Actually reading …

… Laura Ingalls Wilder: The complexities of Laura Ingalls Wilder | Terri Apter. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

By degrading Wilder’s reputation on the grounds that bias sometimes emerges in her writing, we promote the pretence that we can excise all bias from our hearts and minds. A far more illuminating approach is to see that even the writers and artists we love sometimes express the biases that continue to infect us, too.  We are better prepared to catch sight of bias within ourselves, and in other good people, if we admit that everyone is vulnerable to carelessness, injustice and stereotyping. Condemning every instance of bias risks burying our own biases further and masking them with self-righteous condemnation.

Apparently, the members of the ALSC could not bother to read the books they were condemning. Shame on them. Hate to tell them, but their bias is showing, in this case the bias exhibited by their own virtue-signalling. We are not inpressed, dears.