Giving Mother Goose the boot!

By Laila Muhammad | Last updated: Sep 27, 2013 - 12:02:51 PM

“There isn’t an adult walking around today that hasn’t been psychologically devastated by them.”
Author Bauvard, speaking on nursery rhymes in his book The Price Of Plungers

My kindergärtner came home from school the other day and had a book report to do. She goes to her bookshelf and picks out a book titled “The Ebony Duckling” retold by Fred Crump Jr., an alternative to the literary fairy tale by Danish poet and author Hans Christian Andersen “The Ugly Duckling.”

The next day she asked me who was Mother Goose? I told her Mother Goose was a fictional character and an imaginary author of fairy tales and nursery rhymes. That got me to thinking on my childhood and nursery rhymes. I recalled a message Student Minister Nuri Muhammad delivered at Mosque Maryam where he broke down the hidden meanings and below the threshold of common perceptions of such rhymes.

Fairy tales are supposed to teach children morals, and lessons on fairness and doing good to others, right? Well until the creation of Princess Tiana, the very first Black princess by Disney, I don’t recall ever seeing anyone who looked like me in these stories. Dora the Explorer, fairly new to the scene, gave our Hispanic children someone to relate to. But look who created these characters.

Don’t we need to create and tell our own stories? Some might say color shouldn’t matter when it comes to children, dolls, and fairy tales. Well it shouldn’t matter that I choose for my daughter to play with Black dolls and read stories about people who look like her. So Doc McStuffins is one of the very few dolls in her repertoire.

Mother Goose is sweeping up your firstborn from the cradle. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for nursery rhymes and parables. Jesus taught in parables, which are simply short allegorical stories designed to illustrate or teach some truth, religious principle, or moral lesson. Allegory is a statement or comment that conveys a meaning indirectly by the use of comparison or analogy. I just want us to be conscious and aware of what we are feeding our children mentally.

I haven’t read a Mother Goose story in years, but after coming into consciousness, I realized that the subliminal messages fed to us as babies and children are overwhelming. Then when that child matures, using word association—which is defined as a person thinking of the first word that comes into consciousness on hearing a given word—his mind begins to group what he heard as a child with what is actual, present and real today.

An extensive survey by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life concluded 78.4 percent of Americans identify themselves as Christians. A majority of us grew up in Christian churches, be it Baptist, Methodist, Episcopalian, or other. We believed that Jesus was the son of God, and we believed in the Trinity. As a child listens to fairy tales and nursery rhymes, we paint pictures or tell stories so children can gain understanding. Let’s use age-old “Mary had a little lamb” as an example.

Mary (the mother of Jesus) had a little lamb (we refer to Jesus as the lamb of God), who’s fleece was white as snow (now we associate a lamb’s wool being white, with Jesus’ skin being white, with the picture of White Jesus sitting on our parents mantels, with baby Jesus in the manger during Christmas Nativity plays).

If we closed our eyes right now, and someone said “Jesus,” what image would pop up in our mind? asked Nuri Muhammad.

Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Little Red Riding Hood, and countless other fairy tales, if sifted will reveal nothing but White superiority and Black inferiority. It’s no question or surprise why the Honorable Elijah Muhammad teaches us to get out of reading the devil’s bedtime stories to our children. These stories teach our children to love their oppressors more than themselves. So my daughter will not be waiting on a Prince Charming to come rescue her and all she has to do is be pretty and assimilate into White society.

To hell with Mother Goose. The only time she’s allowed in my house is when she can have a center place at my dinner table (wink).

(Laila Muhammad is a writer, videographer and Final Call production assistant. Follow her on Twitter @lailamuhammad1)

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