Sorry.
There are no books on China, but depictions in some of his work. I was just trying to point out the reasons why that might have been so.
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Oh, they already fucking are, and blaming it all on Biden. The Daily Fail in the UK already had two hit pieces out about it.
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If they’re doing it because they’re good people who genuinely want to do better than inthe past, then no.
If they’re doing it pre-emptively because they anticipate a future PR disaster if they don’t, then plausibly yes. Censorship has a chilling effect on supposedly voluntary speech choices, and this is not a new observation, as I’m sure you know.
I have no idea how those forces balance out here, I’m just going to hope it’s the former until someone shows me otherwise. It’s a good outcome in this case regardless.
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They did this with Richard Scarry books. 8 changes that were made to a classic Richard Scarry book to keep up with the times. Progress! - Upworthy Not necessarily humans since most of his characters were animals* but mainly for gender equality.
*So, there are pigs in Scarry’s books walking around, driving, working. Generally being part of the Scarry-society. But then, on the supermarket pages there will be bacon and sausages for sale! What?! There’s milk and cheese for sale too but there aren’t any anthro-cows in his books (the ones I’ve seen anyway).
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I would guess that Geisel himself would probably approve. But then I practically worship the guy-- Sneetches made me pretty much a Warrior for Social Justice even before I could read really.
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Like all humans, he was a flawed person who made mistakes and had major blind spots, but I think there’s good evidence that he did at least try to learn and improve himself over time.
One thing I found interesting was that at the exact same time he was demonizing Japanese Americans and portraying them as disloyal saboteurs he was also pushing hard for equal employment opportunities for black folks and railing against the isolationist and racist “America First” crowd, which was fairly brave and controversial. People can be complicated.
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I think that expression has always been considered pejorative . I grew up in B.C. where a lot of Chinese who worked on the CPR lived…it was an expression used by a lot of older people when I was young, i.e. the 1960s. It may well be that “Dr. Seuss” was not aware of the connotation, though; there were some people when informed it was an offensive expression seemed surprised, thinking it was an acceptable alternate term for Chinese. By this time of course most local people of Chinese descent were born or naturalized Canadian. Those sandals, though; are they found in Chinese culture, thought they were Japanese
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I’m Asian, and literally have a copy of this book. It’s pretty bad, but instead of removing a title for an incidental bit of background racism, I’d like to see them preserved (like older looney tunes cartoons) with a notation that they’re products of their time, and explaining the issue.
Parents that don’t want to have discussions with their kids can avoid the books, and those that do can use them as a starting point for discussions with their kids.
Let’s not forget that Dr. Seuss was heavily into creating WWII propaganda images that were definitely not very racially sensitive…
This was one of the fun ones that drummed up support for having my family put into an internment camp…
He definitely was a product of his times. His work reflects that. Do we remove everything (even by self censorship) that we grow beyond, or do we document it for future use as a learning example?
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Too late, they’ve been at it since 4:00 in the morning.
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I’d argue that that is not what is happening with the books in question, though. They are not finding all copies and burning them so that no one can read them again. That’s conflating actual censorship and attempts at erasing something to what’s actually happening here, that the estate made the choice to let the books drop out of publication. They had made a decision to not print new editions, something that Geisel himself would have been on board with most likely, as he expressed regret on some of the racist ways in which he depicted Asians.
They talked about this today on ATC and one of the people they discussed these books with was a scholar of children’s lit and she made just that point. He even edited books later on to try and make them a bit less racist. And of course, these books will still be found in libraries, archival collections, and in homes all across the country.
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Conversations to be had very early… and not when it’s way too late.
Dead on. That part ruins the entire film for me, which was otherwise amazing. Every time Rooney is on the screen, I just keep asking WHY WHY WHY.
OTOH, I love the Kung Fu sequence in The Ping Panther Strikes Again (I think). One of my favs. Is it racially sensitive? I have no idea.
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I dunno, it’s not like these books are being expunged from our libraries and archives, they just won’t be printing new copies anymore. That’s the ultimate fate of all books, and these stayed in print for generations longer than most.
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That’s why I used the example of the looney tunes cartoons. They’re not essentially expunging them from existence by stopping production/re-sale (while maintaining copyright), they’re still included in the collections, but with a educational bit up front noting that they’re racist, and a product of the time they came from.
It could be argued then that they’re still profiting from racism, but I’d argue that the bigger service is done by preserving the example (while calling attention to the negative).
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Yeah but preschoolers/early readers are less likely to be ready to have a meaningful discussion about harmful racial/ethnic stereotypes. I didn’t watch those old Looney Tunes cartoons with my kids until they were well past the age most kids are introduced to Seuss.
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This is a good case on why we need a stronger public domain. Yes they are racist, but that’s because the past was more racist. These works are still in copyright, so stopping their publication does amount to censorship. Censorship for fairly good reasons, but still censorship none the less.
If we had a functioning public domain this would be such a non issue. Publishers could continue to publish what they think are best of Dr. Susses’ work and the less savory aspects could still be accessible with out the threat of massive lawsuits of a large publisher trying to protect a wholesome image of a flawed man.
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Can’t whover holds the copyright go to some other publisher?
And can’t whoever wants to read the racist books get them from a library?
In case you haven’t noticed… the PRESENT is racist, in part because we never dealt with racism in the past (of which this is an example of that racism being allowed to persist). And I promise you that whenever racist stuff came out in the past, there were people at the time, talking about it, publicly and trying to show why it was racist, hurtful, and wrong. Racist tropes persist when white people refuse to understand that it’s a racist trope, even when being told time and again that it’s hurtful.
But as far as these things being addressed at the time, they almost always were. It’s just that we’ve been told in our history classes that “they just didn’t know better” which is a load of utter bullshit almost always. When Birth of a Nation came out for example, there were robust protests about the film that invigorated the antiracist movement. The NAACP was formed in direct response to that film. The director even apologized and tried to make a film addressing intolerance in society.
Again, no one is rounding up all copies of this book and burning them. They are available widely still.
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It’s my understanding that the copyright holders were the ones who chose to cease publishing those books. The decision was made by Dr. Seuss Enterprises, not Random House.
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