Discrimination In Literature Analysis

Discrimination in Children’s Books and Literature Discrimination against children has been, for long, an open debate on the international level. Regardless of the country, the societies or even the individuals, this issue was and still spreading. In fact, it is crawling amongst different entities through many means including children’s books and literature. Hence, it is of essence to address this issue through the critical analysis of the contexts in which this “epidemic” is leaving its fingerprint.
Nonetheless, it is inevitable to define critical analysis in order to start with this analysis and to move on to show how this discrimination against children is present in children’s books and literature. CDA, also known as Critical Discourse

Children are subjected to discrimination whether at homes, at schools or anywhere, and by people from different age groups including their own. This rather common discrimination is enhanced by the fact that it is present in books and literature dedicated to them. Also, Honig (1998) argues that children acquire their perceptions of stereotyping other children through these books in which they deem other minorities or even women as inferior and face them with discrimination. This is why it is important to discuss the matters of racism and sexism in children books and literature to show how they are presented and provide examples about them through CDA.
First of all, racism is the act of differentiating between people according to their race. Historically, there is no doubt that the white people have exerted racism on other races especially Black people. It is based on the verbal or physical domination of a group of people, a powerful majority in most cases, on another smaller and weaker majority that differs ideologically and ethnically. According to Van Dijk (n.d.): “Ethnic prejudices and ideologies are not innate, and do not develop spontaneously in ethnic interaction. They are acquired and learned, and this usually happens through

It was applied over many years and still is in a lot of places nowadays. Its presence in children’s books and literature only makes the situation worse since the kids acquire racist thoughts while being unaware of it. They see people from other races being portrayed as “different” and they regard them as “others”. This creates a gap in societies that divides not only the physical zones in different places but also leads people to categorize one another according to their race. The same thing applies to gender discrimination. When children see the female characters in the stories being obedient to men or in other words, not being as good as men are, two things happen: the male children regard themselves as superior and powerful while female children start having low self-esteem and become less satisfied about themselves. Last but not least, the fact that racism and sexism remain present in children’s books and literature leads to the thought of why this is still the case despite all the progress that the world has witnessed over the years. Racism was practically put aside with Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1960’s when Black people gained their freedom yet, it is still contained in children’s stories. Also, gender discrimination remains in these stories despite the fact that all the societies, even the most patriarchal among them, have witnessed a huge revolution regarding this issue. To sum up, two serious