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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   2895 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 12, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

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If the U.S. puts a woman on some paper money, who should it be? I would vote for Laura Ingalls Wilder.

@hydroacetylene suggested Bessie Coleman, which prompted some "literally who" responses. I never heard of her myself. Looking her up, I'm assuming she's a Texas regional thing, like Juneteenth. Of course, like Juneteenth, the feds could be happy to use a Texas regional thing nationwide if it pleases the correct demographics.

@sarker suggested Louisa May Alcott.

@erwgv3g34 suggested Amelia Earhart.

Ayn Rand would be funny but not a realistic one.

I would vote for Laura Ingalls Wilder.

She was canceled a while ago.

NPR:

A division of the American Library Association voted unanimously Saturday to strip Laura Ingalls Wilder's name from a major children's literature award over concerns about how the author referred to Native Americans and blacks.

In 1935's Little House on the Prairie, for example, Wilder described one setting as a place where "there were no people. Only Indians lived there." That description was changed in later editions of the book. And multiple characters in the Little House series intone that "the only good Indian is a dead Indian."

National Review:

Most news stories covering the travesty of renaming the Wilder medal have cited the earliest known objection to Wilder’s representation of the Kansas landscape in Little House on the Prairie (1935) as empty of people. “There the wild animals wandered and fed as though they were in a pasture that stretched much farther than a man could see, and there were no settlers. Only Indians lived there.” Until 1953, the text read, “there were no people. Only Indians lived there.” A reader complained in 1952 to Nordstrom. Her response to the reader clearly reflected her horrified shock at the realization of how the passage read. “I must admit to you that no one here realized that these words read as they did. Reading them now it seems unbelievable to me that you are the only person who has picked them up and written us about them in the twenty years since the book was published.” The letter emphasized the response of everyone at Harpers & Row: “We were disturbed by your letter. We knew that Mrs. Wilder had not meant to imply that Indians were not people.” Indeed, Wilder responded just as Nordstrom predicted. “Your letter came this morning,” Wilder wrote on October 4, 1952. “You are perfectly right about the fault in Little House on the Prairie and have my permission to make the correction as you suggest. It was a stupid blunder of mine. Of course Indians are people and I did not intend to imply they were not.”

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