Tintin in the Congo?

So I just read this little Publisher's Weekly story about why Tintin in the Congo won't be reprinted in the U.S. (http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6485843.html), and it got me to reminiscing.

I was working as a children's bookseller when the publishers that be (I have no idea who was involved in the decision, as I didn't pay attention to that stuff at the time) decided to expurgate Hugh Lofting's Doctor Dolittle stories a bit, especially the incident in Africa where Doctor Dolittle is held captive by an African prince who agrees to release him only after the Doctor agrees to supply the Prince with a bleaching potion  - the Prince wants to be white, and thinks the Doctor can help him bleach his skin.  As a 6 year old reading that, my main takeaway was that it was really sad that Prince Beppo wanted to be someone else than who he was, because it was better to be who you were.  (Of course, the fact that he was a Prince probably influenced my thinking.  At age 6, all Princes were, by definition, cool.)

I don't think the decision to cut the scene mattered to the sprinkling of young people who still read Doctor Dolittle (the popularity of the movies hasn't washed back to the books at all, as far as I can see).  But it seemed strange to me.  It was during that same time span that all the new versions of Little Black Sambo came out.  I read them all, and as far as I could see almost the only words that were changed were the names of the people.  And usually those were changed only a tiny bit - Little Black Sambo became Little Black Samaji or something.  I gather that the original pictures looked pretty racist, and the new art of course was gorgeous in all the editions - I think that Jerry Pinkney did one, and there were a couple others.  Having a lot of 1950s era kids books around the house as a kid, I'd heard the story of Little Black Sambo as a kid.  I don't remember thinking anything racist after hearing it - to me at 5 it was just a story of a brave kid with cool clothes who outwitted a whole pile of tigers and then got to eat a huge pancake breakfast.

But I think, y'know, if we're going to edit or censor these kids books for our children, maybe that's ok.  But if we're going to do that, we should make a museum somewhere, like a version of the Holocaust Museum but for racist iconography?  Because I think for young people it is getting harder and harder to understand the feelings that slavery and segregation caused, and how deep and widespread the issue was.  And one of the reasons is that we try to edit the past, to say "that never happened, we never said that, we take it back".  We could gather together all the signs and products and pictures and stories that just strike us now as wrong and shameful, and put them together in a big room with explanations and docents and exhibits about how this stuff tied in to slavery, and to segregation.  Explain how people tried to use books and stories and pictures to suggest that large portions of our population weren't people.  It wouldn't have to be just stuff related to African-Americans.  There are some awful portrayals of Irish, Chinese, and other immigrant groups that we could surely include.  Then we could pack all the school kids off there so that they could realize how creepy we allow ourselves to get.

I guess I'm thinking of this because one of the assumptions I hear is that most people don't discuss literature and images with their kids, so the concern is they'll absorb the racism of the story/image.  So put it all in a big museum where guides and plaques and stuff will explain it.  So that people have to see.  Cause not to quote someone else lots of people bash for racist imperial attitudes or anything, but, y'know, "lest we forget", right?