Spoilers

[cathouse willy]

Spoilers,cancel culture activists. I hate the fact that they share the progressive side of politics with me.A Cbc story.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/entertainment/dr-seuss-books-publication-racist-images-1.5933033




and an opinion ed from Newsweek.


https://www.newsweek.com/dont-scoff-push-cancel-dr-seuss-opinion-1573255



Are they dangerous? I think so..

[sonofswen]

51I-CVd8g0L.jpgwhat about this one?

[David W Pratt]

I must be an unredeemable racist. I've read all of those and missed the racism. None of the news items I've read has provided an example, but I am still looking.

[cathouse willy]

I haven't been able to find an example of this racist travesty.I think it only exists in little minds.I'm hoping that someone who is able digitizes the "banned books" and puts them on the web for any who want it.A better approach to education would be to point out the flaws and discuss them with your kids while you're reading it to them.You get zero results by burning a wonderful book for spite.

[CWSmith]

None of the bedtime stories my grandmother read me are PC. No harm was meant. Our people really are too sensitive and I could catch hell just for saying that.

[sonofswen]

[QUOTE=sonofswen;6401828]51I-CVd8g0L.jpgI read that this is the adult only version....

[Sailor]

I see the racism in some of the drawings. Mulberry street for sure has some images that caricaturise the Chinese. But are we really going to cancel history because we have moved on from it? how are we to remember our mistakes if we simply cancel them?

[Old Dryfoot]

These are a few bits I pulled from If I Ran the Zoo.

"With helpers who all wear their eyes at a slant" <-- A Reference to Chinese people accompanied by a none to flattering picture.

"This is the beast that the brave Chieftains ride
When they want to go fast and find some place to hide.
A Mulligatawny is fine for my zoo
And so is a Chieftain. I'll bring one back, too." <-- Chieftains would seem to refer to someone of ME heritage if the picture for this passage is any indicator. Putting one in a cage might be a less than ideal subject for a children's book.

I can imagine a situation where a classroom full of young children pick up on the "eyes at a slant" line and look at the Asian kids in the room. Similarly, what about the kids that think putting the kid from the ME, a "Chieftain," into a cage is a good idea because that's what Seuss wrote?
Just pointing out examples.

[Old Dryfoot]

I can't imagine that a copy of Huckleberry Finn would be found in a classroom with Jim's full name as recounted by Twain.

[Tom from Rubicon]

I guess I better start buying up a part of my formative years before they are burned.
Tom

[David W Pratt]

Scrambled Eggs Super has always had a place in my heart, it was the first book I read, end to end, without help. Despite that, I have not taken it at face value. Even at six years old, I knew it was imaginary; I suspect all children do.
It strikes me that causing the cessation of publication is on a continuum with burning the existing copies.
A mor constructive response would be to write better books.

[Tom from Rubicon]

There was a little girl who had a honest lack of trust of adults. Came by it honestly and suspicious of adults. She must have been 8.
Been awhile, but I was telling her there were chickens that layed green eggs.
And the little darling gave me the stink eye.
So I brought out a egg box and opened it up to show her.
They were green, azure, maybe even aquamarine colored eggs layed by a Araucana.
Things changed right then.
There on she attached/bonded to me.
Tom

[Jimmy W]

Dr. Seuss Is Not Cancelled, It's Just Time To Retire Books With Racist Imagery

[skuthorp]

I was brought up with the Brothers Grimm, the old unbowlderised stories and Strewwelpeter

Quite violent all of them and definitely non PC.

[ShorelineJohn]

Anybody seen his world war II work? It is disgusting!
I know racism was fine then.

[Ian McColgin]

If parents and teachers were all aware of the subtleties of racism in America, then they could both pick more inclusive books - and there are many brilliant children's books now being written by minority men and women which they should be picking anyway - and could defang such racism as crops up in the likes of Seuss. And by the time they are old enough to read a version of Huck Finn that's not bowdlerized, they will see both the culture of the time and the message of liberation.

I am against both censorship and against what we might call passive racism that just gets passed along without responsible thought.

[Keith Wilson]

Sorry guys, this qualifies for DSE. If I tried to come up with a way of attacking racism that would be more likely to do more harm than good than trying to censor Dr Seuss, I doubt I could. Fer chrissake, change the picture if you don't like it.

[pandelume]

From the OP's first link:

Six Dr. Seuss books — including "And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street" and "If I Ran the Zoo" — will stop being published because of racist and insensitive imagery, the business that preserves and protects the author's legacy said Tuesday.

From the OP's second link:

Cancel culture activists have come for Dr. Seuss, who they deem a racist despite the fact that his books were undoubtedly woke for their time. It shouldn't be dismissed as yet another silly instance of fringe activists overreacting. It's part of a coordinated campaign to indoctrinate children to take on progressive causes.

One of these things is not like the other.

But really, those who wish to read racist or otherwise offensive stories to their children or grandchildren are welcome to do so. It's hardly "canceling" for schools and organizations that promote early reading to remove such material from their programs. It's hardly "canceling" for a private company (Dr. Seuss Enterprises, a division of Penguin books) to determine that they shouldn't publish racist material aimed at 6-year-olds. The times have changed, and Dr. Seuss's oeuvre is either curated to respond to those changes or it will perish.

Considered another way, this isn't about you or what you experienced as a child; it's about what children experience tomorrow and whether the racist attitudes of the past - however unconscious or innocently portrayed - should be part of that experience.

[Nicholas Carey]

I can't imagine that a copy of Huckleberry Finn would be found in a classroom with Jim's full name as recounted by Twain.

No... that's a teaching moment. Here's a teaching guide to Huckleberry Finn.

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/cultureshoc...uck/index.html

Twain was quite intentional both with his use of dialect and of the "N-word". One of the themes in Huckleberry Finn is racism and slavery, and about growth.

Bowdlerize Huckleberry Finn and you strip its meaning.

[sonofswen]

"Fer chrissake, change the picture if you don't like it."

[Hugh Conway]

1) The Group managing the Seuss estate decides to stop publishing 6 books because of offensive images*
2) The moron horde gets worked up over cancel culture
3) The moron horde makes 33 of the 50 best selling books on Amazon Dr Seuss

Genius marketing on the Seuss estate part.

*changing the images is more cancelling than not republishing, peeps.

[Keith Wilson]

Changing the images is more cancelling than not republishing, peeps.

I disagree. My understanding is that it was one or two pictures in each of the books which were unexceptionable at the time, but look pretty gross now. Here's one. It would not be hard to change it. OTOH, It's hardly a big deal either way; they're fairly minor books. And given his drawing style, the pictures of people who aren't stereotyped 'African savages' are hardly less distorted.




I do find it rather bizarre that he's suddenly become a darling of the 'moron horde'. I can only imagine what Mr Geisel would say about Donald Trump. He was not a fan of that kind of thing.

Here's another, which leaves me a bit mystified as to the objections. The characters here are sort of stereotypical Inuit wearing furs, but fer chrissake, they're sailing an open boat in arctic seas. They're also portrayed as brave, intrepid, and competent.



And another. I presume the objection is to the 'Chinese man who eats with sticks'? News flash - folks in China really do eat with sticks, although that may have seemed much more exotic at the time than it does now. And his outfit is no more of a caricature of some old-timey Chinese clothes than the band uniforms or the top hats and tails of western formal dress, or the guy with the turban on the elephant. But again, it would be easy to change.

[Hugh Conway]

Nothing says privileged old white dude like “don’t get offended”

[Keith Wilson]

Nothing says obnoxious counterproductive self-righteous wokeness like referring to someone, even accurately, as 'privileged old white dude'. And you may note, I never said “don’t get offended”. You can get as offended as you like, as far as I'm concerned; knock yourself out.

[J.Madison]

I think you would get the exact same manufactured outrage by changing the images to be less problematic as you get by stopping publishing new copies.

Look to Mr Potato head to see that result....

The people who are so concerned are not people who actually read these specific Dr Suess books so regularly as to need to be able to buy them new at all times. Its just part of the culture war to them, outrage that a private company would try to make elementary kids of varied backgrounds feel welcome and comfortable in their classrooms.

[Keith Wilson]

FWIW, 'Mulberry Street' was published in 1937. The 'Chinese man who eats with sticks' was originally a "Chinaman", colored yellow, with a pigtail. Geisel himself changed it in 1978, because he thought it was offensive.

In 1978, Dr. Seuss author Theodor S. Geisel had altered the Chinese character in question for later editions of the book. His revised version appears in the museum mural. "I had a gentleman with a pigtail. I colored him yellow and called him a 'Chinaman.' That's the way things were 50 years ago," the late author once said. "In later editions, I refer to him as a 'Chinese man.' I have taken the color out of the gentleman and removed the pigtail and now he looks like an Irishman."

(Source)

Of course the crazed right doesn't really give a damn about Dr Seuss; they just want another thing to get outraged over, another symbolic example of how those dreadful liberals are destroying the America all good Christian white folks know and loved in 1960.

[Ian McColgin]

What the racist right Republicans ignore is that Dr. Seuss was a liberal Democrat. Very much a creature of his times, he also grew with them. Witness the strident anti-Japanese racism of his WWII work in contrast to how "Horton Hears a Who!" (1954) is a deft allegory of our occupation of Japan. He confronted his racism and were he alive now I am certain he'd still be modifying his art and story lines.

I did not do much Dr. Seuss as my relationship to language was much influenced by as an infant listening to Mom and Dad read great literature, most notably Shakespeare and the AV Bible, to each other to help Dad finish college. But my younger brother very much benefitted from Seuss's captivating meters and rhymes. Also, where unfair stereotypes cropped up, Mom carefully contextualized things so that Robin did not take a biased understanding. She did the same some years later when at ages eleven and twelve I was reading "Huck Finn". About that age is when Grandmother gave me a copy of "Winnie Ille Pu" to celebrate my taking Latin.

Parents and teachers really can make the difference if they are conscious of their own issues with racism. And artists and writers can grow as they sometimes modify their creations. Nothing wrong with human growth.