Farbenblindes Bilderbuch? Eine rassismuskritische Perspektive auf ein vielfältiges Medium

Abstract

Regarding both content and form, the picturebook constitutes a diverse medium in which representations of cultural and racial diversity have become a common topic. While themes such as flight and migration are frequently negotiated in versatile and nuanced ways, multiculturalism and intercultural exchange are often celebrated as a social asset under the ideological premise of colorblindness. Moreover, recently, efforts can be observed to counteract the exoticization of cultural and racial diversity by naturalizing it as the norm(ality). In contrast, picturebooks that discuss children’s experiences of racial discrimination, the sociopolitical mechanisms of racism and its ideological underpinnings are scarce. On the basis of selected examples, this paper discusses the different concepts of diversity underlying contemporary picturebooks in German language or translation and investigates how they move between the poles of (idealized) diversity, (normalized) difference and (critically reflected) discrimination.