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LITTLE BLACK SAMBO, LONG A FAVORITE CHILDREN'S TALE, IS regarded today as a prime example of racism in children's literature. Goodman, in her study of race awareness in 4-year-old children (1952), is openly critical of Little Black Sambo and she cites two instances of the antipathy of American Negroes for the story. She quotes a Negro mother, talking about her child, as saying:
"Now I just see that he doesn't have books like Little Black Sambo… We're not 'black'—we're brown. I detest that book and I detest the word. Jimmy was called 'black' once… So was Susan, 'black nigger' to be exact—and right here in the Project where there are nothing but colored children!" [p. 184].
At 4 years of age a Negro boy had already acquired a distaste for Black Sambo. Goodman writes about him:
Paul's race awareness is of a medium order, but his feelings are strong. He is not clear about kinds of people, though he has a notion that there is a "black" kind, and another kind which he only occasionally labels "white." He sometimes calls the black kind "black Sambo." Paul probably sees himself as being actually very dark, and he clearly prefers not to do so. He always finds white figures prettier and nicer and the rejects "black" [p. 190].
In a recent book, Black Child, White Child(1971), Porter says, "Overt stereotypes of blacks, such as in Little Black Sambo, now appear more rarely in children's books than they did in the past" (p. 17). Later on in her book she goes further and labels Sambo "blatantly stereotypic" (p. 202).