Did you actually read it? It's from a guy desperately trying to say the book should be cancelled under the rules of "cancel culture". It's a mess he was trying to be ironic and failed miserably. This sums it up right here. "First, notice what Dr. Seuss is in effect saying: Skin color doesn't matter. We should stop judging people based upon their skin. Since the starred vs. unstarred social construct turns out to be socially destructive, in the end, the Sneetches overcome and dispense with this social construct. But today we know better. On the contrary, to be anti-racist means forming snap judgments about people based upon their race, to ignore individual merit and demerit and instead impugn everyone with a collective identity. Seeing individual people as individual people rather as token members of their racial categories is the epitome of contemporary racism. Our individual identities are tertiary matters. Just as Christians hold that all humans are guilty of original sin despite not having personally eaten the fruit of the tree of knowledge, so today we realize that anti-racism means assigning white people whatever sins their ancestors committed. Of course, this concept of original racial sin applies to white people only. Anti-racism means we are to regard non-white people as largely passive, helpless agents; non-white peoples' own histories of colonialism and imperialism count for nothing."
Those books came out in the 60s. Not sure it's the benchmark of children's books that the outraged are claiming it to be, but since it came from that period, it's timeless!
Ok? Do you mean the Boomers are outraged at the outrage? And yes it is timeless and I am not a boomer and I am not outraged. I remember some of the depictions when I was a kid looked off. And will ride or die for Curious George though.
I don't even know how we got from 1980's to 2021. I feel like I lived in multiverse USA Marvel movie. upcoming Cancel possibilities -Cancel the world "Cracker" from any food related items -Cancel Coffee because it's black and usually harvested by low labor workers. -Cancel chocolate candy, because it represents eating blacks and sometimes we break the chocolate, which represents breaking blacks backs -Cancel Condom sizes too because it's not fair that some condom sizes are too large and represents unfair racial profiling -Cancel Movies because why does all the minorities who speak non-english are forced to speak English. I was watching Tony Jaa movie and the dude was forced to speak English. -Cancel the Internet too because it promotes racial profiling, I can join hate groups, promote it, social media it. There is some stuff that is just plain wrong but If people want to stop reading Dr. Seuss books, then just stop reading it, no need to tweet to the world that "I am going to stop reading Dr.Seuss and you should too" Can't wait till they cancel Curious George....Monkey with a white man as his Parent..However that man always dressed with a yellow hat, so is that white man, really an Asian, who pretends to be white?????
Bro just don't read twitter. There are millions of randos with millions of stupid unique opinions ******** their takes with tweets. I got a death threat for an opinion that on a sandwich before and I didn't care because I figured it's some troll or bot. It doesn't matter. No one is canceling Dr. Seuss. This whole Cancel culture hoopla is nothing but a wedge issue meant to district from genuine issues. The right wing is weaponizing it because they don't have policy ideas anymore. They have culture war rhetoric. That's it.
I am sorry I was oblivious, my fault. Also they both apparently have voiced the view that most people should not vote.
"The time is right to cancel Dr. Seuss’s racist books": https://www.washingtonpost.com/ente...496b98-7b55-11eb-a976-c028a4215c78_story.html The time is right to cancel Dr. Seuss’s racist books By Ron Charles Critic, Book World March 2, 2021 at 1:26 p.m. EST As birthday celebrations go, this is some tough love. On Tuesday, the 117th anniversary of the birth of Theodor Seuss Geisel, the company that controls his works announced it will no longer publish six Dr. Seuss books because of their racist imagery. “And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street” and “If I Ran the Zoo” are among the titles being dropped. “These books portray people in ways that are hurtful and wrong,” the company said in a statement. “Ceasing sales of these books is only part of our commitment and our broader plan to ensure Dr. Seuss Enterprises’ catalog represents and supports all communities and families.” March 2 is not only Geisel’s birthday; it’s Read Across America Day, founded in 1998 by the National Education Association, to celebrate reading. That makes the timing of the announcement somewhat awkward, though perhaps not as awkward as Dr. Seuss’s racist illustrations. Geisel, who died in 1991, is credited with revolutionizing the teaching of reading and remains one of the most popular authors in the world. His books have sold hundreds of millions of copies. But it’s long been known that early in his career Geisel drew propaganda cartoons that reflected anti-Black and anti-Japanese tropes. Some of those ugly motifs leached into his children’s books like toxic mold in the basement — easy but dangerous to ignore. The decision to stop publishing these books — along with “McElligot’s Pool,” “On Beyond Zebra!,” “Scrambled Eggs Super!” and “The Cat’s Quizzer” — should not shock anyone who’s been following discussions about Dr. Seuss in particular or children’s literature in general. More recent scholarship has raised questions about even his most beloved classics. In 2017, Philip Nel, an English professor at Kansas State University, published a book called “Was the Cat in the Hat Black?” According to Nel, the mischievous, white-gloved cat was “inspired by blackface minstrelsy.” Similar problems make other Seuss titles problematic for parents, teachers and librarians concerned about exposing children to racist images and attitudes without any critical context. For instance, Seuss’s first children’s book, “And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street” (1937), contains an illustration of a young Chinese man that looks like a pre-World War II stereotype. Because it is. Disappointingly, “If I Ran the Zoo” and “If I Ran the Circus,” both published in the 1950s, contain the same stereotypical depictions of Asians as “helpers who all wear their eyes at a slant” and a picture of African men that plays on the most degrading iconography. After years of earnest efforts to create a more just society, the persistence of racist groups in America — given new energy by the rise of Donald Trump — has made many people realize that more aggressive steps must be taken to counter these attitudes. There’s been a heightened awareness of the way racism is subtly inscribed in our culture, including in our children’s books. Publishers have been trying to undo the damage with titles such as Ibram X. Kendi’s “Antiracist Baby,” Bobbi Kates’s “We’re Different, We’re the Same” and Chana Ginelle Ewing’s “An ABC of Equality.” But these concerns are not new or — despite mockery from the right — part of some trendy cancel-culture hysteria. Langston Hughes criticized Helen Bannerman’s “Little Black Sambo” back in the early 1930s, calling out the best-selling picture book for its demeaning depiction of a Black child. For many people — including publishers who own these titles — the first instinct is often denial and then some contorted effort to sanitize their valuable literary property. Surely, new illustrations of Sambo will solve the problem, right? But the racism that infects some children’s books is not a typo or a stray mark that can be so easily fixed. It’s more like the pink stain the Cat leaves around the bathtub: Cleverly shifting it around won’t solve the problem. That seems to be what the publisher of “If I Ran the Zoo” finally concluded. “Dr. Seuss Enterprises listened and took feedback from our audiences including teachers, academics and specialists in the field as part of our review process,” the company told the Associated Press. “We then worked with a panel of experts, including educators, to review our catalog of titles.” Dr. Seuss Enterprises will surely be in a slump this week, and we know that “un-slumping yourself is not easily done.” Enlightened readers will complain that the company waited too long to do the right thing. Right-wing critics are already whining that the company caved to the woke mob. It would have been easy for Dr. Seuss Enterprises to continue overlooking the controversy around some of these books or to claim, like that nervous fish in “The Cat and the Hat”: “This mess is so big and so deep and so tall, we cannot pick it up, there is no way at all!” But that would have been an increasingly intolerable cop-out. For years, sharp-eyed teachers and librarians had been replacing the weaker Dr. Seuss titles with better children’s books that don’t incidentally mock or diminish any groups of people. Having waited so long for the publisher to acknowledge the problem, the moment is right: “So, as fast as you can, think of something to do! you will have to get rid of Thing One and Thing Two!” We will have to get rid of other things, too. Ron Charles writes about books for The Washington Post and hosts TotallyHipVideoBookReview.com.
I actually had someone ask what was so offensive about this image..I didn't even dignify him with a response. If they say they don't see anything offensive here..they are obvious trolls. Dr Seuss was a product of his time. But even he went back and changed some of his own art years later to be less offensive. There is no reason to cancel everything he did..but what his estate is doing is not "Cancel culture at work". They are simply no longer publishing 6 of his 30-something books because they are n-longer relevant to the times..mainly due to what are now considered offensive pictures. It's their right to do so and no one is forcing them.
"Why the Dr. Seuss 'cancellation' is chilling": https://theweek.com/articles/969971/why-dr-seuss-cancellation-chilling excerpt: As often happens, each side has a point. There is nothing new about revising or even shelving published works in deference to concerns about racism and other bigotries. Nor is there anything wrong with it. In Victorian England, hardly a bastion of political correctness, Charles Dickens changed some languagein reprints of Oliver Twist to cut down on references to the villainous Fagin as "the Jew" after a correspondence with a Jewish woman who criticized him for feeding anti-Semitic prejudice. In the 20th Century, a 1939 Agatha Christie novel whose original title is now unspeakable in polite society was reissued just a few years later as Ten Little Indians (And Then There Were None in the United States); the children's counting rhyme on which the title was based was also changed in the text. In Roald Dahl's 1964 classic Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the Oompa-Loompas working at Willy Wonka's factory were originally African pygmies. Just a few years later, controversy erupted; Dahl ended up agreeing with his critics and replaced the Black workers with pink and golden-haired "dwarvish hippies." There is little question that many depictions of racial, ethnic, or religious minorities in books or films from past eras is now unpalatable, with good reason. The same goes for portrayals of women and gays. And yet there are valid reasons to see the publisher's withdrawal of those six Dr. Seuss books as a worrying sign. For one, the decision comes in tandem with other moves intended to demote Dr. Seuss (Theodor Seuss Geisel) from his iconic status. On the same day, President Biden omitted any mention of Dr. Seuss from his official proclamation to mark Read Across America Day, breaking a tradition started by Barack Obama. The event, first established by the National Education Association in 1998, has always honored Dr. Seuss: His birthday was picked as its date. Now, the NEA says that Read Across America is no longer affiliated with Dr. Seuss Enterprises, and at least one school district in Virginia has been instructing schools to downplay the day's connection to Dr. Seuss because of "strong racial undertones" found in his work. What's more, the critique of those "racial undertones" has been often tendentious to the point of distortion. Thus, a CNN article assertsthat Geisel, who was also a political cartoonist, "had a long history of publishing racist and anti-Semitic work, spanning back to the 1920s when he was a student at Dartmouth College. There, Dr. Seuss once drew Black boxers as gorillas and perpetuated Jewish stereotypes by portraying Jewish characters as financially stingy." No mention is made of the fact that by the 1940s, the cartoonist had emerged as an outspoken foe of anti-Semitism — a stance that would later earn him the title of "honorary Jew," bestowed by Jerusalem mayor Teddy Kollek in 1969 — and of anti-Black racism. A 1942 cartoon skewered racial discrimination in U.S. war industries: An entrance for "Negro job-hunters" is shown leading to an impenetrable maze. Regrettably, many of Dr. Seuss' wartime cartoons also featured the blatant anti-Japanese racism that was a staple of U.S. war propaganda. Yet in later years, his children's books often served as parables denouncing racial prejudice and xenophobia. Horton Hears a Who, written after a visit to Japan, famously declared, "A person's a person, no matter how small," and was dedicated to a Japanese friend, Mitsugi Nakamura. To erase this complicated history really does smack of "cancellation." No less disturbing, much of the current pushback against Dr. Seuss is based on a 2019 paper by Katie Ishizuka and Ramón Stephens that consistently interprets his work in the most negative light and peddles extreme ideological dogma. Take Dr. Seuss's 1961 book The Sneetches, which has widely praised for its anti-racist message: Birdlike creatures with stars on their bellies scorn and bully their plain-bellied cousins until a wily salesman brings a device that can add or remove stars, and all the sneetches change so many times they get thoroughly mixed up and decide to treat everyone equally. But Ishizuka and Stephens attack the poem as insidious because it teaches that color shouldn't matter. Echoing Kansas State University scholar Philip Nel, they also read a sinister racist subtext into The Cat in the Hat: The magical cat supposedly resembles images from Black minstrelsy and exists only to entertain two white children. If such takedowns can get an author moved to the "problematic" list, who and what will escape the purges? Some who support the withdrawal of the six Dr. Seuss books argue that even subtle racism must be "exorcised" from our cultural legacy, especially works intended for children. But if the exorcism targets racial codes so subtle that they are invisible or innocuous to the naked eye (a black-and-white cat wearing white gloves represents racist minstrelsy?), it could do much more harm than good, fostering both paranoia and backlash. And imagine how much art and literature will have to be junked if we ever apply the same magnifying lens to gender stereotypes. Nor is it clear that, as Boston Globe writer Ty Burr suggests, the withdrawn books will still be available in libraries and on websites like Amazon: once a work has been stigmatized as "harmful," libraries will undoubtedly come under pressure to remove it, and Amazon sometimes drops books it considers offensive. The answer isn't that anything goes; it's that we can use common sense to distinguish between old texts or images that degrade or dehumanize members of a group and ones that reflect dated but non-malignant stereotyping. Among the canceled Dr. Seuss books, for instance, If I Ran the Zoo really does contain some shockingly racist iconography of Africans as thick-lipped, potbellied, half-naked savages in grass skirts. On the other hand, the supposedly racist depiction of a Chinese man in To Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street involves an actual costume worn in parts of China at the time the book was published (1937), a bowl of rice, and chopsticks. (The original edition also gave the man bright yellow skin and a pigtail and referred to him as a "Chinaman," but Dr. Seuss himself later made changes.) Mildly stereotypical? Sure, but much the same way as, say, the depiction of a Jewish man wearing a yarmulke and eating a bagel or a Scotsman playing bagpipes in a kilt. Many Asian-Americans have said they don't find the picture offensive, and effectively purging the book from the Dr. Seuss canon because of it seems excessive. Should children's literature adapt to a more racially and ethnically diverse, more gender-equal society? Of course. But the way to do that is to add new classics, not discard old ones. Given the speed of cultural shifts today, people are right to worry about harsh and unforgiving judgments of dated attitudes. And when a writer who cheers the Dr. Seuss "cancellation" warns that "we will have to get rid of other things, too," we are right to feel a chill.
Dr Seuss said he was embarassed by these and his family didnt want them published anymore. What was cancelled exactly?
Just checking in. Looks like the result is still... 1. Liberals don't hate Dr. Seuss 2. Dr. Seuss hasn't been cancelled That should be good news for those that were faux-outraged over something not very significant.
no, the good news is that the New York Times is still covering the story--one more sign that the story is something not very significant https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/04/books/dr-seuss-books.html Dr. Seuss Books Are Pulled, and a ‘Cancel Culture’ Controversy Erupts The beloved author’s most famous books, like “Green Eggs and Ham,” were untouched, but his estate’s decision nevertheless prompted a backlash and raised questions about what should be preserved as part of the cultural record. By Alexandra Alter and Elizabeth A. Harris March 4, 2021Updated 7:41 p.m. ET In the summer of 1936, Theodor Geisel was on a ship from Europe to New York when he started scribbling silly rhymes on the ship’s stationery to entertain himself during a storm: “And this is a story that no one can beat. I saw it all happen on Mulberry Street.” The rhymes morphed into his first children’s book, “And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street,” about a boy who witnesses increasingly outlandish things. First published in 1937, the book started Geisel’s career as Dr. Seuss. He went on to publish more than 60 books that have sold some 700 million copies globally, making him one of the world’s most enduringly popular children’s book authors. But some aspects of Seuss’s work have not aged well, including his debut, which features a crude racial stereotype of an Asian man with slanted lines for eyes. “Mulberry Street” was one of six of his books that the Seuss estate said it would stop selling this week, after concluding that the egregious racial and ethnic stereotypes in the works “are hurtful and wrong.” The announcement seemed to drive a surge of support for Seuss classics. Dozens of his books shot to the top of Amazon’s print best-seller list; on Thursday morning, nine of the site’s top 10 best sellers were Seuss books. The estate’s decision — which prompted breathless headlines on cable news and complaints about “cancel culture” from prominent conservatives — represents a dramatic step to update and curate Seuss’s body of work, acknowledging and rejecting some of his views while seeking to protect his brand and appeal. It also raises questions about whether and how an author’s works should be posthumously curated to reflect evolving social attitudes, and what should be preserved as part of the cultural record. “It will cause people to re-evaluate the legacy of Dr. Seuss, and I think that’s a good thing,” said Philip Nel, a children’s literature scholar at Kansas State University and the author of “Dr. Seuss: American Icon.” “There are parts of his legacy one should honor, and parts of his legacy that one should not.” He added: “They may be motivated by the fact that racism is bad for the brand, or they may be motivated by a deeper sense of racial justice.” Classic children’s books are perennial best sellers and an important revenue stream for publishers. Last year, more than 338,000 copies of “Green Eggs and Ham” were sold across the United States, according to NPD BookScan, which tracks the sale of physical books at most retailers. “One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish” sold more than 311,000 copies, and “Oh, the Places You’ll Go!” — always popular as a high school graduation gift — sold more than 513,000 copies. “And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street,” one of the six books pulled by the estate, sold about 5,000 copies last year, according to BookScan. “McElligot’s Pool” and “The Cat’s Quizzer” haven’t sold in years through the retailers BookScan tracks. Putting the merits of the books aside, removing “Green Eggs and Ham” would be a completely different business proposition from doing away with new printings of “McElligot’s Pool.” Dr. Seuss is perhaps the most beloved children’s book author to come under criticism for outdated and insensitive depictions of racial, ethnic, cultural and gender differences. In recent decades, librarians and scholars have led a push to re-evaluate children’s classics that contain stereotypes and caricatures. Editions of illustrated series like “Tintin” and “Babar,” which have long been accused of promoting colonialist and imperialist viewpoints, have been withdrawn from some libraries following criticism that their European authors depicted nonwhite characters as savages. Children’s publishers and literary estates are trying to walk a delicate line by preserving an author’s legacy, while recognizing and rejecting aspects of a writer’s work that are out of step with current social and cultural values. Some authors self-edited their work in response to criticism. In the 1970s, Roald Dahl revised “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” which originally depicted the factory workers as dark-skinned pygmies from Africa. After facing charges of racism from the N.A.A.C.P., Dahl made the workers Oompa Loompas from a fictional country called Loompaland. The revision failed to appease those who contend that the Oompa Loompas are essentially indentured servants, and other critiques of some of Dahl’s works, like “The Witches,” which many regard as anti-Semitic, have endured. Occasionally, publishers have made tweaks to illustrations and texts to refurbish outdated picture books. Fans of Richard Scarry, the prolific children’s book author and illustrator, have noted ongoing updates to his works to erase archaic gender roles and racial stereotypes. Over the decades, his books, which have sold more than 160 million copies, have been revised to better reflect gender equality, so that a bear “policeman” became a female bear “police officer,” and a mother cat pushing a stroller became a father cat. Later editions also sought to eliminate racial stereotypes, for example, by deleting an image of an “Indian” mouse in a feathered headdress next to an ice cream cone to illustrate the letter “I.” In rare instances, works have been taken out of circulation. Hergé’s “Tintin in the Congo,” which is no longer widely available in the United States, became part of a controversy called “Tintingate” about a decade ago after librarians and booksellers in the United States and Britain removed the book from children’s sections. More recently, some new children’s books have come under scrutiny for insensitive or inaccurate depictions of race, sometimes leading them to be postponed, or even recalled and pulped. In 2016, Scholastic pulled a picture book, “A Birthday Cake for George Washington,” from stores after critics said it glossed over the horrors of slavery. In a statement, Dr. Seuss Enterprises said it decided to discontinue those six titles last year, after consulting a panel of experts, including educators, to review its catalog. more at the link
