Little Black Sambo

The Story of Little Black Sambo was a story that an English woman told her two daughters in India. This story is about a young boy who is given nice clothes, but loses them to tigers that are trying to eat him. He ends up getting his clothes back when the tigers begin to fight over who the “grandest” tiger is. As the tigers fight they melt into butter. Black Jumbo (his father) brings Black Mumbo (his mother) the butter to use to make pancakes, which they all eat and enjoy. The illustrations in this story initially caught my eye. The characters in this story actually looked like human beings instead of the creature-like and monster looking characters in The Coon Alphabet. I am not arguing that these characters were drawn in the most beautiful way or to look the most attractive, but they were clearly human beings. The ending of the story was also a positive ending for the young boy. Even though he goes through a tough journey and almost loses everything he is given, he ends up getting everything back and is safe at home enjoying the pancakes. This is very different from The Coon Alphabet where almost every character has something disastrous happen to them. While I do not believe these characters were shown in the best light, it was a much less disturbing and racist story than some of the others we have read throughout the semester.

The Story of the Little Black Sambo

The Story of the Little Black Sambo by Helen Bannerman told a story of this little black boy who gotten all of his nice clothes taken by some tigers he met in the woods, however he was able to get them back after the tigers had an argument over which one of them was the grandest. Overall, I felt like the story itself had no sort of significance in terms of racism or race relations. However, I do think that the illustrations of the characters are rather too similar to the white people in black face that played in minstrel shows. The Little Brown and Little Black Sambo article does try to defend Bannerman, stating that the characters can be taken in differently by whoever read the story, but I don’t entirely agree with that.  Little Black Sambo is claimed to be an South Asian Indian story, however I didn’t see anything that resembled the way Indian people look to my knowledge at all. As far as the illustrations, if the story were indeed about Indians  I feel as if the people who drew these pictures didn’t have to make the Sambo family as dark as they did. I have never saw any one person whether they are Indian, African or African American who looks a monstrous as the characters in this book; but I do know that black people were looked upon as these ugly less attractive figures that are demonstrated in this text during the times of slaver. Also the fact that Little Sambo and his family has bright pink lips also leads me to believe that this text was solely meant to portray the way whites saw blacks during this time period.