I have to admit that The Horse and His Boy bothered me when I was a kid. I couldn't articulate it then, but now I see that what was bothering me was similar to what was bothering this commentator. Even as a child, I felt a little bit uncomfortable with the idea that you could tell who was a bad person just by looking at them. I understand that it's hard to be a white guy in England in the 50s, and end up without a white supremacist outlook, but maybe we need to encourage children to read a wide range, so that they aren't as harmed by this outlook.

I think the problem with white supremacy and patriarchy is not so much the expression of those views in themselves, but the fact that they are taken as the only point of view. I read many of the so called classics of literature, such as Narnia and Lord of the Rings when I was a child, I also read many other books with conflicting views of who was a hero, and who was a sidekick, of who was good, and who was evil.

There were princesses who teamed up with dragons, brave female knights, Native American girls who survived off the land, and many many black boys and girls fighting anything from slavery and apartheid to school bullies. The diversity of the view points shielded me from several poisonous ideas. One was the idea that black folks are stupid. The literary excursions of my childhood had prepared me for Ralph Ellison, Audre Lorde, and Richard Wright. Ideas like feminism and black pride were conveyed to me inside their words. Another idea that the variety of literature I read protected me from was the idea that there's only one way to tell a story. Instead of that's the way it is, I thought "Hey, it doesn't have to be this way"

And that made all the difference.