Stay up to date with notifications from The Independent

Notifications can be managed in browser preferences.

Repackaged after 100 years, Sambo still causes offence

Rupert Cornwell
Saturday 17 January 2004 01:00 GMT
Comments

A blithe fantasy of a boy who outwits savage jungle creatures, or a demeaning exercise in racial stereotyping? A century-old controversy has been rekindled by a new edition of The Story of Little Black Sambo, one of the most famous - and most reviled - children's books published.

Helen Bannerman's 1899 story resurfaced last month in a sumptuous new version published by Hand Print Books. It contains lavish illustrations by Christopher Bing for the tale of the little boy who escapes from four tigers. There is also a publisher's note explaining the book's "dark and complex history". Mr Bing presents the title character as a boy with short, curly hair enacting "a fantasy in India". He wears a crimson jacket, purple shoes and other brilliantly coloured clothes, set amid a vivid green jungle backdrop.

His parents, Black Mumbo and Black Jumbo are also in oriental garb; his father Jumbo wears a turban, his mother Mumbo a sari.

But no repackaging or cultural blurring, or the publisher's highlighting of the book's "core theme" of a "joyful child going into the wilderness and conquering it", can conceal the racist undertows.

The word "sambo" derives from "zambo", the Spanish-American term for slaves of at least three-quarters negro blood. In late-1960s Britain, it was a staple in the vocabulary of the bigot Alf Garnett, in the BBC series Till Death US Do Part.

These days, it is little used in the US and Britain, and not on television. But in the English-speaking universe, it is instantly recognisable as racial denigration. Two earlier updated versions of the book, published in 1996, omitted the word "sambo".

For Kirkus Book Reviews, where it features as one of the season's top 40 children's books, the new edition is "a classic story respectfully revitalised to a new grandeur ... Amid the beautiful, etched-line textures, sun-kissed colours, and lush greenery, the magnificent tigers not only steal Sambo's clothes but also the visual show".

But Russell Adams, chairman of the Afro-American studies department at Howard University in Washington, disagrees. However charming the story, it was so deeply entrenched in popular culture "that no amount of revision can sanitise it".

Join our commenting forum

Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies

Comments

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in