provides a rebuttal and a more nuanced look at the issue. (By the way, have you heard that we’re going to be diversifying MG/YA speculative fiction with the imprint Tu Books? And that we’re really quite excited?)

And on that note, we’re off! Have a good weekend and happy reading!