I just finished reading an interesting blog post from Editorial Anonymous (EA), where he/she states that the Coretta Scott King (CSK) Award may no longer be necessary. The CSK award is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year and honors African-American authors. EA states this in the post:
Giving an award for creating art about the experience of race is a wonderful thing. But giving an award for creating art and being a particular race? That’s racism in action.
It’s interesting that someone in the comment section said that this post reminded them of a Horn Book essay by Marc Aronson. It reminded me of this essay as well. But there is also a flip side to this argument presented in another Horn Book essay by Andrea Davis Pinkney that also makes valid points.
Honestly, I can see both sides of this argument. Just look at what happened earlier this year with Kadir Nelson’s We are the Ship. If there weren’t a CSK award, would Nelson have won the Caldecott? We can only ponder that answer. Maybe, maybe not.
But then you have other statistics such as the one researched by The Cooperative Children’s Book Center, which stated that in 2007 only 150 of nearly 3,000 titles were by African-American authors.
So, if the CSK award did go away, would any books by African-Americans be spotlighted? What if the award did away with its consideration of race? Would it be okay for non-African-American authors to be honored? If that were the case, Laurie Halse Anderson could been have considered for a CSK award for her book Chains. That speaks of the African-American experience, right?
I can also look at it another way as well. If you look at the CSK award recipients, you see a trend of the same authors wining the award several times. Does that make it harder for unknown African-American authors to break through? I know that this is one of the reasons that The Brown Bookshelf came into existence.
Personally, I’m all about trying to remove the focus of race from children’s literature. It’s easier said than done. Especially when you’re coming for the minority side of the equation.
EA points out in his/her blog post, giving an award only to black people causes a divide. That may be so, but if African-American authors are not on the same playing field with the number of published books and there is a small percentage of editors of color, how large can that divide really be?
There are points made on both sides. I can see that this is a conversation that we will be having for a while.
