# County school board in Virginia expands "read across America" day beyond Dr. Seuss, to improve racial diversity (title updated) **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [March 1, 2021, 12:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/county-school-board-in-virginia-expands-read-across-america-day-beyond-dr-seuss-to-improve-racial-diversity-title-updated/933988 "2021-03-01T00:30:16Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2021, 9:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/county-school-board-in-virginia-expands-read-across-america-day-beyond-dr-seuss-to-improve-racial-diversity-title-updated/933988/41 "2021-03-03T21:56:30Z")
> [@needscoffee](#): > > > [@Dr\_Paprika](#): > > > > I’d be happier if the books were edited, in this specific case, to remove unpleasant stereotypes. > > This would be my preference, too. > > NYTimes says that in 1970’s editions of “And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street”, _a Chinaman_ was changed to _a Chinese man_. Agreed. I rather liked “And to think that I saw it on Mulberry Street”, and my understanding is that you wouldn’t need to remove very much of it. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2021, 9:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/county-school-board-in-virginia-expands-read-across-america-day-beyond-dr-seuss-to-improve-racial-diversity-title-updated/933988/42 "2021-03-03T21:59:08Z")
Oh, and “On Beyond Zebra”! That wasn’t one I read as a kid, but a lot of people I know found it inspirational, in a “you can think outside the box” way. ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2021, 11:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/county-school-board-in-virginia-expands-read-across-america-day-beyond-dr-seuss-to-improve-racial-diversity-title-updated/933988/43 "2021-03-04T23:56:36Z")
> [@Dr\_Paprika](#): > > One might make similar claims about Asterix or Tintin. Hugh Lofting’s original Dr. Dolittle had some problematic sections. Set partly in Africa, the n-word appears at least twice, one of them used by Prince Bumpo to describe himself. The scenario also includes “cultural contamination”: Bumpo has been reading White Man’s children’s fairy tales like Snow White and Sleeping Beauty, and his notion of feminine beauty is a White woman. I assume that subsequent editions of the story have been somewhat sanitized. Walt Kelly, in mid-1960’s or so, had a story arc in which one of the characters re-tells a Kelleyesque version of Little Black Sambo. But first, the characters argue over what could be a non-controversial color to make him instead of Black. They finally settle on Little Plaid Sambo. In the ensuing telling of the story, he is drawn that way too. ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2021, 5:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/county-school-board-in-virginia-expands-read-across-america-day-beyond-dr-seuss-to-improve-racial-diversity-title-updated/933988/44 "2021-03-07T05:24:36Z")
Just wait until they dig up his littlest-known work: _One Wife, Two Wife, Dead Wife, New Wife_. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2021, 4:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/county-school-board-in-virginia-expands-read-across-america-day-beyond-dr-seuss-to-improve-racial-diversity-title-updated/933988/45 "2021-03-07T16:04:55Z")
> [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](#): > > I have several reprint anthologies of Wil Eisner’s _The Spirit_ comic strip from the 1940s with an extremely stereotyped physical depiction of the hero’s black sidekick, Ebony White. There is nothing racist about the character’s personality or habits, and it would have been a shame to lose those stories to the trash heap of History because of the way that character was drawn True. I wouldn’t give them to a pre-schooler, though. They might be really useful in a high school class, as an example of how even people who are trying not to be racist can do racist things. > [@needscoffee](#): > > NYTimes says that in 1970’s editions of “And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street”, _a Chinaman_ was changed to _a Chinese man_ Which doesn’t fix the problem; which is that the mere existence of a person from China on the street is shown as an oddity, somebody that shouldn’t really be there. ---
**Author:** ![needscoffee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/needscoffee/32/1076_2.png) [@needscoffee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/needscoffee)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2021, 5:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/county-school-board-in-virginia-expands-read-across-america-day-beyond-dr-seuss-to-improve-racial-diversity-title-updated/933988/46 "2021-03-07T17:00:46Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > Which doesn’t fix the problem; which is that the mere existence of a person from China on the street is shown as an oddity, somebody that shouldn’t really be there. Oh, for sure. Just pointing out that there’s already a precedent for changing the material as our standards and sensibilities evolve. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/county-school-board-in-virginia-expands-read-across-america-day-beyond-dr-seuss-to-improve-racial-diversity-title-updated/933988.md?page=2)