How long before “systemic racism” comes for children's literature, with its shamelessly sparkly-white characters such as Snow White, Caspar the Ghost, and Frosty the Snowman? Christmas is of course already beyond the pale (if one may use such triggering language) and children's literature has always been a target of censorship, but formerly for reasons of eroticism or fairy-tale gruesomeness. The attack on all things white-suggestive is new.
Comfort-characters such as the shy, polite and kindly Rupert Bear, and T. H. White's “Wart” (boyhood name of King Arthur), are no longer vouchsafed to children, and innocence (“in-nocere”, not-knowing) is equated with silence, which is now considered "violence".
Rupert the cheerful bear-child was once in fact a brown bear, but was made white by editors who wanted him to show up well in illustrations when the Rupert Annual was printed in colour. He set forth each day in his yellow sweater and plaid pants for Nutwood Forest, where he had adventures and Did Good Things. It's surprising there hasn't yet been a march demanding the publisher “Make Rupert Brown Again”. (1)
In T. H. White's youth novel The Once and Future King, Arthur upon becoming king took up nobility as a “glorious doom”. Originally, to be noble meant having a known name, plus character traits like magnanimity and moral excellence. We however are only interested in “inclusion, diversity and equity”, which aren't necessarily magnanimous, moral and excellent. To admit the existence of excellence would be to acknowledge that not everything is equal. Nobility has toxic connotations, today.
No wonder everyone's at loggerheads, adding to what Matthew Arnold in Dover Beach called the confused alarms of “ignorant armies that clash by night”. (2) Some might say that the violence lies in that – manifested as street rallies and online attacks – not in the wise restraint of silence. Only the kindly decency of a simple hero like Rupert could sort it all out -- but we've moved a long way from Nutwood.
1 For the story of Rupert's transformation from brown bear to white, see:
http://www.canterbury-archaeology.org.uk/tourtel/4590809564
2 For Matthew Arnold's poem see https://poets.org/poem/dover-beach
