Strong Points
The first aspect that should be considered as part of the analysis of the book “The World Needs More Purple People” is illustrations. By its title, the whole book is written in purple tones, and it does not contain common harmful stereotypes regarding the race of individuals. Regarding the storyline and the relationships between people, this work pays much attention to building equal treatment for everyone. This aspect concerns racial, cultural, and personal characteristics. The issue may be caused by the fact that the “doer’s role” is performed by a single character (Derman-Sparks, 2013).
The following important part of the analysis is studying how the book presents messages about different lifestyles. It is worth noting that because this work is not a narrative of a specific story, it lacks negative judgments about the lives of people who differ from the dominant culture (Derman-Sparks, 2013). This aspect is reasonably tolerant in the book under study.
Among the positive aspects, the fact that the book does not have Loaded Words that could harm young readers can also be highlighted. In addition, it has a high Appeal for the target audience due to the colorfulness and low amount of text. The author of the book is Kristen Bell, an American actress and producer. She is an activist for achieving high-quality knowledge for children regarding equality in society regardless of race or culture. The copyright year of “The World Needs More Purple People” is 2020.
Drawbacks
One of the book’s problematic characteristics is the underlying issues of colorblind racism and blind spot bias. Thus, the goal of becoming “purple” can strongly affect Children’s Self- and Social Identities. This aspect may occur because the book places a big emphasis on equalizing people among themselves, not paying attention to their unique features. In addition, the book shows that this problem should include children and adults in implementing changes, but this idea is not quite comparable with modern agendas regarding diversity and inclusion.
Therefore, it can be concluded that this book does not show the importance of cultural values of representatives of different races and nations. In addition, there is a low degree of representation of surface and deep culture. To create more relevant learning experiences for all students, this work was evaluated using specially highlighted guidelines regarding bias. The analysis showed that there are severe threats to children’s self-identity and colorblind racism in the book.
Cultural Competence
This text does not fall into the cultural competence continuum for children studying at school. This conclusion was facilitated by the allocation of such issues as colorblindness and blindspot bias, which are shown through the importance of all children being the same rather than equal, with the consideration of unique features. Research indicated that “while the book features children of various ethnic and racial backgrounds, the goal of the visibly Caucasian protagonist is to neutralize all children” (Pagan, N.D., para. 2).
This text showed that I can identify bias in a particular material and compare it with my ideas about the correctness of the information. To competently and respectfully address student performance issues related to individual and cultural differences, it is necessary to develop cultural competence (Pryakhina et al., 2021). This aspect implies spreading awareness about racial, cultural, and traditional differences between children and providing an understanding of the importance of respecting these characteristics.
References
Derman-Sparks, L. (2013). Guide for selecting anti-bias children’s books. Teaching for Change. Web.
Pagan, P. (n.d.). The world needs more purple people. Social Justice Books. Web.
Pryakhina, A. V., Saveleva, I. U., & Kamalitdinova, E. I. (2021). Educational communication as a tool to forming general cultural competencies of students. In 2021 Communication Strategies in Digital Society Seminar (ComSDS) (pp. 101-103). IEEE.