The Dr. Seuss issue

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

Poor selling? Dr Seuss is poor selling? That's your story and you are sticking to it, hum?

For the books in questions? Yes. Quite happy to stick with that. That's part of why this was such an easy, partially self-serving move for the foundation to make in the first place. Pretty obvious to anyone actually looking at the facts rather than looking for fuel to feed persecution conspiracy theories.

Do you have the books in question in your library? Have you read them?

“And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street”
“If I Ran the Zoo”
“McElligot’s Pool”
“On Beyond Zebra!”
“Scrambled Eggs Super!”
“The Cat’s Quizzer”

Where was all of the outrage over the supposed pressure being put on the Seuss foundation to pull these books BEFORE the news broke that they had voluntarily decided to stop reprinting them on their own?

[SeaBookGuy]

Slam-dunk for my favorite Seuss book: Green Eggs and Ham!

[Question Mark]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Where was all of the outrage over the supposed pressure being put on the Seuss foundation to pull these books BEFORE the news broke that they had voluntarily decided to stop reprinting them on their own?

Well, in 2019, there was this article published by Learning for Justice: It's Time to Talk About Dr. Seuss

https://www.learningforjustice.org/m...about-dr-seuss

The Learning for Justice article cited this 2019 study: The Cat is Out of the Bag: Orientalism, Anti-Blackness, and White Supremacy in Dr. Seuss's Children's Books Supremacy in Dr. Seuss's Children's Books

https://sophia.stkate.edu/cgi/viewco...0&context=rdyl

The study is well worth reading and highlights some of Dr. Seuss' early advertising work and his cartoons which appeared in a variety of magazines. I hadn't been aware of such work until reading the article just today. It doesn't paint a pretty picture.

That said, I still wouldn't have an issue sharing any of the Dr. Seuss books which I have seen with children.

[DiapDealer]

I'll certainly take a look. Thank you. But I'm not really interested in whether Seuss or his works actually were (or were not) racist. I'm interested in how some people have taken the recent news concerning the foundation's relatively unnewsworthy decision regarding reprinting these 6 works, and have used it to fabricate a story about the Seuss estate being relentless hounded and persecuted into making the decision they did. And of course I'm amazed at how many (and how quickly) people were willing to gobble up the "Now they're banning Dr. Seuss!" lie.

[Question Mark]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

I'm interested in how some people have taken the recent news concerning the foundation's relatively unnewsworthy decision regarding reprinting these 6 works, and have used it to fabricate a story about the Seuss estate being relentless hounded and persecuted into making the decision they did. And of course I'm amazed at how many (and how quickly) people were willing to gobble up the "Now they're banning Dr. Seuss!" lie.

From the linked 2019 study:

As critical race scholar-activists, we engaged stakeholders, including youth, families, and teachers from racially marginalized communities, to identify and document existing forms of resistance to Seuss' racist works. In 2017, we submitted this stakeholder feedback, and our study findings, to the National Education Association’s (NEA) Read Across America (RAA) Advisory Committee. RAA is the nation’s largest celebration of reading, with over 45 million annual participants. The NEA created the event in 1996 to take place on Dr. Seuss' birthday (March 2nd). For twenty years, the celebration was centered around Dr. Seuss' children’s books and the author himself. We advocated that they reconsider their twenty year focus on Seuss and use their platform to promote anti-racist diverse books by authors of color. The NEA committed to start transitioning away from Dr. Seuss, change RAA’s theme to “Celebrating a Nation of Diverse Readers,” and use the event as an opportunity to promote social justice. For the first time in twenty years, they removed all Dr. Seuss books from their annual Read Across America Resource Calendar, and featured all diverse books and authors at their RAA events in 2018.

https://sophia.stkate.edu/cgi/viewco...0&context=rdyl

The article also relates how pressure was put on the Seuss museum in 2017 to remove the image of the Chinese man depicted in the Mulberry Street book from a mural:

These edits did not remove the racism; they only modified select parts, while retaining other explicitly racist parts. The revised version came under fire in 2017 when it appeared on a mural at the Amazing World of Dr. Seuss Museum that opened in Springfield, Massachusetts that year. While the edits replaced the word “Chinaman” with “Chinese man,” and removed his bright yellow skin and ponytail, the character retained his chopsticks, bowl of rice, slanted eyes, wooden shoes, and pointed hat. The museum faced pressure to remove their mural featuring this character when children’s book authors Mo Willems, Mike Curato, and Lisa Yee refused to attend a book festival there in October of 2017 because of the “jarring racial stereotype” (Hauser). In a letter to the museum, they stated: “We find this caricature of ‘the Chinaman’ deeply hurtful, and have concerns about children’s exposure to it” (Hauser). Dr. Seuss Enterprises agreed to remove the mural in response to the authors’ boycott, but it did not occur without protest from the Mayor of Springfield and members of Seuss' family, who referred to it as “extreme” and “a lot of hot air over nothing” (Kelly).

https://sophia.stkate.edu/cgi/viewco...0&context=rdyl

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by Question Mark

The article also relates how pressure was put on the Seuss museum in 2017 to remove the image of the Chinese man depicted in the Mulberry Street book from a mural:

Pressure from three children's book authors who refused to attend an event there unless the mural was removed (which the estate agreed to do). Hardly the army of misguided cultural activists people today are pretending are directly responsible for the decision to stop reprinting these 6 books.

[Question Mark]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Pressure from three children's book authors who refused to attend an event there unless the mural was removed (which the estate agreed to do). Hardly the army of misguided cultural activists people today are pretending are directly responsible for the decision to stop reprinting these 6 books.

There was also the pressure put on the National Education Association’s (NEA) Read Across America (RAA) Advisory Committee in 2017 by the authors of the study when they presented their stakeholder feedback and the findings of their study to the NEA committee.

Did they directly pressure the Seuss foundation as well? I don't know. However, I'm fairly certain that the Seuss foundation would have taken note of such actions.

[DiapDealer]

Again... hardly the "woke" cancel-culture people are blaming for the recent news. Very few of the people screaming "they're banning Dr. Seuss!" today are aware of the 2017 "pressure" you're pointing out. As I said; the outrage over the recent not-really-news is where my interest lies. If people want to accuse the NEA and a couple of other children's book authors of pressuring the Seuss estate back in 2017 into making the decision to stop reprinting these 6 books in 2021, they have my blessing. But that's not what I see/hear happening. What I see is people drumming up a furor so they can create a strawman to blame for it.

[Question Mark]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Again... hardly the "woke" cancel-culture people are blaming for the recent news...
...What I see is people drumming up a furor so they can create a strawman to blame for it.

I think there is an element of the "woke" cancel-culture to it. Otherwise why publicly announce that those titles would no longer to be printed? They could have just silently stopped printing those titles, especially if they were not selling well.

However, I think you are quite right in that certain elements seem to be exploiting this issue and people's nostalgia for Dr. Seuss to lash out at "woke" cancel-culture.

[Pajamaman]

'Banned' Dr. Seuss Books Delisted on eBay After Selling for Thousands

One seller who had sole a copy of one of the discontinued books received an e-mail from eBay pointing out that the site would not allow the book to be sold because of its "offensive materials policy," explaining that “Dr. Seuss Enterprises has stopped publication of this book due to its negative portrayal of some ethnicities. As a courtesy, we have ended your item and refunded your selling fees, and as long as you do not relist the item, there will be no negative impact to your account.”

Remarkable. I had no idea Dr. Seuss is such a threat.

[Lynx-lynx]

Have the 'offending' Seuss books been blocked in the EU by any sellers, is there an EU comment generally, anyone know?

Unfortunately, my guess is that here in Australia, whoever handles the Suess books will fall into line with the US .... sigh

Edit: all I'm seeing when I search for other countries views on the withdrawal of the books is US material as to reasons for discontinuing publication, not comments from any other country as to how these 'damning' portrayals are considered by them.

[Lynx-lynx]

Originally Posted by Pajamaman

'Banned' Dr. Seuss Books Delisted on eBay After Selling for Thousands



Remarkable. I had no idea Dr. Seuss is such a threat.

What a potato head!!!


()

[hildea]

Originally Posted by Question Mark

That's your interpretation. The quote from Dr. Seuss which Lynx-lynx uncovered suggests that that was not the intention:

I assume that wasn't the intention, yes. But intentions aren't magic.

But the Chinese man has the exact same pose as the magician. I don't see that he is treated any differently. Now, running down a street while eating with chopsticks is odd. Just as is running down the street while doing magic tricks.

Magician isn't an ethnic group. (Do I really have to point that out?)
Compare the portrayal of Chinese people with the portrayal of white people on that page. Can you still say with a straight face that they are similar?

Should Indians be offended that the Indian figure in the book is riding atop an elephant? Isn't that stereotypical?

Hm, maybe? On the other hand, I don't see anything in the drawings that prevent us from interpreting any of the characters as Indian -- the guy with the beard or the magician or the top hat people or... There may of course be nuances I'm missing in the drawings.

What should we make of the fact that there were no female characters in the book? Does that tell children that women are not important?

Yes. Of course. I'm baffled that you need to ask. But publishers are seldom considering withdrawing old books for that reason, because we're more used to blatant gender imbalance in media.

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

When I was a child, at least for a few years, biography was my favorite genres. By the theory that occupational diversity needs to be present in every title, we could stop printing, and stop selling on Ebay, all juvenile biographies, since no one book shows it.

Do you seriously think that's what I'm talking about? I can try to explain better, if you sincerely don't understand me. If you're just trying to score rhetorical points I won't bother.

Provide a wider perspective. If the librarian finds that almost all of their children's books treat people of color as weird and exotic -- which would mean it was an extraordinarily weird library -- the remedy is to supplement with other kinds of books. But if hardly any of their books show people of color as weird and exotic -- or just to make sure a wide range of perspectives are in their collection -- they should, if they can afford it, buy the withdrawn titles while still available.

I think we mostly agree here: Libraries should provide a wider perspective, and provide many different points of view. I sincerely doubt that oldfashioned and outdated views of race are anywhere near extinction in modern libraries, so I doubt there's any need to go out of their way to provide more such books. On the other hand, publishing statistics show that white characters and white authors are still overrepresented in publishing compared to other ethnic groups. I'm glad you agree that libraries should go out of their way to get more books from non-white perspectives.

[Question Mark]

Originally Posted by hildea

Magician isn't an ethnic group. (Do I really have to point that out?)

I don't recall saying or intimating that magicians are an ethnic group. They are, however, a group/subset of performers.

Does Dr, Seuss' portrayal of magicians here tell children that being a magician is weird or exotic and that it is a less noble profession than being a mayor in a top hat or a musician in a band?

I sincerely doubt that most children would walk away with that interpretation.

Originally Posted by hildea

Compare the portrayal of Chinese people with the portrayal of white people on that page. Can you still say with a straight face that they are similar?

Apart from the colour of his skin and the clothes that he is wearing, the Chinese man seems to be portrayed much the same as the other characters on the page. He has the exact same pose as the magician. His nose, ears, eyes and smile are virtually identical to the bearded man.

He is running down the street while apparently eating with chopsticks. That is odd. But no less odd than running down the street while pulling rabbits from a hat.

As for hairstyle and clothing, take a look at some of the pictures on San Francisco's Museum's webpage on the history of its Chinatown: http://www.sfmuseum.org/hist9/cook.html

Up until 1911, the queue hairstyle for men was quite common. That was not so far removed in time from the date at which the Seuss book in question was published.

Is there anything wrong with people wearing traditional hairstyles and traditional costumes?

If they're being mocked, then I would certainly have an issue with that. I don't see that in the picture in question, particularly because of the similar treatment of the bearded man and the magician.

Again, I think you're reading too much into the picture. More than most children would. And, again, reading such books together with one's children can provide teachable moments if needed.

[SteveEisenberg]

Re the MobileReading aspect here:

You can buy used copies of some of these titles at Amazon, but there is no longer an eBook:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...oreType=ebooks

Originally Posted by pwalker8

It's also a very good argument for no copyright if a book isn't available for purchase.