If you want to use a different definition for “racist” than most people, then have it. But it makes for a pretty weak-ass argument.
Those books are inappropriate for their primary intended audience today. These books are entertainment for children. They’re also meant to help children learn by making learning fun through they’re entertaining content. Since they’re no longer appropriate for that purpose there is very little purpose for them now. There are plenty of copies in existence to satisfy collectors and historians.
If I owned that company I’d stop publishing those books also.
Sure, and you can have racist intent without actually being a racist as well. Seuss had the intention of dehumanizing other American citizens based on race.
Seuss didn’t accidently draw something that looked like Japanese caricatures as alley cats. He intended to do so. By your logic, it was racist.
one more time - it’s not the publisher that is ceasing publishing; it’s the author’s estate.
It’s entirely possible for somebody to be racist at some points in their life and/or against some groups, and to be anti-racist at other points in their life and/or about other groups.
Being a racist isn’t some sort of inherent characteristic that one either is permanently, inescapably, and entirely fouled with, or is entirely and permanently free from and can’t possibly have ever had any taint of.
One of my high school friends, a person of color herself, often shares posts from other PoCs on these types of topics. Here’s the post she shared about this one:
Picture this: you’re the only little Asian kindergartener in a class of white kids, sitting on the rug for story time. And to Think I Saw it on Mulberry Street is the book. When they get to the part about “a Chinaman who eats with sticks”, all the little white kids look at you and say stuff like, “YOU’RE a China person!” and “That’s what your dad looks like?” followed by mean laughing. Cue the pulling of the outer corners of their eyes, so they can pretend to be Asian. And in the meantime, you just sit there, knowing that you’re not Chinese, and wondering why they’re calling you Chinese as if it’s a bad thing. And also, picturing your handsome, Caucasian dad, wishing the other kids weren’t making fun of him, thinking he looked like some goofy caricature.
If you can’t imagine what that’s like, I can tell you. Your face gets hot and you’re embarrassed because everyone is laughing at you and you’re trying not to cry, but you’re the only one who is different, so then you think maybe there is something wrong and laughable about being different. And no one listens to you try to explain about where you’re actually from and what your dad actually looks like. And the tears slip out. And the kids don’t care that you’re sad. Now they’re laughing because you’re crying. It feels bad. And then you go home and cry in your mom’s lap. And then she feels bad.
This is why it matters that there are pictures in books that depict different races in negative or stereotypical ways. Kids of all races deserve to be depicted in ways that make them feel proud of who they are, not in ways that mock their differences.
The pulling of the Seuss books isn’t ‘cancel culture’. It’s evolution. […]
The sad little Asian girl inside me is really grateful to those who understand.
Even little kids can tell that the caricatures are done in a way that looks “funny.” They get the underlying message, even while some adults try to argue it’s not really there.
Since none of those kids had racist intent, none of their actions were racist . . . or so I’ve been told.
No, but they were hurtful and mean. And they meant to be mean.
That’s an accident, not an act. Actually, it makes no sense, but I assume you messed up some formatting or something.
Let’s try a different example. Someone beats their wife with the intent of teaching them the proper way to fold the towels. Their intent isn’t evil, but is their action?
They didn’t intend to be hurtful and mean, so they couldn’t have been. Why do you say that they meant to be mean? They were just joking around with their friend.
Well to be fair that child was probably Vietnamese or Korean and the spawn of horrible war criminals that attacked us, and wanted to end American and democracy. Ya know, a subhuman.
My apologies. If I was that author’s estate I would not allow the books to be published any more.
Do they have hugely exaggerated lips? I interpret the tiny slits to be their whole mouth/lip representation and the white rings to be huge nose rings.
I think you’re right about the nose rings in the If I Ran The Zoo picture, but consider the earlier “woodpile” cartoon (sans topknot but definitely with exaggerated lips).
Dr. Seuss Enterprises made the decision not to publish the books. That’s not the equivalent of calling them the “publisher” which I believe is Random House. No one thinks Random House is at all involved in this decision just because they used the word “publishing”.
You and Gyrate are right that the huge nose rings are definitely there, but they are surrounding the round white area that represents the exaggerated lips (with the actual mouth opening represented by the little horizontal line in the center).
Compare the mouth depiction in this early book cover of Little Black Sambo, for instance.
Dr. Seuss Enterprises is a division of the publishing firm Random House Children’s Books/Penguin Random House.
Eh, I’m holding my copy of Zoo now, and the lips are not remotely as clear as the Sambo picture. Half the face is “white area” too. But seriously, given everything else horrifying about that portrayal of Africans it’s not worth quibbling about that particular detail.
Okay. So. You are arguing for the shifting standard. A person who merely absorbed, represented, and reflected the generally accepted standard of his time is simply an average person, and his moral fabric cannot be compared to or judged by the modern standard. Yes? At the time Seuss drew those images, they mirrored the conventions of his time and would have been seen as perfectly normal and ordinary. From our current perspective, we see that past convention as grotesquely racist, but your argument is that because his work fits comfortably within that convention, it must be judged as non-racist in that historical context. Essentially, that was the way it was done, and nobody knew any better, so there is no sin. Do I understand you correctly?
Maybe the feminists will come after “Go Dog Go” next?
This is one of my all time favorite humor pieces, and I think it just close enough to being on-topic that I’m going to post it.