Readdressing L. Frank Baum and racism

 Some time back, I wrote a blog titled "Was L. Frank Baum a racist?" where I admittedly engaged in racism apologetics.

So let's address the issue again:

Was L. Frank Baum a racist?

Yes.

Was his expression of racism allowed at the time because of the society he lived in?

Yes.

Did that make it okay?

No.

Many critics of Baum are aware of his editorials in which he suggested the military should exterminate the remaining members of the Sioux nation. Readers of his works outside of the Oz books are aware of many ethnic stereotypes in his works. A few of his works even use "the n-word." Baum relied on these to depict characters of color in his fiction, as did many other writers of his time. These reveal that while Baum was progressive in his views of gender and other areas, race was one where he was not so enlightened.

In the podcast Down the Yellow Brick Pod, hosts Tara and Em examined the Twinkle Tale "Bandit Jim Crow" with the lens of reading it as a cultural allegory, and it became a disturbing tale. As I listened to the episode, I noted that Baum wrote it during a period where he turned out a lot of work, including the first Aunt Jane's Nieces and Sam Steele books, but it doesn't speak well that he quickly turned out a piece that could be read as a negative allegory about African-American people in America.

Another character from Baum's works I thought of while thinking it over was Aunt Hyacinth from The Daring Twins, who is one of the "mammy" characters who turned up in pop culture for quite some time. Recently, another "mammy" was in the news: Aunt Jemima of the popular brand of pancake mixes and syrups. This led some people claim that people seeking to improve life for everyone in America had gone too far. (While the brand was criticized, when the intent to change the brand was announced, it wasn't a major outcry.) I, however, decided to read up on the stereotype the character originally represented and understand why the company might want to consider rebranding.

The "mammy" stereotype might seem to be a positive character: depending on when her story was set, she would be a slave or a hired servant who would be a dutiful and kind personage in the home who goes above and beyond in her duties to the family she serves. However, when we look at the character further, it gets bad: she is usually depicted as overweight and unattractive, her redeeming feature is the service she can offer the family. Even more disturbing is that "mammy" will care for her white master's children at the expense of her own family. When we remember that Hyacinth actually uses her own money to help care for the Daring family, we see this stereotype re-emerge, though Baum never tells us that Hyacinth has children. Still, she's serving her family at literally her own expense.

I do believe that Baum was attempting to depict a more accurate depiction of the American people in using non-white characters, however his use of stereotypes is troubling because stereotypes depict an inaccurate picture of people that are never accurate to life that inform and influence how these people are thought of. Stereotypes have played a role in our culture in America and we continue to deal with the harm they've caused to this day.

Hyacinth is just one character who reflects a stereotype in Baum's work. I'm not interested in listing all of Baum's characters who are problematic and explaining what's wrong with them because then we'd have quite a long blog and likely forget the main point. I just decided to bring up one character and discuss the problematic aspect of them to offer an example and challenge readers to think through what stereotypes come up in the works they enjoy and what is problematic about them.

Thus, I'm going to have to say it's important to acknowledge Baum's racist and problematic writings, and yes, they reflect how he himself thought. I don't believe we should "cancel" him over these. He has been dead for over a century. His family has acknowledged some of his most troubling work (the Sioux editorials, which targeted actual living people) and apologized. We need to acknowledge and recognize these problematic aspects of his work and learn to do better.