The company that preserves Dr. Seuss’ legacy announced on Tuesday that six of the legendary author’s children’s books will no longer be published because of racist images. The movement generated a reaction from conservatives who call it “cancel culture, ”And rekindled the debate over the promotion of classic but problematic books.
The announcement took place on Read Across America Day, an initiative to promote children’s reading, which takes place on the birthday of Theodor Seuss Geisel, known as Dr. Seuss.
Dr. Seuss Enterprises admitted that the books – published between the 1930s and the late 1970s – “portray people in harmful and wrong ways.” The decision may have motivated a renewed focus on classic works, but conversations about racism and prejudice in the author’s books are nothing new.
“In Dr. Seuss’ books, we have a kind of sensitivity that is geared towards centralizing the white child and decentralizing everyone else,” said Ebony Thomas, a professor of children’s and youth literature at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of “The Dark Fantastic: Race and the Imagination by Harry Potter for the Hunger Games”.
“Dr. Seuss was shaped by a culture of white supremacy completely immersive, ” Said Thomas. “Even then, our ancestors and elders protested against racist works and produced alternative stories for our children. How do we decide what lasts and what doesn’t? It is our responsibility to decide what type of book to put in front of children.”
The debate is complicated because it must address the strength of classic books and, at the same time, take into account the place of these stories in a world of diverse readers.
A 2019 survey of Seuss’s works found that only 2 percent of human characters were people of color – 98 percent were white. The portrait and references to black characters depend heavily on anti-blackness and images of white superiority, the study concluded.
In “And to think I saw this on Mulberry Street”, a white man is shown using a whip on a colored man. In “If I Ran the Zoo”, a white boy holds a large gun while standing on the heads of three Asian men. “If I Ran the Zoo” also features two men from Africa who are shirtless, barefoot and wearing grass skirts while holding an exotic animal.
Although Seuss’s work has been called “dehumanizing and degrading” for blacks, indigenous people, Jews, Muslims and people of color, according to the research, he is praised for promoting universal values in children. President Barack Obama praised the author in 2016, saying, “Theodor Seuss Geisel – or Dr. Seuss – used his incredible talent to instill in his readers the most impressionable universal values that we all love.”
The books that will no longer be published are: “If I Ran the Zoo,” “And Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street”, “McElligot’s Pool”, “On Beyond Zebra!,” “Scrambled Eggs Super!,” And ” The Cat’s Quizzer “. The company said it reached the decision last year after months of discussion and hailed the change as” part of our commitment and our broader plan to ensure that the Dr. Seuss Enterprises catalog represents and supports all communities and families “.
“I absolutely think this is a commitment to a better, more just and inclusive world of children’s literature,” said Ann Neely, professor of children’s literature at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, about the company’s decision. “We have so many great books for children today; there is no need to continue publishing books that are now inappropriate. We should value children’s books at today’s values, not out of our own nostalgia. Children need to see themselves and others who can be different from them in an accurate and positive way. “
Seuss’s books have been examined in recent years.
In 2017, a Massachusetts school librarian rejected Seuss’ books by then First Lady Melania Trump, saying they were “steeped in racist propaganda”. That same year, a Seuss museum in Massachusetts promised to replace a mural that featured images of “And think I saw it on Mulberry Street”. A 2019 book entitled “Was the cat in the hat black?” argues that “The Cat In The Hat” was based on anti-Black stereotypes and blackface minstrel shows.
In addition to the beloved books, Seuss also published anti-black and anti-Semitic cartoons in which he portrayed blacks as monkeys and referred to them with the word N. Other cartoons featured sexist and racist representations of Asians, according to the analysis 2019 Thus, the National Education Association – which runs Read Across America – has distanced itself from Seuss in recent years.
Criticism of Seuss’s works can be found as early as the 1980s. Today, parents and teachers question the impact that their works can have on impressionable children. Children start to form racial prejudices from the age of 3, and these prejudices are fixed at 7 years old, according to a study. At age 10, children exhibited adult levels of racial prejudice, the research found.
“Today’s children are not us. We cannot continue to give our babies the same opinion as we did, ”said Thomas. “We now know that there are anti-Asian stereotypes in ‘And to think I saw it on Mulberry Street’, ‘The cat in the hat’ is minstrel, ‘When we know better, we can do better.”
Neely added: “By current standards, several of his books include very racist illustrations. These outdated stereotypes are not appropriate for children today. “
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