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Purple Lives Matter? Kristen Bell children’s book preaching tolerance savaged for ‘colorblindness’ & ignoring real racism

12-6-2020 < RT 69 325 words
 

American actress Kristen Bell’s debut into the world of children’s literature has gotten off to a rocky start, with her story about a “purple person” widely condemned for trivializing racism – despite having nothing to do with it.


Bell says her first children’s story – ‘The World Needs More Purple People’ – is meant to encourage kids to “look for similarities before differences” and to be inquisitive and open minded toward different viewpoints. Taking ‘purple’ to be a thinly veiled reference to skin color, however, netizens soon came out in force to denounce the story for brushing racism under the rug, and Bell herself as a “privileged white woman” ignoring the plight of real people of color.








Though the story itself makes no reference to race, containing no discussion of skin color and no purple-skinned characters, critics overwhelmingly interpreted the book as a tone-deaf lesson on ‘colorblindness’ – apparently not having read it.



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