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.
Continue reading Seuss’ Estate Pulling Books