Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot,
Nothing is going to get better, it's not.
-Dr. Seuss, The Lorax
I love Dr. Seuss, but I did notice some things when I started reading those beloved books from my childhood to my own kids. Yes, it was the racism. Africans and Asian people depicted in crude stereotypes. At the time I just chalked it up to the rather unreflective racial attitudes of a mid 20th century white guy. As much as I want to say this is another case of over-reacting by the woke Gestapo, I actually know precisely the problematic images and depictions that have gotten six Seuss volumes pulled from future publication. I'm sort of glad that the people in charge of Seuss's material have decided to pull them, even though McElligott's Pool is sort of a personal favorite. This is not being "cancelled" by the way, it is a voluntary decision made by people due to a combination of public relations management and, I would hope at least a little bit of a desire to just do the right thing and stop propagating material that traffics in stereotypes and racist tropes.
But there is a discussion to be had here in the midst of all this; is it really a good idea to hold artists from the past to modern standards? For instance, and this is far from a novel use of this example, should Huckleberry Finn, be removed from the literary curriculum of most high schools because of it's pervasive use of the N word. Mark Twain was a white guy, who despite actually crafting a book about the humanity of a black man, probably used that derogatory word in real life quite a bit. One of my own personal favorites is Thomas Jefferson who had deeply problematic attitudes towards blacks and indigenous people, should we somehow try to sanitize him for our own protection? Or do we let them be who they are. Do we let Seuss (Theodore Geisel) who in addition to writing books for children also produced polemic anti-Nazi and consequently also anti-Japanese propaganda be who he was and try to teach ourselves and our children to be better in the places where it is necessary?
I think that's a pretty important thing to consider here because in addition to the problematic texts, which again I suspect were more a result of simply not knowing any better, there were also some highly valuable moral lessons taught by the works of Dr. Seuss. McElligott's Pool, one of the books slated for removal is about hope and faith and actually makes the point that the world is such a large and diverse place that anything is possible. The Star Bellied Sneetches, is actually an anti-racist tale that points out the utter absurdity of considering physical characteristics as a marker of superiority/inferiority and also a commentary on how unscrupulous characters might take advantage of those who think that way. The Lorax, my personal favorite, is about the dangers of unrestrained capitalism and how it will lay waste to the natural world and cause suffering in many ways. And of course, Oh, The Places You'll Go, is a fanciful ode of what every parent wants to tell their child as they grow up.
Look, I have read Baldwin, I know that representation and depiction in media have a deep effect on children and how they seem themselves in the world. That's why I'm okay letting these few volumes simply fade away. Just as I'm okay letting Buckwheat, Tonto and Aunt Jemima get swept onto the dust heap of things that were okay to most people at some point, but then just weren't anymore. What I don't want is for people to paint Theodore Geisel as a racist, because I do not believe he was. It doesn't matter to him I suppose, but it does matter to us. We just can't go through this with all of history. It's not only objectively stupid, it also gives the genuine racists that are still drawing breath a really good tool to pull a bunch of folks onto their team because of the knee jerk reactions that a lot of us have to things like this.
The culture wars have a way of making people more sure of their own righteousness rather than more aware of the way their prejudice and biases adversely effect their neighbors who look different than they do. If we really want to work on making this world a genuinely better and more equal place, we really should try and keep Thomas Jefferson, Mark Twain and Theodore Geisel on our team. Asking them to change is futile, because they're dead. All we can do is change how we react to them, and maybe actually use the view from their place in history as a teaching tool so that we and our kids can do better.
