Peace, thanks for your recognition of and strong advocacy for the position that ideas and images in mass media-including in comic books-may not only mirror but often help shape and reinforce negative attitudes & opinions.

It seems to me that it is appropriate for persons interested in folk culture to recall, collect, document, analyze, and discuss examples of songs, rhymes, sayings, advertisements, books-including comic books-and other indices of popular culture which purposely or unknowingly contain text and/or images that are racists {and/or sexists, and homophobic, etc}.

However, in my view, that is far different than being nostalgic about those examples. Imo, discussing these examples from folkloric perspectives is also far different than failing to realize the real and pervasive harm these songs, and that kind of literature, and those images did and still can do to the psyches of individuals-both those depicted and/or described disparagingly and those who are depicted and described as superior to them.

If we want a better world for our children and our children's children free of racism and sexism and other negative isms, than it seems to me that we have to do more than identify and eradicate   the root causes of racism. We also have to be alert to and treat gingerly-while we collect, and document,and analyze and discuss, those examples of racism in our cultures.

In my opinion, "Tintin of the Congo}, like "Little Black Sambo," could-and perhaps should-be used as a educational resource for older youth and adults to demonstrate the destructive nature of children's literature.

Should children and older youth and adults read it for enjoyment's sake? I certainly hope not.