This was a rant I originally posted on Facebook on March 3rd, 2021
Dr. Seuss was incredibly jingoistic and made political cartoons reflecting that. He hated the Nazis but unfortunately he also hated “the Japanese” and as such made political cartoons about Japanese immigrants every bit as vile as something you’d see in the daily stormer about Muslim immigrants. He was pro Japanese internment until a Japanese friend of his talked him out of that years after the fact. He made holy shit anti-black racist ads. He also saw racism as an evil that needed to be exorcised from society and mocked the hardcore racists of his day even while he continued to use racial stereotypes in his books. His cartoon remarking “there’s a racist in the woodpile” captured his silliness, his opposition to hardcore racism and his willingness to reuse racist memes all in one panel. There are other children’s books of similar or even older vintage that don’t have the stereotypes his did. So who cares what he wanted, it’s bad to publish something portraying Asian humans as bright yellow and stereotypically orientalist. But also you don’t respect a dead racist anti-racist by defending them at their worst.
But there are other problems with his books than just obvious racial stereotypes or reusing minstrel show gags. Green Eggs and Ham ties up one positive message – you shouldn’t judge something by its superficial appearance, you might actually like it – with a more sinister message – it’s totally okay to harass someone and refuse to take no for an answer. The thing is, children’s books are full of these kinds of problems. But at least if there’s a solid portfolio of different authors, it can be watered down with better messages. So I say this as someone who really likes Seuss’ better stuff, who likes his surreal cartoon style and rhythm and silliness – it’s bad for any one author to take up too much space in bookshelves or be put on a pedestal. It’s good for new characters to rise up. We don’t have to impose our own childhoods on our children. If we try too hard then we end up in a situation where one of the most iconic characters (Mickey Mouse) is literally based on blackface style and everyone just kind of pretends not to notice.
[comments I made on facebook]
People are going to interpret this as me being an extreme “wokescold”. I’m a cartoon nerd. I’m into cartoons and talking about cartoons and cartoonists. This isn’t something I just started thinking about just now.
One of the big ironies here is Dr. Seuss would not have liked a lot of the people “defending” him.