The recent announcement by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences that there will be diversity requirements for Best Picture nominees starting in 2024 reminded me of the following piece, which I wrote a while back but never published…
Not so long ago, the American Library Association’s Association for Library Services to Children (ALSC) announced that its board had voted
to change the name of the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award to the Children’s Literature Legacy Award. This decision was made in consideration of the fact that Wilder’s legacy, as represented by her body of work, includes expressions of stereotypical attitudes inconsistent with ALSC’s core values of inclusiveness, integrity and respect, and responsiveness.
What is the purpose of that award, anyway? It’s supposed to commemorate ‘writers or illustrators of children’s books published in the United States who have, over a period of years, made substantial and lasting contributions to children’s literature’.
That is, it’s an award for sustained excellence and relevance: If children have been reading an author’s books for a long time, and continue to read them, this award is supposed to recognize that. It’s hard to think of an author who exemplifies that better than Laura Ingalls Wilder.
If the ALSC wants to present an award for inclusiveness, respect, responsiveness, cultural sensitivity, political correctness, or… whatever, then it should create a separate award for that, and name it after an appropriate person, e.g., the Ellsworth Toohey Award.
The only thing that’s accomplished by this kind of stunt is to make the award less reliable as an indicator of quality, something that’s also happened with other awards. For example, at this point, if a movie wins an Oscar, a lot of people take that as a sign that it might be better left unwatched. Or consider the Nobel Peace Prize, which can apparently be awarded to people who haven’t actually done anything yet to achieve peace anywhere, in the hopes that they might someday do something worth celebrating.
I suspect that at some point it will become necessary to create an award for awards that haven’t diluted their standards in response to mass hysteria, awards that continue to signal quality instead of virtue. Maybe we can name it after Jerry Seinfeld, who said, when asked about diversity in the field of comedy: ‘Funny is the world I live in. You’re funny, I’m interested. You’re not funny, I’m not interested.’
