Anne of Green Gables and Anne of Avonlea

[ailbhe]

Wait - all those maids and hired hands described as French are actually black, aren't they?

I think I preferred the books before I realised that.

Comments

[ailbhe]

The dialect is actually not like most representations of French-speaking English, either, and Charlotta the Fourth is described as having brown paws, twice.

[biascut.livejournal.com]

I think that's more the class/ethnic thing of only WASPs being actually White, though, rather than Charlotta being African-black. She probably is darker skinned than the Scottish-descended Protestants, both because of genetics and because she has to work harder than them!

I mean, I'm willing to be corrected by someone with a better knowledge of Canadian history, but as I say, I'm pretty sure that the French Canadians are people who'd we recognise as white, but they weren't seen as white by the English-speaking ruling classes in Canada at the time.

(sorry, just read your comment again, and you're probably not actually disagreeing with me, are you?! I agree that they're definitely represented as non-white!)

[ailbhe]

I've changed the original post to read "socially non-White" instead of "black." Gosh, it's ugly.

I'm reminded of English books describing Irish people as dark-skinned and apelike - Punch cartoons and things.

Part of the nastiness is that the comparison is to African-black people and is supposed to be insulting. Ew.

Racism in insidious, complicated and unpleasant shocker, film at 11, I know.

[glitzfrau.livejournal.com]

Ew, indeed. There's also an Enid Blyton 'brown paws' = 'hard work outdoors' = 'vulgar, common, dirty' thing going on there too, I'll be bound.