Oswald isn’t a real child, but he’s become a player in a meaningful and necessary conversation about race.
Educators in Amherst who use a reading program featuring Oswald, who is African-American, noticed that when a new batch of curriculum materials arrived in 2015, Oswald’s skin tone was noticeably lighter. His hair looked different too.
The changes may have been inadvertent, but were nonetheless ill-considered. The artist who had drawn pictures of Oswald and his SuperKids classmates died unexpectedly, according to the publisher, Zaner-Bloser of Columbus, Ohio, forcing the company to hire a new illustrator.
All of the children depicted in the SuperKids materials appear a bit different, a change the company tried to explain to its young readers by saying, “We’ve grown up a bit — now we’re in second grade and look like this.”
That didn’t fly with Amherst teachers using the materials. They rightly flagged the change. What was an African-American student looking at Oswald to make of his transformation? Why should growing up mean looking more white?
Critics of the materials had other questions about the SuperKids program as well, including what they saw as a disproportionate use of white children in stories of academic success and of children of color in stories about athletic prowess.
The Ohio company promised to address the issue and provided new materials this spring. But the revision didn’t satisfy educators, including Michael Morris, who is now acting superintendent. Members of a group called the Fort River Social Justice Committee put the problem plainly in a June 13 letter to administrators of that school, one of three in the district, including Crocker Farm and Pelham Elementary, to use the products.
“The illustrations depicting the 2nd grade characters reflect a white-washing of their racial identities, along with a stunning loss of their racial facial features and corresponding hair textures,” the committee said.
It called the publisher’s changes “minimal and inadequate to address the problems.” The company is now pledging to provide an entirely new set of illustrations by next spring.
Every day in America, children learn about race in ways that shape their identities and self-esteem — and have an impact on their future academic success. Amherst educators are duty-bound to select instructional materials that foster pride, not revulsion, in one’s own race. By pushing back on Oswald’s makeover, and not accepting his Michael Jackson-like transformation, they’ve helped improve the experience of children in schools that adopt these materials.