4 ms·
It's 6 of Dr. Seuss's books, and ones that most people haven't heard of. If you actually look at the content of the books, they are clearly racist and demeaning
by o_v_o 6y ago
It's 6 of Dr. Seuss's books, and ones that most people haven't heard of. If you actually look at the content of the books, they are clearly racist and demeaning to those they make caricatures of.
And in any case, it was not a sudden "canceling" or anything approaching that. Seuss's estate, managed by his family, made the decision after much deliberation to cease the publication of only six books due to the content. You could even see it as an anti-cancellation - Seuss's family wants to avoid him being associated with the obviously racist content of some of his work.
- tayo42 6y agoYou'd think people would be tired of being unnecessarily outraged by everything by now?
- amznthrwaway 6y agoRepublicans and other right-wing racists will never stop being outraged, and they will never stop mistaking dumb slippery slope logical fallacies for good arguments. There’s nothing you can do except deplatform them; but HN is explicitly designed as a safe space for far right wing bigots; so this is guaranteed to be a bad discussion. Daniel Gackle has devoted much of his adult life to ensuring that extremists and racists feel safe here in HN; and that minorities do not. He likes to pretend this isn’t the case, but he only talks to very specific people for feedback, ensuring that he can always pretend that people like me are wrong. He’s a closed-minded, bigot-supporting pile of shit who spends every day of his life making the world actively worse for minorities.
- tired-dev 6y agoYou mean like being outraged that people are outraged?
- tclancy 6y agoLook at the pictures in the relevant books and ask yourself if you would want a Black child to see themselves in those images. Ask yourself if Dr Seuss would. No one is outraged, the world just moves on.
- 1123581321 6y agoIf there is no outrage, then you wouldn’t mind if those books continue to be bought and read to children and stocked in libraries. A reasonable outward rhetorical demeanor is not what is in question.
- hannasanarion 6y agoIdk, you're the one deciding to be outraged by an authors children following through on a decision they made last year to stop printing a selection of their father's work. Are you tired of it yet?
- tayo42 6y agoAre you all misinterpreting my comment? Yes I think it's silly people are getting outraged over them deciding to stop printing the books. Seems like people can't stop being outraged about pointless issues. This is on par with Starbucks Christmas cups drama
- cambalache 6y agoDoes Seuss state own ebay?Do they have a constitutional mandate to stop selling of private copies to be sold between 2 private individuals? Are you going to order Fanta, Volkswagen,Bayern,BASF, Ford and Hugo Boss products to be delisted because they were literally associated with the Nazis?
- mackal 6y agoBanning of the books is consistent with eBay's TOS. This is basically "eBay is enforcing it's TOS WRT Dr Seuss books" kind of story.
- nph5667 6y agoThe problem is that you call it "clearly racist". If that is so clear why it took months to decide? In reality it's not that clear and you know it. You just moved a goalpost a little to include something that yesterday nobody complained about to become "clearly racist". And tomorrow will be something else.
- ncallaway 6y agoDo you think they spent months deciding whether the works were racist? Or, is it possible there's an interpretation of the sentence (and a perfectly reasonable one) where they spent months deciding whether they should stop publishing a publication that they had decided was racist? The decision matrix might have been more complicated than: "does the work contain racist content".
- DangitBobby 6y agoI quickly read through Mulberry Street a few minutes ago, and there is a depiction of a Chinese man "eating with sticks." He is wearing sandals, a straw hat, a robe, and holding chop sticks. His facial features are not exaggerated or like a caricature in any way. To me, it's clearly a mistake.
- probably_wrong 6y agoAccording to this article [1] you may have read the updated version. > Seuss actually grew to become more aware of his harmful images later in his life, and to regret them, eventually revising the Mulberry Street text and illustration. "I had a gentleman with a pigtail. I colored him yellow and called him a 'Chinaman,'" Seuss said. "That's the way things were 50 years ago. In later editions, I refer to him as a 'Chinese man.' I have taken the color out of the gentleman and removed the pigtail and now he looks like an Irishman." [1] https://theweek.com/articles/969777/complicated-quagmire-dr-seuss https://theweek.com/articles/969777/complicated-quagmire-dr-...
- DangitBobby 6y agoI think you are right. I saw another version later that seemed worse.