The British are afraid that Tintin in the Congo will offend black readers, and has deemed the comic book unsuitable for children. The full article by the UK Telegraph is here: Tintin banned from children’s shelves over ‘racism’ fears
The first four paragraphs from the article:
The Campaign for Real Education has condemned his publishers as “over the top” for deciding to package one of his early adventures, Tintin in the Congo, in shrink-wrap and with a warning about its content.
Its criticism comes within weeks of the worldwide release of Steven Spielberg’s new film about the boy reporter and his dog Snowy.
George Remi, the Belgian artist better known as Herge, first published his tale of derring-do in Africa in 1930. When he re-worked it in 1946 he removed several references to the Congo being a Belgian colony.
But the book still contained a number of images that were perceived as racist. One of these showed a black woman bowing to Tintin and saying `White man very great…White mister is big juju man`.
Amazon.com is also worried about offending English-speaking readers. They blurred the cover image of Tintin in the Congo (they also made it difficult to copy):
Amazon is not worried about offending the French-speaking customers:
Click on the images to see the images on Amazon.
Americans did not read Tintin comics. I read the books as a child on summer vacations in India. I also read Asterix in India.
The Congo region of Africa over the past two decades is the world’s deadliest war zone. Mass rapes are used as weapons, children are kidnapped and forced into militias, rampant disease and violence have killed five million people.
This is funny. Yesterday (11 Nov 2011): The Vancouver Sun is worried about the elephants.
A disclaimer on a comic book will save the people, and the elephants.
Epiales 
A short disclaimer, explaining the…….here it comes…..watch for it………CONTEXT!!!…of the raciality of the piece, would work wonders.
Nice blog, m’boy!
Context: The book portrays the people of the Congo as primitive simpletons. I agree that the depiction is insulting, but that was considered funny in 1930 – especially to the Belgian colonial masters.
I think the Brits are just getting too sensitive about everything.
Thank you for visiting!
Things are much better in the Congo now.
I hope the Congo remains peaceful. I want to visit someday. I have an old hardcover Congo guidebook, written in the days of Belgian rule. As a practical guide, the book is useless now. I’ll have to download the Congo guidebook on my iPhone, through the Lonely Planet app.