Daniel Golden snags the front page of this morning’s WSJ with a look at the ways textbook publishers depict minorities, making the argument that, in trying to compensate for decades of leaving ethnic minorities and the disabled out of the picture, companies like Houghton Mifflin might possibly be going too far in the other direction in order to meet various state and local guidelines. There are even standardized ratios:
“In 2004, according to federal estimates, non-Hispanic whites made up 67.4% of the U.S. population and 59.9% of the school-age population. Under McGraw-Hill Co. guidelines for elementary and high school texts, 40% of people depicted should be white, 30% Hispanic, 20% African-American, 7% Asian and 3% Native American, says Thomas Stanton, a spokesman for the publisher. Of the total, 5% should be disabled, and 5% over the age of 55. Elementary texts from the Harcourt Education unit of Reed Elsevier PLC should show about 50% whites, 22% African-Americans, 20% Hispanics, 5% Asians and 5% Native Americans. Of the total, 3% should be disabled, says Harcourt spokesman Richard Blake.”
One teacher suggests that the numbers are necessary in order to get any sort of diversity in the books at all, arguing that “it’s a real benefit for minority children to be able to see their own ethnicity in a position of responsibility or in a historical perspective.” Others bring up what I like to call the “hey-you’re-leaving-out-the-white-guys” argument; Golden cites a history book that mentioned African-American aviatrix Bessie Coleman but left out the Wright brothers. And then, even if you’re in favor of upping the representation of various groups, there’s the genuinely offensive bit where a photo editor admits that publishers sometimes use a member of one minority to represent another—Chicanos for Native Americans, to take her example—because they look close enough for the purposes of maintaining quotas.